Day IV (part I) - Kyoto

Day IV (Part I) - Kyoto

Sunday was a busy day in Kyoto. I tried to fit this all in one entry but it is simply taking too long so I'm breaking it up into one long entry and I'll follow it up with a shorter one later.




Nijo Castle


We started the day off by walking from our hotel over to Nijo (or Nijo-jo) Castle. Nijo Castle was the primary home or place of ruling for the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Tokugawa shogunate was a feudal regime that controlled Japan during a period of time referred to as the Edo Period. The Edo period gets its name from the capital city at the time, Tokyo. Although the actual capital was in Tokyo, the shogunate kept the Imperial Court, and thus a lot of the real power, in Kyoto. The timeframe that the Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Nijo castle spanned from1603 until 1868, when it was abolished during the Meiji Restoration.

The castle itself was amazing. Many areas of the castle had been damaged or burned down over the years but most of it has been restored to its original design. The castle had two moats and two surrounding walls, one outside the main gate and another on the inside.




Inside the first wall is the Ninomaru Palace, where from what I could gather the Imperial Court used to sit before moving to the castle. As you can see, the gateways and entrances are adorned with very intricate wood carvings and gold paint, designed to show wealth and power to visitors.





The inside of the palace was also very impressive. There were numerous paintings on the walls of each room as well as the hallways. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photographs inside but here is one I found on the web.

The walls were painted by some of the most prominent Japanese artists of that time period and most often depicted landscapes and animals.

Within the inner walls of the castle were beautiful gardens, ponds and landscaping.

The inner castle burned down in 1788. The building has been restored but there wasn't much to see as we weren't allowed to go inside. The inner area did have some higher ground that allowed for some pretty good views.





Imperial Palace

After visiting the castle we stopped by the Imperial Palace. The Palace itself was closed on Sunday so we were only able to see the outside. The outside of the palace was not all that impressive. We had read that the inside was not impressive either. We were told that the true power lied with the Shoguns which is why Nijo Castle was much more ostentatious and intimidating than the lame-assed Imperial Palace.


We had read that the park outside the Palace was a nice place to visit as well so we checked it out.








The park was very spacious and had numerous people sleeping on park benches, but we were not really in the mood for a nice stroll in the park so we didn't stay long. About the only highlight of the trip to the park was when we were walking along the edge of one of the enclosed buildings. I was a little bored so I jumped across a little divider that separated the building from the main walkway while saying "what if I did this?"

I took a few steps and then jumped back over. I was caught off guard when at that exact moment a loud siren began blaring. Apparently they do not appreciate it when people walk wherever. I was convinced that at any minute I was going to be hit in the neck with a blow dart or some kind of ninja star and I would spend the rest of my time in Japan in a holding cell where they would serve me nothing but sea urchin.


Fortunately nothing ever came of it. We kept walking and pretended as if nothing happened. It would not have been a mystery who actually set off the alarm as we were the only people within about a 100 meter radius of the building, but it appeared that simply no one cared.


Kyomizu-dera


After visiting the Imperial Palace and Park we headed across town to the Tendai Buddhist temple, Kiyomizu-dera.


This wooden temple was built in the mountainside back in 798 (although the current buildings were constructed in 1633). Thus, we had to hike up the mountainside and it was a little challenging. Some fat asses hopped in one of these man-and-carriages to carry them to the top but we just hoofed it. Here are a few pictures of the stairways that lead up to the complex, which contains an impressive pavilion and a pagoda before the actual shrine.

The Temple itself is a magnificent wooden temple supported by pillars off the slope of a mountain.





One interesting part of the temple was the Otowa waterfall, where three channels of water drop into a pond. Visitors to the temple collect the water, which is believed to have therapeutic properties, from the waterfall. It is said that drinking the water of the three streams confers wisdom, health, and longevity. However, some Japanese believe that you must choose only two — if you are greedy and drink from all three, you invite misfortune upon yourself. I didn't drink any, so I guess I'm running the risk of living a very short life filled with disease and utter stupidity.

We went to a handful of temples and shrines in our trip to Japan and this one was by far the most crowded. There were people everywhere. To me it was like the St. Peters of Japan.


There are a number of Buddhist traditions/rituals that were on display in this Temple. I am a little confused by the whole religion thing in Japan. As I understand it, technically all Japanese are Shinto, however, many consider themselves Buddhist as well. I am also a little confused by which traditions/ceremonies are Shinto and which are Buddhist. For instance, it was my understanding that cleansing yourself in a water basin, which you will see throughout these Japanese temples/shrines, is a Shinto tradition, along with many others, yet we saw them here at Kiyomizu-dera. Thus, I apologize in advance if I am incorrect in my explanations of temples, shrines, traditions, etc.



That being said, the first thing you will see in many shrines and temples is a water basin which people use to cleanse themselves before entering. These basins will have ladles for washing your hands. Appropriate conduct is to grab the ladel, draw some water, pour it on one hand and then the other, finally taking a drink of the water (only to wash out your mouth - not to drink the water) and spit it out.

In some shrines you will also see visitors burning incense. The smoke emitted from the incense is also thought to be cleansing so you will see people wafting the smoke onto themselves.
In Shinto shrines (I think) you will see patrons "summon the diety" by throwing a few coins into the donation box (5 yen piece is considered the luckiest), stepping up to a long hanging rope connected to a bell, pulling the rope sharply to ring the bell


clapping twice to "summon the diety", then bowing.


Some of these rituals may have been mixed up in this particular temple because there were numerous side temples that were accessible through the same tour. We did not have an English speaking guide so we kind of tried to piece together what we were seeing from what we had read in our guidebooks.


One thing that we did not do was take the "walk of love" in one of the adjacent temples, the Jishu Shrine. Basically there are a pair of "love stones" placed 18 meters apart (one pictured below), which visitors attempt to walk between with their eyes closed. Success in reaching the other stone, eyes closed, is taken as a presage that the walker will find love. None of us actually did the walk as it didn't seem like an appropriate thing for 3 guys to do on vacation.



Since I did not go on the walk I guess that in addition to being short lived, diseased and stupid, I will also be lonely.


Damn.


So that's it for this entry. More to follow.

Day III - Travel to Kyoto

Day III - Travel to Kyoto

After a long night out in Tokyo we got ready to catch a bullet train to our next destination, Kyoto.

The Japanese public transportation system is absolutely phenomenal. There are seemingly unlimited subways, trains, trams and buses that can get you around all of the major cities. Tokyo's subway system is intimidatingly large, but if you know where you are and where you want to go it is fairly simple to figure out.

I'd like to take a minute to discuss the Tokyo subway system, as it is unlike anything I have ever seen. If you try to get on the subway at rush hour, you literally have to PUSH your way onto the train to get on. At certain stations they even have workers whose job it is to shovel you onto the subway.

Another strange thing about the Tokyo subway is that for some reason it is completely acceptable, and in fact is common practice, for people to sleep on the train. These are not homeless people looking for somewhere to spend the night or partiers who stayed up all night and can't stay awake on the ride home - they are businessmen going to work, women shopping with their friends, teenagers, kids, everyone.
I'd guess that on any given train about 10% of the people are asleep.

In certain situations even American tourists fall asleep on the subway.

I guess these people don't worry about being pickpocketed because the crime rate in Japan is so low. They just simply close their eyes and sleep in public.

On more than one occasion I would find myself sitting on the train, minding my own business, when I would feel something land on my shoulder. I would immediately turn my head to see that sure enough, a complete and total stranger was leaning their head on my shoulder while they slept on the train. Very strange, to say the least.

We continually wondered how these sleeping people knew when to wake up. Does the conductor calling out their stop wake them up? Are there different noises for each subway stop? Do they often miss their stop and just catch the subway going the other way when they wake up? These are questions I never got answered.

These subways are also remarkable clean. When you factor in the sheer quantity of people that ride them each day it becomes even more impressive. On that note, the entire country of Japan, from what I could tell, is extremely clean. I have probably never really seen a city as clean as Tokyo considering its size.

Another thing about all of the Japanese public transportation (subways, trains, etc.), is that they are extremely punctual. You can literally set your watch to the times the trains pull in. I took dozens of rides in my weeks in Japan and there was not one single train that was late. Not even by a minute.

The highlight of the public transportation system in Japan are the bullet trains, or the "Shinkansen." These high speed trains have been recorded as going as fast as 275-361 mph in testing, while I believe the ones currently in use generally run in the neighborhood of 180 mph. Whatever the actual speed is, it certainly was an exciting way to travel across Japan. We traveled to four different cities and were never on a train for over three hours. Extremely efficient, to say the least.

Kyoto

We arrived in Kyoto Saturday night. Tokyo is the current capital of Japan, but from 794 to 1896 the capital of Japan was Kyoto. Kyoto was one of the cities on the short list of potential cirites to drop of the Atomic Bomb in World War II, but it was spared due in part to its historic significance. As such, Kyoto was also largely spared from the firebombing in the war and is one of the few places to catch a solid glimpse of historic Japan.

Kyoto is known for its numerous Shinto and Buddhist shrines, gardens, architecture, and the presence of Geishas, which I will discuss in more depth in later posts.

Day 2 (Part II) - Tokyo

Day 2 (Part II) - Tokyo

Shinjuku

After visiting Electrictown we got cleaned up and headed out for the night to an another neighborhood/ward in Tokyo called Shinjuku. Before headingout to dinner we met up with Chris Jones at the Shinjuku station, which is the busiest subway station in the world. I can believe that assertion, as we walked around aimlessly in the station for about 45 minutes before we found the correct exit (we were too stupid to realize that we had to go directly towards and through the West exit to get to the East exit, which apparently makes sense to people in Tokyo).

Shinjuku is a major commercial and administrative center of Tokyo. It is home to the largest non-native Japanese population in all of Japan. It also has a very busy nightlife.

Izikaya/Saya's Birthday Part I

We met Chris Brennan and a group of girls out for dinner for one of the girls' birthday party. The girl whose birthday we were celebrating is named Saya and her friend's name is Minami. I'm not sure if they were friends with Chris Jones, Chris's fiancee (Miwa), Chris Brennan, or all three.

I also didn't catch the name of the restaurant, but it was an Izikaya. Izikaya's traditionally were places that Japanese businessmen would go after work to have a few drinks and a few small dishes of food before going home for dinner. It is widely known that the landscape of the Japanese business world historically has been noticeably different than that of the United States. From a young age Japanese students would work incredibly hard throughout their childhood and teenage years to get into a good college/graduate school, oftentimes attending school all day, coming home and studying for a few hours, and then attending another school at night, all to get ahead or simply to stay on track. The ultimate hope was to get into a good school to be hired into a reputable company after graduation. This used to be incredibly important because once a person was hired into these companies they were typically employed for life with that same company. This obviously is quite different than the American job market where people change jobs frequently.

Many of these Japanese businessmen would be paid a set salary and thus the name "Salaryman" came into existence to refer to these white collared Japanese businessmen. It is a term that you hear rather frequently in Japan. Salarymen are known to work long hours, but they also are known to party pretty hard after work as well, much as young professionals do in New York, Chicago, and other major US cities.

One thing that I found interesting about Salarymen and their social life is that it is tradition that when a group of Salarymen are out on the town a younger salaryman should not go home before his superior, so oftentimes they end up staying out later and drinking more than they would like. If you're lucky you may see one passed out in public after a long night on the town.

Japan also traditionally is/was a male dominated society, with women being thought of as subservient. This landscape is slowly changing and you will see a number of women "salarymen" (or "salarywomen"?) around Tokyo, although the market is still heavily dominated by men.

Back to dinner, as more Japanese women entered the workforce the menus of these Izikaya restaurants expanded and now it is common to find groups of people having drinks and sharing small dishes.

To me it seemed like some sort of Japanese Tapas restaurant. Our Tokyo friends referred to the place we went as the Japanese T.G.I.Friday's.

Either way I thought it was great. You can simply order what you want on a portable menu screen and they continually bring you food and drinks. It was a really fun way to get the evening started.

Private Room Kareoke

After dinner we decided to go out and party like Salarymen. One thing that we all knew was that Japanese people love their kareoke. Perhaps the only thing they love more than kareoke is private room kareoke.

Those who saw the movie Lost in Translation caught a glimpse of Bill Murray participating in this popular Japanese tradition, and those who were in Shinjuku on September 12 were (un?) lucky enough to see Mike Schreiner participate as well.

For those who have never had a chance to partake in private room kareoke, it is simply renting out a room that has a kareoke machine in it, multiple microphones, and some tambourines. Even in Japan they have plenty of English and American songs, so "Don't Stop Believin", "I want it that way", "Like a Prayer" and "Every Rose Has its Thorn" are played ad nauseum, as people try their best to display their singing voices.

The best part about private room kareoke is that you are in a room filled with people you know and not a room full of strangers, which you might be in a typical kareoke setting, so it is a lot easier to cut loose and have fun.

The complete lack of any singing talent whatsoever in most participants is masked by the fact that 99% of the people who participate in private room kareoke are extremely intoxicated, which allows people to (a) actually think that they sound good and (b) actually think other people sound "good" or "not that bad",

when neither of which is actually true.

One thing that I found interesting about this particular private room kareoke was the mixture of music tastes. The girls were all Japanese and sang a lot of songs that we obviously have never heard of, some of the guys were a little older and Australian so they sang some pretty weird stuff as well, and I was surprised to see that my rendition of "Don't Stop Believin" by Journey, which is known to many (read - myself) as the ultimate kareoke song of all time, completely crashed and burned.
Whatever the case may be, we had an absolute blast. I would highly recommend this experience to anyone visiting Japan.

Late Night - Shinjuku

After Kareoke Chris Brennan took us to a few random late night bars.

As you can see from the pictures I think we probably could have done without these places :)

Tokyo is absolutely nuts. I'll save my parting thoughts on Tokyo for a later entry as we returned to Tokyo after visiting a few more places.