Kyoto

We spent Saturday and Sunday in Kyoto. Kyoto is the oldest city in Japan. It’s the only city that wasn’t destroyed by either fire bombing or A-bombs during WWII. I was probably the most excited to visit this city because it is the home of the Geisha.

By Saturday and Sunday, Jonathan and I had been living out of hotels and a little travel suitcase for almost ten days. My gallbladder was killing me, and everything Jonathan did drove me crazy. This wouldn’t have been that bad (usually I’m good at hiding my annoyance) but Jonathan was feeling the same way, which made for a very precarious and potentially explosive situation. To make matters worse, this is the first city that we visited that Jonathan had not ever served in. So, we had no idea where the heck we were or where we were going. Jonathan decided right away that he hated Kyoto, because it was so hard to find his way around. I didn’t care if we saw anymore shrines or temples, I just wanted to see the Geisha. So with this in mind, we visited the Kyoto Tourist Information Center on the 9th floor of the Train Station department store and found two walking maps of different parts of the city. We had two days to spend in Kyoto and two parts of the city to explore all on foot. There was also a venue where we could go to see a Geisha show.

Saturday we set off to tour one marvelous and mercantile shrine after another. The Shinto shrines are quite the money makers. Not only are there entrance fees, but prayers to buy, donations to make, and of course any number of little blessings to purchase so you can take them home with you. This is a religion of which I have very little understanding. The goal of the day was to make it to an hour long performance by Geisha, showcasing all the Geisha art forms. The performance would cost us about $25 each, but what’s the point of visiting Kyoto if you don’t see the Geisha? We had about two hours to blow before the performance at 7pm, so we decided to find a place to eat. As we bobbed our head in at each appealing restaurant the menus had price tags of $90+ per person. Gion, the Geisha district, is apparently the ritzy part of town. So we decided to walk a few blocks to see if we could find something a little more affordable. After about 20 minutes of searching, Jonathan popped into a small little hair studio to ask if anyone knew of a restaurant nearby that wasn’t too pricey. Before I knew it, Jonathan had drawn quite a crowd of women all talking and pointing in different directions.

So there I am, hot and tired, and my stomach is seriously hurting me, and now Jonathan is involved in a 4 person conversation about where we should eat for anther 20 minutes while I just stand to the side and try to look involved. I can feel myself start to lose it. All of a sudden one of the women waves for us to follow her—I have no idea where we are going! Jonathan hadn’t bothered to communicate the plan to me, but I can see that he had made some sort of deal with this woman that involved 5000 yen ($43) and the word “ha-m-ba-ga”. All I can think of as I follow Jonathan and this woman chatting away in Japanese is that if Jonathan agreed to pay $50 dollars for us to eat hamburgers, I know I’m going to lose it. So we follow the woman down to a little pub style restaurant and she tells us to sit down while she goes to the back to talk with the owner. Now alone with Jonathan, he leans over to inform me that the woman had offered to take us to her friend’s restaurant and that if we paid her 5000yen up front, she will serve us hamburgers. He goes on to tell me that he couldn’t say no to the woman because it would have been rude to have asked for help and then not accept it once it is offered.

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes—not only do I not eat usually eat hamburger in the States; I definitely don’t eat it when my gallbladder is brimming with pain. Not to mention I can buy a hamburger for $1.99 anytime I want to in America—why in the world would be pay $50 for one in Japan? I was so frustrated with being dragged all over the place without even a chance to communicate my thoughts! When the lady returned with the owner and began to order us hamburgers, I just plainly said, “no,” with a polite smile (now Jonathan would have to do something). The air went from excitable chatter to a still hush. The “helpful” woman and her owner friend stared at me in disbelief. Jonathan quickly chimed in with the explanation of my sickness and asked if I could order something else. The women wouldn’t let us look at a menu... apparently allowing the chef to serve what he wants to serve is fairly common in Japan, as all the other guests in the restaurant had the same thing to eat that we did. Jonathan called it “o-makase,” but I think that she didn’t let us see the menu because we had already agreed to a higher price. Anyway, she asked if chicken would be ok and I relented.

It took a minute or two for me to finally calm down, I’m proud to say not a single tear fell (it would have been wasted). Jonathan felt so bad for letting the situation get out of control. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but when I’m tired and sick I have little control of my faculties. My food wasn’t bad, you really can’t go wrong with grilled chicken breast, but poor Jonathan’s food…imagine a giant hamburger floating in a plate full of sauce-like gravy—the owner called it stewed hamburger. Hahaha. Jonathan was a little mad at me too; after all, I had asked him to find us a place to eat and told him that it was his choice where we went. I guess that he just thought it would be fun to interact with some people and eat at a little hole-in-the-wall. And to be fair, we didn’t just have a piece of meat, our dinner included salad, salmon sashimi on shredded radish, soup, some vegetables, rice, and all the beer we could drink (Jonathan politely refused this last one). We had to be rude and leave before they brought out coffee and dessert because our show was about to start and we still had a good ten minute walk ahead of us.
We arrived at the show just in time. We got great seats and let the graceful art of the Geisha unfold in front of us. It was an enchanting hour. My favorite part was Bunraku puppet show, which has always been Jonathan’s favorite thing too. This is the show with the giant detailed puppet that is controlled by several people all dressed in black. It was amazing how realistically and fluidly the puppet moved and conveyed emotion to the audience. We hope to see more Bunraku performances while we’re in Japan.

We saw more shrines than I can even remember. I’ll include pictures of some of the most famous ones for you to take a look at. Another interesting part of the Kyoto tour was going to visit the famous Zen rock garden. We paid about $10 to see the small rectangular yard filled with pebbles with rock islands spread throughout. Scores of people were sitting staring at it, trying to meditate and pray. It was so loud and there were so many people there, there was no way in my mind that a person could experience anything close to Zen. However, I made jokes for the rest of the day about finding Zen in this busy street or that, which made Jonathan happy.

And so ends our happy week of touring Japan.

These monks were on a pilgrimage. They were walking so fast, I hardly had time to snap this shot.


The Geisha
This Bunraku puppet was amazing. She was so big, and every part of her bent and moved like a real person. She had three people controlling her.
Look at her hands, her fingers bend as she dances across the stage.
Geisha dancing.
Jonathan and I both agree that the white Geisha was the most enchanting.

This priest was standing outside the temple singing/humming chants. He would bless you if you dropped money into his little cup.

This water is supposed to be curing, so people stand in line for hours just to wash their hands and mouths in it.

The grounds of the Golden Pavilion.

The Golden Pavilion was originally built to be a retired Shogun's summer home. It stands in the middle of a pond. This building represents the decadence of the late 1300's. The person who built it painted it gold to show off his wealth. When he died a few years later his son converted the summer home into a temple.

Feeling the Zen at the Rock Garden.
Here is the whole thing. I don't really get how this place would make you relax. Seeing all the perfectly raked pebbles made me want to go out and play Lava (you know the child hood game where you would jump from chair to couch in order to stay off the floor and avoid the lava.)
This is the mediation hall next to the Rock Garden. It was beautiful with intricately sketched Japanese nature scenes drawn on all the screens.

The Kyoto Train station is massive and quite the architectural marvel. Train stations are like airports here in the states. Riding the train is a big deal, and it's really expensive. We saved close to $1000 by using our train pass.
This is a Buddhist shrine outside of someone's home. The swastika you see on the gate is actually an ancient Buddhist symbol for eternity. Hitler adopted the symbol but flipped it to represent his regime. It's weird to see these all around Japan, but they have nothing to do with Germany.
These are little prayers you can buy at the Shrines.
This is a counter that is in every shrine in Japan. Here they sell prayers and other little trinkets that will bring you blessings.