Steph's Trip To Japan
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24 July, 2004
We woke up bright and early and had breakfast at about 7. They had
some pastries and baked stuffs at their buffet (you had to have a ticket to
get into the room, by the way), as well as cereal. There was rice, soup,
fried stuff, lots of…well, unidentifiable Japanese food, as well as a ton of
eggs, some Canadian bacon, and hash browns.
We were out on the street soon enough, and took our bus to Nijo Castle.
Nijo castle was very beautiful—paintings covered the screens inside the
building, but photo taking of any kind is forbidden, because the flash
disrupts the paint and wood. The same thing happened to the Hall of
Mirrors in France. We took off our shoes and used the smallish guest
slippers to walk around, marveling at the beauty and the age. After all,
this castle was older than our country! The floors sang as we walked
across them—the Japanese call them the “Songbird Floors”. They were
used in the old days as a sort of security system. If any ninja tried to
sneak in, everyone would hear them. It sounded like music, not the
annoying squeak of wood that you might expect. Maybe even like wind
chimes.
The grounds outside were quite spacious, but we weren’t allowed to walk
through the gardens. We took a couple of pictures before we had to
head back.
From there we headed to the Golden Pavilion. It appeared to be a giant
garden with walls from the outside, which it kinda was. We first stopped to
get some drinks and ice cream out of some vending machines, and
wandered on our way, snapping pictures or filming whenever I could get
the camera to work (it ate tapes like you wouldn’t believe). We came
upon this giant building, which I am supposing was the Pavilion. It stood
on the most serene lake filled with koi and surrounded by lush trees. The
entire building seemed to be made of gold (though it was only gold leaf),
and on top of the building sat a golden houoh, or phoenix.
We passed by here to a shrine or two, where you could buy incense and
prayer candles, which you would leave with the shrine attendants. You
could also pay 300 yen to get a fortune; if the fortune was bad, you
would tie it to a string and the attendants would pray that you have better
luck. The wooden building had a long hanging rope you used to hit the
gong. You were supposed to hit it once, then bow your head in prayer. I
simply filmed, then bought some good luck charms and post cards at a
nearby gift shop, the only air conditioned building so far since the hotel.
I believe from here we went to Kyoto University. We were unfortunately
running late, so our friends already there had been waiting. Luckily, we
had time to eat some lunch at the Café like restaurant. There wasn’t a
whole lot I recognized, so I bought a sundae. To understand this, imagine
crushed cornflakes topped by a single scoop of ice cream, then whipped
cream, more crunchy things, chocolate syrup, and two triangle wafers
sticking out of the top. Rather small for the 600 yen or so I paid. This
being my first meal, let me explain: In Japan, they eat small portions,
because they are rather small to begin with. I didn’t mind the high price,
that’s the cost of living there. And tax is always included in the price.
When you sit down at a restaurant, they give you chopsticks and
occasionally a fork or spoon, and a tiny glass of water. This water lasts
you through the whole meal. You want more water, you say? They frown
at you, then realize they’re dealing with a dumb foreigner and bring you
some more water anyway.
Oh yes, I got a salad as well. It had some white goo in the center that I
assumed was oyster, but it turned out to be harmless salad goo. Yes,
salad goo. It might have been salad dressing, it might have been egg,
but whatever it was, I did not eat it.
After this we were led through the campus, past many tall buildings which
appeared to be under attack by thousands of bikes. Just before we
entered the conference hall (before I entered anyway, I was the last one
in front of Mr. Hernandez) I recognized three men and shouted happily
from ten feet away. And huzzah! It was Vice-Principal Yamamoto, Kiyono-
san, and Hirohata-san! They had another Yamamoto with them, this one
being the science teacher at their school, and we were formerly
introduced. From there, my memory insists, we went straight to the
conference, and unfortunately were a bit late. We were handed packets,
and we Americans soon exhausted the supply of interesting pictures in
the handouts. So we tried to figure out what the first three speakers were
saying. This went badly for me at least, but Mr. H made some notes
about something at least, though I think he was passing notes. After a
while we gave up and headed to a room the college had set aside for us
to talk about what we had learned. We had a nice sit and drank some
tea, and talked about our project back at home and how we could make it
easy to collaborate with the Japanese. Have I mentioned there was no air
conditioning in this university while we were there?
We eventually went down to the gift shop, where some of us bought
shirts (missed my chance, huh?) and I bought some post cards. The nice
lady also gave me a cookie, which I still have because it says Kyoto
University on it.
We came back to the hotel, and wandered around the streets for a while,
watching the Gion festival march about and stop wherever there was a
shrine with this porto-shrine on their shoulders. There they would shout
and make happy noise. We had to walk through this throng of what must
have been a thousand white-clothed people to get further down the
street. We stopped in a green tea shop, where they sold green tea:
icees, cookies, ice cream, different kinds of green tea, green tea
suckers, you name it. I hate tea. So I had no fun there. Eventually I got
back to the hotel, where we all met up and went to dinner. I sat with the
middle schoolers, who turned out to be a pretty cool bunch. I ate rice for
dinner, and that was about it. Most shops will give you a bowl of rice,
even though it isn’t on the menu (which has pictures, not for foreign
benefit, but for their own).
We returned to the hotel and changed clothes, while I discovered my TV
went crazy and was showing the premium channels (the kinds you pay
for). These were predominately adult themed, ‘cept one cartoon channel.
I swear I didn’t push the pay button. So then we hopped into two van-taxis
and were on our merry way to…a large ditch with cement sides. We put
on life preservers in case we fell into the tiny stream, and armed
ourselves with flashlights and bug spray. We were on a hunt for Giant
Japanese Salamanders with Tominaga-san. We did end up finding one;
this one was about a foot long. They can grow to two meters in length,
and it is quite a pity we didn’t see a bigger one. Yet, being one of a
handful of people in the world to see this rare creature in the wild felt cool.
Back to the hotel.
