The final Japan post… It has arrived!
Interestingly enough, I’m writing this post on the eve of arriving in Vietnam. We left China three days ago, so I’m basically an entire port behind schedule. Luckily for you I’ve been taking diligent and copious notes so hopefully nothing important will be lost along the way. Except maybe the bad or boring stuff… but we can let those go.
My final evening and day in Japan were spent in the town of Kyoto, just north of our port in Kobe.
Kyoto, although clearly similar in its Japanese simplicity and austerity, differed wildly from Tokyo. While Tokyo was massive, full of neighborhoods with various cultures, and generally more metropolitan, Kyoto was smaller, more cohesive, and distinctively quieter in nature. Tokyo was navigable by subway while Kyoto had to be explored by bus or taxi. Everything was slightly more foreign-feeling, exactly the Japan I had expected.
I noticed all of this the minute we got off the train. In fact, I’m fascinated by my initial responses to these cities. I’m going to start taking pictures of whatever I see right when I exit a plane, train, or subway, as those seem to be the most telling moments for me thus far.
Anyway, tangent finished.
We arrived in Kyoto without any idea of where we were going to sleep, so finding a hotel was mission critical. We just so happened to run into one of the ship professors in the train station who conveniently gave us a quick guide to the city (instant orientation, yay!) and the name of a hotel just across the street (score!). The hotel was incredibly cheap, but we weren’t sure if all nine of us would be staying there, so we got one room, threw our stuff down, and got right to exploring.
We hopped in cabs that took us directly to the center of town: Shijo-dori and Kawaramachi-dori, the intersection with the highest concentration of shops and dining. Clearly, we were in search of a meal.
Now, as I’ve said before traveling with a group of nine takes a certain amount of flexibility and patience which I am still struggling to attain. In this case, however, I was so excited to be out in Kyoto, that I kept myself out of most of the decision-making that night by simply staring at the illegible signage and local traffic.
That little move landed us here:
Yep, you’re right—there’s no English on that menu.
We found ourselves in a traditional Kyo-Ryori style restaurant that served “Kyoto cuisine” at its finest—or at least that’s what we thought.
One hour and 10 courses later we realized that not only was this cuisine not very ‘refined,’ but it happened to be exactly what we had been craving for so long! Several courses of fried foods, salads, and cheap sake all masquerading as authentic Japanese food left nine 20-something tourists with zero complaints whatsoever. I’ll save the authentic dining experiences for dim sum in China. Sorry I’m not sorry.
Holy crap, that food was good!
After dinner, we thought it might be a good idea to walk off our meal in Gion, the local Geisha district of Kyoto. While Gion is definitely not the last remaining geisha district, it is definitely one of the best known.
It was already late at night, so we didn’t get to see the same amount of geishas flitting between the tiny wooden homes and teahouses as we would have in the day time. However, the lighter traffic did allow us to do a little more exploring than normal. A little liquid-sake courage even convinced me to get a sneak peek into one of the houses.
Look at those tiny shoes!
The whole street was adorable, but we were exhausted from the day of traveling and wanted a lighter end to our day. That led us here:
I skipped a couple steps ahead for comedic effect, so I’ll go back.
One of the girls, the far-right lighter-colored bear in this photo, had heard something from a friend about Japanese photo booths and what an experience they were. I was a bit skeptical because hey, we’ve all been to photo booths, and they are pretty much about as interesting as your personal rolodex of funny facial expressions can make them. After that, you get 4 black and white photos (color if you’re lucky) and that’s that.
But these… these were something else entirely.
The booths had a system for whitening your face and making your eyes wider (please see lower right picture below where I look like an alien). They also had an infinite number of ways the photos (up to 10 in some cases!) could be altered—make-up, clothes, hair extensions, backgrounds, written words, pictures, frames, themes, motifs. You name it, you could add it!
We spent HOURS in there, laughing and smiling, taking pictures with the locals, and dressing up in the costumes that were very conveniently provided free of charge. Even Pikachu had fun:
Once we had exhausted our wallets (each print out was 400 JPY) and our creative geniuses (one group did prom pictures) we headed back to the hotel.
Remember how a few people weren’t sure of where they wanted to stay? Well, at 10pm their motivation to find more authentic sleeping conditions (ryokans, temples, etc) was completely nonexistent. So that left all nine of us in less than 300 sq ft. One guy got fed up with the chaos and bought his own room, but interestingly enough, none of us followed him. We pushed two twin beds together and slept 6 across with two people on the floor.
Talk about luxury traveling.
The next morning, after what you can imagine was a ton of sleep (not), I forced everyone to get up early and get some culture time. I conveniently disregarded any references to being the ‘Mom.’ I was fully prepared to get my temple on alone, but no one wanted to be left behind so 6 of us made the trek up to the first temple: Kinkaku-ji or the Golden Temple.
As we were among the first people to arrive, we had a nice view of the temple door for about 20 minutes. After taking some pictures with the locals and recounting our best pictures from the night before, we were finally allowed inside. The wait was definitely worthwhile:
It seemed to me that we had come at the perfect time of day. The Golden Temple was lit directly by the rising sun, and the pictures were just phenomenal. All you Mac users might recognize this photo as one of the stock images provided as a background choice. We all tried to replicate it and some got pretty close.
Just stunning. Stunning, stunning, stunning.
We explored more of the temple grounds then made the made the 20 minute walk to the next closest temple: Ryoan-ji.
This temple was definitely more of what our cab driver conveniently called “Japanese beauty.”
He was right. Our American senses are so fond of loud, shiny, and in-your-face-ness (yes, I made that up) that often simpler beauties are lost on us. But knowing this, we tried to explore Ryoan-ji with open minds. Unfortunately for us, we chose to do it at a temple that is commonly described as ‘unknowable’ because scholars still can’t agree on what this particular rock formation really means. It has been said that one can spend years contemplating the meaning of life in that little garden.
We were there for 15 minutes.
We did not figure it out.
After chasing the unknown for just about as long as we could stand it, I convinced everyone to make one last stop before we headed to Kobe to rejoin the ship. This last temple came highly recommended by our driver from the night before, who said that if you only see one temple in Kyoto, it had to be this one. Anxious and excited, we hopped in cabs to make the journey across town as fast as possible and ended up here:
Awesome, he led us directly into the tourist trenches.
We were dropped off at the base of a hill that was lined with tea shops and street vendors. None of us were complaining, but we were definitely all confused. Had this guy taken us for a ride? Were we a part of a huge Japanese scam to trick tourists into buying (even more) random crap? More importantly, was this it?
A short walk up the hill would tell, there was in fact, much, much more.
Turns out, Kiyomizudera was on the short list for the 7 New Wonders of the World.
Oh me of little faith.
The temple grounds were beautiful and crawling with locals, young geishas, and tourists alike.
And from the top of the hill, you could see the entirety of Kyoto.
Talk about a life moment!
We decided we had hit the proverbial ‘temple jackpot’ so we explored every inch of the grounds.
We made our way into a sacred temple called the womb, where it is said that if you make a wish to motherly Buddha, it will come true.
We spent time in a spiritual journey garden full of sign-post paths and gardens.
We even did ceremonial hand-washings with the locals.
Such an amazing experience! I truly fell in love with this space. And we even had the perfect afternoon of weather! Not a cloud in the sky… can you say it was meant to be?
After we had our fill of holiness and purchased more (you guessed it) random crap, we made our way via train and tram to the port in Kobe where our home away from home, the MV Explorer, was waiting for us. I was actually surprised at what a strange comfort the boat has come to represent. A tiny sense of relief and relaxation came over me when we pulled into the port.
Then all that was left to do was wave goodbye to Kobe, but not without another high school band sending us off in the fashion in which we arrived. The Japanese are truly some of the friendliest people I have ever met.
So goodbye Kobe, hello 2 days at sea, then we are in China! Such a short turnaround considering we had 10 days to prepare for our time in Japan. Thankfully, I actually have a plan for China—one day in Shanghai, 4 days in Beijing, and 1 day in Hong Kong.
See you in China!
No question of the day??
ReplyDelete