I Want You, I Need You

*Disclaimer: this post is stupidly long and for that I apologize.*

Since I was going to be spending Christmas in Japan I decided to treat myself to a little trip down to Kyoto with my friend Jaimie.

She stayed over at my place the night before we left so that we could get an early start to the day. The alarm went off at 5am and we were out the door by 6:20am. Not too shabby. We caught the train to Takasaki and had to get our Shinkansen tickets upgraded to reserved seats because when Jaimie bought them that detail got lost in translation. Luckily we were able to get 2 of the last 3 seats available for that day. The downside was that we were going to have to be in the smoking car :( On the bright side, at least we knew we would have seats!

Once we got to Tokyo we transferred over to the shinkansen and settled in for the 2+ hour trip. Amazingly, the smoking wasn’t too bad and it didn’t really bother me. What did keep irking me though was something that sounded like a cat meowing. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. Was it a cell phone? A kid making a weird noise? What the hell could it be?! It was rather quiet and out of place so it took me a while to locate the source. One seat back and across the aisle was a cat in a bag. Go figure!

We arrived in Kyoto around lunch time and met up with a friend of Jaimie’s named Wayne. He’s a rather nice guy who hails from Texas and mysteriously lacks an accent. We threw our bags in a locker and grabbed some tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet) for lunch which was quite tasty and a welcome sight after being on trains all morning. 

Once we had refortified ourselves we headed out to meet up with another Gunma JET named Lee and his girlfriend Masao to go and see the rock garden at Ryoanji Temple. Unfortunately, we didn’t have overly long to explore the compound because the sun started to set around 4:30pm.

After that we were supposed to go out and grab dinner at a buffet Lee had heard about. Jaimie, Wayne and I were all still too full from lunch to think about eating vast quantities of food (even if they were local favourites) so we opted to go to a fancy sweets shop in the Gion district to eat parfaits instead. I chose the vanilla ice cream with cinnamon and thick, dark sugar syrup which was super yummy! The rest of the crew (except maybe Masao) felt a little sad at the fact that their parfaits were super Japanese and contained vast quantities of jelly.

The next day Jaimie and I had Starbucks for breakfast and I nerded out when I saw that they sold almost all of the Japanese city-specific Starbucks mugs. I had been wanted to buy one but the only places I had been to (Tokyo and Kyoto) had rather disappointing designs. I debated buying a few of them but settled on getting just the Hokkaido mug. I don’t really know why it has a polar bear on it but I figure it’s best not to question these types of things.

After breakfast we went to the Matsu Grand Shrine and walked over to the Arashiyama district. We grabbed lunch at one of the first places we saw because it was raining and we were given a 5% off coupon. Score! I had a super delicious rice bowl that had beef, egg and cheese. As we ate we were able to look out over the river and mountains as the mist rose from the pine trees. It was a really enchanting sight and I probably should have taken a picture but I’m lame so now you’ll just have to use your imaginations! A thousand apologies.

After lunch we walked over to Tenryuji Temple and found the bamboo grove. The path that winds through the bamboo was really pretty and well worth the search it took to find it. One the other side of the path we stopped to look at a map that was only written in Japanese to see if we could loop around somewhere to get to a bus stop. As we were doing this the group of young Japanese men who were smoking nearby commented, in Japanese, that we didn’t understand Japanese >.< I understood that! I just didn’t happen to know enough to tell them off so I guess they weren’t too far off the mark.

We managed to find our bus stop and took it up to Daikakuji Temple only to discover that it was probably closed seeing as how we were the only ones wandering around. We took a few photos and then quickly left because it was super creepy with no one else around!

Pond?

Back at the bus stop we discovered that we needed to walk for 25 minutes to get to another bus stop that would take us to the Golden Pavilion. A nice lady gave us directions but all we could make out was 25 minutes, turn left, and pond. Miraculously, we managed to find our way to the pond. Or should I say dried up lake. We wondered around in a confused fashion for a while as we tried to get our bearings until we found a bus stop that happened to go where we wanted. As we were looking for when the next bus would arrive a kindly old man wandered over to us and told us which bus to take, when it was coming and a little bit about the local history all in perfect English! I think he had been watching us wander around because as soon as he finished talking to us he turned around and wandered away again.

We got to see the Golden Pavilion which was the second time I had seen it in a month. It was still there and still pretty so that was good to know :P Jaimie had never seen it so I agreed to go there with her since it was one of the highlights of my trip with my dad.

After that it was time to head back into town and meet up with our friend Amy (also from Maebashi) and her friend from America, Angela. Wayne joined up with us a short time later and we all set off together to find a ramen shop that was rumoured to be the best in Kyoto. Like most local restaurants it was a little tiny hole in the wall and didn’t have any English menus but luckily for us Wayne knew enough to translate the majority of what was on the menu. We all ended up getting the set which included ramen and karaage chicken. It was by far the best ramen I have ever had and the karaage chicken (think popcorn chicken but better) was to die for. The best part about it was that the 3 pieces of chicken which turned out to be the size of your fist! The size of the ramen bowl was nothing to sneeze at either! All of this came to about $8. Not too shabby!

The next day was New Year’s Eve and we had decided to go to Osaka for a day trip and to meet up with Lee one last time. We toodled around in American Town (or was it called Little America? I can’t remember) for a bit and then found ourselves in a massive shopping district. Seeing as Osaka is known for its okonomiyaki (it also happens to be one of my favourite Japanese foods) we decided to stop and have some for lunch. The wait took a while but it was well worth wait!

After we said good-bye to Lee we continued to wander through the shopping area. As we were waiting for the light to change at an intersection a Japanese guy in his 20s came up in front of me and started doing Luc’s Happy Birthday Dance while saying, in English, I want you, I need you over and over again. As he was nearing the end of his dance he went down on one knee and looked up at me, pointed and said “you!”. It was too funny! We had a brief conversation in Japanese and then the light changed so we had to say good-bye but I wish that I had just stayed and talked a bit more with this guy. He made my day :)

Once it got dark out we decided to go to the Osaka Sky Building to get a night-time view of the city. On the way up the elevator, and then subsequent glass escalator that was suspended between the towers, I spent the entire time trying not to hyperventilate. It was terrifying! But the views were gorgeous and I made myself go up to the open air terrace and walk around the circle, pausing only to take a picture in each direction, before running back into the safely of a securely enclosed space.

Wishes for the New Year being burned

We went back to Kyoto and met up with Wayne to ring in the new year Japanese-style. We had decided to go to Chion-in Temple to see the monks ring a giant bell 108 times to purify you for the new year but accidentally went to Yakasa Shrine instead. By the time we realised our mistake it was too late to run over to the temple so instead of hearing a bell ring 108 times we heard a drum beat once. Whoops! It was still a neat experience and it had been snowing all day so it was really pretty and made me think of home.

After 3 days of running around all over the place Jaimie and I decided that we needed to spend New Year’s Day in a more relaxed manner. We woke up at nine instead of our usual 7:30 and ate at Caffe Excelsior. I had a maple latte and a caramel scone and could have wept at its deliciousness.

After breakfast we headed over to Kiyomizudera temple where I discovered that I had forgotten my camera at the hotel. Blargh! It really was a shame too because the temple grounds were really rather unique. There was a large balcony which overlooked the rest of the compound and allowed for some really spectacular views of Kyoto.

Inside the temple was Jishu Shrine, which is known as Japan’s love shrine, and people come from all over the country just to visit it. There are 2 stones that are placed roughly 20 feet apart and if you can navigate from one to the other with your eyes closed you will be assured of finding your love match. The shrine was far to busy for anyone to try it which is too bad because it would have been a lot of fun to watch someone try to do.

Back in Kiyomizudera there are 3 waterfalls that you can drink from with each representing a different life wish. It is considered greedy to drink from all 3 though and if you do it assures bad luck and misfortune so you have to choose carefully. The different streams represent health, wisdom and longevity and, as fate would have it, none of them were labelled. So I drank from the one closest to me and prayed for health. Hopefully it doesn’t work like a birthday wish and by telling you what I wished for I didn’t blow my chances at having a healthy life…

The next day we just spent shopping around Kyoto because we were both a little temple-ed out. We also tried to change our shinkansen tickets to reserved seats but discovered that they were already booked solid for the day.

On the final day of our trip we discovered that our shinkansen tickets had been bought for the wrong day so we needed to have them stamped by a station master. Luckily it wasn’t a big deal and all we had to do was go through the manned gates instead of the automatic ones. As we fought our way onto the unreserved car our joy in finding seats was short-lived as we discovered that we had managed to get on the only smoking car allotted to people without a seat reservation so naturally everyone and their dog was smoking >.< Blech.

On our final leg home from Tokyo Jaimie and I somehow managed to get on the wrong train and ended up in Ibaraki prefecture. That little detour ended up costing us about an hour and a half of extra travel time. Nine hours and seven trains after we left Kyoto I finally made it home. It was a day from hell but the beers I bought at Takasaki station helped it go down a little smoother.

Cheers.