Japan
May/June  2008

back to James writings and travelogues

This is part four (of five): May 29th to May 31, 2008
part one   part two   part three   part four   part five

All text and photos ©2008 James A. Teitelbaum
All rights reserved.
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Thursday, June 29

International Rebecca and I checked out of the Weekly Mansion Akasaka, my home for the previous ten nights, bought some bento boxes, bananas, and water to go, said goodbye to the FoodeXpress (¥1460), and took the subway to Tokyo Station. 

At Tokyo Station I found a small glossy flier reproducing one of the most bizarre posters I have seen to date.  The poster (and now the smaller flyer) are all over Tokyo.  It is advertising some sort of film or play about Arabs.  There are four Japanese women on the poster, all dressed in Arab costume.  One of the pretty and petite Japanese women is sporting full female eye makeup... and a huge thick moustache, Saddam Hussein-style.  Or Freddie Mercury-style.  Same thing.  Either way, I have spent the past ten days seeing this poster all over the Tokyo subway, and wondering what the hell it was that I was looking at. 
Truly bizarre.
This culture is impenetrable.

Having shared this latest bit of weirdness with Rebecca, who was equally confused and amused at this oddity, we boarded a bullet train - or shinkansen - bound for Kyoto.

You may remember that before leaving Chicago, I stopped into a travel agency and bought a pair of Japan Railways passes for $268 (¥28,300) each.  This deal is not available on-line or anywhere in Japan, you have to get it at an agency, and you have to get it before you leave your home country.  Our passes were good for seven days, beginning today (14 and 21-day passes are available too).  It allowed us to ride all JR trains at will, be they shinkansen between cities, or local JR trains (such as the Yamanote Loop inside Tokyo, or the Kyoto equivalent). There are only two restrictions: the first is that we have to ride in non-reserved shinkansen cars, which are slightly less luxurious (but still quite comfortable), and which do not guarantee a seat.  The second is that we are limited to two of the three classes of shinkansen.  We can take Hikari (H) or Kodana (K) shinkansen trains, but not Nozomi (N) trains. The H, K, and N trains are basically the same, but they make different numbers of stops, and therefore take different amounts of time to get where they’re going.  Kodana trains make the most stops, and Nozomi the least, with Hikari in the middle.  So, being banned from Nozomi trains, we checked the Hikari schedule and soon found ourselves in plush and comfortable seats for the two hour and forty minute trip to Kyoto.  Kodana trains would have taken another forty-five minutes, and Nozomi trains took about forty minutes less time.  Hikari bound for Kyoto leave Tokyo station every thirty minutes between 8:03am and 8:33pm. Japan, for those of you who have never looked at a map, is actually an archipelago, with the biggest island being Honshu.  The part of Honshu from Tokyo to Osaka is called Central Honshu.  Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara form a triangle that takes about forty-five minutes per side to travel by rail.  The sleek white train is almost silent on its tracks.  Rebecca told me about her trip from Narita to Tokyo: a Japanese businessman in a blue suit was sitting next to her on the train, chugging beers.  We ate our lunch and watched the Japanese rural landscape whip past.  I tried to take a few pictures out the window, but it was a futile effort.  What I manly noticed is that there are no truly wild parts of Japan left, or at least not between Tokyo and Kyoto.  The only time that we really got away from populated areas was when going through some mountains.  And even in the hills, there were people and industry.  These mountains were also the only place free of rice paddies.  As was the case between Narita airport and Tokyo, I observed that rice is grown on every square acre that isn’t being used for something more vital.  Few things seem to be more vital.

Bento lunches!

We made it to Kyoto without mishap.  In the train station, I left Rebecca guarding our luggage, and went in search of a tourism office to get some maps.  I had a small and rather general one that I’d been given by the travel agency in Chicago, and a whole pile of site-specific maps guiding me to certain destinations, but I was hoping for a better map of the whole city.  I got two, a street map and a bus/subway map.  Both proved invaluable, and the price was right: free. Consulting these documents, along with the map to our hotel (printed out from their web site), I got us pointed the right way, and we headed to the Hotel Rhino (yes, like the animal) at 7 Sanzo-cho, Saiin, Ukyo-ku, Kyoto.

The map provided by the hotel implied that the hotel was three blocks west and three blocks north of the train station.  Walking distance.  On the map, each of the three blocks was drawn the same size.  After hiking about four blocks, I determined that not every street in this city was actually shown on the map, and that the equidistantly drawn blocks actually represented major intersections.  Four more blocks worth of hiking with our increasingly heavy luggage in the increasing afternoon heat, and we got to the second intersection on the map.  We semeed to have been walking forever at this point, but the map indicated that we were two-thirds of the way to the halfway point.  The third intersection - at which we were supposed to turn north - was, in fact, not four more blocks west (in keeping with the scale established on the map so far), but about twelve.  We were pretty tired and pretty annoyed by the time we finally found it.  Then, hiking north, we plodded on, dragging our bags, mopping sweat from our faces, and stopping in a kombini for water.  Prepared for the concept that the three further blocks shown on the map might be anywhere from three buildings to three miles, we pressed on, figuring that we had probably, hopefully, maybe, passed the halfway mark, and were into the homestretch.  This was an optomistic appraisal of the situation.

We finally crossed a certain a major intersection: the corner of Nishioji-dori and Shijo-dori (streets in Kyoto actually have names!), and realized that we had gone too far.  Rebecca spied the hotel just behind us, diagonally across the intersection.

With great relief we stepped into the cool lobby and checked in.  The hotel is a notch nicer than our digs in Tokyo were, but also a bit more expensive.  In fact, the place was a hair over my usual target lodging budget of under $100 (or equivalent) per night.  It came to about $110 per night. 

Kyoto was built between two mountain ranges, and is divided into thirds by a pair of rivers (the Katsuma and Kamo) that meet together far to the south of the city, forming a “Y” shape.  Most of the parts of Kyoto that are worth seeing are in the eastern third, east of the Kamo river, and right in the foothills of the mountains.  There are also a few sites in the north, and one area in the extreme northwest, a bit up into in the other mountain rage.  We’ll get to all of those later. 
The Hotel Rhino is west of the city center, and near absolutely nothing of interest.  This part of Kyoto is where a lot of locals live and work.  There are few noteworthy restaurants, no historically interesting sites, bland architecture, and lots of people crowded together.  It is not seedy or dangerous in any way, but there is no reason for a tourist to come to this part of town.

The reason for choosing the Hotel Rhino, with its slightly high price and very inconvenient location, was the web site I had booked through, and which you must avoid at all costs: www.asiahotels.com.  This site had me booked into a really great-looking hotel in a primo area of eastern Kyoto at an affordable rate.  After taking my credit card number and sending me a confirmation email, they went on to send me a further email message almost two weeks later, saying that I did not have a reservation after all.  I went back and read the fine, fine, fine print: all reservations are tentative and subject to the hotel’s availability, which “may” not be confirmed for up to fourteen days.  Fourteen days to wait for a confirmation? No way!
So I had to scramble (on a different web site, natch) to even get into the Hotel Rhino, the only hotel left in the city at that point, so close to tmy departure date, other than a few $350 per night luxury hotels.  And I mean the only one.  There were no other options!

So we made it into our tiny (of course) room, and got settled.  The view out the window was less than charming: the tops of lots of buildings, and some mountains way in the distance.  There was a cool old-school radio built into the night table between the two beds, but none of the channels were broadcasting in English.  Next to the television were an ice bucket and drinking glasses.  A paper banner around them claimed that they were "sanitarized".
Rebecca made a funny movie on her camera of me exploring the plumbing in the bathroom.  In Japan, there is a mixture of old-fashioned Japanese squat toilets (basically a porcelain-covered area scooped out of the floor), and Western-style plumbing.  A lot of the museums and nicer restaurants have both types for a person to choose from.  When you book hotel rooms on line, they will tell you which style of plumbing you’re getting.  Most hotels have Western-style plumbing available.
In our hotel room, the Western-style toilet had a whole bunch of controls set into the wall in front of the commode.  There is a button with a picture of a musical note on it.  When you press it, the toilet makes a fake flushing noise.  So if you are making (let us say) potentially embarrassing noises with your ass, you can hide the sounds with flushy noises.  But then, everyone can tell that you’re trying to hide something, because the sound effects are really fake.  So really, you’re just fessing up to being the stinker in the place by announcing it with substitute sound effects.
Another set of controls causes an appendage to mechanically telescope out from the rear of the toilet bowl.  Another further button causes this rod to spray water.  Yet another pair of controls activates a second similar tool to extend from its hiding place in the bowl, this time to squirt water up at a different angle, more like a bidet.  So, two different telescoping water jets.  There was also an ass-dryer for spewing hot air at your bum, and finally heat controls for the seat.  Very complicated. 
But how to flush the damned thing: that was the puzzle.
Like the Weekly Mansion Akasaka, the shower in the Hotel Rhino was powerful, just the way I like it.  The tubs in both rooms were only like three feet long, so it would be necessary to sit with knees pulled up to one’s chest while taking a bath.  But the tubs are also quite deep; even with my long legs, I had to step high to get into them.

After cleaning up and resting for a bit, Rebecca and I went out to explore the immediate surroundings.  We came across a little sake store.  The owner was a friendly middle aged woman who spoke exactly two words of English: “thank you” (heavily accented).  Kyoto is not as cosmopolitan as Tokyo; English cannot be counted upon quite so much, and we were stared at a little bit more that in Tokyo (really, no one stared at all in Tokyo).  The small amount of Japanese that I’d picked up during the past ten days would be put to good use here.  I made it clear that I wanted a karakuchi (dry) sake of ginjo (medium) quality (as opposed to daiginjo - or premium quality - or the questionable juice-box quality that Rebecca sampled the previous night).  Paid ¥1533.

We walked by the moat of Nijo Castle, which is said to be worth a visit, but it was closing up for the evening.  We went back later in the week.

 Wandering aimlessly, we passed through a covered shopping street, sort of an arcade or a mall with a partially transparent roof, with the ends open to the outside air. 
I got a fish-shaped pancake cookie, a bigger version of the ones I’d bought in the gift shop at Kabukiza.  The filling was not greenish seaweed jelly this time, but a nutty brown paste that reminded me of the filling in a crepe I’d wolfed down in Paris the previous November.

We discovered a small shrine that looked a bit more unkempt than most, in fact it might have been entirely abandoned.  The five-sided balsa wood prayer boards all had pictures of monkeys on them.  There were only two or three hanging up (as opposed to thousands at places like Sensoji Temple), and they looked ancient. 
It was here that I decided to collect a few of these as souvenirs.
 
When I got home, I took an old wooden picture frame, painted it glossy black with gold trim, and set a piece of red poster board into it.  I hung seven prayer boards on it (I collected eight). 
I decided not to put these under glass, since having them hanging free in the air is closer to their real-world use.  I guess that if I wanted to be “authentic”, I could have just tied them all to a pole and hung that in my house, but I like them in the frame.

We scored a cup of ice from a fast food restaurant and found a place to relax and try our new sake.  It was just fine.
As we sipped it, we watched all of the bikes and scooters go by, and marveled at the thousands of them lined up outside of major shopping areas of places of employment.  Even the locks were interesting: they were a simple metal ring, looking like one half of a pair of handcuffs.  The back wheel was secured to the frame to prevent mobility, and that was it: sometimes the bikes weren't locked to anything (such as a bike rack or a parking meter, or whatever).  The Japanese businessmen in the blue suits often zoomed by, with their briefcase secured ot the bike with a bungee.  The women were fearless about cruising to work on their bikes, pedling furiously in their skirts and heels.  Japanese women of all ages take a lot of care in their appearance (in a very good way), and having to ride a bike is seems to provide absolutely no excuse to slack off in this practice.
 
Heading back towards the hotel as it began to get dark outside, we found a little sushi restaurant on a tiny alley-sized street right next to the hotel.  The unassuming little restaurant did not look like anything special from the outside, and its location on a tiny street means that they probably don’t get a lot of traffic in there.
But... it was amazing sushi!
The restaurant was not cheap (we had a rather small meal for about ¥4600), but it was delicious.  I had two maguro, two unagi, and two tako.  The maguro in particular was great.  Rebecca had the same, except she swapped the tako for egg.  This was rare and cool for her because she never gets unagi.  But she had to admit it was amazing unagi.  And then I had another maguro.  So it came to about ¥329 per piece on the average.  A little bit spendy, but it was really good.  Later in the week, we’d be paying about ¥68 (about sixty-five cents) per piece, so stay tuned, sushi geeks!
There was a couple sitting next to us at the sushi bar who had their own personal bottle of shochu, which the owners (an almost-elderly couple) were pouring for them.  They offered us several drinks, and we took them up on it.  I had two drinks of an inferior shochu and Rebecca had one.  Then we each had a much better drink from the couple’s personal bottle. 
Later that night we found the same bottle of shochu in a grocery store for ¥1048 (and later shot a portrait of it).

The man was considerably older than the woman, and Rebecca and I spent some time debating the nature of their relationship.  In another parallel to our trip to France just seven months earlier, this Japanese couple reminded us of a couple from Monte Carlo whom we’d met in the St. Germain area, at a restaurant called Deux Petit St. Benoit.  In both cases the magnanimous guy was very friendly and wanted to hear all about Chicago.  Rebecca remembers our new Japanese  friends teaming up with the owners of the restaurant to make fun of my earrings. 
Whatever!

At the grocery store referenced above, we also spent ¥778 on groceries (in addition to the shochu), including a filet of salmon that I recklessly ate raw, hoping that it was sashimi grade.  No ill effects were noted. 
This same store carried a beverage called Qoo, which is apparently a cat and onion flavored soft drink, and shrink-wrapped raw fish heads, which I assume were not sashimi-grade, and did not sample.

Walking back to the Hotel Rhino, we passed a big bush that had all sorts of weird bugs in it.  We could not see the bugs, but we could hear them.  Their buzzing sounds contained all sorts of interesting and weird harmonics.  I kicked the bush a little bit, and they all stopped.  Then they started again.  So I kicked the bush a little bit, and they all stopped.  Then they started again.  So I tried to make a tape recording, but my old recorder doesn’t quite have the fidelity or frequency response needed to capture weird Japanese bugs.  I will make sure to look at the specs for the next recorder I buy to see if weird Japanese bugs are included on the list of possible sound sources.


Friday, May 30

I downloaded a PDF file called Kyoto Walks, which contains a few different walking tours of the old parts of Kyoto.  We planned to do one of the eastern Kyoto walking tours today. In order to get to that part of town, we had to navigate Kyoto’s incredibly dumb public transportation system.  This city has no less than five rail systems and two bus systems (possibly more), and none of them are affiliated with each other.  The city is a mess of JR trains, city subway trains, JR busses, city busses, plus private rail lines run by at least three different companies.  Some of these lines share train stations, but transfers between the various lines are not free.  So for the most part, a trip across the mid-sized town of Kyoto requires two or three fares.  No wonder everyone here rides a bike! We wanted to use JR lines as much as possible so that our rail passes would make the travel ‘free’ (or at least pre-paid and with no further expenditure), but most of the time we were not able to.  The automatic fare machines in the Hankyu Railways station are particularly unfriendly to those who do not speak Japanese.  Unfortunately the train station a half block from the Hotel Rhino is a Hankyu line.  We eventually deciphered the automated fare machine, and took the train to the end of the line in eastern Kyoto.  From there we transferred to a JR train to southeastern Kyoto, where we began our walk. Before beginning, we tried to get lunch along a major street, Higashioji-dori, but we didn’t find anything appealing.  So we got bento boxes, salad, and water from the kombini again (¥1477, and probably a wise thing to do if we’re splurging on nice sushi dinners), and ate them in front of the first destination on our map, Yasaka Pagoda.   By the way, if you care to follow our walk, you can download Kyoto Walks here.  Right-click or control-click to download it directly to your desktop. We began at the bottom (southern end) of Walk #2 (page 2), following the dotted line near Kiyomizumichi Bus Stop towards Sannenzaka Slope, and then heading north towards Ninenzaka slope and then Yasaka Pagoda.  The map says that this whole walk takes about 50 minutes, and that may be true if one were to just hike it straight through.  But stopping to see all of the fascinating things along the way means that a more realistic time frame to complete it is an entire day, perhaps spending the last few hours (if you begin early enough) at one of the museums at the top of Walk #2 (or the bottom of Walk #1; the two maps overlap a little bit at the museum district).

This whole hike is rather amazing.
When one thinks of Edo period Japan, an ancient land of houses with paper walls, people in kimonos, bamboo plants everywhere, quiet streets, green hills, tea ceremonies, and Shinto shrines, this is where it can be found.

Just a few blocks to the west of the path we followed is the major boulevard of Higashioji-dori, and to the east are amazing lush mountains.  Between the forces of nature among the Higashiyama Mountains, and the forces of a modern Asian city is a preserved sliver of a place and a time long past, a narrow and winding two-mile long ribbon of old Japan.

a random street along our walking route

This is the jackpot for old temples and shrines - there are dozens of them.  Some of them are small villages in their own right, and most of them are fascinating in various ways.  Each has their own personality and each have different things that are interesting.  Many of them are totally free, some charge for admission, and some are free to walk the outer grounds, but charge for admission to the main buildings.  Certainly this area is a draw for tourists and there is no doubt that the local government knows this (and profits from it), but I never felt like the area was crass, inauthentic, or exploitative.  Even an old cynic like me was able to more or less buy the idea that this was a preserved piece of the past, and not a vulgar countefeit erected to pull in gaijin cash.

As we traveled north, we saw countless amazing things, and learned a whole lot about ancient Japanese culture.  The little stone roads are full of interesting shops, homes, and tourists on the street.  As mentioned above, we began at Sannenzaka ("three-year-slope") and Ninenzaka ("two-year-slope"), two pedestrian streets that run along the hillside, with staircases at the steeper parts.   We ate our bentos along this route, on a stoop next to the Yakata Pagoda.  This is a giant five-story pagoda, or basically a tomb for the most honored of inhabitants.  Taller pagodas are better; five stories are the best you can get. 
Rebecca was disappointed with her food; it was covered with what she had thought were some sort of sprouts or vegetable roots, but which turned out to be tiny dried up minnows.  She got one glimpse of the hundred tiny eyes staring back up at her, and had to give up her lunch.  I had no problem eating it.  We (or, I) ate near a guy who was offering rickshaw rides (a Chinese tradition, but let us not nitpick) to other tourists.  Just as the guy struck a bargain to take some more gaijin across town, another rickshaw appeared to take his place.

At the northern end of Ninenzaka is Ryozen Kannon, a memorial to the unknown Japanese soldiers who died in World War II.  We did not go inside, but we did marvel at the gigantic and amazing Buddha sitting behind the building, with the Higashiyama Mountains forming a spectacular backdrop.

We discovered (or rather failed to discover) that the boundaries between some of the temple complexes and nearby parks can be nebulous; even with my extraordinary navigational skills (if I may), and a sheaf of maps, we were sometimes unsure exactly what location we were in.  It almost doesn’t matter: as long we were stimulated we were happy, and there was absolutely no lack of things to experience.

We climbed a huge staircase to the Kodaji Temple, a particularly old-feeling site.  The wood here seemed to have been carved into intricate ornamental sculptures a thousand years ago, but in fact thay are relatively new, dating from 1605.  Yeah, 403 years is considered 'new' in these parts.

Next, we came across the amazing Higashi Otani Mausoleum.  This city of the dead creeps ever upward into the mountains.  Tier after tier are filled with ancient stone shrines.  Staircases of stone lead onto terraces set into the landscape, seemingly built at random, made up on the fly as each new level was needed.  The tiers are not always connected, so moving upwards sometimes requires going back down and finding a new staircase to a new terrace that does in fact join up with one that goes still higher.  It is like a vertical maze, a snakes and ladders game, the goal of which is to find your way to the top, with dead ends blocking your path at random. 
Oops, I didn’t mean dead ends....

All of it makes for an amazing view, once the summit is reached.  We only went halfway up and it was well worth doing.  Looking back down over the landscape, the tombs in the foreground contrast the buildings in the modern parts of Kyoto, way off in the distance.

Some of my photos contain glimpses of a zeppelin that was circling the city all day.  Up here in the Higashiyama Mountains, its motors were quite loud and bounced off of the cliffs, ruining the tranquil feeling of this part of the city.  It took a few hours for the blimp to make its circuit, so for hour an hour at a time, several times over the course of the day, we had to put up with this mechanical grinding sound so that someone could advertise something to everyone in Kyoto simultaneously.  It was probably not an annoyance to people in the modern part of town, but the peace of eastern Kyoto was definitely wrecked by this not-so-modern aircraft.

And then there are the crows. 
They are loud, they are fearless, they are big, and they are everywhere.

Coming down the mountain and back onto the prescribed path, we saw two geisha in a rickshaw. 
This was perhaps the quintessential Kyoto photo-op, but it all went by too fast.

We checked out Yasaka Shrine, one of the biggest in the district.  The area has one central shrine in the middle, marked by a huge torii gate, and a few dozen smaller shrines orbiting the main one.  It was here that I got my second souvenir prayer board; this one has a picture of the actual shrine building on it. 
Rebecca got one with a picture of a she-diety on it from one of the sub-shrines on the grounds. 
Girl power.

Three famous views of Yasaka Shrine.

(below): Yasaka again

In Maruyama park, Rebecca got soft-serve green tea "soft cream" with tea powder sprinkled on top (¥300).  No minnows.  We saw a famous statue of a samurai and his son, and enjoyed the gardens, but were a month or so too late to see the world-renowned blossoming of the park’s famous cherry trees.  We got turned around leaving the park, and wandered down a quiet street in a heavily wooded area before making it back to the walking path.

Another huge staircase took us up to Chion-In temple.  We took off our shoes and sat in the large main building as some monks chanted while playing gongs and bells.  I made a tape recording of the monks paying their music.  The floors were a dark and very hard wood, worn smooth and shiny by many hundreds of years of being buffed by socks and skin.  The only other color in the place was accents of gold leaf here and there. 

Slightly off of the walking route (but still on the map) is Nanzenji temple, another of the many sites that are considered to be must-sees.  As can be seen on the map, Nanzenji has no roads leading to or from it on the north, south, or east; it is in the foothills with nature on three sides.  The area is the size of a small village, and one could probably spend an entire day just visiting this one site.
I had read: “Walking around the temple complex and along the aqueduct is free, but there are three regions of Nanzenji that you can pay to enter; Sanmon, the two-story main gate to Nanzenji Temple (¥500) offers pleasant views over the surrounding area of the city. Nanzenji Zen Temple, small but relaxing temple and moss garden behind the aqueduct, dating back to the 13th century (¥300) is probably only worth it if you have a particular interest in Zen Buddhism. Hojo, the abbot's quarters, is a more interesting building, with a small raked gravel garden and some impressive paintings on the sliding doors of the buildings (¥500).”

A big painted map (of course) marked the entrance to Nanzenji.  Inside was mostly forested and peaceful.  As we walked towards the back of the grounds, the hills became steeper. 
I observed an unusual structure (for Japan): something that looked like a railroad bridge between two valleys, three stories tall, and made of red brick.  Very few things are made of red brick in Japan.  We were at the bottom of the valley, or it is more accurate to say that we were at ground level, but the bridge ran between two hills.  Turns out that there is an aqueduct running across the bridge.  Water from the top of the mountains runs down mountain waterfalls, is collected in a reservoir up in the hills, and is then routed through an aqueduct that eventually travels across this bridge. 
Wandering around further, we eventually found ourselves on higher ground, and would have been able to walk over the bridge, creeping along the edge of the waterway, if a fence hadn’t prevented people from engaging in this very dangerous activity. 

But, nothing prevented me following the aqueduct in the opposite direction, back up the mountain.  I wanted to see where it came from.  No one else was going up there, but there was a path. 
Rebecca waited below, and I hiked up the mountain, along the artificial river of concrete and brick.  The side of the mountain was steep upward to my left and there was a pretty scary drop down the mountain to my right.  That drop evened off after a while, and soon I was hiking through a very pleasant forest on mostly level terrain.  There was no one else around, and the only sounds were gurgling water, occasional birds, and the wind in the trees.  I was conscious of not wanting to leave Rebecca alone too long, but I wanted to see where this led.  It was nice to have the quiet and solitude, with all of the other tourists only a few hundred yards away.  Eventually, I got to the reservoir, and found a great blue heron resting there.  It was on the other side of the water, and did not react as I got close to the water’s edge to take a picture.  I also saw three turtles in the water feasting hungrily on the corpse of a big fish.

I went back, and found Rebecca.  We discovered another mossy path that lead up into the hills, but there was a gate forbidding access to this one.

Deeper into the green hills, beyond where most of the casual tourists venture, there is yet another of the many shrines within the Nanzenji premises. At the gate, a poem on a bronze plaque began: “the evening bell, solemn and bronze, in the grandfather temple down the hill, sounds dimly here...”.  This is all well and good, a fine bit of poetry for a forested shrine, until we get to the final line: “...growing out of the crotch of the slippery monkey tree”. Growing out of the crotch of the slippery monkey tree. I am not sure what to make of this metaphor. Best to let it go. Within this particular shrine is a tree that is ancient looking, twisted and gnarly.  A monk was reverently showing the tree to some people, speaking in Japanese.  Even without having any context, I thought that the tree was interesting.  Kind of special in fact.  Walking around the other side of the special tree, I saw a sign in romanjii.  The sign was two words: “special tree”. Best to let it go. Not sure if it was a slippery monkey tree. After walking back out of the Nanzenji grounds and back onto the road we’d been following, we finally found ourselves near the northern end of Kyoto Walk #2.  Rebecca and I had been on the go for something like five hours.  The zoo, several museums, and the giant Heian shrine (with huge orange torii gate straddling the street) were all in the neighborhood, but it was probably too late in the day to be able to see a museum for more than an hour or so.  It may have been near cloing time for attractions, but there was still plenty of daylight left, being late May, so we decided to continue walking north, now onto the first page of Kyoto Walks, into the southern end of walk #1.

Shrine of the special tree.

On the right side of the map (for those looking at it), you’ll see a dotted line along a canal marked as Path of Philosophy.  This is the route we took.  The Path of Philosophy (also called Philosopher's Walk or tetsugaku-no-michi) is a two kilometer (1.25 mile) path along which a philosophy professor, Kitaro Nishida (1870 to 1945), used to frequently walk.  This trail certainly feels much older than something from Nishida’s time, and it is: the shrines and temples along this way date back a thousand years or more. 
The Eikando Temple, for example, was built in 1082, and reconstructed in 1497.  It is amazing to think that the current structure has stood for over 500 years, and almost as amazing to contemplate that the original one was around for over 400 before that.  We saw another place that dated from 887.  When you’re looking at something with a three-digit date, you’re officially looking at something old: this goes for both the building dates of ancient monuments and the age of living humans.

The path meanders along the east bank of a canal. 
The waterway has been updated with concrete sides at some point, and the water that flows within is seldom more than a foot deep.   Swimming in the gently flowing canal are occasional koi, the sighting of which is considered good luck in Japan.  The path is quiet and serene, with trees along the way and a feeling of being in nature, even though houses are backed up almost to the edge of the path on both sides for much of the way.  At some point in time, someone got the idea to spin the buildings 180 degrees, so that the fronts face the canal; it wasn’t long before some of these buildings became businesses. 

A random shrine along the philosopher's path.

To date, there is nothing crass or unwelcome along the path: no kombinis or corporate fast food chains.  Just some little artsy craftsy stores, “anteage” (“antique”, I presume) kimono shops, and cute little pastry shops.  We got a sort of apple and cinnamon cake for about ¥150, and it was gone in four bites.
We also spied an interesting grave site below the embankment that looked more like a fort than a tomb.  We heard some woodpeckers, and some frogs in a sewer but were not able to get a visual on either.

We were becoming exhausted from walking all day long, often up and down hills.  We skipped this: “Ginkakuji is at the northern end of the Philosopher's Walk.  The Silver Pavilion is often choked with tourists, dry landscape Zen garden, surrounding moss garden. Be sure not to miss the display of Very Important Mosses! The temple grounds are beautiful and the trail that runs through the woods isn't to be missed.”
“Not to be missed” or otherwise, we’d had our fill of amazing temples and shrines, and they were all closing up shop anyway.   We got one look at the steep hill we’d have to climb, and were almost relieved when we saw guards closing the gates at the top.  It was 5:30pm on the nose, and every shop keeper along the hill slammed their doors and pulled their retractable corrugated metal gates down over the front of their shops, almost simultaneously.  It seemed choreographed.

As we made out way north, the sun was just beginning to get lower in the sky.  We saw more and more koi as we went.  The first one had been a little bit exciting, but by the end there were groups of a dozen or so swimming around in what proved to be somewhat deeper water.  The canal then took a turn to the left (west), and the path became less pretty and more utilitarian.  It eventually ended in a small dirty reservoir.

It was time for a much needed dinner.  A call was made to head to the area around the corner of Sanjo-dori and Kawaramachi-dori in central Kyoto, where there is a lot of shopping, nightlife, and restaurants.  Naturally, we were nowhere near any of the five separate rail lines, so we began to hoof it west.  We’d be able to pick up the Kaihan rail line near Kyoto University and take it south to the area of Kawaramachi station in central Kyoto.  From there, after dinner, we’d be able to get the Hankyu railways train back to the Hotel Rhino.

On the way we passed Yoshida Shrine, high atop Yoshida Hill, a gigantic forest preserve.  In the evening dusk, the long path going up the mountain through a dense forest looked beautiful, mysterious, and worth a visit.  Next time... unless it burns down first, reducing the local birds and bears to tears, as seen in this warning sign:

We walked past the area of the university; college kids were everywhere, doing what they do. 
We finally got to a train station and made our way to some dinner.
I wanted Rebecca to try a kaitenzushiya (conveyor-belt sushi place).  I figured that she’d get a kick out of it.  I’d heard about Musashi Sushi, one of the oldest kaitenzushiya restaurants in Kyoto.  It is right on the corner of Sanjo-dori and Kawaramachi-dori, in the middle of the action.  All of the sushi is handmade, and seats surround the chefs, so you can make requests.  All plates are ¥137, and usually contain two pieces per plate. 
So yeah, you’re reading this right: that’s about 60 cents a piece for freshly rolled sushi. 
Too good to be true?
Nope.
We walked out of that place having spent ¥2320 (less than $23) for seventeen plates of sushi, or about thirty-four pieces (maybe thirty; some of the plates with super-nice cuts have only one per plate).   We were seriously starving, and it is really hard not to freak out and go all Homer Simpson at a kaitenzushiya this inexpensive.  The cuts aren’t huge, of course, and it wasn’t the best sushi that I ate in Japan, but it was far from the worst I have had in my life.  Rebecca and I were both perfectly content, and very stuffed.

Fake crepes!

We spent a little time in the Kawaramachi area; this is where all of the nightlife happens in the evenings, and where all of the department stores are as well. 
The few blocks of Kawaramachi-dori that run between Shijo-dori and Sanjo-dori are the major shopping area, and a block east of that is Teramachi-dori, a covered shopping street with lots of little shops and tons of kids walking around having fun.

Somehow, we found room in our tummies for a crepe at Crepe Oji-san (¥450); this was the second apple-cinnamon snack of the day, and was also the only non-Japanese cuisine that I “let” Rebecca eat!  Like so much of the food in Japan, the rainbow of colors and flavors in the crepe stand were displayed as shellac’ed plastic versions, completely life-like and appetizing to the last.

The strip of Kiyamachi-dori that runs between Shijo-dori and Sanjo-dori (so, parellel to Kawaramachi), is a long and narrow street divided down the center by another canal. 
The other side of the street (the other side of the canal) is called Pontocho-dori. 
Some of the businesses on Pontocho-dori face the canal out their front doors, and the Kamo river out their backs. 
Patios and decks on the river make for a great view while dining.  We walked along the water and looked at all of the restaurants and bars with funny Engrish names.  Many of them looked great, but after working up a huge appetite during our endless and beautiful hike today, we had perhaps overeaten and there was no room in our bellies for even a drink.

I made a tape recording of two teenagers giving a classical music recital (flute and violin) on the steps of their music school, right across from the canal.
Back at Teramachi-dori, we discovered Neo-Mart, “We will give satisfaction to you with variety goods of funny, American, retro spective since 1989”.  “Retro spective” is two words.  This place sells all sorts of junky American pop culture trash, sort of like an Uncle Fun or Archie McPhees.  Between this and the photography exhibit in Yokohama, I am not surprised that the entire nation of Japan thinks that Americans are lunatics.  Or “erunatics”.  “Eru” is the syllable most Japanese use to replace an “l”. 
We heard a really low-resolution recording of Auld Lang Syne: Neo-Mart was closing!

Then we headed back to the Hotel Rhino and were in our little beds by 10:30pm.


Saturday, May 31

Today we relied once again upon the Tokyo Walks document, heading to the opposite end of town, the northwest, and following Walk #4 (upper half of page 4) through the Kinkakuji and Ryoanji areas.  This walk seemed to be quite a bit shorter than yesterday’s massive double-excursion, but we also wanted to move on to Walk #3 (page 3), the Arashiyama area.  This is at the very northwestern edge of the city, nestled up against the mountains to the west.  Yesterday’s sights had taken us into the beginnings of the mountains to the east.  Arashiyama is also home to a monkey park, and we definitely wanted to see the monkeys.  Rebecca has a thing for monkeys.  But really, who doesn’t? The problem is that it was a bit rainy.  Never one to let the weather spoil my precious time abroad, we grabbed the umbrella that Rebecca had thoughtfully packed, and headed to the bus stop bound for Kinkakuji, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion (sort of a mirror image of the Ginkakuji, or Temple of the Silver Pavilion, that we missed yesterday).  While waiting for the bus (¥220 each; the driver actually makes change!), I grabbed some pastries from a bakery for a fast breakfast (also ¥220).  When we got to Kinkakuji, it was raining pretty hard, and there were thousands of tourists there, huge and overwhelming throngs of them.  The most we’d seen anywhere yet.  Individual tour groups had matching clothes to indicate which group they were with: yellow hats or red shirts, whatever.  Some even had color-coordinated umbrellas.  I took one look at the rain, the crowd, and the idea of yet another temple and said “to hell with it!”. For next time: “Kinkakuji is the most popular tourist attraction in Kyoto.” No shit. “Originally built as a retirement villa for Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in the late 12th century, and converted into a temple by his son. The beautiful landscaping and the reflection of the temple on the face of the water make for a striking sight. Follow a path through the moss garden, before emerging into a square crowded with gift shops.” Go on a weekday.  And I can only imagine what the crowds on this Saturday would have looked like if it weren’t raining! We ducked under the umbrella, and began the hike from the upper right corner of the Kyoto Walks map toward the bottom left.  We marched down a street of shops and restaurants, not really touristy, but not purely for the locals either.  I grabbed an umbrella of my own for ¥400.  Our eyes were open for two things: something to eat for lunch, and for Gallery Gado.

We spotted Gallery Gado right away (27 Miyashiki-cho Hirano, Kitaku, on Kinukake no Michi, near Kinkakuji).  I had been looking forward to visiting this place, and I was glad that we did not miss it, and that it was right on one of our planned walking paths (and not across town in some obscure location), so that we found it quite easily.  This gallery sells modern interpretations of ukiyo-e.  All prints are authentic woodblock prints by a handful of contemporary artists. 
I had figured out that a real 19th century ukiyo-e print was going to be out of my price range, so I reasoned that a modern print would do nicely.  Books and edibles were my souvenirs so far (plus photos and various brochures and things), but I thought that a real piece of art would be good to bring home. 
Postcard-sized prints are available for ¥800 (4"x6", open editions, unsigned), medium-sized prints for ¥2000-5000 (6"x9", open editions, signed), and large prints for up to ¥38,000 or more (18”x23”, limited editions, signed).  
Rebecca and I both enjoyed the works Masao Ido, the primary artist shown in the gallery.  We also liked some prints by Seiji Sano.  The one Masao Ido print that we both really liked a lot was one of the large ones.  It is catalog number 3498 (#72 of 200), a parasol stuck in the ground near a set of stone stairs leading to a house.  Yeah, sounds real exciting, right?  You have to see it.... it is lovely!  They wanted ¥29,400 for it (and they want ¥38,000 for it in the catalog I took with me, which is the going rate for most of the large prints).  The medium prints were more affordable at around ¥4200 (and considerably smaller).  The size was not the only difference, however.  The complexity of the printing, and the number of colors used was notably lesser.  By the time you get to the ¥800 prints, they are down to only three or four colors, tops.  The postcard prints were too simplistic and did not appeal to me.
The modern works are also different in tone and style from the 19th century classics, but are often quite nice in their own right.  Richer colors, more bold shapes, and a lot more complexity. 
One of the artists was doing work that appeared on the surface to be actual vintage prints, but upon further examination, I noticed modern touches in the subjects, like telephones, cars, and contemporary fashions (these were between the medium and large sizes, and were ¥5250 each). 
I eventually settled on one of Masao Ido’s medium-sized prints. 
I was slightly hesitant because the edition is not limited, and also because the bigger, more complex, large size prints were just so spectacular that the smaller prints just paled in comparison.  But I was confident that when I got it home, out of the shadow of its larger and flashier brothers, I would be happy with the purchase. 
At home in Chicago, I had a very cool vintage shadowbox fame that had been waiting for something to put in it, and this print would do nicely.  The week I got home, I had a matte cut for $6 and viola - it was on the wall in no time. 
The print (in blues and greens depicting a tranquil bridge over a river, partially obscured by the branches of a tree), was ¥4200 (about forty bucks).  The gallery also charged me ¥300 for an exhibition catalog.  Once again, in Japan you never get a break: here in the West, if one were to buy a print, the gallery would probably throw the catalog in as a bonus. 
Not in Japan. 
Anyway, with the catalog, I can ogle at the ¥38,000 large-sized prints in all of their postage-stamp sized glory.

“Les’t try!!”

The gallery also has a little table where visitors can make their own one-color prints (“Les’t try!!” - sic).  I tried my hand at smearing some ink on a woodblock and pressing it carefully onto a piece of textured paper.  It came out a bit... blotchy.  The woman tending to the gallery gracefully gave me a little paper sheath to protect my masterpiece.

Continuing down Kinukake-no-michi-dori, we briefly wandered up an inviting path into a wooded forest, and promptly came back down when we discovered another cemetery at the top.  No need to see more of these, especially given that we’d explored the most amazing one possible the previous day.
Onward...
Most of the temples around here ask for an admission charge.  They are all wonderful, but are all somehow - paradoxically - both unique and identical.  We decided to poke our heads around the grounds of a few of them, but only to pay for the whole tour of the last one on the street, Ninnanji.

One of the ones that we gave the once-over was Ryoanji.  The word on that one was: “Famous Zen garden, considered to be one of the most notable examples of the ‘dry-landscape’ style.  It bears a simple but profound four-character inscription: ‘I learn only to be contented’.  Fantastic boiled tofu restaurant on the grounds (slightly expensive)”.

Although we skipped the interior, we did manage to spend some money at Ryoanji: ¥130 for a bottle of water, and ¥530 for some cool pastries in a pretty little gift box.  Everything in Japan is so well packaged.  These pastries came in a rainbow of colors and flavors.  While Rebecca was deciding which to select, the very last box of the most interesting-looking flavor was snapped up by one of the hundreds of Japanese school children spending their Saturday (now somewhat less rainy) on a cultural field trip.  There were plenty of all the other flavors, so I guess we missed out on the best one.  We got a box with a nice and safe picture of a strawberry on the front.
Inside were triangular pastry that looked like pierogies or blintzes or ravioli.  The difference is that they were not made of pasta, they were made of a soft and sweet dough with a slightly rubbery texture that was not at all unpleasant.  The sweet wedges were filled with a strawberry paste.  More exotic flavors seemed to be filled with seaweed (naturally), more unusual fruits, and nutty flavors.
These things were delicious.
I never really saw any in Tokyo, and I do not know what they are called.  But I did see them all over the Kyoto and Nara areas, and also at Narita airport.  In the airport (later in the week, on my way back to Chicago), I grabbed a few boxes of various flavors to take home as gifts for Al (my car was parked at his place) and Kim (my turtles were parked at her place), plus one for me!

Something else that I will mention here is a lot of the tourist attractions in Japan have little stations with rubber ink stamps.  Each location has their own uniquely designed stamp.  Tourists or kids can collect ink stamps from all of the places they visit, not at all unlike getting a passport stamped as one travels the world.  I was surprised at how many of the sites I had visited over the pat two weeks had a little stamping area somewhere.  I remember Emi being aghast as I stamped my own real passport with the souvenir stamp at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office Observatory - she tried to stop me before I explained that I was using the ‘memo’ or ‘notes’ page, not one of the proper pages for official visas.  I collected about seven stamps all over Japan, mostly just because it amused me to line up with the school kids to get a good stamp.  Rebecca got a few too.

As the rain finally began to subside, we made it to the next site on this walk: Ninnaji temple, head temple of the Omuro school of the Shingan sect of Buddhism.  It was completed in 888 (Rebecca said that I was now the second oldest thing she has ever seen.  That one is going to cost her!).  Highpoints include a 17th century five-story pagoda, a plantation of dwarf cherry trees, beautifully painted screen walls, and a walled garden. In the hills behind the temple, there is a delightful miniature version of the renowned 88 Temple Pilgrimage in Shikoku.  We skipped that last bit, but we did more or less feel like we got our ¥500 worth in touring the temple. 
Inside, the Japanese penchant for low ceilings and doors was made all too clear to me, once again, as the photo to the right amply illustrates. 
I had to duck a lot in this country!

Rebecca liked the gardens so much that she asked me to take her picture in front of them - this might have been the first time in the five years that I have known her that the photo-hesitant International Rebecca has actually asked to have her picture taken.
Also at Ninnaji: more torii, more big diety statues flanking the entrance, more sub-shrines, more tourists, less rain, a big Zen garden, sculptures of big flowers painted gold, ornate bronze Buddhas.

Three famous views of Ninnaji Temple

Directly across the street is a restaurant where we got two acceptable bowls of noodles in broth (¥1730 total).  I chose the ‘value meal’ sort of thing, and got a small bowl of neon pink and yellow pickle shreads, rice, and a square of tofu in soy sauce with my udon.  Rebecca’s soba (wheat noodles) came with a sheet of tofu on top. 
In Kyoto, everything is fine.

There was nothing for it next but to get on the train and head to Arashiyama, a short trip away, in the very northwestern corner of Kyoto.  Consulting the map and bound for the train station, we walked off of the main street and into a neighborhood area.  Immediately, we were in what seemed to be almost a rural area.  A family were tending to a garden in the field behind their house.  Next to that was a forest, and a junkyard full of bits and pieces of statuary seemingly salvaged from yet another old temple or shrine.  Looking more out of place than anywhere else in Japan, three vending machines were lined up at a random place along the road, with nothing but weeds and mud surrounding them.
The Keifuku Railway tracks were right across the street from there.
This was anything but another major subway line.  The station was small and completely outdoors.  The train that eventually came was exactly one car long, and was an electric cable car that looked like it had been built in 1948.  The car was kind of cool looking.  It took us to Arashiyama, the stop at the northwestern end of the short rail line, and the town in the noethwestern corner of Kyoto.   After Arashiyama, it is all mountains for a while, presumably until things flatten out enough to plant some rice.

At the Arashiyama train station - which was decorated in lots of bamboo - we found a plenty of souvenir shops, but most of them were not too crass, and were in fact sort of nice.  There were a lot of people out now, as the rain had cleared up.

Arashiyama is on page 3 of Kyoto Walks.  We did not follow the walk this time, but instead headed directly over the Kastura River bridge towards the Arashiyama Monkey Park.

The Arashiyama Monkey Park rocks.

Set at the base of a full-on mountain, we walked up to what appears to be yet another temple or shrine.  At the gate, a woman made it clear that things like the bright white plastic bag that my art print was in would inspire bad behavior in the apes, so we had to check most of our stuff (on the map it says: “please put paper bag here some monkey want to get it”).  After paying ¥540, we passed through a small gate towards a little path that leads up the hill.  And then, as it twists and turns though the forest, the dirt path becomes a slope, and then an incline, and then it becomes nearly vertical.  The forest is heavy on the maple trees, and is said to be lovely in the autumn.

Halfway up, there are informative signs: monkeys have 32 teeth (this number had been crossed out and corrected on the sign), only male monkeys have canine teeth, and the big red cushions on their butts are made of old skin (a handy illustrative photo of a monkey ass is provided on the sign).  As the humidity and summer heat starts becoming unbearable while hiking ever upwards, the shirts come off (mine did, well partially... oh ladies stop squirming it isn’t that bad), and then there are signs warning people how to behave around the monkeys (we need these in nightclubs too), and then finally, one arrives at the top of the mountain.  More warning signs, another dirt path up the side of the mini-Fuji, a splendid view of not only Arashiyama, but all of Kyoto - all the way to the other mountains in the east... and then: apes.

Rebecca and I walked through a little chicken wire gate at the almost-top of the mountain, with some hesitation.  There were grey monkeys with red faces and red asses on the other side of that gate, running wild and free.  These moneys were hungry and did not look particularly friendly.  A ranger came over and shooed the simians away.  He gestured that we were welcome to enter.

We strode - with some reservations - through the gate and across a small plateau.  Each of us had one eye on the amazing view below us, and another eye on the chimps dashing around a small corrugated aluminum shack ahead of us.  Without appearing too terrified, we sought shelter in the building.  On the map this building is called “rest room”.  Inside, a few rangers and a few other tourists watched as apes clung to the wire windows and begged for nuts.  Some of the people fed the apes, who shamelessly grabbed for the tourist’s nut sacks.  Signs in many languages warned us not to look the apes in the eye, or to make threatening gestures.  I curiously pointed a finger at a monkey through the wire, and was bitch-slapped in the finger by the little bastard for the effort.
This was like Planet of the Apes, with the monkeys running free and the people in the cages.  Sorta.  Charlton Heston was nowhere in sight, and the statue of liberty is 7500 miles from here.  And these Japanese apes aren’t in charge.  Yet. 

After a bit, we felt comfortable enough to walk back outside of the shanty, and into the territory of the apes.  These monkeys just wanted nuts, and as long as we didn’t mess with them, they weren’t going to mess with us.  We were the visitors here, this mountain belonged to the monkeys.  On the edge of the plateau, with a mile-ish drop beyond, there were coin-operated binoculars for ¥200 per viewing.  No one was using the binoculars, but the monkeys seemed to like to use them as a perch.  Without our having to ask, a ranger offered to take our picture with an ape in the foreground.  My shirt was a sweat rag, but the photo is brilliant anyway, mostly because Rebecca looks so thoroughly amused.

After that, I spied a path up to yet a higher level of the mountain, beyond the safe confines the ape-proof bunker of tin and wire.  I went up there and observed some primates in their truly natural habitat.  When these monks weren’t clinging to the wire windows of the ‘rest room’ begging for food, they were up at the very top of the mountain doing monkeyish things: foraging in the peat, swinging from trees, picking their lice, and just chillin’.  I was all Marlin Perkins, checking out the wild kingdom.  We had learned that there are about 150 monkeys in the tribe that live up here, and that the rangers have identified and named them all.  I saw a cool bird too, with blue-grey wings, an orange belly, and a black and white head. 
Rebecca remained below, shooting a little movie on her camera of the apes frolicking on the binoculars (right-click or Alt-click [Windoze]/Option-click [Mac], and then “Save As...” to your desktop).
Although it seems impossible, eventually the monkey park grew wearisome, so we took an exit path - different from the entry path - down the mountain.  The descent was a fair bit faster than our climb had been.

We crossed the river back into the greater part of the quaint town of Arashiyama by about 4:00pm or so.  With some daylight left - a few hours of it, really - we explored the area.  This is a particularly picturesque part of Kyoto that is popular with Japanese tourists.  The river is beautiful, the mountains are amazing, and the attractions in the area are worth the trip.  They include boat rides, more shrines and temples, the monkey park, some great-looking restaurants (we didn’t try them though), a bamboo forest, and much more.  The Arashiyama area is definitely for tourists, but I liked it anyway. 
It serves to illustrate a great example of how to properly and tastefully exploit this sort of region without letting it become tacky or overly commercialized.

Just over the bridge, we saw another pair of geisha in a rickshaw. 
Again? 
Same ones that we'd seen two days ago?  I guess their rickshaw driver (puller?) finally made it all the way across town, two days after we’d seen them at Yaska Pagoda!
Much faster to take the maze of conflicting train lines.
The Japanese tourists were just as amazed at the sight of the geisha as the caucasian people present were (all two of them: me and International R.), and were snapping photos like mad.  The girls were cool and collected, but the poor rickshaw boy was completely embarrassed.

Speaking of Japanese girls and photography, here is a fact: with the exception of those employed as geisha, Japanese girls are incapable of being photographed without flashing a peace sign for the camera.  Try it yourself: whip out a camera and every Japanese girl in the room with stick two fingers up as they say “cheese”.
I guess that flashing a peace sign is infinitely better than some impromptu ersatz gang sign, or the giving of the finger.  Cheese, as a rule, is not really consumed in Japan, so I wonder what goes through their minds as they are saying it (they all do).  Next time I take a picture in America, I will make people say “raw squid with crunchy eyeballs”, or “pulverized crab brain paste”.

More Arashiyama sites...
After a once-over at Tenryuji (a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the main temple of the Rinzai sect of Buddhism in Kyoto; it's also considered one of Kyoto's Five Great Zen Temples, founded in 1334), where Rebecca enjoyed the lawn of moss, we explored the aforementioned bamboo forest.  It was peaceful and fascinating with thousands of bamboo trees stretching sixty feet straight into the air.  Finally, some substantial bamboo in Japan!  We missed Nonomiya Shrine at the end of the forest path (“a real highlight of a visit to Kyoto, ¥1000 for Okochi Sanso - a cup of matcha, traditional Japanese tea, in the tea garden”).

Near the entrance to Nonomiya Shrine, I insisted on taking a ‘wrong’ turn; we ended up at a lovely and picturesque walkway along the riverbank (see picture to the left).  We rested for a bit near a cafe and watched the small boats docking along the river in the shadow of Mount Monkey.  Now the sun was setting, and it was time to head back to central Kyoto.  It also looked like it was going to rain again, and then some.  Giant black clouds, tinted with deep greys and purples were gathering. 
We hiked over to a JR station (yay for ‘free’ rides on JR!), where a very helpful conductor got us situated.  We commented on how much more helpful the rail employees are in Japan, compared to the CTA people in Chicago who treat customers with something best described as contempt (and that’s on a good day).

We cleaned up at the hotel, relaxed, showered, changed.
Sipping our shochu stash, we decided to give Japanese television a try, and discovered what appeared to be a game show.  Two men in white turtlenecks and diapers were holding beers.  If they answered a question wrong, they either had to chug the beer or get slapped.  At least I think that is what I was seeing.  The people doing the slapping were hitting these guys hard.  Really hard!  At one point the cameraman got in on the action and decked one of the drinkers.  Later we saw a timer on the screen, and wondered if the point of the show was to keep these guys awake.  Maybe the drinking and smoking and shouting was to keep these guys awake.  I really have no idea. 
Then someone slapped the host.
This culture is totally impenetrable!

Enough...
We went back out for a walk, and a block from the Hotel Rhino, we discovered a shop selling locally-made sake.  The guy tending the place was friendly and pointed us towards the product that he made right there on the premises.  We bought a bottle of his spirit, Kuwata Saketen (¥1300). 

Near there, we found sustenance at an unexceptional restaurant, up on the second floor of a building, above a shop.  Couldn’t tell you the name of the place, it was not in romanjii.  I got a set consisting of three breaded chicken chunks, a bowl of soba noodles in broth, a small western style salad of iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber and egg, a bowl of rice, tea, crunchy Chinese chow mein noodles, and finally a bowl containing three squares of a grey-ish tofu relative and a small ring of something I can’t begin to identify, possibly some sort of vegetable matter.  Rebecca had similar fare.  ¥2500 for both meals and a beer. 
While contemplating the injustice of ordering 16 ounce bottles of beer and having the waitress pour 12 ounces of it into a mug and then toss the rest, we meandered around by the hotel, in the busy area near the corner of Shijo-dori and Nishioji-dori.  We walked past Stroke Hair Space, a salon.  A small sign in the window said: “Is there a stylist whom you can really trust?  I?”.

We came across a record store that hadn’t played Auld Lang Syne yet tonight; Rebecca coveted the new Radiohead CD, and I looked for a boxed set by Ippu Do, a Japanese technopop band (think YMO-ish) who I liked a little bit in the 1980s.  I had actually looked for this set in a few other record stores over the past two weeks, and had never found it.  Truth be told, I didn’t want it all that much, I was looking for it more out of curiosity than anything else, maybe just as an excuse to poke around record shops. 
When I was younger, record shopping was a key and integral part of travel.  Finding the best rare and foreign releases was a top priority.  Now... I have 1000 CDs, boxes full of records, and 150 gigabytes of MP3s.  I don’t really need any more sounds.  I own recordings that I have never played.  But it just seems wrong not to wander into the occasional record store while in exotic lands.
Japanese rock band names:
Ogre You Asshole
Bump of Chicken
Orange Range
King of Psyborg Rock Star
Gulliver Get.

On the way back to the hotel, we discovered that there is in fact crime in Japan: some cops were arresting some teenagers in the park.  They probably just had weird haircuts or something.  We stopped at Shop 99, a ¥99 store (basically a dollar store).  We bought five items (mostly water and juice) and managed to spend ¥520; no word on where that extra ¥21 came from.  Gaijin tax.  The blood orange and casis juice combo was good the next morning! 
The vending machines on our hotel floor have beer in them, and also candy specifically labeled as being for men or for women.  I did not find out how much of a faux pas it would have been for a man to eat a woman’s candy or vice versa.  Always the confectionery expert, Rebecca noted the same variety of candy at Shop 99, but they were of a brand called Sweet Box.  It is not known if Sweet Box are for men or for women. 

Back in the room, we’d had just enough to drink that we thought it would be clever and arty to pull the Christian bible and the Buddhist holy book (in English) out of the nightstand drawer, open each to a random chapter, and read them both at the same time into my tape recorder.  Actually we didn’t think it was clever and arty, we thought it was more like taking the piss out of clever and arty people.  This is what you do in a tiny Kyoto hotel room at midnight on a Saturday.

It was not time for bed.
Well, actually it probably was.
We had experienced a freakishly intense day: everything from braving a rain storm to buying art, to strolling in a bamboo forest, to climbing mount monkey...
But this room was making me crazy.
We were reading the bibles for crying out loud.
That is desperation for you.

A short walk north on Nishioji-dori, we discovered the Countryside Western Saloon. 
The outside looked like any other Country-Western theme bar, so it was of course quite out of place in Japan. 
Or not.
 We might have walked right past it, but they had a Kiss LP cover the the left of the door, and that venerable 1970s rock band, with their Kabuki makeup and songs about God of Thunder seem to be a theme this week.
Inside we found a dim and cozy bar.  The western theme was a bit more subdued inside compared to the exterior.  We found two huge bookshelves full of manga for browsing, multiple aquariums right on the bar, Sex Pistols posters, and really good music playing: English punk and post-punk from 1976 to 1984.  The golden age.  Early Squeeze and Joy Division back to back: this actually works for me rather well.  XTC (Science Friction), Buzzcocks (Ever Fallen in Love), The Jam, and even the Rich Kids (how coolly obscure is that!)... and then The Eagles.  All good things must end. 
Contrasting the music being played, the menus were printed inside 1970s heavy metal album covers.  We were handed Rainbow on Stage, a live album by supergroup Rainbow that I have never heard and don’t really want to.  Perusing a hilariously complete list of the band’s equipment (printed in the 1970s) juxtaposed with a list of the beers for sale in the bar (printed more recently) we settled on two beers for ¥1000.
Two drunken Japanese guys soon struck up a conversation in passable Engrish.  No blue suits for these hep cats: it was Saturday!  Our new pal Shohei Yamaguchi is a mathematics student at the nearby university which surprised Rebecca and I - he looked to be about forty.  He took to calling me James Brown before long.  He made it a point to show off some Chicago Cubs memorabilia in the corner of the bar.  There was not much sports stuff in this place (fine by me), but the small amount they did have was Cubs stuff!  Rebecca, who is marginally more interested in sports than I am (in other words she is slightly more interested than my own ‘not at all’) tried explaining to me that lots of Japanese players have been recruited to the Cubs in recent years and that, oh wait, what were you saying?  Were you talking to me?

We learned the word agaru, meaning dead, as in a dead battery.  We learned this word as we observed a goldfish during its final moments, expiring in the aquarium right in front of us.
As it floated to the top of the aquarium, we decided that perhaps this was a sign that we ought to finally go back and lay down in our pair of tiny beds.

We did.

This has been part four (of five): May 29th to May 31, 2008

part one   part two   part three   part four   part five

back to James writings and travelogues

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