music: Ryan adams
The time i feel like writing in my journal the most is always in the morning, getting ready for work, sitting in front of the mirror applying my makeup, singing along to ryan adams. i write entire entries in my head because i have zero time at those moments to sit in front of the computer and write. I used to only be able to write at night time, but now at night i just want to eat dinner, watch a movie and go to sleep. in the mornings my brain is buzzing with emotions and thoughts that i just tell to my reflection while i curl my eyelashes and add another coat of mascara. by the time i find myself on this page, they’re gone. i’m sorry. i will try my best.
anyways, valentines day was kind of depressing, i drank some pink champagne with strawberries and ate some of the chocolates my students made for me and watched the valentine’s episodes of the OC and wished for my own seth cohen. pretty uneventful. The next day i went to work as usual, received a phone call from mark (!!) inviting me out with him and his friends that evening, but i have to work on saturday, so that was a no dice situation, he invited me out saturday night also, but alas, kyoto plans. bummerrrrrrrrr.
anyways, KYOTO! beth and i met up at nagoya station before 10pm with chu-hi’s in hand, backpacks on back and smiles on faces. we bought our shinkansen tickets and travelled the very brief shinkansen (36 minutes!) to kyoto. We arrived in kyoto for 10:30 and embarked upon our mission to find a warm pub, some drinks and delicious food. we somehow navigated ourselves through the kyoto subway system (only after staring at the map above the ticket machines for a good 20 minutes) and found ourselves in downtown kyoto on a street that reminded me of hess village but more japanese. meaning, lined with bars whose signs i couldn’t read and with a river running through the middle of it. We were completely touristy, with our backpacks still on, i even purchased a fanny pack for the occasion (which i pulled off, it was meant to be kitchy alright) and both hovering over my lonely planet guide to kyoto. We were basically wearing signs taped to our foreheads that said “HELP US!” we were helped to the bar we wanted to go to, A bar. Basically its one big room, a log cabin if you will, with several huge picnic tables and you are just seated at any table with randoms. it’s loud and rowdy and cheap and there are stickers all over the walls, and beer is sold in huge bottles and you are given small glasses and everyone’s pouring their beer in each other’s glasses and kompai’ing and making friends. it was incredible. we made friends right away and it seems as though every japanese person we met in kyoto could speak english. The group of guys who guided us to A-bar paid for our drinks ( i love japan). We then decided we were in desparate need of dinner, so we found ourselves at the Hub, which is, ironically, our favourite pub in nagoya, so we end up at the kyoto branch. Anyways, we order more food, more drinks, vodka redbulls are downed when beth starts to crash and all is well. I end up meeting a guy from canada, sipping a glass of merlot, and we talk for hours about canadian bands and sing moneen songs. his name is ross.
anywho, beth and i basically stay out all night as we didnt have the decency to find a hotel as soon as we arrived, but the next morning we are ready to take on kyoto with full force. Ross, who lives right downtown kyoto takes us to a killer indian restaurant for delicious curry and naan for lunch and then we hit kiyomizu-dera, which ended up being my favourite spot in kyoto. You walk up a hill through winding, old kyoto streets filled with stands selling food and souvenirs, and there are horse carriages pulled by little japanese men. We saw two geishas (not even the young in training ones!) these were real life, older geishas. they were absolutely beautiful. Beth and i obviously were total creeps and took their pictures without them knowing.
Anyways, kiyomizu-dera, has this incredible huge veranda that basically looks over the entire city of kyoto. it’s breathtaking, basically the best first stop on a kyoto tour. There’s so much to see and do there. tons of statues to rub for good luck. There is this famous lover’s rock walk. where basically you touch one rock, and with your eyes closed, must walk about 8m through the crowd, without bumping into anyone and touch the other rock at the end of the walk. if you do so, it means you will have good luck in love. Beth and Ross both fail, and i’m skeptical of the whole thing, refusing to do it. finally they convince me. It’s terrifying actually, walking that long with your eyes closed, you constantly feel like you’re going to run straight into a wall, even though i knew there were no walls anywhere near me. Beth was my voice guide and people basically dive out of the way when they see someone doing the walk, scared that they will pretty much ruin this person’s life and chance for love ever. So anyways, i’m doing this, freaking out, BUT i didnt peak once and then i hear beth say “okay, reach down!!.” So i do, and i can feel the cold smooth surface of the rock under my hands. Im beaming. We high five and people around us are smiling and giving nods of approval. It felt like quite the accomplishment.
So we finish touring the kyoto grounds then head to check out gion, this extremely old street in kyoto which is famous for it’s geisha houses. We unfortunately don’t see anymore geisha’s but the area is beautiful. i actually took my most favourite shot of kyoto of this street at dusk. After this, we are basically exhausted and ready to find a hotel and a hot shower and clean clothes. So we say goodbye to ross, head to a local coffee shop to grab something warm to drink and pour over our lonely planet guide for a cheap and closeby hotel. We find one right downtown, close to the nightlife area (which will be handy for that evening) so we drag ourselves there, book ourselves a room with two twins for one night and head up to the 9th floor. It’s tiny but its clean and quaint and has a shower so we are more than pleased. We scrub off two days worth of grunge, change, reapply makeup and are ready to hit the town.
Lonely Planet steers us wrong, when we finally find what they called a stylish izakaya which turned out to just be a restaurant, and quite frankly, we really wanted to sit on the floor. so we mission about downtown kyoto and come across a cool looking place. we head inside and god bless our fabulous translation skills, what we thought was a 6 minute wait turned out to be a 60 minute wait. but we pulled through and soon found ourselves seated (on the floor) at a table, shoes off, sipping hot sake and all was well. We ate a delicious meal and drank a great bottle of white and just talked and talked about everything (mainly i couldnt shut up). I’ve been craving conversation like that since kanika disappeared off my planet and it was nice to have that. beth is a great person.
we navigate ourselves back to abar after dinner, but being a sunday night was a little less raucous. we were seated at a table with two australians, hermione (to which beth replied “there are actually people named that in real life?” and her douchebag australian guy friend who she was visiting in japan, he’s a teacher here. anyways, hermione is awesome and we go with them to this bar ING, which ross took us to the night before owned by this really cool long haired japanese guy with a great record collection and menus that are made out of nirvana and ramones album covers. We made more friends and somehow managed back into our beds at our hotel.
We groaned through the 10:30 alarm and peeled ourselves from bed to make 11:00 checkout, stuffing our things into our backpacks still half drunk and went out for breakfast and planned our day. We somehow found the kinkaku-ji (Golden temple) after walking for about 45 minutes or more, but it was breathtaking, absolutely beautiful. it sits in the middle of this pond, and it reflects off the water and it is just something you have to see. pictures do not do it justice. There we met up with two of our japanese friends we made the night before who both speak great english and designated themselves as our tourguides for the day. they first took us to lunch at this little restaurant, a single counter that serves mainly rice dishes, run by one well-preserved older japanese woman. she talked to beth and i through our japanese tour guides and told us both to call her “okasan”- mother. she called me alyssa-chan, and gave us little trinkets for good luck. it was heart-warming.
Our tour guides then took us to their buddhist temple, not one for tourist sight seeing but one for actual meditation and sutra chanting. it was huge and beautiful. One of our tourguides had to head to school, so the other took us on a mission to Ryoi-ji to see the famous rock garden. on the way we stopped at another temple, but i cant remember what it was called. either way it had lots of statues wearing aprons (which is apparently to show care for the figures) and it was known for its plum trees. no idea.
anyways we end up at the rock garden. and it’s well, a bunch of rocks, made to mimick the movements of the ocean or something? i dunno, it was just metaphors all over the place. and being an english major, i appreciate metaphors but all i was really thinking was “whoa… japan.”
So after this, we are both exhausted and ready to sit on the shinkansen, so we say goodbye to our friend and head on the bus back to kyoto station. we pick up gifts of kyoto sweets for our schools and get on board the bullet train for the 36 minute ride back to nagoya.
Thus concludes kyoto trip 2008. it was beautiful. Really, i had such a great time. i cant wait to go back for the cherry blossoms.
