Here is a test: Can I write a full-length blog post in under an hour? It's 11:30 now, I usually try to be asleep by now, but it's Wednesday, and I have responsibilities. At 12:30 I draw the line, so here goes nothing.

Last we spoke, Gabe and I had headed out from Osakikamijima, on our way to Kyoto. We caught a the train and got in at the tail end of the day. We got a bus to the only guest house that still had rooms in all of the city, and checked in.



The famous (infamous?) Uno House was a pretty intense place to land after hauling bags through the hot Kyoto afternoon. An extremely tan American woman with a smoker's voice and perfect Japanese was having an animated conversation with the harried looking lady sitting where I guessed the reception desk was. A little boy who seemed to be her son was running around half naked and cigarette smoke poured from a kitchen just around the corner. Every inch of every wall was covered in handwritten signs instructing you on what you could and couldn't do, and rather than floors and hallways, narrow snaking pathways wound around, carpeted and about six inches above moldy damp concrete. Walking through the kitchen someone asked me if I had a dog with me, the little boy stood in our way and shouted for his mother, who ignored him, and then we were through. The woman (who turned out to be Mrs. Uno) walked us along a progressively narrower hallway until she came to our room which had no air conditioning, no window, terrifying wallpaper, and a rusty wall fan.


Looking back towards the kitchen.


To our room.




Our excellent room. At 2,000 yen a night, we were getting what we paid for. (2,000 yen is about 18 dollars, if you're too lazy to look it up.)


It's the details and the decor that really make it.

So, once we had come to terms with the Uno House, we decided it would be best to head out a bit and see what the neighborhood was all about. All the temples and sites of Kyoto had closed, so the directionless stroll was the way to go. We ended up finding the river right away, and right from there, the contrast between Kyoto and Tokyo was perfectly clear. I suppose I had noticed it in the past, but after spending a week trying to get to know Tokyo, I could really feel the different character that Kyoto has.


Tokyo does not have anywhere that looks like this.


As we walked along the river, we must have passed hundreds of these restaurants, all with porches on the river, all with women in Kimono serving groups of businessmen and older Japanese couples. I don't know what they serve or what these places are called, but they are pretty cool.


In Tokyo, I suddenly felt lonely seeing young couples all around, but in Kyoto the same feeling was mixed with love of the great Kimono everyone was wearing. It's really something you hardly see in Tokyo, but in Kyoto it's common for groups of young people to be out in traditional clothes.


Coming off the river, we walked right into some sort of demonstration. That sign says 2000 years, and something about a west shrine or temple. What I like about these guys is their umbrellas - I want an umbrella with monk's protests written on it.


As Kyoto was never bombed in the war, there are a lot of bits of old pre-war style buildings all around. They are surrounded and encroached upon by newer architecture, but little bits like this - I look at it, and I can imagine the city as it was in the 20s and 30s, low buildings that looked like this along the commercial streets, and wood and tile homes and teahouses crammed together along the dirty back streets.

Night fell, and we walked back along the road that ran behind the porch restaurants. One gets to the restaurants through long narrow alleys, some clean and lined with bamboo, but some looking more like this.


That sign for "Paul's Boutique" kind of kills it for me.


I stopped to take a picture of this book store, and the owner, who was sitting on a railing behind me got a big kick out of the fact that I was taking a picture of her empty, dark bookstore.


Another alley.



So, then we got some dinner and went back to the hotel, at which point Gabe decided to close his eyes at about 9:30 and fell fast asleep. Not wanting to bother him I went out into the kitchen and met the people who seem to live at Uno. It was an interesting group, a bunch of travel bums basically, one guy had been here four months, had been farming in Shikoku, staying in people's houses, bouncing from place to place. Another guy had come to see his girlfriend in Tokyo and had some sort of relationship mishap and ended up in Kyoto without her and without plans. The farmer and the girlfriendless one decided to hitchhike back to Tokyo tomorrow, but that night they were going to go out. They asked me if I wanted to, and I decided why not - I went to tell Gabe, who seemed very confused as to what time it was, who I was going out with, and why, but his confusion lasted all of five seconds, and then he was back asleep.


We ended up at some tiny basement reggae bar that was serving 400 yen red stripe and playing the oddest selection of reggae you have ever heard. The best one was "Magic Carpet Ride" from Aladdin - the reggae version. If you don't understand the words, it's all just reggae, I suppose, but the really cool looking Japanese girls dancing to a reggae mix of a song from Aladdin was pretty funny.

Oddly enough, I met this fellow and his sister.


I say oddly, because they live about ten minutes from me in Brooklyn, two stops further down on the F train. They were living in London - he was working, she was bumming along for the ride, and they were just traveling for fun. The found the bar by chance, and I almost didn't go out at all. As we got to talking, he had gone to Stuyvesant and knew a few kids from my high school, and she had gone to her prom with Ian Cella - a kid who I sat next to in elementary school. How strange is that? Very strange.

We talked about Brooklyn, Japan, high school, and we drank some beers. The brother (whose name I have since forgotten) and I watched the girls dancing a bit, at which point he informed me that "Japan is a fine country." And he meant fine about the looks of the ladies, not the general appeal of the country. According to him, and he seemed well traveled enough, Japan is the number two most fine country. Number one is Denmark. Who knew? I'll have to see if they need English teachers who can speak a little Japanese in Denmark.

The next day was our single full day in Kyoto, and so we made a point to head out early and see as much as we could. The first two times I went to Kyoto were so perfect and I had so much more time - that while I took a lot of pictures, I wasn't crazy about most of them. It's tough for a hazy summer day to compete with the fall foliage of last November, or even the pouring rain of March.




A graveyard at Chion-in.






We did have a knack for finding the traditional Japanese weddings. I really wanted to go up there and get the awesome picture that the photographer was getting, but it was off limits and guarded by two serious looking monks. How about that for a wedding portrait though?


Gabe, taking in Japan.




I really like this picture - it's not amazing in any way, it's very conservative and the sort of thing you might find in a guidebook. The thing is, you would find it in a guidebook because it sums up a lot of the feeling of being in Kyoto, and when I see this picture, I remember what it's like to be there, and that's important.


Side note: This is the coolest tour guide I have ever seen. He was there with an American family, showing them around, but in full traditional dress with a topknot. All he needed was two swords tucked into his sash and he would be a totally credible samurai.


Kinkaku-ji gardens.


I totally owned Gabe in the "throw ten yen into the stone bucket" game. How dumb would you feel if you were the person who threw the one that's all the way in the back, or the one right in front?

We did some more stuff, had a good dinner, and then slept uneventfully (and kind of uncomfortably) at the Uno House. In the morning we packed and headed out. We had some time to kill, so we decided to walk back to the river. It had poured rain all night, and the rain had scrubbed the haze out of the sky. It had also raised the river tremendously, which was quite a sight to see.




This is almost the same picture as the first one. Look at the difference, in how clear the air is, how low the clouds are, how high the water is, and how much of the plants have been washed away.

And that was that. I put Gabe on his train to Narita and watched him fight with a Japanese man for his seat as the train pulled away, then had half an hour to watch trains come and go until mine came.


A 700 series Nozomi superexpress.

With some careful planning I had managed to get myself on one of the once-an-hour new 500 series trains, which was the only Shinkansen I had not ridden. While most Shinkansen have long streamlined noses, their regular cars look about like normal train cars, boxy and square. The 500 cars are cylinders, and the front of the train is longer and pointier than any of the other trains. The canopy is a shiny black bubble. I was pumped.


Daaaaang.


The train looks, sounds, feels like, moves as fast as, and costs as much as an airplane. I was home in 32.532 seconds.

And that's that. It's 12:28, so as the Japanese say, dekita - I've done it. Back on Friday for more solo adventures.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12, 2006 at 11:32 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.