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Bryan'S JOURNAL

April 2005

Spring break in Japan has come to an end and I have returned to Tokyo from Kyoto – and I am glad to be back! I went to Kyoto with a friend from Ohio I met during the intensive language session at Waseda, the university where I am studying. We took a bus to Kyoto and stayed for three days. Kyoto was beautiful and I enjoyed my time there, but it's very different from Tokyo. Kyoto is a much smaller and quieter city. In Tokyo there is always something to do at every hour of the day or night. However, in Kyoto, every store, restaurant, or attraction seemed to close early and open late. We could not start our day until after eleven in the morning and had to rush to see as much as we could before five in the evening. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see and do everything we wanted, but I really enjoyed what we did have time to experience.

Our first day in Kyoto, we decided to go back to ancient times and visit the old Imperial Palace (Kyoto was the capital of Japan for over 1,000 years) and Nijo-jo, an ancient palace. The Imperial Palace was enormous! My feet were sore after taking the full tour, but it was worth it! There were the most incredible paintings on the walls. In fact three of the rooms – the Tiger Room, Crane Room, and Cherry Room – were named after their paintings and were used as waiting or resting rooms for courtiers visiting the Emperor. I was also excited to see the Seiryoden, once used as the emperor’s residence and often mentioned in Japanese literature. I became familiar with the Seiryoden after reading "The Tale of Genji."

Nijo Castle was also pretty cool. The floors were constructed so that they make the sound of birds chirping when you walk on them. I was more impressed by the beautiful surroundings than the interior. The castle was surrounded by spacious green gardens that I thought were breathtaking, and tons of winding paths waiting to be wandered.

After hours of walking – strolling and touring gigantic castles and palaces – we had to get something to eat. We found a little Thai restaurant, with the capacity to hold maybe 15 people, called Slam! on our walk back to the hostel. As soon as we walked in we were in awe. There were tons of fun knickknacks all over the place. The walls were painted a warm salmon pink and there were paintings of rainforest life that the owner brought back from a trip to Singapore. The artwork was incredible! We just kept staring at it – the pictures were so realistic, the colors so rich and tantalizing, it felt as if we were eating in the rainforest! The owner was very friendly. For the first hour he very patiently suffered through a conversation with us in Japanese. We had to remind him not to speak in turbo mode so we could take the time to comprehend and process everything he was saying. It took us 15 minutes to have a conversation that should have lasted only five, so he gave up on us after a while and our conversation became a mix of Japanese and mostly English. More importantly, the food was great! We stayed in Slam! over four hours just hanging out.

The next day we visited Kiyomizudera, one of the most famous temples in Kyoto. The Main Hall, a national treasure, with its wooden balcony overlaying the mountainside, is a beautiful work of architecture in the Heian period style. It blew us away. During our tour of the temple we found a hidden pathway and, being the adventurous students we are, hiked the path further up the mountain. We didn't know what to look for, but climbed as high as we could, passing several stone half-circle shrines with candles and flowers inside. Once we reached the top we stood still and stared at the city below. It seemed to go on for miles. After about five minutes the sound of an ambulance brought us back to reality. Our stomachs begged us to climb down for lunch. I ate my favorite, tempura soba (tempura is a Japanese dish of vegetables and shrimp or other seafood dipped in batter and fried in deep fat, and soba is a Japanese noodle made with buckwheat flour), and then we strolled from Kiyomizudera to Geion, the Geisha District.

Our final day in Kyoto, we took a train to Arashiyama, a touristy district on the outskirts of Kyoto, to look for Iwatayama Monkey Park. We got lost on our way there and encountered a strange man. I guess he saw us making wrong turns and backtracking, because, once we caught up to him, he exclaimed, "You guys are lost," and ran off without offering to help. We were a little frustrated from being lost, so I guess he helped by leaving us with a much needed laugh – just as we found a sign pointing us in the right direction.

We decided to make a detour before going to the park, and stopped for ice cream and gelato. By the way, Japan offers some very interesting ice cream and gelato flavors. One of my friends from the Japan study program put it best when she said something like, "Usually, when you pick up a carton of ice cream with a horse on it, you think it's the cute little trademark to represent the brand, but no... not in Japan. The little horse means you're holding horse-flavored ice cream!" It's true! In addition to horse flavor you can try black sesame (actually, really good!), shrimp, and many other land- and sea-creature-flavored ice creams.

We ate our ice cream as we took the steep, 15-20-minute walk up the mountain to feed the wild monkeys of Iwatayama. We could tell we were approaching the top as the monkey odor grew stronger. There were several of them – many different sizes. We made it just in time for feeding. Those monkeys were vicious! We had to go inside a little shack to feed them sweet potatoes and apples through metal fence-like windows. The bigger monkeys claimed territories and chased away the smaller monkeys (who were getting most of the food because people thought they were cute). They chased one another to steal food, and one of them even tried to grab my whole bag of sweet potatoes and apples from my hand.

After feeding time, we climbed a little higher up the mountain and sat on a bench to watch the monkeys play. Before leaving the monkey park we decided to do a little monkeying around of our own. We played on the nearby playground with the kids and their families we spoke with on our hike up the mountain. Then we went down the mountain to search for the bamboo groves behind Tenryuji Temple. We hung out by the Hozu River watching the people on riverboat tours, and the kids trying to skip rocks, until it was time for us to go catch our train.

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