Brian: Kyoto Day 1

I wrote this on the night of 4-19, but didn´t get internet access until now:

4/19/07
Expenditures for the day:
¥580 Milano sandwich set (M) with ice coffee
¥160 fare to Ueno
¥160 Ginza subway to Asakusa
¥493 postcards
¥100 dango
¥100 Asakusa temple blessing
¥740 osusume (suggested) teishoku (set lunch)
¥160 subway to Ueno
¥160 fare to Ikebukuro (to pick up luggage)
¥190 fare to Tokyo
¥13330 shinkansen to Kyoto, charged on MC
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¥16173 total, of which ¥2843 was spent in cash

Our final day in Tokyo was supposed to be spent in Shinjuku and Asakusa. As it turned out, they were too far away for us to visit both of them, so we decided to only visit Asakusa. The day began as usual with Pat and I getting breakfast and Michael staying back programming. This time we went to a café to get a “western” style breakfast – I ordered a sandwich and ice coffee. I put “western” in quotations because the sandwich had shrimp, tuna, and mayonnaise, which I’ve never seen before in the States (then again, it was called a Milano sandwich). We left for Asakusa at about 10 AM, and something very strange happened. As we split up to use the fare machines in the train station, I was accosted by a middle-aged man wearing a denim jacket. He immediately said “keitan desu” while flipping open a badge, and I was immediately reminded of a phrase I learned yesterday, fuzakenna, which means “you’re f’ing kidding me.” Why was I being stopped by a plainclothes officer? In response I just said “amerika-jin desu kara…” to which he nodded in acknowledgement and continued asking me questions. He asked if I was a tourist, to which I said yes (although not technically), and also to see my visa, which I said I wasn’t carrying at the moment, and then where I was staying at, and where I was going on the train. I could actually understand pretty much everything he was saying, which was a good thing because the whole time he was staring at me intently like police officers do, reading me. It also happened to be a good thing that we got stopped, because in the end, he was able to help us out. We were trying to get to Asakusa, which is not on the train system, but rather requires us to connect to the subway first. The police officer kindly wrote out the kanji for “Asakusa” and also told us to connect at Ueno (we were originally going to go the opposite direction, hehe). So in retrospect, if he hadn’t stopped me, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to Asakusa in time today, although it was freaky being stopped by an undercover officer in a foreign country.

Asakusa was really tourist-y, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fun. It was also a great opportunity to buy gifts. I bought a few postcards to send back to the States and also got to eat… dango! This probably has no significance for my readers but Makino works at a dango shop in the J-drama Hana Yori Dango. Dango are these doughy balls on sticks that are covered with peanut powder. They weren’t especially good, but I really had to try them out. The main street we were on, which led from the Kaminamon Gate to a nearby Buddhist temple, was very busy with tourists and Japanese school kids. Who would have thought there would be so many on a school day? They were all wearing their uniforms and traveling from shop to shop buying things and goofing off. Their uniforms were different styles and colors depending on their school and whether they were elementary, middle, or high schoolers. The temple was also pretty cool. It was very large and had two big panels filled with lanterns right outside it (you have to see the picture). The lanterns were arranged such that they formed two parallel planes, one on either side of the street. Outside the temple were blossoming plum trees and fountain with several spigots. There were also long metal spoons that you’d use to wash your hands and rinse out your mouth in ritual purification. I got some pictures of Patrick doing it. Inside the temple, I threw in ¥100 and did a quick prayer, as did Patrick.

After getting a blessing at the temple, we found a nice shop selling teishoku or set plates for lunch. I ordered the osusume teishoku or “suggested set plate”, which was ¥740. Not only was it tasty, but it was the first time I felt full after a meal! Although, my stomach might have shrunk over the last week to compensate for eating less.

We headed back to House Ikebukuro to pick up our luggage before setting off finally for Kyoto. The shinkansen cost us ¥13330 or about $112 and took 2:20. We rode the Nozomi Super Express, the fastest one they currently have. It was not only fast, but quiet and luxurious too. I imagine it would be like sitting in business class on an airplane (not that I’ve ever experienced ever sitting in anything besides coach -_-). It was fun watching the scenery fly by while listening to music on an iPod (Michael lent me his because mine ran out of battery). Michael and Patrick passed the time by playing a 2-player computer game. We arrived in Kyoto at around 5:20PM. The hotel we’re staying at, the Kyoto Dai-ni (#2) Tower Hotel, was right next to the train station.

Thus ended the self-guided portion of our Japan trip, and commenced the Stanford handholding version. There was of course a person from the Stanford center waiting for us in the lobby and a page of instructions was given to us in English. The Stanford person also arranged all the necessary logistics for our luggage, since it will be staying at the hotel until the 22nd and will then be shipped to our homestays. I grabbed my laptop out of my luggage (this is being written on that laptop, but I can’t upload it as I write it because there is no wireless) before turning it back over to her. Our rooms are quite small and cramped, not as comfortable as the annex suite we had just moved out of but still adequate. I’m sharing my room with a boy named George Schnurle, a really tall Caucasian. I only met him briefly but he has apparently taken 2 quarters of Japanese and is really jetlagged because he just arrived today. We had dinner together as a group at a Japanese-style restaurant. Everybody introduced themselves and we had a fun time socializing over free food and drinks. I chatted a bit with Professor Macdougall, the director of the Stanford center who helped me find the internship, and also Sensei Yamaoka, who is teaching first and second year Japanese at the center. After dinner those of us who weren’t tired climbed a huge staircase with over 150 stairs, I’m guessing, to get to the top of the Kyoto train station and take in the view. On the one hand it was really fun catching up with friends and joking around comfortably, but on the other hand I felt like I was losing the familiarity with Japanese that I was starting to pick up.