It’s Cyclical!

I leave Japan tomorrow, and I can’t really say that I’m looking forward to it. I’ve really fallen off with the blog posts, so I wanted to apologize about that. I’ve been distracted the past couple of months by being genuinely happy about where I am, or rather was, in my life. I’m trying not to be bitter about coming home, especially since I think I’m just grumpy about the transition. There are of course a lot of things I’m going to enjoy about being back home again, it’s just hard to think about those things right now. It doesn’t help that I’ve spent the last three weeks saying good bye to some people that I grew really close to. Anyway, I’m trying not to be pessimistic, I’m pretty sure things will be pretty good when I get back. Unfortunately, at the moment, I’m somewhat caught in limbo, in that all my friends have left and I’ve spent the last day and a half sitting alone in a hotel room.
I’ve been exceptionally busy the last couple of months. At first it was just my classes all gearing up for finals. I took a short trip to Sendai with a couple of friends, and that was a lot of fun. Sendai is known for cow tongue, so I had a lot of that. It was amazing. Cow tongue is now very close to the top of my list of favorite things to eat. That trip was wonderful in that it was carried out in exactly the way that I like to take vacations. We did almost zero sightseeing, and instead focused our days around our meal times. We filled the time in between we aimless wandering and napping, as well as the occasional game of go. All in all it was a great trip, and I’m really glad I managed to make it work.
After that though, I really did have to buckle down and focus on finals, which I think went pretty well, with the exception of Japanese. The problem with this exam was, though I was more prepared for it then I was for most of the previous exams, the final section was on something we had barely covered in class. Apparently, the other section did focus on it, so it made it into the final. Unfortunately, that meant that me and the majority of my classmates got shafted in the arrangement. I’m not that bitter about it though, as I do really feel like I’ve been improving. I would like to continue to study, as it is my intention to return to Japan at some point in the next few years. The other finals weren’t that big of a deal, though I did spend a fair amount of time studying for them. In the end, I feel like I learned a lot from my classes, with the exception of Taiwanese Society, which was a joke.
Once finals were over things became, if anything, busier. With everyone gearing up to leave people were doing things all the time, and I actually found myself having a hard time divvying up all of my time. Watching my friends leave was a sad and painful process, but I don’t feel so bad about it now that I’ve had the chance to talk to some of them that have made it home. I’ll be able to keep in touch with them and hopefully see a lot of them again. A lot of these people feel like friends I’m going to have for a long time, and I’m determined to make the effort to keep in touch with them.
All in all I would call this year a smashing success, and I’m really glad I decided to come for the full year and not just a semester. I watched the people that came just for the semester programs and it seems really unfortunate. Most of them didn’t get the chance to really find their groove here before their time was up and they were forced to leave. I also think it’s hard to really learn anything meaningful from an experience like this if it’s not for a period longer than three or four months. I didn’t really find my groove until April, which is part of the reason I fell so bad about leaving now. That being said, if I were staying it wouldn’t really be the same, though a lot of the people I was closest to were Japanese in the end. I have a greater concept of who I am and I feel like I understand what I want from my life a little better than I did before I came here, though I’m still exceptionally cynical and sarcastic (not to mention handsome, genius, and infinitely talented). Overall, I don’t really have anything negative to say about how I’ve spent my year. I had some regrets about how I was spending my time and the things that I was doing early on, but they all ended up leading me to a point where I was happy, and for a sustained period of time. Now that I know what that feels like, I’m going to be trying to get it back, and I finally feel like I have an idea about what needs to be done for that to happen.
Anyway, I can’t really think of anything else to say at this juncture. I look forward to seeing everyone back home soon.

Lots going on lately, so I haven’t had much free time, and the free time I do have has been spent napping or being lazy. I’ve been feeling pretty sick the past couple weeks, though its not really anything specific. Just a sort of constant nausea and fatigue. It’s not so much of a problem as it is an annoyance, in that it’s not interfering too much with my school work (though I’ve slept through a few classes lately). What it is interfering with is my leisure time, something to which I take great offense.
Last week was a rough week in terms of school work. I had a Japanese test on Monday, and a paper and presentation to do for my Chinese foreign policy class. The Japanese test was rough, as always and I ended up with a 61% on it. I was really annoyed about that though, as I studied for it and felt like I did pretty well on every section but the honorific language part, which I couldn’t answer any of. Honorific language shares a lot with a word it resembles, that being “horrific.” Basically, it’s a form of speech that you use when you want to show respect to the person you are addressing. It gives new forms and verbs for every verb you have already learned for honorific, modest, and humble speech. As far as I can tell, it’s useless, as none of the Japanese people I spoke to know any of it. To add insult to injury, we never practiced any of the words in context, just “Here’s the word, here’s its honorific counterpart.” On the test we needed to read a speech and convert the different verbs into the appropriate level of politeness. It’s annoying, but I guess I’m the only one complaining as everyone else in my class scored above 85%.
The paper and presentation were no less time consuming, though much less irritating. I had to do a chapter review of our textbook, and the chapter I got was titled “China’s role in the World Economy and International Governance,” which was many things, though interesting was not one of them. The presentation went well though, and I’m feeling glad to be done with it.
I’m going to upload some of the pictures I’ve taken over the last six months onto my facebook page, though I can’t be bothered to go through all of them and delete all the duds, so expect a large amount of them.

Sky so Blue

Been really busy lately, and really tired, haven’t been sick exactly, but feeling really lethargic and it’s been interfering with my daily life a bit. Not a big problem though, and I’ve been pretty pleased with how things have been going. Sorry that I haven’t been working on finishing the posts about my trip with Mom and Grandma, especially since it’s been two months now. I just got kind of tired of writing those posts so I kept putting it off. I’ll try to put some more out, as they are good stories and the trip was a lot of fun, but since I want to keep doing blog posts I feel like I should take a break and just talk about current events.
I’m having trouble with Japanese, and I think it’s the same problem I have when studying math, in that the point at which things stop being related to common sense is the point at which I start having a lot of trouble with it. It’s discouraging, but I think I’m keeping up, if only barely. Overall though, I feel decent about my position, and I’d really like to keep practicing Japanese when I get back. It would really be nice to become skilled in a second language, especially since I’ve always had so much trouble with foreign languages. I feel like if I managed to become proficient in Japanese I would have overcome a personal issue. Anyway, we’ll see how things go once I get back, but I’m not really sure where I can study. A couple of the new people here are from St. Cloud, and apparently you can take Japanese there, but only 101.
Weather has been getting warmer, which I have mixed feelings about. I always get excited when Spring comes because by that point I’m ready for it to be warm again, but by the time Summer rolls around I long for the snow and ice. I just really don’t care for hot weather, and prefer the cold. Spring here is truly beautiful though. Our university has tons of Sakura trees scattered around it, which bloom in a beautiful pink. Sakura trees are one of the things Japan is most famous for, and unfortunately it only lasts 1-2 weeks before everything greens up. I did take some pictures though. It’s been raining a lot, and I do like that. Call me crazy, but I really do prefer the rain to the “good weather” days. Something about it just pleases me. Yesterday was particularly stormy, it rained buckets and the wind was strong enough to rattle windows. Overall I’d have to say I’m enjoying the weather, and I’m hoping Spring lasts just a little bit longer.
A little over a week and a half ago I got hit by a car, though it was nothing serious, just disorienting. I was borrowing a friend’s bike so I could pick something up from his room. There’s a sort of ally that runs along the back side of the dorm building, and since the dorms are in blocks there are walking exits onto it every 50 feet or so. It’s rarely even used as a street, so I rarely even think of it as one, and I was coming out of one of the exits when a car hit me. The timing was really bad, as neither one of us really could have seen the other unless we had stopped completely to look, which no one ever does on that path. It was raining pretty nard, so the ground was really wet too. So I came out, and I could see what was going to happen a split second before it did, and I had time to run through it in my head. I hit the front corner, and rolled onto the hood before they stopped and I fell off into a gutter (drainage gutter, I got really wet). It was really weird, because I was really calm through the whole thing. I remember thinking the whole time “Well this sucks but nothing too bad is going to come of it” although that may not be a good thing. In the end my friend’s bike was fine while the guy’s car was banged up a bit. He didn’t ask me to do anything. Just wanted to exchange ID numbers (he was a student) in case I needed to go to the hospital. I was fine though, since my head never made contact with anything. The worst I got from it was a skinned knee and elbow, a bruise on my forearm, and a nasty cut on my finger, which got infected before healing up. The only lasting effects are that the joints on the left side of my body are still a bit sore, especially when I twist them (which I don’t do often anyway). Anyway I’m fine, and everything else is going pretty well.

We had to check out of the ryukan at ten in the morning, so we got up at around eight to start packing up. Since Mom and Grandma unpacked a lot of their stuff it took them awhile to get ready, and it took me awhile to get ready since I’m incapable of waking up in the morning, as you may already know. It was sort of a shame to leave, as the beds at the ryukan were some of the most comfortable I have ever slept on, even though they were just futons with comforters. Staying at a ryukan is sort of like staying at a bed and breakfast that someone has put together in their attic, in that it really feels like you are staying in someone’s house. This can make you feel a little awkward, but overall it was a really good experience, and I’m glad we stayed there (interestingly enough, the only conceivable type of accommodation I have yet to experience in Japan is a youth hostel). One thing that Mom and Grandma weren’t too sad to say goodbye to was the slippers. This being a traditional Japanese inn, we were required to take off our shoes at the entrance and wear slippers around the inn. This wouldn’t have been so bad had it not been for the fact that our room was on the second floor, and no amount of toe clenching could keep those slippers on my feet on the way up or down those stairs.
The first thing we did was to head across town and check in to our new hotel, which was done in a more typically western style (uncomfortable blankets and all). We dropped our stuff off there and then headed back to the station to catch a train to Fushimiinai Shrine. Our first attempt at a train was unsuccessful, as we ended up going the wrong direction. I’ll take a moment here to comment on the train system in Japan. Local trains in Japan are great, and they make navigating even the largest cities easy. I was able to get wherever I wanted in Tokyo with almost no difficulty. Also, they run often and are generally on time (local trains mind you). Confusion sets in when you attempt to read a map that has no English on it. Now, I can read hiragana and katakana easily, and I can recognize enough kanji to be able to generally figure out what a bus or train schedule is saying, or at least where I need to go. The problem is that the large maps are so cluttered that I don’t even know what I’m looking for, or where I am on the map. Because of this it is often hard to figure out which direction to go even if you figure out which line to take, as only the next stop on the line is consistently labeled. In this way I have more than once managed to get myself turned around and in the wrong station. In addition to this, the trains run in three different types; express, limited express, and sub-express. Each one will stop at stations in a different order, skipping every third station or stopping at every fourth station, that kind of thing. Sometimes it can be hard to find the train that is going to stop at every station, so it’s not a hard thing to get yourself going the wrong way. So once we got off the train that was going the opposite direction of the direction we needed to go we got on a train going the right way. Unfortunately we got on an express, and overshot our station before we were able to get off. Then we finally were able to catch a train and get off at the right station, where, upon disembarking the station, we learned that there was another station closer to the shrine that went straight to and from Kyoto station. So we went back and forth for almost an hour for no reason other than to keep ourselves occupied.
We did eventually make it to the shrine, and it was pretty amazing. It’s situated at the base of a mountain (not the rocky kind of mountain but the stout, forested mountain), and looks like any other shrine that you might find in the Kyoto area. What makes Fushimiinari shrine special, and the thing that it is world-famous for, is the toji gates. A toji gate is gate, the kind that you have undoubtedly seen on the cover of a pamphlet about Japan. Two pillars with an elaborate piece of wood across the top, traditionally and orange-red. They can range from massive, to tiny, to miniature, which are sometimes used to write prayers on. Fushimiinari shrine has four kilometers of trail that are lined with these (that is to say you walk under them). All in all there are over 5,000 gates on the mountain. Some of them are spaced far enough apart that you can step off the path if you so choose, but there are sections of the trail that are essentially tunnels. We ended up going up about halfway before Mom and Grandma got tired. Fortunately, there are rest stations with miniature restaurants situated at various points along the trail, and we were able to stop and have a bit of food and a drink. The view from that area was amazing, and there was a viewing spot where we could see the entirety of Kyoto’s city center. I decided to keep going along the trail and try to see as much of it as possible before sundown, which was around six. The trail was essentially more of the same, and the higher into the mountain I got the fewer people there were. The area is truly beautiful, and once I was out of earshot of any other people it was even more so. I went off the main path for awhile and followed a dirt trail that turned out to go nowhere, and I managed to make the full loop of the trail before meeting back up with Mom and Grandma, at which point it was getting late in the evening so we headed back down the mountain. By the time we got back down the mountain we were all exhausted, despite the fact that it wasn’t very late. We headed back to the hotel with no trouble with the trains. After we had rested up a bit we wandered around the area near our new hotel looking for a restaurant, and found a little place that looked like it might have been someone’s house. As it turned out, it was a restaurant in the style of a high-end Western restaurant, and we had a really good traditionally Japanese meal.

Layer Cake

The next day we needed to get an early start in order to catch a train so that we could pick up Mom’s camera. We had made arrangements a couple of days prior to go and pick it up at a station in a little town about midway between Kyoto and Osaka. It only took about 45 minutes to get there via Shinkansen, which was convenient for Mom and Grandma since they had the train pass. My plan originally had been to not go with them, since I didn’t think I could really afford the expense of taking a Shinkansen in addition to the other costs of the day, but Grandma paid for my ticket so that I would be able to help them with Japanese. As it turned out, I was less than helpful. I managed to botch my ticket, which turned into a hassle as we tried to sort it out. Part of the problem was that once they were on the other side of the barrier, I couldn’t get to them, which meant I was stuck in the place you go after you get off the train but before you can leave the station. The other part of the problem was that the people who could help us were on the other side of the barrier, and we had a hard time communicating with them since Mom and Grandma don’t speak Japanese, and they didn’t know to come talk to me (not that I probably could have explained much anyway). Eventually we got it sorted out, but the whole thing put me in a foul mood, and I find my Japanese skill is influenced by my mood, therefore, the more frustrated I am the worse my Japanese is. We found the lost and found office, conveniently located right next to the stairs we had to go down to get off the train platform, and had to wait about 20 minutes for somebody to come and help us. It didn’t take long to get it sorted out once someone was there though, and we got Mom’s camera back with remarkably little hassle.
When we got back we decided to try and see the pagoda that Kyoto is famous for, one of the only remaining structures of its kind. The pagoda is a tiered structure typically used for housing ceremonial figures, though not always the focal structure in a compound. Some temples have pagodas at various key points on the grounds, and they sometimes serve as houses for the lesser deities or as spiritual guard posts. I don’t know much about them, but they are always comprised of an odd number of tiers, either three, five, or seven levels high. I don’t know if there are any seven level pagodas left in Japan, but the one we went to see in Kyoto was five tiers tall, and stood about 70 feet tall. The pagoda itself was located in a temple compound that was extraordinarily large, encompassing between two and four city blocks worth of space. The whole thing was walled off and surrounded by a moat, which had some of the largest carp I have ever seen in it. They seemed to be used to people being around, as they had a habit of following our shadows and popping up their heads if we stopped, probably hoping for food or that we would fall in and they could eat us. Most of the temples in the compound were being renovated, which is something you are likely to see if you do watch temple viewing in Japan. Japan has a pretty extensive program dedicated to maintaining and restoring the nation’s temples, and at any given time the odds are good that you will stumble upon one that’s being worked on. It takes a little of the charm out of the experience, but I can’t say that it makes it any less interesting of an experience. We wandered around the main grounds for awhile before wandering over to the area in which the pagoda was located, which was in a garden of sorts. Once there we learned that we needed to pay 800 yen in order to get into the area the pagoda was in. It seemed a little odd to me, since I could clearly see the pagoda about 50 yards away through the fence, and there didn’t seem to be anything worth paying 800 yen to get closer to see, but we opted to pay and get in on the off chance that everyone else going in knew something we didn’t. As it turns out we weren’t really missing much, but we did get to go in the ground level of the pagoda and admire how old it was (400 years roughly. It’s always something of a shock when travelling in countries that have histories that go back longer than the lifespan of your average tortoise to realize just how long some of the stuff has been around. This particular pagoda was actually closer to 700 years old, but it got burned down several times and I guess they didn’t feel comfortable counting the time prior to the most recent burning).
On our way back to the station we caught a lunch of noodles, at a restaurant where I was able to reaffirm my belief that kanji is a terrible thing to do to a hungry person. At this point we had already decided that instead of going through the hassle of finding a new hotel in a new city and moving around too much more we would keep Kyoto as our base of operations. To that end, since this was to be our last night staying at the Heianbo ryokan, we decided to look for a new hotel (I was finally able to figure out why the name “Heianbo” seemed so familiar to me. In my mind I must have combined the words “Heian,” which is one of Japan’s historical periods that I learned about in my Japanese literature class, and “Honinbo,” which is a title only one person can have at a time in professional Go, and part of the name of Honinbo Shusaku, one of the greatest Go players of all time). After nightfall, we spent about an hour wandering around in the rain trying to find the hotel we had booked, which upon finding we decided to look for a new hotel. We headed back to the ryokan, and spent the rest of the evening looking into hotels.

I’ve got this problem….

Just started up the Spring semester, so I’ve been busy this last couple weeks. I had to register the other week, so I got up early on the registration day so I could register before the majority of the student body was awake. Unfortunately, even though the registering website opened at 9, and I received an e-mail telling me as much, I was later told that if you had registered before 1pm, then your registration hadn’t gone through and you weren’t registered (the website of course had given me the message “registration confirmed”). So of course a good half of the students on campus had issues with their registration. In the end I got it all sorted out, but it was a bit frustrating. After I settled in to my new schedule my body decided it would be a good idea to get sick, so I’ve been dealing with that for the last week as well. It isn’t anything serious of course, but it has been sapping my will to write lately (as well as to eat, breath, and live) which is notoriously low already. Anyway, since it’s been so long since these events were current, I’m going to try to start pumping the entries relating to my trip with Mom and Grandma out a little more quickly.
The day after we got to Kyoto we got up at nine so that we could try to sort out our money issues. I thought it was going to be a big hassle, but it turned out to be pretty simple. We walked to the station, which was about a five minute walk from where we were staying, in the hopes that someone would be able to help us find an ATM that would accept Mom and Grandma’s cards. We went to the information desk, where we were told to try the post office, which was located right next to the station. Fortunately enough, the ATMs at the post office worked just fine, and both Mom and Grandma were able to get money out, which was fortunate since we were all burning through money at an alarming rate. Throughout the trip, I think Mom and Grandma had a lot more money on them then they thought they did, as we were a at least five days in before they started using coins for things. Japanese yen comes in 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, and 500 yen coins and 1000, 5000, and 10,000 yen bills. The 1 and 5 coins are generally pretty worthless, with the 1s feeling as if they are made of aluminum (and they may well be). A good general rule of thumb is that 100 yen = $1 (though at the moment it’s closer to 94). That means that at any point in time you are probably carrying a considerable amount of money around in coins. As an American, it is easy to forget how much something is worth when it’s in coin form, as the biggest coin we are used to is the quarter. Anyway, the point is that Mom and Grandma both kept breaking 1000 yen notes, and just holding on to the change (I myself have long since moved past this phase, though unfortunately I have found that money in coin form gets spent pretty fast, probably because I still don’t associate coins with large sums of money).After the post office, we went around the block to something called the “Campus Plaza,” which was really just a place where we could check our e-mail. Nothing really interesting about the place, although I don’t think the guy I sat next to liked me being there. He kept giving me funny looks, like I was invading his space. We weren’t there for very long, and headed back to the area where our hotel was to try to find something to eat.
We ended up in a grocery store that for some reason reminded me of Mexico. I have no idea why, since there wasn’t a Mexican theme and the food was very Japanese, but something about the place just gave me that feeling. Anyway, that aside shopping was quite a bit of fun. We picked up a good amount of food for lunch and spent an unreasonable amount of time in the candy isle. We headed back to our hotel and ate lunch there.
A brief aside here, but there was a ginger cat that liked to hang out outside of the hotel, and it was adorable. Reminded me of Diablo. Anyway, this cat appeared to hate me with a passion I found somewhat disturbing, as seems to be the case with all ginger cats.
After lunch we headed back to the food market that we had visited the night before but which had been closed. During the day it’s a bustling, crowded place packed with all manner of people and food. It’s a great place, and I really enjoyed it. I few of the things I was able to find while there were: Tofu doughnuts, squid on a stick, candied tomatoes, $2000 knives the size of a broadsword, every imaginable kind of fish, and roasted chestnuts (which are made using a steaming machine that is perhaps the loudest device ever conceived by mankind). Not really too much to say about the food market, as all we really did was wonder around and look at the food (I ate some of it too). After we had been there a couple of hours we headed back to the hotel. I took a nap in the cab on the way back, and when we got there we just rested for awhile while we tried to figure out what we were going to do with our evening.
In the end, we ended up trying to find a performance that was taking place at a festival on the other side of town, which would probably have been easier if we had know what exactly we were looking for and where it was. As it was, we only sort of knew where to go, and so we took a cab to a really cool part of town. It was quite a bit more cramped than where we were staying at the time, but in a cozy and interesting sort of way. There were a lot of really neat looking shops and restaurants in the area, and since it was night everything was lit up. Once we got to where we thought the performance was, we wandered around near a shrine until we saw something that looked like it might be what we were looking for. Once again, Mom almost barged in on something that we had no business barging in on, and we left that building in an embarrassed rush. We followed a large group of people in the shrine we were near, and spent a while wandering around while we debated whether or not the performance we were looking for was likely to be taking place there. We never did find the performance, but the shrine was hosting a festival featuring a wide variety of interesting displays and light shows (after a fashion). The whole place gave off a really halloweeny vibe, so of course I loved it. Some of the things on display included sculptures and really elaborate ikebana (flower arrangements in the traditional Japanese style). We spent a couple of hours there before heading back for the night.

Yakitori Yakitori Yaitori

We got another late start on Saturday, since there wasn’t much that we were going to be able to do before we had to catch the train down to Kyoto shortly after noon. We had enough time to catch a quick bite to eat, but after that we had to pack up the room and head to the train station. Packing up for me isn’t usually a big deal, as I tend to just live out of my suitcase. I’ll have dirty clothes, books, and the like scattered around, but the bulk of my stuff is usually still in my suitcase, and it doesn’t take too long to pack up (this is of course ignoring the fact that I’m very lazy). Mom and Grandma on the other hand unpacked when they first got to the hotel; clothes in drawers, toiletries in the bathroom, that kind of thing. Because of that it took them a little while to pack up (not to mention all the rearranging needed to accommodate all of the new stuff we had bought). We ran into a bit of a hitch shortly before we left. Mom and Grandma had run low on cash in the few days that we had spent in Tokyo, and needed to get some out of an ATM. The concierge told us that we could get money out of the ATM at the am/pm (a Japanese convenience store, though I’m not sure if it’s actually Japanese or a foreign company). I walked over with Mom, but unfortunately, neither her nor Grandma’s cards worked. In the end I ended up withdrawing 100,000 yen (about $1000). After we sorted out the money situation and checked out of our hotel we caught a cab to the Tokyo station and caught the Nozomi Shinkansen down to Kyoto.
The ride down to Kyoto from Tokyo only takes a couple of hours, and it’s really a pleasant ride. Not only are the trains comfortable, as most Shinkansen are (they have enough legroom that the person in front of you can fully recline their seat without crowding you in any noticeable way), but the view is pretty spectacular as well. Once we got to Kyoto we began the arduous task of finding our hotel. We were to stay at a ryokan, a traditional style Japanese inn. We had a map of the area, and it seemed that our hotel was close to the station, so we decided to walk. As it turned out, our map made almost no sense, as the geography that it was attempting to portray had changed since the map had been made. The result was about 45 minutes of wandering around small streets and alleys in the area around the train station with five large suitcases trying to find our hotel. In the end we did find it, but not before Mom stuck her head in the door of someone’s house thinking it was our hotel (fortunately no one was home, and Mom made it out of the situation without scaring some poor Japanese person). We checked in and Grandma began her process of exploring the room. The hotel itself was small, and had the feel of a bread-and-breakfast in the sense that it was small, cozy, and run by an elderly couple. It was actually two small buildings that were held together by a courtyard with a small decorative bridge and a garden (as well as the world’s smallest beer vending machine). Our room was small, but still large enough for the three of us. The floor was tatami mats (woven bamboo placed on the floor in large tiles), which gave the room a pleasant smell. Our bedding consisted of three futons that you would fold up at during the day to make room, a pillow, and the softest down comforter I have ever used. It was like sleeping with a cloud on you, and not the real kind of cloud, but the kind of cloud you imagine exists when you are a kid. There was a table and some cushions to sit on, as well as a TV that got maybe six channels, but that was about it. It was comfortable though, and I enjoyed staying there. We didn’t check in until around five, and after that we took about an hour to figure out what we wanted to do and get unpacked. As we were unpacking Mom realized that she had forgotten her camera on the train, so we headed back to the station to try to figure out if someone had found it. We had to ask someone at the information desk where the lost and found office was since we couldn’t find it on any of the station maps, and the guy I talked to ended up drawing us one. In order to get to the Kyoto Station lost and found office you first have to leave the station via the main entrance and take a right. You keep the station building on your right and go until you reach an alley. You follow the alley for a couple of turns and you will see a sign saying “lost and found” above a door that you wouldn’t have noticed had it not been for the sign. The Kyoto Station lost and found office itself is a room no more than 8 by 8, if not smaller. In that room, which is painted a sickening white, are two Japanese men with large folders, telephones, and absolutely zero proficiency with the English language. After about 30 minutes of phone calls and me speaking in broken Japanese with one of the men manning the office, we managed to figure out that Mom’s camera was at the lost and found office two cities away, and we scheduled to pick it up on Monday. After that, we decided to head downtown and take a look at a food market, even though we weren’t sure if it would be open. We caught a train and got off after about ten minutes, and made our way to the market. In the end it was closed, but there was a shopping arcade attached to the market, and we looked around there for a bit before catching a cab in search of something to eat.
Mom wanted yakitori (grilled meat) since I had recommended it earlier and I was able to ask the taxi driver what his favorite yakitori place was. One of the staples of Japan is very nice taxi drivers, and this guy was certainly one of them. Not only did he take us to his favorite yakitori place (conveniently located within walking distance of our hotel), but he also came in with us and talked to the cooks, telling them he had recommended the place, and where our hotel was so they could help us find our way back if we needed help. We thanked him, and after he left we had a fantastic meal of grilled meat, everything from chicken to gizzard. After dinner we headed back to our hotel, making it back without any trouble, and called it a night.

One Fish Two Fish

The next day, Friday, we got up early to go to the Tsukiji fish market. The Tsukiji fish market is Tokyo’s most famous open air fish market, and even if you haven’t heard the name before you have probably heard of the market before. It usually gets running in full swing around five in the morning, and starts winding down around eight, so we got up a little before six. Fortunately, our hotel was located about a ten minute taxi ride from the market, so we were able to get there pretty easily. The market itself is located near the water in a series of open-air warehouses, and to get to it you have to maneuver through a maze of stacked Styrofoam boxes, fast moving transport vehicles, and fish parts. Once you get there the atmosphere is so crowded and hectic that it can be a bit hard to get your bearings. The market goes on for what seems like miles, and it is easy to get lost among all the fish purveyors and buyers. The upside is that you can even if you do get lost you are never at a loss for things to look at. Any fish you can think of can be bought by the dozen, and many fish I had never even seen before were on display. Octopi, Monk Fish, Whale, Shark, and of Tuna, can all be found, carved up and ready for sale. Given the amazing amount of fish in the market, you would think that it would reek of fish, but surprisingly, it hardly smells at all. Maybe it’s the freshness of the fish, but it doesn’t smell at all.
The market may be a popular tourist attraction, but it’s important to remember that it’s a place of business first and foremost. This means that people are not going to tolerate you getting in their way, and are likely to run you down if you do. I almost got run over by forklifts at least a dozen times, and Grandma was bumped a couple times. It’s interesting, but the first thought I had when I got there was that the market felt a lot like Bangkok. Crowded, cramped, dirty, and full of food, it made me feel a little nostalgic. Another interesting thing about the market was the tuna. Tuna is perhaps the most popular fish in the world, and that holds true in Japan as well. Since most of the tuna that you can by in the states comes in those tiny cans, it’s easy to forget how large of a fish a tuna actually is. I saw tuna there that were bigger than I am, and must have weighed five times more. The only thing bigger than the fish were the tools that were used to cut them up. I saw a man wielding a knife with a serrated edge that must have been at least six feet long. There were knives as long as I am tall, and as thin as the blade of a band-saw. Other knives were big and used more butchering. Some of the larger knives looked like they weighed 15 pounds, and the people using them had arms as big around as my neck. After a couple of hours wandering around the fish market, we decided to head back to the hotel. On our way back, we ran across an alley next to the market that was exclusively sushi restaurants. Grandma isn’t much of a fan of sushi, so Mom and I stopped at one of them to grab a sushi breakfast. We each got a rice bowl with sashimi (sushi without rice), and it was absolutely amazing. It was probably the best sushi I have ever had. After breakfast we started walking back to the hotel while trying to catch a cab. It was on this walk that I learned never to take Mom’s advise when trying to catch a taxi, because every time she had us cross the street to where she thought we could catch one, they would start passing by where we had just been. We did eventually catch one though, and made it back to the hotel.
I decided to take a nap and Mom and Grandma decided to seek out some coffee. I got up around one in the afternoon, and we headed out in search of a toy store that Mom wanted to go to. We were able to walk there without too much trouble, and it was really a pretty interesting store. It was five stories tall, and each floor specialized in a different category of toy. One floor had novelty toys, another had baby toys, the next stuffed toys, then hobby toys, and finally models. We spent about an hour looking around there, Mom got some souvenirs for the kids, and I was able to find a magnetic Go board that Grandma was nice enough to buy for me. After that, we caught a taxi to the Imperial Palace grounds. It was a pretty impressive area, though unfortunately I can’t say much about it since it is closed to the public all year round save for two days near the beginning of the year. We didn’t find this out until we got there, so we just wandered around the gardens and took some pictures of the palace from across the moat. Once we finished looking around there, we headed over to Tokyo Tower, so I could show Mom and Grandma where I spent New Year’s Eve. We wandered around the temple grounds where I celebrated New Year’s, took some pictures and observed a little bit of a Buddhist ceremony, before we headed out to have dinner. We found a nice yakisoba place (soba are a type of Japanese noodles that are made of Buckwheat, and yaki means grilled or fried, so yakisoba is soba that has been cooked on a grill) and had dinner. After dinner, we went back to Tokyo Tower and rode up to the main observation deck. I had been there before, but even having seen it before the view was really breathtaking. I think Mom and Grandma were impressed with the view, but I think Mom was more impressed with the fact that she left her purse on the railing in the observation deck and it was still there 20 minutes later when we went back for it. After awhile we decided to head back down and make our way back to the hotel.
That was our last day in Tokyo, and we managed to make it a pretty full day. I think it was a pretty good introduction to Japan for Mom and Grandma. The day after, which was Saturday, we headed to Kyoto, but I’ll talk about that soon.

Labyrinth

Travelling with family is fun, if a little exasperating at times. Being around Mom and Grandma all day everyday was fun, even if we sometimes grate on each other’s nerves. Grandma was particularly amusing, always exploring every new hotel room until she knew where everything was. I think one of the things that made the trip both frustrating and amusing was that none of us were used to interacting with each other, and we sort of treated each other the way we would have treated the people that we are used to being around. Mom sometimes treated us like children, while I spoke to her and Grandma like I do to my friends here (lots of asshole sarcasm and joking), and Grandma treated me and Mom like she sometimes interacts with Grandpa. It was all a bit amusing, if a little confusing.
I forgot to take notes on what happened when during the time we spent in Toyo, so I’ll just try to hit some key events. On our first full day in Tokyo we headed to Tokyo’s most famous Kabuki theater, to see a performance. Kabuki performances usually takes place over more than six hours, and are in four or more acts. Fortunately, we were able to purchase a ticket for a single act, so we were only there for 90 minutes. I had never seen a Kabuki performance live before, though I had seen them on video as a part of my Japanese literature class. Overall the experience was not unlike watching a performance of a Shakespearian play, if the actors had more reverence for the material and the performance itself was ritualized. There is a care of movement and speech in a Kabuki play that is unmatched in anything that I have ever seen in the States. The actors train themselves to speak in a very particular way, putting emphasis in certain places and the way they move is very deliberate. I’m sure this is also the case in many western performances, but the level to which it is done in Kabuki is something else entirely.
We didn’t get done with the play until mid-afternoon and afterwards we went and did a little more looking around before heading to Shibuya to visit a department store famous for its knickknacks and for having just about anything that you could need. Up to that point we had been moving around in fairly quiet parts of town, and I don’t think that either Mom or Grandma had an idea of just how busy and crowded Tokyo could be. Shibuya is one of Tokyo’s busiest neighborhoods, and the roads are winding and confusing. We had a little bit of trouble trying to find the place, but after about half an hour of wandering around we found it. For some reason, my normally abysmal sense of direction was right on the money most of the time during the trip. Maybe I have just been living in the wrong hemisphere for my entire life. Once we were at the store we looked around for an hour, spending most of our time on the floor that sold novelty goods. The store wasn’t really remarkable, except that it was built like a maze. Each floor was divided into three floors of its own, and the stairs in one part would skip a floor while the other stairs led to another floor. The result was a very confusing and challenging to navigate store, but at least it was interesting. We found our way back to the station easily enough and headed back to the neighborhood in which we were staying to have dinner. We found a little ramen shop under the train tracks, and I had fun explain to Mom and Grandma how to use a ticket machine at a restaurant. Some restaurants don’t take orders, they have their menu in a vending machine at the front, where you buy a ticket and give it to a server. It was the first time that Grandma had had real ramen before, and I think she was a little surprised by the amount of food that was provided. She made it through about half of it, and I was able to finish the rest before we headed back to the hotel to turn in for the night.

Been on spring break for about three weeks now, and I’m really enjoying it, although I’ve been far too lax in my blog writing duties. I spent the last two weeks travelling with Mom and Grandma, and I had a lot of fun doing that, and it was great to see them. I’m working on a multi-part installment of what I did with them, which will hopefully allow me to go into more detail than I would be able to in one enormous post, and might help get me into the habit of writing more often. Well then, let’s get started.
We had a bit of confusion in the days leading up to their arrival. We weren’t quite sure what day they were actually going to get here, as it was going to be different than the day that they left. Figuring out time zones is tricky, and not one of my strong suits. In the end though we figured it out, and I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) down to Tokyo to meet them. We ended up meeting at the hotel, as it had a shuttle service that they were able to take there straight from the airport, and it was a lot easier and cheaper for me to just go to the hotel from the train station. After the initial greetings we settled down and it started to feel as though we had just seen each other. It was weird, it was as if I hadn’t been gone for seven months and had just seen them the day before. They got in at a little after six in the afternoon, and after about an hour of lounging and catching up, we headed out to try to get a bite to eat. We didn’t go very far, just to a sushi place that we found a couple blocks from our hotel (not the first one we passed though, Japan in general and Tokyo in particular has a ridiculous number of restaurants, most of them packed into alleys). It was one of those restaurants where you have to take your shoes off and sit on the floor which gave Grandma a little bit of trouble, but I think she was mostly just complaining, a common trait in our family. The sushi was good, though not the best I’ve had since I’ve been here, and afterwards we wandered around a little before heading back. They were feeling pretty tired, and I had been travelling all day so we turned in early. More tomorrow, I feel sick at the moment.