Kyoto

last time i promised the 2nd installment of Summer Sonic, complete with Metallica.

well tough shit. i got lazy. this entry is all about the Kyoto and Tokyo trip i took a few weeks ago. i might finish Summer Sonic sometime though... if i feel like it.


the Beppu Osaka ferry, revisited

the most god-awful overpriced greasy noodles i've had in recent memory began this trip. whoever thought that serving godawful greasy cold pseudoChinese hokkein noodles on a boat is a good idea is obviously the lucky recent recipient of a frontal lobotomy. almost as catatonic, their drool almost as translucent, as one who chooses to eat such a meal, and pays nearly 500 yen for it.

there's something depressing and slightly (alright, more than slightly) pathetic about eating alone. i'm a big condoner of solo travel, but it's the single serving dinners (if i may allude to Fight Club) that'll kill your soul and rot your brain faster than greasy MSG. and yet here i am, pretending to be fully engrossed in Kerouac over my godawful greasy cold MSG coated noodles like some kind of mysterious intellectual gaijin. unlike the last boat ride, there are no infinitely more outgoing travel companions to attract the creepy drunk Japanese shipping company guys freely dispensing cheap sake in a carton like last time. "keep away, for i am just one step away from being a creepy raving vagabond," says my aura. "don't you even fucking THINK about being a cow on my fast track to insanity."

and yet Japan has to be the ideal place for solo eaters. as i look around, about half of the people here are enjoying their single serving dinners. most restaraunts have counter seating to avoid the feeling of a vast range of formica desolation out in front of you. nope, you go elbow to elbow when you eat alone, close enough to stab someone's cornea with a chopstick, but never to speak to them.

unfortunately, there is no such counter style seating in the ferry cafeteria. blast and damnation.

i slept about as well as i had expected to on that damn ferry. it was less crowded this time, but it had the same mildly amusing Japanese quiz show on the overhead TV, and the same cruel green exit light shining in my face all night. and inexplicably sound asleep elderly women snoring in my ears. but hey, i got transportation and a night's accomodation for 7000 yen. insane MSG dreams and fallout green lights in my face were but a small price to pay for passage to the cultural cradle of Nihon.

Ohayou Kyoto

Daylight and a local train from Osaka Port brought me to Kyoto Eki, a space-age soaring atrium of modern transportation. or so it liked to tell itself. there are travellers with bigger backpacks than they could possibly need, tourists with hard-shell Samsonite and hotel reservations (reservations? HA!), young salarymen in suits (kids in black Armani straightjackets), schoolkids on field trips, and people with Kendo sticks in long cases. my breakfast is melon-pan, yogurt, pineapple juice and weak coffee from AMPM, eaten while observing the frentic chaos that rushes at 730am on a Sunday morning in Kansai.

a "night person" to the core, i feel something for "morning people" that straddles awe, admiration and derision. those perky fuckers and their sunny outlook on life, they get on my nerves. during the summer in Beppu, it's a rare night that i get to sleep before 230am, a rare day i can bring myself to greet with a guttral groan and slap to the snooze alarm before 11 (and that's on weekdays; weekends it's more like 1 or 2 if i'm hung over. which i usually am). but somehow travelling solo invokes in me that Ben Franklin spirit of "early to bed and early to rise" bullshit, awakening in me the realization of a whole world alive in the mornings when i can do nothing but stay unconscious out of sheer spite.

i mean.... on normal days there's nothing to look forward to but Same Shit Different Day (ah, the nouveau mantra of Benny's "early to bed"). but away from home (wait, Beppu is "home?") there are unfamiliar noises and stresses and uncertainties and wonders to shake me awake. there's the physical exhaustion and throbbing in your feet and calves from a day of exploring, the mental toll of days spent in Zen meditation and temples (replicas), and on crowded buses. it's exhausting, pondering the fact that people live--they LIVE!--Same Shit Different Day existences in these great ancient capitals of the world. there is indeed a person behind the Mickey Mouse mask at Disney World.

after a short accomodation hunt, my whirlwind and crapshoot tour of Kyoto begins. the Lonely Planet pantheon decrees that 2 days is the "absolute minimum" amount of time to spend in this city. well, sorry. that's what i have. i'm reminded of the time i went to Paris 4 years ago. it was about this time of year, when summer's death rattle puts a chilly vapour into the September breezes. i took one of those whirlwind weekend tours of Paris with a GErman tour group that veritably grabbed us by the hand and ran us through the streets of Paris like a double-decker bus outta hell in 36 hours (it was Rainbow Tours, and i think one of their double-deckers tipped over on a highway a few years ago. but that's just a coincidence). it was like using a moldy, herpes-infected frathouse beer funnel to chug a bottle of aged Merlot, a drink that should be imbibed sip by savoury sip in a snifter. or at least from a shared herpes-infected bottle on the banks of the Seine.

if Paris was funneling Merlot, then my 2 days in Kyoto were going to be like.... aw hell i can't even think of a clever simile right now; the point is i was going to see jack diddly shit of Kyoto in the grander (Lonely Planet) scheme of things. but that's okay,

because i would just gratefully take in whatever Kyoto wants to show to me, like a single cup of green tea and sweets on the coffee table in your inn, while roaring for seared yakiniku. or the goodnight kiss that leaves you aching for something more. that's Kyoto.

there, there's a good simile after all.

Kyoto is a UNESCO labyrinth

Kyoto is home to approximately eleventy million and forty five UNESCO heritage sites. well, like i said i had 2 days. so i had 2 choices--painstakingly plan the most efficient route to as many of them as i could get to, or....

halfassedly amble around town at whim, get lost, wander around lots of milquetoast residential areas with Soviet-esque apartment blocks, all the while hoping to stumble upon a few personages of historical significance and admire the Zen mandala-like journey i took in getting there.

i glanced at the maps the tourist office had given me. finding the "international tourist" office had been a bit of a Zen pilgrimage in itself, tucked away on the 7th floor of the upscale department store attatched to the train station, miles away from the conveniently located office for domestic tourists. but their English was great, and they were every bit as freakily helpful as most in the Japanese service sector are. so... which walking tour to take....

i fumbled around with the walking tour maps, the first of eleventythousand times that day, and found
"Higashiyama Area. Start this walking tour from Gojozaka Bus Stop, heading for Kiyomizu Temple. The approach to Kiyomizu Temple is an attractive winding road lined with touristy bladyblah and lovely foshizzle. From Kiyomizu Temple to Maruyama Park there are woiervnkds and an array of stammygasterdom and shrines. Crossing Maruyama Park keep walking northward to Heian Shrine, whose garden is admired for its cherry and iris flowers in season. "

Eastern Kyoto. Higashiyama-ku. yep, sounds good to me.

Higashiyama was crowded that day, mostly by Japanese tourists but with a healthy dose of gaijin as well. not quite sure where to go, i simply went with the schools of salmon, upstream. hey, throngs of tourists can't be wrong about which UNESCO heritage sites are most worth seeing. the roads diverged--one seemed to logically follow the border of the temple grounds, the other went up into a back street lined with garbage cans and kakidoori (shaved ice) stands. hmmm.... the map seems to say go up the back street. whatev.

this route passed through one of the biggest cemeteries i've ever seen in Japan. looking down at the gravesites carved into a hillside was almost like being a giant, overlooking a typical skyline-- rectangular graves compactly placed jutted about 3 feet up into the air like miniature skyscrapers in a city of the dead. but instead of industrial pollution, the peaceful smell of incense wafted up into the atmosphere. it got me thinking about the power of smells to evoke memories and associations in your brain. my friend Jessy used to burn a strikingly similar smelling incense to cover up the smell of um... other substances that were vapourised in her room at the Spanish house junior year of college. for me, it was the smell of nostalgia, freedom, intellectualism. and secrecy. for the Japanese, it probably makes them think of holy men, shrines, New Year, and the death of loved ones.

after i while of musing i realized that i'd probably veered pretty far off the walking tour, but i didn't care. anyway, there was another temple coming up and i'm sure it was important. so i paid my 500 yen and had a look. the whole complex was huge; i wasn't even sure if it was all part of the same grounds. what struck me about this one was how it was just sort of carved into a hillside and propped up by scaffolding. Japan is such a seismically active place, i wondered how the knees of the scaffolding hadn't buckled when the earth inevitably jerked up with sudden deft force as it often does here, sending the temple falling down like images of California McMansions bellyflopping to the valley below and its Buddhas careening with it. divine intervention? perhaps. or maybe it's a replica.

Entourage in Gion

let me tell you, Zen journeys have a way of rendering one hungry as balls. so i ducked into a random restaraunt during some down time (a great way of avoiding solo dining awkwardness) and got some curry. i sat next to the window facing the kitchen, thinking that was a bit silly since i was in one of the most celebrated cities in the world, but i'd rather have a view of a dingy curry shop with tobacco stained doilies on the tables, but that it was probably rude to sit with my back to the staff. so it was rather odd that i chose that one particular moment to turn around and have a look outside the window--that's when i saw her.

it was sort of like when you're 8 years old and you go to Disney World or Universal or whatever, and there she is in all her heavy L'Oreal and synthetic polyester satin glory--Ariel or Princess Jasmine, or Belle or whatever random princess is suddenly the object of squealing little girls (and a few little boys as well). at Disney World, even at that young age, we knew deep down that it wasn't really Sleeping Beauty, but a representative of her,like department store Santa Clauses. some of us even knew that Snow White was likely some college student named Tammy on semester break from Florida State who wanted some extra cash and had the looks and charisma to spend the summer as a goddess. we had the Doublethink necessary to know that, and even to use it as a source of inspiration--perhaps someday, we could be princesseses for a summer as well.

but here in Kyoto, her name was Hatsumomo or Sayuri, or Mameha (most likely not her birth name), in that chalk-white makeup, artfully bearing the weight of silk and history and waxen black hair and stigma, even her feet carrying wooden geta blocks. she has a line of people, young and old, Japanese and foreign, following her. but unlike the giggling 8 year olds at Disney World asking for Cinderella's autograph, they maintain a safe distance from her out of reverence, awe, perhaps even fear. why? because she's the real deal. she walks the line between fact and fiction, of a world on Earth that gets as close to myth as one possibly can. and she is its envoy.

The Search for Kinkakuji

Kinkakuji Temple is one of the most famous sites in Kyoto, and one of the most famous in all of Japan. it's a golden temple. here, look. see? golden temple. and it seemed, as it's one of the most famous in Kyoto not to mention all of Japan, that i should see it on my first visit. and one would also think i'd be able to find it. well.... the following is the story of how i managed to miss Kinkakuji temple.

i actually had a decent night's sleep at the whatever Ryokan i stayed at for probably more money than i really should have (except when you stop to consider i'd spent the night before on a miserable ferry, and i'd beon a miserable night bus the next) . but it was one of those sleeps that leaves you aching for more... but there was sightseeing to be done and UNESCO World Heritage Sites to be gawked at. in the words of the Beastie Boys, there would be "no sleep til Brooklyn."(or Tokyo. whatever).

at this point i'd abandoned maps altogether and started relying on the bus labels that tell you where it's going. there were no buses for Kinkakuji that i could see... but there were some for Ginkakuji. hmm. interesting. well.... ok, sometimes there are variations on the Romaji spelling for Japanese names, so maybe this was just a bastardization of "Kinkakuji." and in any case, it'd be damn nice to get on a bus and off my feet. so i boarded the Ginkakuji bus. and rode. and rode and rode. finally we reached something that sounded important: Ginkakuji Temple and the Philosopher's Path (hahaha not to be confused with Harry Potter and the Philos-ok fine enough of that shit).

Ginkakuji temple was nice. it had a Zen sand garden and an area of lush bamboo forests (come on, can you really describe bamboo forests as anything but "lush?") and a place to climb up and overlook everything, every splinter in the wood of the temples and every swirl in the Zen sand gardens. i snapped a picture and little white wishies were floating in the air everywhere, a truly magical site. but it wasn't the golden temple i'd set out to find that day. apparently Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji were, in fact, 2 different places altogether.

i headed back down the hill and took the Philosopher's Path next to the canal in order to avoid the throngs of tourist kitsch shops, but i did get an ice cream. damn they have good ice cream in Kyoto. i even passed by something that was either a crime scene, or a television set made up to look like a crime scene; i eventually surmised that it was a television filming set. at the end of the path, i came back out on the street and realized that i had no bloody clue where the nearest bus stop was, or if it even would go to Kinkakuji.

after some considerable wandering around and sitting at a bus stop, i eventually did find a bus going to Kinkakuji. it was clear on the other side of town.... but that's okay, because i'd seen something i wouldn't have seen that day, had i been a bit more of a planner. the bus FINALLY came and... hey look, a seat! awesome! man these things are difficult to get and (*yawn*) this rocking is kinda nice and the glass feels so cool against the side of my head, this map says i have a good half hour before i get to.......

(45 minutes later)


oh fuck. where the hell am i? "Kono basu wa Ginkakuji yuki desu" or something to that effect... which means i'm heading for Ginkakuji. again. i slept through the damn Kinkakuji bus stop and i'm going in the wrong goddamn direction. i look at the clock on my cell phone. 4:30. Kinkakuji will close in half an hour. shit.

on my kotasu, there's a stack of postcards. one of them bears the image of Kinkakuji Temple, shining like the eye of heaven itself. i set out on a journey to find it, and failed. maybe that's what Kyoto wanted. it wants me back, again and again, to discover it on Kyoto's, and my own rambling, unplanned terms.