Kyoto and...

Hello there all our dearly devoted readers. Josh here again. I believe Val told you a little about our adventures from Paris to Doha in the middle East to Osaka, Japan and how our phone was stolen and such. Oh and shopping in Osaka. After Osaka, we hopped a train for Kyoto, Japan`s oldest capital city, and a wicked hot place in the summer. It has been incredibly humid, and a real drawback has been our bodyclocks. We were living on Europe time for a month and so getting used to that was a cinch, but now that we`re on a 7 hour difference, our bodies drag in the morning and then at night don`t want to go to sleep. This leaves you with two options, wake up early and drag for the morning and then don`t nap at all, so that when night comes you`re ready to go to bed. Or the other option is to sleep in and stay up late, but then you miss a lot of the hours when things are open and you wake up and it`s the hottest part of the day, so you don`t want to go out until evening. It`s a no win situation, and our bodies are feeling it. We arrived in Kyoto and had booked a room the night before online for a nice little hostel. If you`re not familiar with hostels, they are like hotels that are popular with young or budget saavy travelers and they offer single beds in dorm style rooms for very cheap or for people like us, cheap private rooms...usually pretty small but comfortable. We have met a lot of people like us through hostels. We arrived pretty early on Thursday morning to our hostel and left our luggage there (as our room wasn`t ready yet) and had a walk around. Kyoto has a very `historical` feel to it: a lot of old temples and shrines, lots of old elaborately carved, wooden architecture, and people still dressed in kimonos. We walked a block behind our hostel and came upon the KENNINJI Temple. Val called it the Kenny G temple. There were no saxophone players anywhere, but there were some Buddhist monks and some pretty beautiful wooded gardens and temples. It is interesting to experience, and it`s funny to see how modern technology is mixed in with this ancient way of life. At the temple we saw this monk walking around these construction workers and the contrast was pretty humorous.

Then we had a nice leisurely (and sweaty) walk to the GION Corner, where they still perform ancient styles of Japanese theatre, i.e. dramas with masks and these weird puppet-looking things, but they only do performances at night, but we saw where it all goes down and we may have accidentally walked in on the spot where they were rehearsing and we were quickly but politely asked to go to the entrance of the theatre and come back later.

Back on the walk, we headed for the Yasaka Shrine, a huge orange shrine in Maruyama Park where we saw some more crazy temples and took a lot of pictures. There are these huge shrines where people pay money to say some prayers and ring these large bells. They also burn a lot of incense. The park/garden there was classic, the cool looking trees and ponds with big white herons (or cranes or whatever those birds are called) catching fish and the little circular stones as walkways. Kung fu movie in the making. Very cool.

It was very hot and humid and nearing 3 o`clock and time to check into our AC equipped room, so we made our way back. Once checked in, we took a little rest, found ourselves a map of Kyoto and decided to go out exploring after the heat had wained.

In each place we`ve visited this summer, we`ve found this:

1. When you stay with someone who is a local: someone who knows the place you`re visiting, they show you around and you see a lot of local things you may not find on your own. It`s efficient and it's very easy on our part. We just show up and they take care of everything.  

2. When you visit a city (say any European city) by yourselves, you grab a map and even if it`s in a different language you can make out street names and navigate your way around. Sometimes you happen upon some interesting sites. Other times you get lost trying to find the sites you know are there.

3. When you visit a place (like Japan) you can`t even read the street signs, as their letters aren`t even the same, so you just sort of guess as to where you are and hope that you happen across something cool. It`s very much an adventure and once you`ve been in a city for a full day, had a chance to navigate the bus or train system, you start to get confident as your extra-ordinary sense of direction kicks in.

We`ve experienced all these, and all of Japan has been falling under the latter category.

That night in Kyoto, after a dinner of riceballs and Japanese salads, we felt confident enough to navigate back to that Maruyama Park and temple where we had been earlier that day hoping to see the place lit up at night (there were also people setting up for some night festival that was going on). On arriving at about 9 o`clock, however we found them all packed up already. That was fine with us, as the grounds were still lit up and very beautiful under the clear sky and a waxing moon. On our way back we saw a Starbucks and as Val and I had been practicing trying new and interesting foods, we noticed that the Japanese Starbucks has a `Coffee Jelly Frappuccino`. Coffee Jelly is a desert in Japan that is pretty much coffee flavored jello with cream on top. I love it and we decided to check out the Starbucks version. Upon entering, we noticed a taste testing that was going on and were very kindly ushered in to try some coffee and treats. The Japanese, as I`m sure Val told you are extremely hospitable and would go out of their way to help you...even if you don`t ask. (We are up to around 15 to 20 separate incidents where we`ve been standing somewhere looking at a map and a kind old lady or young businessman barges in to show us where we are and kindly ask where we`d like to go. Several times the person gives us directions and then walks us there, clearly out of their way.) So we accepted the coffee and treats and retired for the night thinking and talking about how we loved the national willingness to serve. We vowed to try to put that virtue into practice in our own lives as we return stateside.

The next morning we woke up ready to navigate the city again, as this would be our last day in Kyoto and we wanted to experience as much of it as we could. We rented bicycles for the day, checked out of our hostel, but leaving our bags there, and made our way south out of the Gion district and through Kiyomizuzaka to see the large Buddha-looking statue. It was gigantic. It felt amazing to be on bicycles. We didn`t realize how good it felt until we stopped at the statue. As soon as you stopped, the humidity was almost overwhelming. You immediately wanted to get back on your bike with the wind in your face. It was just enough to take the edge off, so we kept moving. We rode down to the Shosei-en Garden. A beautiful old garden built a long time ago by some Japanese lord; one of the Honganji, I think, where we took a tour and had another Japanese lunch of riceballs and I think Val had another salad. It was very cool, these little old dojo-studio style buildings with the serene little ponds and elaborate landscaping. It was incredible. We then picked up and headed a few blocks in the direction of the Higashi-Honganji Temple, which is another series of buildings on a pretty large plot of land right there in the middle of the city. We went to the main temple, which is still used as a temple but also a very touristy spot, took our shoes off as is the custom, and went inside to sit on the tatami mats as we listened to some guys doing some chanting, burning some incense and bowing before the buddhist statues. It`s interesting to watch the spiritual rituals and customs of another religion. Val and I sat asking so many questions. We wonder how much is simply ritual and how much is heartfelt. We reflected on our own customs and rituals as well, wondering how we could learn from this. A few blocks away was another temple built by an ancestor of the previous temple. This one was called the Nishi-Honganji Temple. The magnitude of these places was insane. They are so elaborately designed, and it makes you just sit there and look. As the heat crept on, so did we. We stopped at a convenience store for another dinner on the run and happened by the Nijo Castle, this cool old castle built some long time ago with huge walls and a moat around it. Standing outside of that makes your mind wonder why they had to build things like that and what an outsider might think as they approached that place...or an invader. We continued onto the last of our stops for Kyoto, the Imperial Palace. The emperor of Japan`s home away from home in Kyoto. The emperor lives in Tokyo, which is now the capital city and which used to be the ancient Japanese city of Edo. It was like several city blocks wide and had grounds for relaxation and recreation. There were hordes of Japanese both young and old out enjoying that traditional game of games, baseball. Ha. They LOVE baseball. Val and I will actually be going to see a baseball game while we`re here, but it was humorous to see this once popular American sport decline in American popularity and now so popular here.

We returned to grab our bags, use the internet and continue on our adventure to the Kyoto main train station by train, and book some tickets for an `overnight` bus ride to Tokyo. While we waited for our bus, which left at near midnight, we walked around until we found a KARAOKE bar, ate a quick dinner, and sang to each other for an hour to such favorites as: Love Shack, some New Kids on the Block, the Beatles, etc. It was soooo much fun.

On the overnight busride, our bodies still struggling with the new time zone, we caught a few z`s and awoke to the sites and sounds of Tokyo...at 7 am. More to come.