Japan Is Doomed

Tuesday 20th March
Very late on Monday 19th, a plan was formed by myself and Johnny, an Asian studies student on a holiday from South Korea, at the K’s House hostel in Kyoto. Instead of disappearing off to different parts of the city, we would instead join forces to form a traveling duo more powerful than any this world has ever seen before! What followed on from this alliance of titans can only be described as an epic quest. Or possibly a day long trip around some great temples and shrines in Kyoto. Either will do.

We set off at a reasonably good time considering how late everyone had been drinking, hopped on a train and headed north-east of the centre of the city, towards what is probably the most famous landmark in Kyoto - Kinkakuji. The golden temple.

However, that was quite some walk from where we left the train and there was plenty of exciting things to see on the way. Itching to snap some photos in the brief sunlight, we headed for the first shrine we could find. It turned out that prolonging the wait for Kinkakuji paid off. What we stumbled upon was a small shrine with a small, but amazingly crafted garden. What made this place so remarkable was that, in prime tourist season, it was totally and utterly empty. Not like the graveyard from yesterday’s post, with a few people here and there. Not even like a cinema when it’s showing a Ben Stiller movie. No, totally and utterly 100% empty.

Moreover, it was totally silent too. Even three days into my stay my ears were still ringing from the eternal 100 greatest roadwork sound effects CD on loop that someone insists on playing outside my flat at 3am. It was nice to just stand on the island in the middle of the lake and hear nothing. I’d almost forgotten how that sounded.

Eventually we tore ourselves away from the silent garden and headed to Ryoan-ji, a temple and shrine complex, not too far from Kinkakuji. Basically, once you step inside it, everything you can see for the next hour or two demands you take a picture of it. You know what that means…

It means I took a whole load of photos! Hurrah! Bear in mind that what we’re currently looking at is just the first part of the temple complex itself. We’ve hardly even got to the meat of it, yet.

It really was a stunning place. Every single building and construction, from the tallest temple to the smallest statue, were beautifully hand crafted, and surrounded by perfectly maintained gardens, with immaculately trimmed hedgerows and trees so symmetrical birds became confused trying to land on them and had to make emergency stops at nearby airports.

I lost count of the number of times I said “We just don’t have this sort of thing in England”. Sad but true I’m afraid. I’ve never seen a hedgerow that flat before. Or a river that quiet. My theory is that I actually walked in and was immediately drugged then shown a video whilst I was stumbling about in a haze. If I never update after this, I’ve been got by the Kyoto temple mob. Avenge my death.

Sadly this update is becoming far too wordy and I haven’t even got onto the most spectacular (albeit predictable) moment of the trip, so I’ll stop now with three final photos. They’re all black and white, to end this update on a classy note. As ever, all photos are in the gallery!

Travel

Monday 19th March
Kyoto is battered by tourists even more than Tokyo is. Although there aren’t as many visitors there at one time, it’s much, much smaller, so the density is a lot higher, I think, I was never that great at maths. Anyway, determined not to be a tourist and just see everything that everyone else has taken a million photos of and written a million books about, I decided to leave the guidebook at home for one day, hop on my bike, and go where the wind decided to take me.

I quickly abandoned the wind plan as it would have quite quickly taken me into the large river that meanders through Kyoto, so instead I just kept taking random turns and exploring whatever looked exciting as a result. Whilst I couldn’t totally escape from the other visitors, I found a few places that were virtually abandoned, something almost totally unheard of at this time of year.

The first thing I found was a tiny little shrine which was absolutely empty, just off a small street near the centre of the town. Dwarfed both in size and importance by larger nearby shrines, this place lacked the tourist information booth and ice-cream vending machine that others offer. I’m guessing that Haagen-Daaz cookie crunch ice-cream is not a traditional food of Japan, so I was glad I’d finally found somewhere that had held onto it’s identity so well.

The third picture of this set shows an Omikuji (fortune slip). People tie these to either fences (if they are there to hold them) or tree branches. Seeing a huge tree covered in these blowing in the wind is a powerful image, when you consider that every single one was tied on by someone wishing for something.

After I left the shrine, I continued on my merry way down the main road, turning off at some random little side street. I was hoping to find some utterly secret, minute little temple that I could explore on my own. What I found instead was a huge Buddist temple with a huge garden and a car park. Normally my “tourist honeypot” alarm would have gone off so loud people nearby would hear it, but this place seemed totally abandoned, bar from a few Japanese holiday makers.

What really made this place stand out, however, was the graveyard behind it. Totally open to the public, I decided to head over and have a look. In the entire graveyard, in the middle of one of the most tourist friendly cities in the world, were about three people. I was overjoyed and went into camera overdrive, determined to catch a photo that did justice to this awesome spectacle.

Well, I tried anyway. You can’t really see from these photos, but this was only a tiny part of the entire thing. It was huge, and I know if I ever head back to Kyoto, I’ll waste all my time trying to find this place…

Anyway, that’s my story for my second day in Kyoto. I spent the rest of the day viewing the city by bike, not really stopping, just covering a lot of miles, before heading back to the hostel and collapsing in a heap. Little did I know that I’d hardly begun to see anything amazing…

Travel

Sunday 18th March
I set off from Tokyo station at the deliciously exciting time of around 8am, to get the world’s slowest bullet train to Kyoto. Now, on a normal train, this journey can be done in around eighty minutes. But I was not on a regular train. I was on the super saver, student, basically free, super slow, sometimes goes backwards, no roof, no seats, no walls, occasionally no wheels train. So it took four hours. I would have complained except it gave me chance to dive into the guidebook I had borrowed from Matt and plan out my first day.

However, when I arrived, all that planning went out the window when I met Yukiko and Naoko, friends of a friend in Tokyo who agreed to show me around for the first day. They decided the first thing to see was Sanjusangendo Temple, a huge temple inside of which stand one thousand six foot statues of Buddha, every single one a little different, as well as huge stone gods as well. Sadly, they don’t allow any photography inside, but they do allow it outside in the excellent gardens of the temple, so I leapt at the chance to try out my new camera.

Although the temple doesn’t look that big from the first photo, that is not the front of the temple. That is the side of the temple. The thing goes on for ages. Afterwards, we went to explore other smaller temples nearby. I have to admit, as spectacular as some of the collosal tourist traps are, I’m really a big fan of the tranquill little temples that offer a view not many people have seen. Infact, I filled about half my camera with shots of the graveyard that backs off the end of one of the lesser known temples. Sorry in advance for those of you who’ll sit through that one…

After that we headed for lunch, and then Yukiko dropped the bomb - I’d come to Kyoto on the same day that some Maiko (trainee Geisha, about 16-17 years old) were giving a free performance. She said we could get some good photos if we went to their training centre and waited for them to come out. So we did!

Very pretty they were too. Once they’d fought their way through the photographers to their Rikishaws (those carts pulled by a person), they set off on the long winding route to where the stage was, towards the north of Kyoto. While they were on their way, we decided to head towards the Kiyomizudera Temple, which is the water temple. I didn’t actually have time go inside, which is a shame, but I still took lots of photos of the surrounding area.

However, by about six, once the sun had started to go down, the Maiko had nearly made their way to the stage. So in a mad cap dash Tom and Jerry would be proud of, we quickly made our way to try to get the last few remaining seats for the performance. Sadly, we were about twenty minutes and three hundred people too late, instead cramped at the back of the courtyard. Thank god for zoom lenses, then…

Cool, huh? Afterwards we headed home, and on the way saw a group of young schoolchildren, no older than 7, singing about road safety. Now although that sounds very nice, I found it strange they were singing this at night in the middle of a road. I decided not to question the bizarre logic that was clearly floating around somewhere, and instead headed home for the night.

I couldn’t have asked for a better first day in Kyoto, and it really got me on my feet for the next three days. But you’ll have to wait to hear about that.

Travel

Having explored Yokohama sufficiently, we headed down to the rather large Chinatown, which is found closer to the middle of the city. When we arrived we had to walk through one of the four large gates to get into the town. I think we walked through the Goodwill gate, but it could have been one of the others.

Because it was Chinese new year, there were an awful lot of people milling around, waiting for the parade to start. We however had spent the day freezing by the sea, so we were not in the mood to stand around some more. Instead, we started doing what we do best; exploring and eating.

As you can see, the place was packed and everything was very pretty. I just wish Chinese New Year fell in June, when the sun basically never sets and it's warm and toasty all day long. Nevermind.

We decided to check out a few of the souveniour shops along the main street. I realise that this is a very touristy thing to do, but we were pressed for time and very rather hungry, so rather than search out the traditional shops we gave into quick advertising.

After that, we headed to what I think was the main shrine in Chinatown, and fought our way through the thousands of people trying to pray so we could have a look at the pretty decorations. Man, we really were tourists. I couldn't take any photos of the inside of the shrine (people might have got annoyed) but I managed to get some pretty good photos of just outside it, which gives a hint as to how many people were there. Notice the big Chinese parade dragon too. We didn't stay to see them perform but we did get to see them carrying the huge dragon suit through the street.

Eventually, 8pm rolled around and it was time to get some food. We had to wait for some time to get a table at one of the hundreds of large restaurants, but eventually we did. We were then basically assaulted with food. If you made a mountain out of all the food we consumed, mountain rescue dogs everywhere would come out of retirement.

Sadly, we took so long eating our meal that by the time we finished we were so exhausted, we just hopped on the train and headed home. When my mother comes to Tokyo in March, I intend to take her to Yokohama, so I will be able to write Yokohama Part 3 then.

In the mean time, the photos from the school speech contest have arrived! I'll write about it this weekend. (I hope).

Travel

Having been for an excellent English-style meal on Saturday evening after our marathon, I came home very late and crashed straight into bed, without stretching or exercising properly. This meant that on Sunday morning, every time I moved my legs, a jolt of pain would run up and down them. That's why it would have been pretty stupid of me to accept our friend's offer of taking us to Yokohama, Tokyo's neighboring city, for Chinese New Year. Only a fool would take up that offer.

So we set off to Yokohama at around 2.30 from our local station (which goes straight there!) and sat on the train for about 40 minutes, dealing with stares from Japanese people and complaints from my thighs.

When we arrived, we were met by another friend and taken around some of the large shopping malls and walkways of Yokohama. The city itself is tiny in comparison to Tokyo, but it still has a sizable population. The important differnece is that Yokohama is nicely spaced out and nice to live in, whereas Tokyo is a case of an angry toddler on a rollercoaster planning a city. Have a look at an overhead map of Shibuya or Shinjuku and try to work out some logic to it.

As you can see, the skyscrapers were still huge, just like Tokyo. However, unlike our lovely city, you can take a photo of just one skyscraper. That's impossible in Tokyo, because the chances are whilst you're lining up the shot, another three buildings will be built right next door. The second photo is a pretty funky statue that we walked under. I don't know what it is, why it's there or what it means but it was very pretty. Finally, the big wheel of Yokohama. Not as big as the London Eye, but bigger than the one in Odaiba I think. (Remember?)

Notice that the sky is very blue in these photos. That is because it was a lovely day. A little cold, perhaps, but a nice clear sky. It's kind of strange that after exploring a few shops and stopping at a cafe, the sky was basically black. My theory is witch magic.

The shopping malls offered similar wares to Tokyo's, but at a much better price. I know I'm coming here next time I need to buy lots of clothes or something. Yokohama also had a Snoopy Town, just like Harajuku!

The next time we stepped outside, however, it was a different story. Night had descended on Yokohama. Or rather, it had tripped and fallen on it. It became bitterly cold, and everyone agreed it was time to head to Chinatown, safe in the knowledge that lots of other people would be there, and it might be warm. But first, we had to take a standard "Look at us! We're at the sea!" photo.

…well, that photo came out badly. Notice the pretty wheel in the background. They light it up at night so people don't walk into it. Or something.

Tune in for part two, when I take lots of pretty pictures of a country I'm not in!

Travel