All right, I'm back from my adventures around the Kyoto region. The trip was extremely fun, as could be expected. I spent three days and two nights in Kyoto, a day and night in Nara, and a day and night in Himeji with my friend Andrew, pictured to the right. This is telling the story from the ending, but right before I got on the shinkansen to go back to Hiroshima, Andrew and I went to this great Chinese restaurant in Himeji and decided to throw ourselves a real feast. Our order is pictured over there, once we'd gotten through it a bit. This was easily food enough for four, as we didn't expect the portions to be as large as they were when we ordered - nonetheless, after a good hour and a half of hard effort, we managed to eat the whole thing. You know that scene in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life? Yeah, it was like that. The waitress tried to discourage us from ordering so much food, but she clearly underestimated the power of the young American stomach. I felt like someone should have given us a trophy or something.
Rather than talk about everything I saw here, I put the most representative photo of each place I visited with a little description of each one here. I deserve some credit for going against my natural inclination and submitting to the norms of tourism by taking a million pictures. More specifically, I took a little over 200 picures, 150 of which I kept; I am a tourist machine. Clearly this is far too great a number to put up here, so I'm just going to keep the vast majority until I come back to the States. The reason that I'm against taking picures in the regular tourist fashion is that doing so distracts greatly from the actual experience. All too easily one slips into the unconcious habit of looking not to appreciate beauty but to find the best angle from which to capture this beauty in a photo. An extended look at a beautiful building is not done to consider the architecture or enjoy its beauty, but to consider how best to fit the whole building into one shot. Still, the canonical photo-tourist rarely takes even this kind of extended look, instead staying only long enough to snap a picture and pose for one of himself in front of what he has only looked at through the camera lens. This photo is all-important, as the tourist's actual experience of the spot has been so tepid and shallow that photographic evidence is necessary to prove even to himself that he was really there. At this point, one is no longer experiencing, but merely recording - one sacrifices the experience of the present for a simulacrum of experience in the future. Walker Percy lays this all out in an excellent essay in "The Message in the Bottle," from which I have stolen a very great deal.
Having said all this, am I hypocrite for taking all those photos? Probably. I tried my best to avoid the photo-tourist attitude and to force myself to take time to really see everything outside of the camera lens, but without complete success. In the end, I'm glad that I did take photos because I saw so many things that memory alone will quickly fade without a little aid, but nonetheless the places where photography was forbidden were always a bit of a relief.
The entire trip I was extremely thankful for the Art of Asia class I took last spring; Buddhist art, which is primarily what I saw, has such a different aesthetic system that it is very hard for a Westerner to appreciate - that is to say, it was very hard for me to appreciate before taking a class on it. Still, after visiting innumerable temples, I did get a little tired of seeing nothing but Buddhabuddhabuddha everywhere.
Incidentally, my decision to opt for books over clothes did come back to bite me in the end, not because of any personal mephitis, but because books are extremely heavy and quickly become a great burden when carried in a one-shoulder satchel. Why did I think it necessary to bring 20 pounds in books on a five-day trip? I am a genius of preparation, that's why.
All you video game fans, I got to play Mario Kart Double Dash today at an electronics store. I will rub in this little taunt by assuring you that it is an excellent game that takes the style and playability of the SNES and Game Boy Advance Mario Karts and adds in an excellent new element with the weapons man. The two-player experience when one person is driving and the other fighting his little heart out to protect you and sabotage the other players is too marvelous to describe. In addition to using offensive items, the weapons man can punch and kick the karts next to you to slow them down, and even throw his weight into turns to make them tighter. I'm in awe.
- Gyaa! I'm give up