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.