2006.01.10: Another Fresh Start (This one's for real)

Hello again, friends! It's been a while since I have updated this, but it's been a while since I had anything to write about. That has certainly changed now that I have arrived in Okazaki, Japan to continue my Japanese studies. I will now make up for the long absence with lots of big pictures and even more words to go along with them.

It all starts 6 days ago. . . .

I went up to Iowa City last Thursday for video games, booze, and friends, although not in that order. The video game portion of that was fulfilled by several sessions of Guitar Hero at Derek's apartment. Karla's keeping it cool while Brad frames the shot.

Lesley sacrificed one of her three hours of sleep to join us at the Sanctuary. She couldn't stay long but it was good to see her again. I got to see most of my friends before I left, actually. Robert came by Muscatine for Christmas, I got to see Erin many times throughout my last week, and then Thursday I got time with Derek, Karla, Brad, Lesley, and Jay.

Jay is even more jaded than I am and I think it's great. This is shortly before he bought me a truly awful drink, but I stuck him with the ACM so I still think I came out ahead.

My plane for Japan left at 6 AM Saturday morning and landed in Nagoya at 4:50 PM the next day. Two things got me through my 16 hours in the air: this beautiful view of Mt. Fuji towards the end of the flight, and hanging out in the back of the plane with the stewardesses and fellow foreigners on their way to Japan. One of the stewardesses came from a small town about 15 minutes away from Muscatine, and was a cousin of Jason Nebergall of No Shame Theater fame. Traveling always seems to be full of coincidences like that. So if you find yourself on a 12 hour plane flight to a foreign country, get up out of your seat, leave the snoring fat guy and crying babies behind, and head on back to the rear of the plane. Just don't forget to look out the window sometime.

After I got to Japan, I didn't do a whole lot of resting, although right after getting into my apartment I ended up playing Gamecube with some of my neighbors. (I left my own system at home to avoid just that thing from happening!) But soon after that, we went out for Karaoke, which was a lot of fun. They have thousands of English songs, so it's pretty friendly to foreigners once you get inside. The next morning, I went to Kyoto with two friends I had made the night before. Travis, who doesn't know any Japanese, and Dave (or at least I think that's his name), who has already been here for a year. The train ride from Okazaki to Kyoto was about two-and-a-half to three hours and cost a little under $30 each way. While both Nagoya and Kyoto have relatively mild winters, the stretch of land in between them is quite a bit colder. This picture was taken out the window of the express train.

Dave explained to me that the train conductors follow a strictly choreographed routine as they pass from station to station. This includes pointing at signs along the railroad track as well as specific hand movements across the lines of the card hanging to his right. Whatever the point of it is seems to work, as almost every train I've seen has been exactly on time.

Once in Kyoto, we walked from the station near Kyoto Tower all the way to the Kinomiyo Temple. Along the way Dave treated us to lunch at a delicious Tonkatsu restaurant. We continued through the city, walking along one of the city's busiest streets, Fourth Avenue.

A little further up 4th street, just outside of the Yakasa Shrine, we found a small parade. The procession, which ran between the Yakasa Shrine and Kyoto's Gion district, was some sort of traveling shrine for a statue of Ebisu, a god of luck.

Here is a little more of the parade. Note: I didn't take this picture because of the policeman, or the tree branches either.

After the parade passed, we continued on to the Yakasa Shrine, which was filled with Japanese tourists and rows of stands selling food and various good luck charms and fortunes chosen randomly from round containers. I thought I would purchase a special New Years fortune, but I accidentally bought a lover's fortune instead:

Such fortunes are called Omikuji, and can range from a great blessing to a great curse. Good fortunes are usually kept, while bad fortunes are bound to a tree where they cannot spread their bad luck to the bearer. As my fortune was a half-blessing (and I didn't understand what it said at the time) I kept it.

Kyoto's streets -- even the major ones -- are filled with many alleys like this. The narrow, dark alleyways are welcoming rather than threatening, and they offer fleeting glimpses of stores and bars and houses tucked away from the major tourist thoroughfares. We passed dozens of alleys I wanted to go down, but on this day, we were tourists, so instead we kept climbing up from temple to temple.

I found this gate at an intersection near a pagoda in Kyoto. It seemed to be just about the only thing people weren't taking pictures of. At the time I thought it was kind of strange to find this in Japan, but the Internet tells me the "Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil" image came from Japan! Boy do I feel silly!

After wandering through Kyoto for hours, we finally made it to the mountains and the Kiyomizu temple. This picture makes it look like it is tucked away in a deep forest but, just behind me are more of the same Kyoto city streets, with almost no segue between the two.

Here is the view of Kyoto from inside the temple grounds. The tower off in the distance is where we started that morning.

This is another temple located near Kiyomizu. We never made it over that far; instead we rested our feet while trying out some of the temple's special New Year ginger sake (90% ginger clumps, 10% sake).

By this time, the temple was closing up, so I just grabbed a few quick pictures without looking around or even knowing what I was taking pictures of. This room featured a rather large Buddha, although due to the distance it doesn't look very big here.

On the way back to the train station, we walked through some more of Gion's side streets. Gion is probably Kyoto's most famous cultural/shopping/entertainment district, and all of its buildings are made to look hundreds of years old. Of course it's all fake, but it's all damn good fake. As with most everywhere else, the side streets are home to many hidden gems -- only in Gion, the closest you or I can get to these exclusive teahouses and restaurants are peeks like this through the wooden barred windows.

After the trip I went home and got my first real sleep in several days. Since then I've settled in my apartment and have started exploring around the town on my new (used) bike. I have a few more pictures now, but those will be for a later update.