Kyoto Weekend

Well spent the weekend in Kyoto, which everyone told me was a must see. It is impressive, the city is built on a flat plain surrounded by hillsides covered in trees. Once again wherever it is flat the japanese have built but as soon as the ground starts to rise in anyway then the hillsides are covered in trees and shrubs. There was one scene where I was looking down a busy city street with high rise department stores, neon lights, cars, all teeming with people, a great neon tunnel, at the end of which was a tree covered hill. Difficult to explain how strange this looks, when you are just so used to countryside gradually creeping into a city scene.
I read the guidebook and there are pages and pages of must see temples and shrines so I spent breakfast on Saturday working out a route from thesilver pavilion temple, down the philosophers walk and onto another 5 or 6 temples. So jump into a taxi and ask to go to the temple in my best Japanese and off we go. 15 minutes later arrived at the golden pavilion temple sigh, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji are just a little bit too close, anyway not a total disaster as this was also one of the must see temples. Paid my money to get in and nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue, umm this temple visiting might not be my cup of tea. Back into a taxi and carefully pronounced GINkaku-ji and back onto my original plan.
Another nice garden, nice wooden building, nice statue, I think you are already beginning to see the pattern here I decided to carry on with the plan and walked the philosophers walk, well it does kind of suit my reflective nature...This walk was great, all along a blossom tree lined canal with cafes and houses flanking it. Part way along there was an artist sketching the path, mug that i am for this I ended up buying an original, not sure if my bargaining increased the price or not but it was fun trying out my numbers, numbers and counters in general are tough in Japanese cause there are so many ways to say the same thing and which one you use totally depends on context. Ended up at Eikan-Do, which is a another famous temple, nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue. Thought with this temple hunting was over for the day so took a taxi to downtown Kyoto, in particular to Nishiki Market.

Nishiki market is a long arcade, probably 0.5Km long, that is filled on both sides with food stalls. Tried octopus balls here, I am hoping thats only the shape not the content, also tried some other funny looking stuff that all I am sure about is that it wasnt meat, everything tasted great though so best not to think about it too much. Nishika is crossed several times by shopping arcades, each arcade is also about 0.5km long and there are shops for everything. I spent several hours going up and down mainly looking for Pokemon for Gian. Can you believe it the land of Pokemon and nothing. They have character shops teeming with toy figures from anime and cartoons but no pokemon, apparantly that ship has sailed. Going to have another go today at my business card department store, might even ask for directions to give one of them heart failure :-)

And so back to the hotel. The hotel itself is really impressive, the Granvia, built into the main train station building. The train station is probably the most impressive thing i have seen in Japan so far. It is 11 stories high, has 3 basement levels, it has a vast open centre and you can walk from level 1 up open steps to level 11. Its built like a segment of an ampitheatre and so the bottom of the steps is perfect for giving shows, on both days I was there there was a stage set up and various school bands came and played. Either side of this vast space are a massive department store and a huge shopping mall called the CUBE. Two floors of the CUBE are given over to restaurants, from fast food "Ramen" to high end sushi.

I decided to use one of the 9 restaurants attached directly to the hotel and so ended up at the japanese "soba" restaurant, soba is best described as pasta like. As I didnt have a reservation they were very apologetic and I had to sit at the chefs table and have the special menu. Oh woe is me, this was fantastic, 6 courses all served to my by the two chefs working 2 feet away from me, both very chatty and very very patient with my Japanese. I rolled out of here and went and had an after dinner coffee at the lobby cafe overlooking the central plaza area. If coffee here didnt cost 10USD per small cup I might have stayed longer...

Sunday was feeling lethargic, more accurately fat and bloated :-) so decided to just do the big temple near the train station, what was this like, oh you know, nice garden, nice wooden building and nice statue. I then went off to spend an hour at the Manga museum, 5 hours later I left the place, it was fascinating. They were running workshops and constructing a new manga book, there were several artists around helping people draw, tons of kids were there making key rings and I had my portrait done, manga style, made me look about 10 so its obviously a perfect representation :-)

Decided after this to just chill out at the hotel, spent far too much money drinking coffee and eating cake at the hotel cafe and put Kyoto to bed.

Catch Up

Well its been a while, last week was mainly work work work but here are some of the highlights.

Went out with the Italian group on Thursday night, what a complete disaster, they turned up 2 hours late, fortunately I was with Ed so it was no problem. Once they turned up it took them an hour to decide to make a move to the restaurant and once at the restaurant they stood outside for 20 minutes, in the end i left them to it and went home, Ed stayed cause he fancied one of the girls but he followed me about 10 minutes later, apparently once in the restaurant they couldn't decide which table to sit at or even which set menu to follow. Italians or women.....

On Saturday finally visited the gardens in the centre of Kanazawa, for 3 days they were lit up at night, normally the park is closed at night, so I walked round the park and visited the tea ceremony building and watched a tea ceremony in progress, very interesting but a little slow, maybe you have to be taking part in it to understand it...

After this I walked around Katamachi, which is the Kanazawa entertainment district, had an unbelievably good sushi meal and then walked around a bit more and found a Jazz club with live music. Unfortunately I was the only person in the bar so the band played one song at 10 and then all got off stage to wait till more people came in. This bar was on the 4th floor of a building and most of the bars are on a floor in a multistory building. I still cant read Kanjii so its tough working out which bars would be any good just from looking at the signs.

Made major progress in speaking this week and able now to speak to the host family, its still all disjointed and I keep forgetting to say the verb, it always comes at the end in Japanese and after i have said noun, adverb, particles and adjectives I keep thinking i am done, its like saying "dinner really good" everyone understands but gives them a laugh...

Tonight I decided to go out and sample some more local food so I went out with a mixed group of students and Jets (some graduate program where english speakers come to japan to teach kids english) and we had a great indian. Followed this by going to a folk bar with Ed. This is kind of like Karaoke for talented people, yes thats right that was me out of the picture. Anyway the scenario is the bar has a stage area and any punter can go up, pick up one of the dozens of acoustic or electric guitars, or play the keyboards and give it some. Ed went up and dicked around on bass for 10 minutes or so, he was pretty good but he couldnt remember any complete songs. Once Ed finished a japanese guy went up there and picked up an acoustic guitar, took a scappy bit of paper from his back pocket and played a song about kanazawa that he had written. Brilliant doesnt do it justice, he then played a few more "standards" and went and sat down, wow!

Off to Kyoto tomorrow for a long weekend, its a holiday in Japan on Monday so no school. Probably have a 1000 pictures of temples and shrines for you to look at monday evening.

And suddenly the world caves in

Japanese counters...You know how most languages you learn how to count and then you can count, people, things, heavy things, vehicles, etc etc. Well not in Japanese! There are about 10 groups of things that have their own number counting system which is just close enough to the original numbers to catch you out and even within a groups counters there are exceptions! Grrrr this is just great, just when I was thinking I was on the home stretch to start learning Kanjii along comes this little monkey wrench.

Anyway went back to the department store today to "proof-read", yes thats the japanese word for it, my business cards. I dont know if my japanese is better or the memory of my last visit was still fresh in their minds but everything went swimmingly, go back on the 9th to pick them up. We didnt point to a calender this time so I think I go back on the 9th.

Was at the fish market again for lunch today, probably going to eat there nearly every day that I am at school, its fabulous. Up till now I have just been picking up snack stuff from stalls but I have notice that there are sushi restaurants in there as well, its not going to get much fresher than that so I think tomorrows lunch is sorted! Will take my camera with me tomorrow.

One final observation, you know in these kinds of markets the aisles are really narrow, it seems a worldwide trait that little old ladies congregate in narrow alley ways and casually move from side to side just arrhythmically enough that you can not get past without pushing them to the ground and shouting "walk in a straight line you silly old bat". Nearly made me late for my class.