Month: May 2008

Today we toured the Uzumasa Eigamura – a studio film park where they make a lot of the Power Ranger-type shows. I do not actually know what any of the shows were, but I did recognize various incarnations of the Power Ranger team and a giant size statue of Voltron. That was pretty cool.

The park also had a variety of Edo-style buildings and the like for filming a whole range of Japanese cinema. We chatted with a lot of Japanese children who were required to practice english with foreigners for school.

Tonight is our last night in Kyoto. We still want to see Kobe and Okayama out west, Tokyo in the east. And somewhere in the mix it would be nice to fit a full-blown traditional ryoken onsen stay. But we are running out of days to see everything we want.

Maybe we will just stay another week…

Making our way to and from tourist spots has brought about many different realizations and a few minor hazards. A great part of the crowding at these sites comes from the hoardes of Japanese school children who are also touring famous spots. They are often `spirited` bunches, seldom rude, and often curious about the foreigners. The braver ones say hello. The ones with homework march right up to us in a big group and proceed through a script in one of their workbooks. So far, we`ve been the subject of four such assignments. We`ve given signatures, peace messages, messages to Junior High Students, and provided our thoughts on Japanese cities, food, and culture. In exchange, we`ve received a few nice hand-drawn student `name cards` and had a few nice group photos with the school kids.

On a random bike ride, Jennifer and I passed a vending machine dispensing 1 litre cans of Kirin draft beer in Kyoto. When I later returned to purchase said 1 litre beer, I discovered the machine was not in operation. It was a very sad moment. There were tears.

Yesterday we did the walking tour with Johnnie Hillwalker. It was an excellent day. The tour wends its way through back street of Kyoto (and past our ryokan, incidentally) to tour the less-well-known historic spots of the city.

We visited a Buddhist temple that is actually used for practical Buddhism, several Shinto shrines, and numerous small merchants in the area. We saw the building where Nintendo began its days as a playing card company, sampled some Inari zushi and had Japanese sweets. The tour took about 5 hours altogether.

Afterwards, we visited Kiyomizudera temple. It was nice. One of those must-see attractions that is much too busy to be properly enjoyed. The serenity of the temple in its moutain setting is lost amid swarms of sight-seers and tour groups.

The streets on the way to the temple were packed with merchants. Pottery was the big attraction.

Weird moment of the day.

After visiting one of the temples in the Gion quarter, Jennifer and I were hungry and decided to stop for lunch. The cafe that we chose turned out to be a house. The residents installed a diner on the bottom floor and lived on the upper levels. The house was older than the country of my birth.

I had the omelet rice and Jenn had the curry rice. She cooked the whole meal right in front of us.

As we were finishing up the meal, another couple walked into the restaurant. They were french, had little english and absolutely no Japanese. After a brief struggle, I ended up interpreting the broken english of the french into broken japanese. It was surreal.

We awoke early this morning and walked the 3 kilometers to the Imperial Villa. We toured the grounds for a while, then staked out an excellent viewing spot for the Aoi Matsuri. We were not really certain what to expect. It turned out to be a parade of people in old costumes. The people of Kyoto have been doing this parade for a very, very long time.

The entire procession took about an hour to pass our vantage spot. The participants had a five hour trek ahead of them under a hot afternoon sun, decked in layer upon layer of heavy fabrics, with stops for special ceremonies at two shrines. We went for ice cream. It was cool and refreshing.

Afterwards we headed over to Kinkakuji – the Golden Pavilion. It was very gold. And busy. While the gold leaf on the temple was impressive to behold, the moss gardens around the palace were much more enjoyable.

And you can always tell when you have reached the end of the tour, because a gift shop and ice cream kiosk awaits. We bought some souvenirs from the Golden Pavilion kiosk – not one of which had anything to do with a golden pavilion – then ventured off to Ryoanji temple.

Ryoanji temple is famous for its rock garden. And I must admit, the rocks were really impressive. They remained still for our pictures with the austere gravity and dignity that only a rock can muster. The gravel around the rocks was superbly raked. The entire experience was tranquil. We headed on.

Our third stop proved impossible to get to by transit. After some struggles with the bus system, we finally gave up on visiting Power Ranger world at the Toei movie park. Kyoto theatre was doing a presentation of Osamu Tezuka world (remember Osamu Tezuka? this is a paragraph about Osamu Tezuka) and we decided to travel there instead. Sadly, the presentation was not really a presentation so much as a gift store. With tears in our eyes and an expensive Astro Boy key chain in my pocket, we headed off into the sunset to find a computer and write our blogs.

We rolled into Kyoto a day ahead of the Aoi Matsuri. We booked rooms at an inexpensive ryokan called the Higaiwa. It is a lot more quaint that the previous ryokan we visited and with none of the frills.

After examining the travel maps of Kyoto, we realized the city was far to spread out to explore properly on foot. The city sprawls through the mountains over several kilometers and hidden amongst skyscrapers and business parks are thousand year old temples and vast green spaces.

We decided to rent bicycles to explore the city. Not as fast as traveling by transit, but a more intimate way to investigate the city. The bikes were very affordable.

We set off west, traveling lazily through the Gion quarter. The streets were narrow and slightly crooked, each building boasting tremendous gravity and history. We stopped to visit a couple temples. Since the Gion district is somewhat elevated from the rest of Kyoto, the temples afforded some beautiful vistas of the city.

When we finally tired of our exploration, we returned to the ryokan to sate ourselves on senbei and Pocky.

Our trip to Himeji yesterday was damp. We awoke to brilliant sunshine and heat and weather forecasts of clear skies. We intended to rent bikes in Himeji, tour the castle and park, then hike up Mt Hiromine to visit the Hiromine shrine.

We arrived early, began our tour of the castle grounds under cloudy sky, and by the time we entered the castle it was raining. It is somewhat pleasing to know that the Japanese are as poor at forecasting weather as the English.

The rain was rather light, so we continued the tour of the KoKoen traditional gardens. Very beautiful spot to tour. If I had two acres and a full time staff of twenty gardeners, this is precisely what I’d do in my back yard. Three foot long, eighty year old Koi and all.

As we left the garden, the rain stepped up its tempo from ‘light, refreshing and warm’ to ‘Welcome back to Vancouver’. Within seconds I was soaked head to toe. This seemed an opportune time to visit the covered shopping arcade. After dabbing myself dry with a 4″ x 4″ handkerchief, we watched the water cascade down from the heavens for a while.

We decided two things: that our three hour hike to Hiromine would not be very pleasant in this weather, and; it did not appear likely the rain was going to stop. We got Chinese take out instead.

And so we bid farewell to Osaka. At the end of our journey, we will try to sneak back to a few places and visit some shrines and sites we didn’t get opportunity to see. But for now, we’re beginning the Kyoto leg of our journey.

Probably one of the most enjoyable aspects of Japan has been sampling different foods. Almost every night I am able, I will stroll into a convenience store and purchase several foods and beverages. Selection is made on the basis of the packaging’s appeal.

With the exception of the takoyaki, the food here has been fantastic. If the Japanese do anything well, it’s making convenient and tasty snack foods. On the beverage side of things…

See, with the food, you have a rough idea of what to expect. Most packages have an appealing image of the actual food item contained inside. Or the packing is clear and you can see the food item. The actual flavour or texture may catch you off guard at times. Generally speaking, you can do alright.

Beverages, on the other hand, could be anything. Most come in cans. The images emblazoned on the side could be anything. Even if you are fortunate enough to see the liquid through a clear container…it is a liquid! The best you can surmise is the colour!

You should note that this is not actually daunting in the slightlest! On the contrary, it adds an element of suspense and surprise into re-hydration that is quite refreshing.

Today Lance and I headed out to Nara. It`s a place known for its park, deer, and giant Buddha statue. We had a fabulous time there!

It was a bit unclear at first exactly which train to take to go to Nara. We hopped on one headed for Takara/Nara (I think?) thinking we could just take it the whole way out. Luckily, we could understand the announcements a little bit and got the idea that the train was actually splitting at one of the stations and then part of it was going to Takara (?) and the other part going to Nara. With the help of a few fellow passengers and a train conductor, we managed to switch to the correct part of the train and continue on to Nara.

Once we arrived we started walking down with the other crowd of tourists towards the large park with the many shrines and temples inside it. Once we got to the fringe of the park, we weren`t exactly sure where to go from there (the map wasn`t too clear on the relative distances). Luckily, we`ve found that when you are visiting a tourist spot in Japan and aren`t sure of your bearing, following any of the large groups of Japanese school children is a pretty safe bet. It`s very easy to spot them since they are almost always in uniform. If there are any outgoing kids in the group, you might have the added entertainment of exchanging a hello and sending them into a fit of giggles.

The deer here were a bit larger than at Miyajima and generally better behaved. I think that the people who run the deer cracker carts have probably had a hand in disciplining brazen and unruly deer. They didn`t really bother you unless you had purchased deer crackers with which to feed them. Lance and I decided to forgo this option and instead had a bit of a chuckle at the children who bought the deer crackers and proceeded to screech and panic and run away from the deer that they were trying to feed.

Once we arrived at the building that houses the giant Buddha statue it was a truly magnificent site. It is the largest wooden building in the world and is quite a bit smaller than the original structure was (destroyed by fire and rebuilt several times). Inside was quite crowded with tourists and it was a bit hard to catch any kind of Buddhist serenity.

After a bit more walking around in the park we stopped for lunch at the famous Mos Burger chain. The food was very good and it was a bit of an interesting twist on a `fast food` joint. The line-up at the counter is pretty similar, but then you go find a table and they bring your food to you. The food was very tasty though much smaller portions than north america.

After lunch we decided to wander around the town. We found all sorts of interesting and beautiful sites as we passed through. My favourites were the two cemetaries we walked through. I could really feel the spirits there as we walked through the tightly packed memorial stones with breezes rustling through the small bamboo groves.

After wandering to a point in the town where we once again knew roughly where we were, we realized we should probably head back to the train station as we were both pretty tired from all the walking at this point (and we had a fair bit more walking to get us back to the station). I think we both nearly fell asleep on the train back to Osaka.

From there we were hungry again and stopped at a place close to this internet cafe for dinner. It had really great food and lots of stuff we recognized. So, now we`re all caught up again and probably ready for some dessert. If the real selection of parfaits in this town taste half as good as their plastic display models make them look, I`ll be pretty happy.