After our mass dinner that night I was a free man and skated out the door before my chopsticks could hit the floor. Back when Kyoto was the capital of Japan the city was laid out in a grid and modern planners have kept at it in the intervening centuries--the place is moronically simple to navigate and has an above par subway, train and bus system to get one anywhere quick. I rode the subway three stops south to the somewhat-new Kyoto Station that I'd heard so much about, both good and bad. In Dogs and Demons, Alex Kerr's polemic concerning the supposed loss of Japan's soul, the author lambastes the local and national government for allowing the ultra-modern glass, steel and stone behemoth that is the new Kyoto Station to be built, pretty much calling it an architectural abortion. Without touching the sticky subject of anyone's national heritage or loss thereof, Kyoto Station is one of the more breathtaking pieces of architecture I've ever seen in person or pictures. One enters from the north at street-level ideally and is treated to a main "hall" with a glass canopy at least ten stories up and enough airspace to set up a pretty respectable RC airplane course. To the left are the entrances to a couple hotels, a performing arts theater, some top-end restaurants and more. Straight ahead are the departure/arrival platforms for trains heading to every conceivable destination in the city and Japan. To the right is an Isetan department store, several cafes and restaurants situated on tiers (including a Cafe du Monde with real beignets! WTF?!) and a stairway that rises all the way to the roof. Overhead is a "skywalk" platform that takes you from the top of the stairs on the right to the hotels on the left--all the while suspended over the cavernous main hall. Don't look down...
Inside Kyoto Station's cavernous main hall. Look at that yonder staircase--you can't even see the top.
I decided to save a couple J-bucks by walking back to the hotel and discovered no less than three Starbucks on the way. I stopped at one and had a latte after a three week cold turkey. The next morning I borrowed a bicycle from the hotel and rode to the Kyoto Station one for morning coffee and a scone, found another one while riding the northern outskirts of the city later and stopped for afternoon java, then returned to the Kyoto Station branch again for a late night fix and another scone. I know, it's Starbucks and believe me that if I'd had any other choice I would have taken it, but when you're confronted with real lattes...damnit, I'm not made of stone! My secret dream is for Peet's to maybe slowly creep up on Japan from the Aleutians, hop to Vladivostok, catch a ferry to Hokkaido and *BAM!* set up shop in Sapporo while I have them distracted.
And then there was Thursday.
Thursday thoroughly confused me before it gripped me in wonder. Here's the deal: the entire trip so far had been conducted under the iron fist of "The Itinerary", giving little to bupkis in the way of freedom to the students to decide what they want to see. That book was more or less scrapped on Thursday when the students were allowed to divide into groups of four, given chartered taxis and set loose to see whatever the hell they wanted with the stipulation that they had to be back by 6 PM for dinner. It made no sense. It boggled the mind. Why didn't they do this in Nara and Hiroshima? Maybe not the pricey taxis, but maybe just doing something like "OK, kids, here we are at Hiroshima Peace Park. You have until 4 PM to see anything you like within the park boundary. Piss off and have fun." And in Kyoto fun they did have, and learning too. Not a single group steered their taxis to the nearest video game arcade or, umm, goofy golf course (what delinquent things to JHS students do these days? I should ask), they visited Kinkakuji, Gion-machi, the Imperial Palace, Ginkakuji, Arashiyama and all the other places of great historical importance in Kyoto I'm leaving out. If the administrators need any proof that giving the students some breathing room is a good idea then Thursday is their case study.
Kinkakuji and Arashiyama. Fall was definitely a good time to see these.
I only got around to seeing Kinkakuji ("Golden Pavillion" as it's known in the West) and Arashiyama because I was traveling on a counterclockwise bike loop of the city starting at the station. Now, if I'd had my bike--or any proper road bike--I could have seen much more, but no, I was on a single speed mamachari, the flimsy, squeaky and frankly dangerous machines that pass for 98% of the bikes in Japan. The back tire was leaky and the the accompanying brakes squealed so loudly I only used them in the most dire of emergencies lest nearby eardrums and glass panes burst. The leaky tire would have been enough to deter most, but luckily I know a secret about Japan few foreigners ever learn: at virtually all Japanese apartment complexes, large and small, someone on the premises has squirreled away a pump somewhere near the bike parking area. I have never not found one when I look, whether it be placed next to the gas meters, hidden inside a stack of used tires, behind a pile of cinder blocks or hanging from the ceiling.
Here it is, the entrance to Dendentou, for all your electromagnetic blessing needs.
Kinkakuji and Arashiyama were, as expected, gorgeous and well-covered in touristy sites around the web. I'll let the pictures do the talking and just comment on one of the oddities I found at the latter of the two sites. On the same grounds of a moderately famous shrine where kids from around the country come when they turn thirteen was a smaller shrine called the Dendentou. It caught my eye because of the relief carvings of Heinrich Hertz and Thomas Edison. A nearby placard indicated that one prayed at this shrine for "good fortune with electronic devices and electromagnetic radiation." OK. Sure. What I missed in Kyoto that I dearly wanted to see were the three largest hanamachi neighborbhoods in Japan where the geiko and maiko live and train. You may not recognize those names, but they're the proper and polite way to refer to what we non-Japanese know as geisha.
That was pretty much it for really eventful happenings in Kyoto. There should be more, but, you know the deal, I was only there for a day-and-a-half. Friday morning came and I found myself on a bus for Osaka and Universal Studios Japan. USJ is located near the Osaka docks and that morning a viciously frigid wind was blowing in off the bay, but it hardly matters at all when you've got tunnel vision. You see, USJ has a roller coaster and it's been ten years since I last rode one (Santa Cruz Boardwalk's Big Dipper) so I was just a little bit excited to get a crack at it. Unfortunately so were lots of other Japanese folks and I only got to ride it twice since waits fluctuated between 45 and 70 minutes. Maybe I would have stuck out a third wait if three of my students hadn't invited me to come with them on Jaws and Jurassic Park. It was very educational for all of us: they taught me about enjou kosai (paid dating, a kind of prostitution) when we saw a 50-something-year old man with a 20-year old girl; I taught them how to pickpocket and stole one of the girls' wallet to demonstrate (I'm not a pickpocket, really); they countered by stealing my hat and glasses and running away; I got back at them by pushing them towards the outside of the boat and the hungry jaws of, well, Jaws to which they screamed incessantly. A bonding experience to be sure.
OK, the "Land ho!" pose is officially my shtick. Hands off! In other news, Yuki photographed me pretty well. Next to that photo is--I shit you not--San Francisco Land, one of USJ's "districts"! They actually had the Buena Vista, sans Irish Coffee of course.
We were having enough fun to miss the 3 PM rendezvous time and ended up fifteen minutes late to the buses for which we got scolded. Whatev, it was an arbitrary meeting time since our plane wasn't leaving Itami Airport for hours and we ended up lazing around the souvenir level there buying rare canned coffees, Hello Kitty cell phone straps and bagels with brands (like "branding a cow" brand) burned into them. When I stepped off the bus in Kusu I literally got on my hands and knees and kissed the ground knowing that I had a semi-relaxing weekend waiting for me. One where I set my own schedule. Goddamn, freedom is sweet.
--Matt
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