A Weekend in Kyoto

So I love Public Holidays in Japan, especially since I work within the school system. Schools in Japan, or at least the elementary and middle schools, don’t get very long “holiday” holidays like schools in the States do… three weeks for Christmas, one for Easter/Spring Break, two to three months for summer. Instead, Japan loves to sprinkle the 20 or so national holidays all over the calendar. This past Monday, we had a day off from school for the Respect the Aged day, and next Tuesday is the Autumn Equinax. October 13th (Monday) is Health and Sports Day, and November 3rd (also a Monday) Culture Day. So instead of the long summer and long fall semester with perhaps 2 days for Thanksgiving like in America, instead there is the month long summer holiday in August and then 6 day-long holidays from September to December. I can’t say just yet whether I like this system better, but it sure does break up the weeks nicely.
And… it’s great for traveling.
As a JET, you only get so many days off, and only of a certain kind. For instance, out of the school year, I can get 3 days sick leave, and 20 days just for general use.* Well those 20 days are quite precious things, especially if you’re planning to return to the States over Christmas or summer like I am, but what’s the good of being in Japan if you don’t travel a little? So, you keep a keen eye out for public holidays, especially those that land right beside a weekend, and you seize them, because it ensures one more day of sightseeing/travel time without the need to take nenkyuu (aka, those 20 special days.)
This weekend I seized on that Respect for the Aged Day weekend, and I visited Kyoto. Fortunately, I have a CIR (Coordinator for International Relations-the “other” JET) friend who is nicely settled only 25 minutes away from Kyoto by train, and she invited several of us unfortunate inaka JETs to visit.
Now my prefecture is tiny. Very tiny. So tiny, in fact, I take for granted just how big the rest of Japan is. From my humble little train station to the capital city, the “slow” train takes right around an hour and fifteen minutes, and I’m on the other side of the prefecture. Logically, I know that my town to Tokyo is not a day trip, but it’s difficult to appreciate it until you’re actually living it.
Friday night, the ride to a transferring station, and the hop off my island, took around an hour and a half, no more. And suddenly, I’m in Okayama, with no idea how to buy a shinkansen bullet train ticket.
For those unfamiliar, the shinkansen is God’s gift to the wary and wealthy traveler. From Okayama, Kyoto would take about 3 1/2 hours by slow train. But by shinkansen, it’s barely an hour. However, by virtue of this, the bullet train is quite expensive. You can go with an unreserved seat, which is generally $20-30 more expensive than a slow train ticket, or a fancy reserved seat, which is $20-30 more expensive than the unreserved. The dumb answer is to go with the unreserved, but a bullet train with 16 cars may only have the first 3 or 5 for unreserved seats, so they go like hot cakes.
I, unfortunately, didn’t have a whole lot of time, so I just ate the cost, after the hour it took me to figure out where I was going and how to say where I was going. (I’ve gotten used to the geographical kanji of my area, which can be just as annoying as name kanji, but unfortunately I hadn’t had the presence of mind to look up what the kanji for Kyoto was.)
Overall, the shinkansen is pretty darn nice; big seats, a trolley, and if you don’t get too easily car sick or travel at night, some nice snapshots of Japanese countryside. The landscape from Okayama to Kyoto was primarily tunnels, but there were some very nice views of towns tucked into picturesque mountain valleys.
But if I was overwhelmed with Okayama, Kyoto Station was a whole new beast. We spent quite a bit of time in there over the weekend, and I’m still a little confused as to where the shopping area is in relation to the Shinkansen Line and the regular JR line. I was the first of the delegation to arrive, and even with cell phones, it still took us a few minutes to find each other. Worse yet, living in inaka, I’ve gotten into the habit of, if I’m meeting JET friends, to just look for the tall and/or white person. This proved impossible in Kyoto, not only because of the sheer mass of humanity, but because-well, I hadn’t seen that many foreign people in one area since the Tokyo Orientation! I am calling the kettle black here, but they were all quite obviously foreign, too… With traveling backpacks stuffed to capacity or several large rolling suitcases. I felt quite at home, with my small-ish duffel bag and purse, quite as if I lived so close I hadn’t bothered packing for more than two or three days. But then, you’ve never known real frustration like lugging a huge backpack around somewhere like the prefecture capital.
The delegation slowly began to arrive, until we got news that one of our party, coming from the far North, had gotten stranded in Tokyo. Apparently the last train to Kyoto runs at 9:30, and he missed it by about 5 minutes. He tried the night bus-which the attendant said was full-and got taken hostage by Tokyo Station security guards who wouldn’t let him leave without a ticket, even though a police officer had let him in so he could just cut through the station to get to the east exit. Between this and that, he spent the whole night wandering Tokyo-which, apparently, isn’t as interesting as you would think, unless you’re into street racing and 50 year old prostitutes.
But the next morning, our delegation was complete, and we set off for the first sightseeing item on our list: the red Tori gates. I unfortunately am pitiful at place names, but these Gates are one of those sites that’s recognizable on sight. They are absolutely breathtaking in person, especially since they just seem to keep going and going, up and up the mountain… so we too kept going, up and up the mountain. What an amazing view of the city, since the Gates are only one or two stops outside Kyoto Station on the way to Nara. But geez, what a climb. I’ve never been more resentful of Japanese etiquette against tank tops-at least those avoid the monstrous pit stains that ensue with any kind of traveling here whatsoever. Japan has to be one of the most humid and hilly areas I’ve ever been to, and yet the general populace seems to insist on being covered head to toe whenever possible (see “Sports Day.”) Still, the Tori gates were worth it, for the beautiful sights and giant spiders.
The crazy thing about sightseeing is that even if you plan your day well ahead in a reasonable fashion, it still somehow ends up taking longer than you expected. After the Tori gates, we traveled right into Kyoto and took a city bus to the Kiyomizudera Shrine, tucked up into the corners of the mountains surrounding the old capital. It was not quite as cluttered as other shrines had been with buildings, and the shrine itself seemed to grow out of the mountainside. Best of all, there was a part of the shrine that only opened about every 30 years, and we happened to land on that 30. Inside were candles lit in prayer, and enormous statues, made of both stone and metal. The metal was obviously very old, in that it was starting to turn that green rusting color even though it was clearly polished. The stone statues featured men-demons with terrifying, glowing eyes and breastplates that looked like monsters. In the dark, with just the flickering candlelight, the effect was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. There was also a beautiful little baby pavilion surrounded by trees, and a waterfall that supposedly gave wisdom, health, and longevity (but not all of them-you have to choose two of the three.) On the way back down, we stopped in one of the many, many shops and had some delicious green tea ice cream. A young Japanese guy also came up and introduced himself-his father had had a job somewhere in Illinois, and his English was impeccable enough that he kept throwing “like” into sentences (slang-the true mark of someone who has learned by living.)
The next stop for sightseeing was the Silver Pavillion, and then possibly stopping into Gion on the way back to the CIR’s place for a taste of the nightlife. By that time of the day, we were all getting a little run down, and the only thing we’d eaten all day was some Starbucks for breakfast and the ice cream. We stopped in a nice little sit down restaurant for supper, but by the time we finished, the Pavillion had closed. It’s not totally surprising that attractions around Kyoto closed by 5:30 or 6… it’s dusk by 5, and night by 7 pm. So instead, we took the subway into the “hip” part of Kyoto where all the young people and foreigners hung out, grabbed some snacks, and sat next to the river, enjoying some spontaneous band music on the bank.
The next day we started off as early as possible for the Nijo Castle. Nijo Castle was built by the Shoguns around 1500-1600 as a home in Kyoto, right beside the emperor before he moved to Tokyo. For another who has read “Across the Nightengale Floor,” it’s also the place the story was based on. The Shogun was worried about ninjas attempting to assassinate him in the night, so they invented this genius type of floor… it squeaks when you step on it, but it’s impossible to predict. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take pictures inside, but the place was very spread out and huge; most of the paintings on the sliding doors were still in tact, and even four hundred years later, the place gave off a sense of grandeur. The grounds were especially lovely, with a nice deep pond, and a moat filled with giant koi fish.
After Nijo Castle, we took the long ride into Nara, to the south of Kyoto. Nara is very famous for its deer population-smaller than white tails, but tame as can be, tame to the point of being really annoying if you have any kind of food. About a fifteen minute walk from the train station, you’ll also find the giant Buddha… and when I say giant, I mean GIANT. You can see the building from three blocks away… it was wider than my high school, and at least 10 stories high. Inside was housed three figures, the central one the Buddha sitting on a giant lotus petal with figures floating around behind him. And it was… HUGE. I estimate that one of his fingers is just about my height. There was also a pillar with a hole in it that I might have been able to squeeze through… If you make it, you’re guaranteed a year of good luck. But we got there right before closing time, so the guard wouldn’t let us try.
After the Giant Buddha, we all headed back to the CIR’s place and had some delicious home-cooked Japanese food (though strike me down if I can tell you what it was, or even what was in it.) By the next morning, our adventure was over, and I was back on the trains, winding my way to the island.
It’s too bad about the whole stupid-Internet thing, because I had a fantastic weekend. Sometimes when I’m just hanging out in my apartment or sitting at my desk in school, I forget that I’m actually halfway around the world from where I started, but traveling around-and trying to figure out the train schedule-really makes me feel as if I’m in Japan.
Well, that, and school lunches. But that’s a topic for another day.

*20 days is about the average, but ESID (Every Situation is Different), so the number of days off really depends on the contract.