Kyoto continued: Gion Matsuri, Nara, and Arashiyama

Warning to beer folk: there’s almost no mention of beer, or even sake, in this post.  Much as I want to sample tons of beer while here, that may have to wait until I (A) have seen the basic sights so that don’t miss out on seeing Japan for all the beer, (B) can say more about beer in Japanese than just “One more, please!”, and (C) have a place to stay such that visiting another town doesn’t involve schlepping my 30lb duffel bag + backpack.  The Japanese subways at morning rush hour are hard enough to navigate while unladen, but when loaded up I can’t even ride the escalator because I’m too slow to merge into the stream of humanity pouring into them.  I’ve just been taking the stairs. 

So here’s my thought on beer for you: If I’m drinking one of the Japanese macrolagers (and we do this often, as water comes in tiny glasses here and it’s the only certain way to cool off), Kirin and Suntory Premium Malt seem tastier than Asahi, and I haven’t yet had a Sapporo.  I’m pleasantly surprised to find that while Asahi reminds me a lot of American macros, the Kirin and Suntory Premium seem a little less watery, a little fuller in malt flavor, and lacking something about American macros that gives them an unpleasant aftertaste (I think it’s the corn). 

But that’s it folks!  I’m writing from Tokyo now, we arrived last night.  So, hopefully I can cover the highlights of the rest of Kyoto in this post, and by the end of today will have new and exciting beer stories from Tokyo. 

On our second day in Kyoto, we took the train out to Nara, Japan’s first capital city (710 – 785).  The main attraction here is Todai-Ji, the largest wooden building in the world, and home to the Daibutsu (‘Big Buddha’), made of 437 tons of gold and 286 lbs of gold.  The hall itself was aw-inspiring, but I wonder if the architects gave any thought to Nara’s summer weather.  To reach the hall, you have to walk down a long approach path, almost like a runway, with no shade.  In the 100+° F degree heat, it started to feel like the path was a race against the sun, and slowpokes would be burnt to a crisp before reaching the Buddha.  It reminded me of the old Nintendo games in which Mario would have to cross some stretch at a sprint or else the little pegs he stood on would fall out beneath him, except in this case the threat came from above instead of below. 

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And, though I know this pegs me as the prototypical tourist, and will make Buddhists roll over in their grave, I think that when it comes to the best sight of the day, the imperial deer that roam all over the temple grounds give the big guy a run for his money.  They were everywhere and they were didn’t bite or get pushy or defensive (a contrast to out animal experience on Day 4…). 

We saw the second tallest pagoda in Japan.  We saw some ‘fine’ wooden statues that we thought

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had been described as the ‘oldest’ or ‘biggest’ of something, but which were in fact just ‘some of the finest.’  And we saw some signage regarding the reactions of the deer in the park when harassed by humans (apparently they emanate lightning bolts).

That night was also the peak of Gion Matsuri, one of the largest festivals in Japan (though for the life of us, we can’t figure out exactly what the festival celebrates).  Everyone in the city that night was out wandering the streets, many of them dressed up in kimonos and wooden sandals.  It was clear from the number of people, the likes of which I haven’t seen anywhere before, that this wasn’t just Kyoto-ites, and that people from all over Japan and the world had come to visit.  Most of the evening was spent just walking the streets, visiting vendors, and oohing and aahing at the floats stationed around the downtown that would be in the parade the

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next day.  Nick loved the floats’ paper lanterns, as did I, but I’m just going to come right out and say this: all the floats looked pretty much the same.  Having grown up in California, I thought this might be something like the Rose Parade, where each float is unique and they all try to outdo one another.  Nope!  But then, I guess the appearance of the floats might not really be the point. 

In any case, we eventually got claustrophobic from pushing through the crowds so much, and looked for a place to settle for the evening.  After much hemming and hawing, we sat down at Club East, an unassuming somewhat dingy place in the basement of a building along the canal.  No more thought went into this than, “Hey, they have a sign out front saying drinks are ¥500 (a little less than $5, which is cheap here).”  This was another tiny place, with two empty four-top tables and a counter that seated about six.  When we arrived, there was the bartended and a Japanese man and woman about our age who were clearly the bartender’s friends, but that was it. 

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We sat at the bar, ordered our drinks, and we talking amongst ourselves, but it was clear from awkward occasional eye contact that they wanted to talk to us but didn’t know how.  Finally, the male friend of the bartender piped up and asked if we liked our drinks.  We said yes.  He told us the drinks were strong, so we’d get rosy cheeks.  We all giggled.  The ice was broken now, and we tried to talk to them, but our Japanese is limited to the handful of phrases I remember from the one semester of Japanese I took in college four years ago before running out of electives.  The bartender and his female friend seemed to know just a touch more English as I know Japanese, and it was the somewhat-proficient male friend who had to do most of the work of making this conversation happen.  We ended up staying for about three and a half hours and having another amazing night.  Since the bar remained empty all night (I don’t understand how any of these businesses make any money), it was like being at a party at someone’s home.  They’d try to talk to us about music and then play it for us over the speakers.  The bartender (Jackie) played guitar and sang vocals for a punk-reggae-ska-rock-and-roll band, the girl (Ami) loved Britney Spears and some Japanese group called Yuzu, and the guy (whose name was something like ‘Pachugo’) loved Bette Midler.  That’s right – Bette Midler.  I thought he was pulling our leg at first because he seemed like a joker and it was hard to imagine a 27 year old guy’s favorite artist being Bette Midler, but he was dead serious and launched into an a capella rendition of Wind Beneath My Wings for us.  Then Ami wanted to turn the club into a karaoke bar, and got Jackie to play Britney Spear’s Overprotected on the speakers on repeat.  She knew all the words, all the more incredible considering I’m not sure she knew what most of them meant, and wanted us to accompany her.  Though Nick joined in enthusiastically, Ben and I didn’t know the words, so we just sort of danced lamely. 

Music was also the catalyst of the one moment of completely clear understanding all night long.  All of the hotel rooms here have the panels built into the bed stand or bed frame that look like what people in the 1950s might imagine future electronics to look like (that is, they’re clunky and have an unnecessary number of switches and dials). The panel always has a dial labeled ‘BGM’, which will play background music if it is turned up.  This is what they have instead of a clock radio, but all it plays is a single track of the hotel’s selection over and over again.  In our last hotel, it was some traditional reed flute and tambourine music that was fairly horrific.  In Club East, before the karaoke party got started, Ben remarked at one point that we needed some ‘BGM’, they overheard and responded with cries of “BGM!” and started playing the bartender’s band’s music off their phones.  Who knew BGM was such a universal concept?

Another great moment in my mind was when we all tried to describe what we do.  Nick and I hemmed and hawed and tried to avoid answering.  I can’t even explain what management consultants do in English, much less in Japanese.  Ben volunteered that he’s a banker.  Both their initial and secondary reactions were priceless.  Initial reaction: “You’re a baker? [Pantomimes kneading bread].”  We all laugh and Ben says, “No banker“, and spells it out for them.  Secondary reaction: “Sodesne!!! [Is that so!!!]” Ami made a delighted squeaking noise and sidled her stool a little closer to Ben. 

I asked Pachugo what he did and I love that he gave me the benefit of the doubt and assumed that I’d understand him when he responded with “Freeta des.  [I'm a Freeter.]“  ‘Freeter’ roughly translates to ‘Slacker’ in English, except it’s a little more specific.  It refers to young Japanese people post-high school or post-college who don’t have a job and who mooch off their parents.  We all laughed really hard and I volunteered that “I am now too!  As of one week ago!” (Ok not really, I’m not mooching off my folks, but I will be job hunting…)  He beamed and said “For me, as of two years ago!” and started laughing hysterically again. 

Eventually Nick and I noticed that the more Ben drank, the more enthusiastic he got about having another drink, so we around 1:00am, we scooted on home.

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Our third day in Japan was spent exploring the rest of Kyoto.  We got off to a slower start than on previous days, given the revelry of the night before, and given that we had to haul our bags back to our first hotel.  This was one of the major glitches of the trip.  Because Gion Matsuri is such a big deal, our original Hotel, Fujita Hotel Kyoto, had no room for us on the 16^th.  So, we stayed at Hotel Fujita on the 14^th, 15^th, and 17^th, and the Gion APA (stands for ‘Always Pleasant Amenity’!) on the 16^th.  The two are a little over a mile apart, and we had no better way to move our stuff between hotels on the mornings of the 16^th and 17^th than to walk it over — Through gigantic crowds — In the kind of humidity that makes you wipe giant rivers of sweat off your face only to find that by the time you’ve reached the bottom of your face, the top half is soaked again.  As I said, this was a major oversight. 

Once we were re-settled, we visited Nijo Castle and its gardens, as well as the Imperial Palace Park.  We speculated that maybe the reason Kyoto has no homeless people (or none that we’ve seen so far) is that you would quite literally die if you had no respite from the heat and humidity, so people must migrate to the north or to the coast in the summer.  Or, maybe we’ve just lived in San Francisco too long and have forgotten that other cities don’t necessarily have people living three-to-a-block on every sidewalk.

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In the afternoon we parked at the International Manga Museum for a few hours.  It’s really more of a library than a museum, which I thought gave it a really welcoming feel.  It’s bright and airy, and any visitor can take any manga (comic book) off the shelves and take it to any one of dozens of couches, chairs, picnic benches, or the astroturf lawn out front to read.  There was a limited English selection, but we enjoyed the chance to rest our feet and bask in the breeze of their air conditioner.  We also noticed that they had the best toilet of any we’ve seen so far on the trip.  Not only did it have the usual bidet and shower functions of adjustable water pressure, but it also could produce a ‘BGM’ of sorts, a flushing sound, to cover noises, and it bore a button labeled ‘Powerful Deodorizer’. 

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That night, we went out for yakitori and shabu-shabu.  The restaurant had an electric stove in the middle of the table, with a metal pot and griddle that sat on top of it.  For one price, you get all the meat and vegetables you want to grill on the griddle or boil in the pot.  Usually these places leave me feeling cheated.  I’m a relatively small person after all, so at all you can eat places I usually just end up paying a higher price for the same amount I’d normally eat.  Not this time though!  After all the walking we had done, we were all famished, and we must have finished off a sizable portion of a cow.  However, this was only possible after getting a little territorial.  I kept putting pieces of meat on the grill, and then while waiting for them to cook, I’d look away and then look back to find they had been poached by one of the boys!  I tried not to say anything, but I think they had a lower tolerance for eating potentially still-raw meat, so the pieces never lasted long enough to be cooked well enough for me to get them.  Eventually, I cordoned off a little section of the grill with some slices of onion and cooked my meat on there.  Once we were all convinced that we’d have meat sweats all night (but how would you even know given that it’s so sweaty here anyway??), we called it quits and headed on out.  We didn’t go out that night, but we did stop to watch some more of the ongoing Gion Matsuri festivities and play some Pachinko.

Yesterday was our last day in Kyoto, and we spent it in Arashiyama, a suburb in the foothills.  I, of course, was excited about the prospect of visiting the Arashiyama Monkey Park.  The Japanese snow monkeys are the entire reason I became interested in Japan in the first place.  I was a Human Evolutionary Biology major, which involved taking several primatology classes.  Somehow, in the course of these studies, I settled on the Japanese macaques (snow monkeys) as my favorite monkeys.  I think it’s partly their ingenuity (they wash their food in the river, and sit in the hot springs in the winter looking like skiers in a hot tub all tuckered out after a day on the slopes), partly their social structure (cheers for matriarchies!), and partly their funny little red faces in their furry coats.  I was convinced at one point that I’d come here to study them for my senior thesis or PhD, which was what prompted me to take Japanese lessons, which prompted the Japanese history classes.  In the end, none of that amounted to much, and my thesis was about fossils and the missing link instead, but the snow monkeys have a special place in my heart. 

The park is on a hill on the south side of town.  It is posted with a large number of signs warning visitors “Monkeys: Please do not show them any food. Please do not look at them in the eyes.”  At first, we thought, no big deal – hell, we don’t even see any monkeys.  We climbed a slope for 10 minutes, which under any temperate conditions would have been mildly strenuous at worst, but which left us looking like we had stood under a shower given the heat and humidity of the day.  All throughout this climb, which was inside the park where the monkeys run free, we saw nothing.  I was starting to get a little cranky.  Then, when we were just one turn away from the top, we saw one in a tree about 30 feet away.  He was chewing on some leaves and scooting about, generally minding his own business.  Then, all of a sudden, an adult monkey scampered onto the trail right behind us.  I was so excited, and about to take his picture, when she suddenly became aggressive.  She started advancing on us, growling, barking, and baring her teeth.  At this point, I was starting to get really nervous, because she was only a foot away and looked intent on biting off our feet.  I was really wishing I had worn running shoes and maybe pants too.  I might have recovered at this point, except as we tried to ignore her and keep walking she started following us and getting angrier sounding.  We started walking faster and so did she.  Then, all of a sudden, two more monkeys scampered down from in front of us and blocked us in.  I lost it at this point and started screaming, which I’m sure didn’t help.  Ben was pretty nervous too, but very chivalrously tried to put himself between me and the monkeys.  Nick just laughed and walked on ahead up the trail.  Ben and I followed, scooting as far as we could away from the monkeys, trying to keep an eye on them without actually looking them in the eye. 

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Around the next corner was the top of the hill, which held a city panorama viewing platform and a small rest station.  I made a beeline for the rest station and safety from the monkeys.  They were everywhere up here!  Forget the three from before; there were dozens of monkeys, probably close to 100 of them, lolling around in the sun all over the place.  Inside the rest station, we purchased some sweet potato chunks that we fed to them through the wire walls of the building.  After no one lost a finger, we got a little braver and went back outside to get a better look at them.  They were grooming, playing, and lounging in the spray from a hose that had been set up for them.  The babies, some no bigger than a kitten, were especially funny.  They roughhoused just like little kids.  We stayed up there for a long time, taking more pictures of monkeys than just about everything else on the trip combined, and then started back down. 

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We got some ice cream, which has become a near daily habit, and discovered that the Japanese have some odd tastes.  Nick got a pink flavor that was labeled “#1 popular flavor,” but which turned out to be cotton candy, and a somewhat bizarre version of it at that.  I got something which sounded like “lemon soda” when the man described it, but which was blue with marshmallows floating in it, and which tasted like bubblegum.

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We wandered around Tenryu-ji temple, which had one of the best Zen gardens we’ve seen so far, briefly checked out the bamboo grove, had some lunch, and then got on our way back to the city.  We picked up our bags from the train station lockers and jumped on a train to Tokyo. 

So, that’s it for Kyoto!  We’ll be here in Tokyo until the 23^rd, and then I’m off to San Diego.  I’ll do my best to get some of our hundreds of pictures up before then, but it may have to wait until I’m back in the States.  Until then, sayonara!