Aye, Cap'n, she's a biggun!

Ok, folks. Here it is - the long awaited, massively oversized Kyoto trip update! Thar be pictures in them thar posts.

Let's just power through this. It'll be a good reflection of how the trip was - great, but definitely exhausting. And I don't want to hear any comments about how you shouldn't get exhausted just by looking at stuff all day. It was either pouring rain or hot as all heck, and humid as a Turkish bath to boot. (Hmm...maybe Heck is like a Turkish bath, with annoying vendors pushing stuff in your face, instead of a burning pit of fire and devils poking you...in which case Kyoto is definitely Heck.)

Anyway, it felt like walking into a wall of tepid water that would just cling to your skin, but somehow didn't clean off any of the gallons of sweat that your body was miraculously producing despite only having drunk 2 small cups of tea the day before. You had to just give up on being comfortable and resign yourself to being a walking spring of sweat. On a very related note, there were people handing out free plastic and paper fans with advertising on them. I thought they were dumb until one got shoved in my hand and I began to suspiciously fan myself...and then it became a little disposable miracle. Seriously, that fan was the best free thing I've gotten in a really long time. Maybe ever. Although job-fair T-shirts might give the fan a run for it's money...

Anyway, enough kvetching. On to the picture show!

(this is just a pretty picture I took. Purty, ain't she?)

Saturday. Arrived in Kyoto, roughly on time despite losing the train schedule for that day and being misdirected by a train station attendant. Kyoto station is without compare. Maybe it doesn't have the atmosphere, nostalgia, or radiation of Grand Central, but it's freakin' big. 11 stories above ground, and at least three below. This is the view from the top level. I immediately ran into some of the Frenchies from JSPS. We said hi and went our separate ways...because we're retarded like that.

After checking into the hotel that Eric miraculously found for us (Gion Matsuri's kinda like New Year's Eve in New York and we didn't have reservations) we headed out to catch as many temples as we could before they closed. Seriously, this trip made me feel like Becca Croft, Temple Raider. Well, not so much boobage or raiding, unless boobage means being a foriegn boob who stares at everything, and raiding means taking lots and lots of pictures. In which case there was a lot.

Right. We went to Kinkakuji, the Golden Temple. This was previously described to me (by Yamazaki-san who speaks very little English) in approximately these terms: "Do you know Kinkakuji? It is...all...yellow? gold! It is all gold. Very famous. It's crazy." And you know what? He's exactly right. Check that out - it is completely gilt, and it's supposed to be a kinda thick layer too. This is supposed to be a favorite with tourists (no duh, it's freaking gold and everyone likes to look at the pretty shiny things) so we were very lucky in that there weren't too many people around.

Unfortunately we didn't finish Kinkakuji until about 4:40, which was too late to get to anything else before the usual closing time at 5:00. So we just gave up and headed over to Gion. That's where all the action's at...in both colloquial senses. It's the traditional downtown of Kyoto and home to fantastic shopping, restaurants, and the few remaining geisha houses. We only saw one geisha the whole time I was there. She was very pretty...I don't really know what else to say. I didn't want to be one of the hoard of white people that must stare at her any time she goes out, so I didn't get more than one quick glance.

Anyway, Gion. I got my first Starbucks fix, bought some sweet, sweet shoes (they're guys shoes, although it might be possible for my gigantic size 10's to be accomodated in a large department store), got a couple more mangas, and ate on the top floor of a large store which had a 2,000 yen buffet. I don't think they were expecting hungry, fat Americans to come because I definitely ate more than 2,000 yen's worth of raw fish alone. Well, as Eric said, that's the Chinese coming out in me. Gotta get your money's worth.

Later on we ran into my friends Janay, Nick, and Kari while wandering around Gion. We hung out with them for a while and went to Namco tower, which has video games and is open 24-7. My favorite was this one:
It's like my eyes suddenly turned monochrome. Janay turned out to be very very good at Tekken 5, and I turned out to really really suck. I did get to play Taiko, though, and that was a ton of fun...like maybe I'll have to get the game for my PS2 kind of fun. Eric and I had to head home at about 11:30 so we wouldn't miss the last subway train (turns out we were close enough to walk, but being the brilliant Berkeley graduates that we are, we didn't realize until we did it accidentally the next night.)

Sunday. Somehow, miraculously, we got up at 7:00 am and were out of our hotel by 8:00. Why, you ask? So that we could get to our first temple before it got completely mobbed. Thus, we arrived at Kiyumizuji (Clear Water Temple) at about 9:00 am and there weren't tons and tons of people. It was quite a hike to get up to the main temple, but at least there were things to look at along the way, like this traditional (= Caltrans orange) building/gate/thingy here. The building on the left is a small temple built for some emperor on the occasion of his birth. It's famous for being very brightly painted - as if everything else isn't? Maybe it's just that there's really nice designs that haven't been lost in the past 500-600 years. Pfui. The way I see it, if your work doesn't last half a millenium, then what good is it?

Seriously, everything in Kyoto that's not brand new, is at least 300-400 years old. It's nothing short of astonishing, since it's all in working order and well-maintained. Anyway, rant aside, this was my favorite temple. Here's why.
This is the patio/ledge thing next to the main temple. It's very famous, not for it's view or beautiful construction, but because of the legendary number of suicides that take place there. Apparently there's a saying that means "to take the plunge" or "go for it" which goes something like "I'll jump off Kiyumizu."
This is the view from Suicide Ledge. You can see all of Kyoto from here.
...and finally, the clear water that give the temple it's name. You go down there and take a cup on a stick, catch some water from one of the falling streams, and drink it. It's delicious...and very sanitary. The cup-on-sticks are flashed with UV light after each user. I love this country sometimes. Who else would have state of the art technology at a site which hasn't been structurally or cosmetically changed for hundreds of years?

After this, we headed on to Ginkakuji (Silver Temple). Apparently this one didn't have the same quality of PR relations, since there was never enough money to actually make it silver. Or really maintain it very well, come to that. It's still a very pretty building, though. Before it was a temple it was some noble's summer house, back in the 1200's.

Next was Sanjusangen-do (Hall of 33 rooms) although I honestly have no idea why it's called that, because I saw maybe three rooms total, and one of those might be in a different building. It was nothing short of amazing, if only because of the sheer perversity that made these people finish it. There are 1001 - count 'em - 1001 statues of Kannon in one giant room. 1000 of them are approximately person-sized, and theres an 11 footer in the middle. They all have 20 arms and 11 heads (although 10 are very small so they look normal.) I'm not sure if Kannon is a god or an incarnation of the Buddha because the Japanese are very bad about mixing Shinto and Buddhism and whatever else and also the English signs were impossible. Anyway, here they are. We weren't allowed to take pictures. The other statues are more minor gods and goddesses and are exquisitely made, even if they would make a grown person pee their pants if they came to life.

Historical Side Note: (blame my father for this - it's his fault I like history) There's an archery contest that's been held here since forever, and part of the contest is basically an archery marathon on crack. You have to shoot as many arrows as you can for 24 hours. There was some guy back in the 1300 or 1400's that shot 11,900, and 11,700 hit the target. Did I mention the target's 390 feet away?

Next stop was just across the street, at the Kyoto National Museum. This was the luckiest thing that happened to us the whole trip. There was a special exhibit of culteral items which we decided to spring for at an extra 500 yen or so. Holy crap. These 'cultural items' ended up being some of the most treasured pieces of art in all Japan. Most of these are stored in shrines for all but a couple days of the year. You really have to go here and look at some of these. You can skip the rest of the post as long as you see some of this stuff.

Hmm...time to speed up the pace. This post is already super long. After the museum, we went to Ryoanji which houses the archetype of all Japanese rock gardens. Check it out. I promise if you're there in person and you stare at it for a while, it's kinda cool. Like Zen 3-D images, except you won't see a sailboat.


After that it was time for dinner, so we went back to Gion and there was a giant giant festival going on with Japanese junk food and fair games and thousands of girls wearing kimonos (literally - for once it's not just hyperbole) and extremely nice painted screens for public viewing and the carts that were part of the parade on Monday. We actually got to climb up into one of them for only 300 yen and it was awesome. They're not very stable and very overdecorated, but somehow you tell the rational part of your brain that it's ok because they've lasted hundreds of years, they're sure to last for more and you won't die in a horrible cart-crash and become the latest overseas death to appear in a small article on page A26.

The next day it was pouring rain so there weren't too many people at the actual parade. Except for at the corners, where they yank the cart around 90 degrees so that it can continue down the parade route. Which is where we went. That was the most crowded place I've ever been in my life. There were a couple times where I was standing up only because I was leaning on at least three other people. Crowd control aside, the parade was pretty cool. The music was disappointingly repetitive and there weren't any interesting parts except for the carts (no marching bands or dancers or even pretty girls in between each cart/float). But dude, watching the carts turn was pretty sweet. They pulled the cart onto some flattish bamboo, smooth outer side up, fixed the rear wheels, and came around the side of the cart and just yanked until it turned. This took three yanks and between 3 and 10 minutes, depending on how competant each team was.
After that I went to Kyoto station, shopped for two hours, and went home. The only thing I bought was a bento (box lunch) from a fancy shmancy department store which was absolutely delicious, even the pickled vegetables which are usually nasty.

And Rebecca lived happily ever after. At least until the next post.