| Submitted by: Mark Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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It was decorated with Peanuts characters. I guess they must carry the strip here. Shultz must make a fortune. Anyway they have to explain on the cereal box that cereal actually makes a good 'balanced' breakfast. It is apparently not a typical Japanese breakfast. Fish is standard, I think. McDonalds finds their most popular breakfast, by far, is the fish sandwich. And in defense of their own product the cereal-maker says 'Calbee's Brown Sugar Cereal. Our tastes are changing, and today's health conscious family wants less sugar in their food. Calbee uses the healthier, less refined brown sugar to add just a touch of natural sweetness.' I think they are intentionally confusing the customer. Brown, unrefined rice is healthier. I have never heard of any health benefits of brown, unrefined sugar. We took our bag of groceries to the train platform and ate it there and on the train. It is funny to hear the trains arriving. While the announcements are usually straightforward and businesslike, perhaps with a chime. Here there is a voice that sings out Matsumotoooo Matsumotoooo Matsumoto. We had reserved seats on the train. It was well after dark so we ate a little, slept a little, and wrote in our logs. The usual prompt trains let us down and came in to Shinjuku Station twenty minutes late. Even at 10 at night it is impossible to get a seat on a train.
Back at the room we went to bed early.
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10/16/96 Arrival in Kyoto
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Part of what they give you with the room at the Kimi, and I think this is standard at Japanese hotels, is a robe. Here if you are going to the shower or W.C. on the floor, which takes you into public territory, you can wear the robe. The problem is that it is really tough to control a robe. The tail will always get wet from something if you wear it to the shower. Maybe the Japanese have a better idea how to handle the robe. I have taken to using sweatpants for exactly the same purpose and that works very well. Plus you don't really have to remove them going to the W.C. which is very, very cramped. Also they have pockets.
I thought I would mind having just one W.C. for the floor, but it is less of an inconvenience than I was expecting because I have gotten into my same routine I have at home, which is waking at about 5:30 or earlier. I will nap in the evening (easy to do if on the JR and not out of place on the trains or in the evening if we are in). I go to sleep between 11 and 12:30, then I wake up early. I can hit the plumbing without much competition.
I dress and put fresh film in my photovest. I have a whole routine worked out for handling film. I generally take the length of the trip, subtract two days and multiply by 5/4 rolls/day. I take that in a sealable freezerbag and put a second empty freezerbag inside. I take out three rolls of film and put a cardboard tag in each and put them in my photovest. I load the camera with a fourth roll. When I finish a roll of film, I pull an unused roll out of my vest, put the tag in my pants pocket. I put the used roll in the newly freed up canister and put it in a different pocket. I then load the new film into the camera. At the end of the day, when I empty my pockets I have tags for the number of rolls I have used. I take the used rolls out of my vest and put them in the inner freezerbag. I take that number of rolls out of the outer bag, put a tag in each, and put them into the supply pocket in my photovest. It sound complicated but it works really well to make sure I have three fresh rolls every day and the fresh rolls are segregated from the exposed rolls.
Listening to American Armed Forces Radio has convinced me that our military has lousy taste in music. It is an unfortunate choice for the only station that really comes in where we are. Well, we are leaving today. We can quickly pack, since we travel light.
We pack and prepare to leave To-Kyo for Kyo-To. (Actually I am told the name 'Tokyo' really means 'East Kyoto.') Leaving the bags in the room we stop at the local grocery and get steamed rolls. There was a little film poster for LEON: INTEGRAL VERSION. LEON played in our country under the title THE PROFESSIONAL. It is about an assassin who befriends a young girl. Gary Oldman played the villain. A French actor, Jean Reno, played Leon, the assassin. Now you see his picture here on cigaret ads. Apparently the film was a big hit over here and there is a special edition coming out.
Today the filling of the rolls is in a tomato sauce. They tend to vary the contents. We take them back to the Kimi and have them with hot green tea. Then we check out. They ask us to go back to the room and get the robes and towels. I think they just want to be sure we have not stolen them.
As it is starting out this is the first really nice day. Our first order of business is changing money. With our heavy luggage on our back we clump into the bank and are sent upstairs. The bank clerk looked mystified, then asked another clerk and they both laughed. We really had no idea what the joke was and that did not make us feel really good. Then they said it was OK. They asked for Evelyn's passport, showed her picture and said 'copy.' 'Copy,' he repeated. 'Where?' asked Evelyn. Then he ran off to copy it. When he returned he had Evelyn fill out a form. Then he gave Evelyn a number and sent her downstairs. There was a long wait, probably 15 or 20 minutes while they counted and prepared the money. We still don't know what the big joke was. We probably never will.
The train to Tokyo station was crowded but eventually we got seats. People read books on the train, but most have non-descript book covers put on at the bookstore at the time of purchase. Perhaps that is so people will not know what they are reading. If you are a dignified and important businessman you probably don't want people to know you are reading 'Meter Maids in Bondage.'
We got to the train station and found where to board our car. It is amazing but they stop the train on a dot within an inch or two of the same spot each time. They can tell You exactly where to stand in front of where the door of the train will be. There were a bunch of Americans in front of where our train was stopping. I was concerned they put us on some sort of gaijin car. Well, it was, but for an earlier train. There was a tour group going to Hiroshima. Our car was Japanese.
We asked our conductor for Fuji time and he told us 11:53. We were up then minutes early in the passage between cars to film Fuji. When we pass another Shinkansen, you are really jounced. 11:53 came and I would not have seen Fuji if I had not known to look then. The local town throws up a haze of smog. I could just make out the left slope.
Near Tokyo they really had houses packed closely together. Some houses were as close together as 18 inches. Out on the countryside you see some houses with yards. And some are still packed together.
Right on schedule we arrived in Kyoto at 1:39 PM and got off the train along with a flood of people. As we were being washed along in a flood of humanity I commented to Evelyn that so far Kyoto was a lot like Tokyo. Our first task was finding the tourist office. We went outside to try to walk around the train station like we had done in Shinjuku, but quickly discovered this would not do us much good since it was leading us way off in the wrong direction. We returned to the train station to get directions and eventually found our way, though by this point I was about two inches shorter due to the effect of carrying around all my luggage. We picked up some information and then took the bus to the River Side Takase. If I thought I had seen leather shops around the Great Buddha, we saw a lot more from the bus. This is sort of a depressed area. Even when we got off the bus we had a hard time finding our way to the hotel. We were supposed to cross a river and we expected a long walk. Luckily as we were trying to puzzle our way with a map a woman came up on a bicycle. She suggested we go down the street we were on and cross the bridge, then turn left. The river at this point was only about six feet wide, which was why we had not realized how close we were. There is a little bridge over it and two armed guards in bullet-proof vests. I am not sure if they are police or soldiers (actually they van is just white without any markings, leading me to believe they may be neither) and they seem prepared for a riot. They have four or five riot shields for the two of them. It really looks as if trouble is expected or as if there is something of military value to guard. But it cannot be the latter since we very freely cross the bridge. What the heck is that all about?
The hotel is more like a private house that has rented out their upper floor. When we first arrived the host was showing us where the WC and shower were. I did not have time to take off my backpack so walked down the hall with it. Then when she was done I tried to turn around and discovered it was impossible, the hall as so narrow. I had to back up to get to the room and to let the host get by. The room is larger than at the Kimi, Still no mirrors in the room. There is some water damage on one of the doors. There are tea bags for green tea in the room and the host drops off an insulated thermos/pitcher of water each day. There is a TV with a coinbox. 100 yen for two hours.
The rules of sandals are really hard to get used to. You leave your shoes at the door, but you pick up sandals. These are worn around the hallways, but not into the room. You leave them outside your door. You wear the sandals everywhere outside your room but inside the W.C. As you go into the W.C. you leave your sandals outside and wear a separate pair of sandals provided for the W.C. So if you are passing by your hotel and decide to stop to use the bathroom, expect to change your footwear four times.
The River Side is not really as clean as the Kimi either. Nor is it going to be as easy to find restaurants. By this point we wanted to get lunch and went out to find it. We saw some other tourists from Germany or Austria and asked them. They were staying in the neighborhood but had not eaten there. They said we were a 20 minute walk to Gion, the fanciest section of Kyoto. We headed off looking for it. It was more than 20 minutes but we found it. It looked nice. We tried looking for lunch at a department store, but we found it to be rather expensive. We looked around the Gion until we found a mall area that had some restaurants. I found one that looked decent and we ordered by writing down. I had an egg and shrimp donburi and a strange soup almost a custard with eel and other interesting seafood. Evelyn had udon noodle soup with eel. Eel, it should be noted is a rather tasty delicacy we learned to like with sushi.
We decided to do some exploring after dinner and after looking at some shops we went to the geisha neighborhood on Hanami-koji. On this street things still look much as they did in the 17th century. It is very much a taste of the old Japan. There is nothing similar in Tokyo because of the earthquake and the bombing. Kyoto was spared both. All the modernization has been voluntary. The buildings are all made out of wood and set very close together with no spaces in between. It is little wonder these neighborhoods were so vulnerable to fire. The whole neighborhood is a tinderbox.
It seems like each building is made of varying shades of brown wood. There are a few hinged doors now but at the time they were all sliding doors and most still slide. They are traditionally wood frame and paper where we would have glass. The paper lets through light but maintains privacy. Of course it is terrible insulation. I just keep remembering the paper lanterns with candles inside, the paper windows, the wood frames, and the fact that the houses are all one long block. This place is a Fire Marshall's nightmare. |
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