Day Four: Temples and Indian Food

So, true to form, I’ve been wandering around the greater Kyoto area just sort of looking at temples and shrines. It’s been a blast, especially because I really have no schedule like I did when I was hear last. Back in Nagoya, I had to meticulously plan every day so that I could get to the most important temples, or reach a certain point on the Nakasendo, or what have you. But since there’s nothing really driving this week, I’m just kind of living it up in a gorgeous city. I hesitate to call it a vacation, though, and I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe it’s because there are so many unknowns along the horizon, like meeting up with my host family and figuring out how the study abroad program is going to work and all that. Not a source of stress, by any means, but definitely not a fun and fancy free romp. I guess what I’m saying is ultimately I still have to be some place tomorrow at 2 PM, so I’m enjoying limited freedom. Incredible, limited freedom.

Like I said, my last trip was very scheduled to the point where each hour had an event planned into it. Here, though, I’ve just been enjoying walking around Kyoto. For example, my one mission today was to find this Indian restaurant that had gotten rave reviews on Trip Advisor. I’m god awful with directions, but I knew which street the restaurant was on and figured that if I could just wander long enough and find myself on that street, I’d be golden. So I set forth from my hostel at around 3 PM, (knowing full well that the restaurant didn’t open until 5) and set out for Ajanta Indian Restaurant Kyoto. What followed was a two and a half hour lollygag through one of the most interestingly beautiful cities I have ever seen.

Kyoto is an almost surprising city. What I mean by that is, you can walk through the Gion shopping district and see people from all over the world, and then take a right down an old street and see women dressed in traditional Japanese garb running past old men grilling fish outside their tiny old apartment. There are very specific pockets of globalisation in Kyoto, but it doesn’t permeate every aspect of the town like it does in the greater Tokyo area. I mean really, I would literally turn corners and find myself outside a McDonald’s and a Gap, and then walk three blocks and see someone praying at a three-hundred year old shrine.

My hostel is across from a beautiful river, and I’ve spent a great deal of time there just people-watching and enjoying myself. On this Ajanta excursion, I got a Peach Nectar drink (quite honestly the greatest beverage in the world) and sat down on a bench watching as the joggers and dog-walkers went by. After finishing my drink, I got up and crossed the bridge to the street where I believed the restaurant to be on, and came across a Buddhist monk reciting what I’m pretty sure was the Amidha Buddha sutra. He was standing stock still right in the middle of the bridge, and was completely adorned with the robes, hat, and even the metal staff with the rings attached to it. The bridge itself was packed with people, and I noticed everyone was giving him a wide berth. So, much to my dismay, I passed him by. Had I seen even one person interact with him, I would have gladly spoken with him for as long as he would have let me.

Finally, after traipsing through the tiny streets of Kyoto, I found Ajanta tucked between a sweets shop and a gas station. I walked in just as they were opening, and was treated to a hot towel and some delicious tea before ordering my meal of chicken curry and garlic naan. After chatting with the owner for awhile, he had someone bring me a mango lassi as a service. Needless to say, it was delicious.

All to report for now, as I’m going to sleep. Tomorrow I plan to walk the Philosopher’s Path, and I promise a ton of pictures.

Day Three: bAKpAK Gion Hostel

Well, I was determined to write yesterday, but after having spent a great deal of time in the air without sleep I kinda crashed for fifteen hours. I’m not going to complain, I can tell you that much. After travelling into the Gion district via train yesterday, I found my hostel, checked in, and absolutely passed out until the early morning. When I woke up, Kyoto was completely covered in snow. Needless to say, it was beautiful, and photos will surely follow.

Not too much to report from yesterday, actually. I checked into the hostel and spoke a bit with the caretaker, but that was about it. It’s strange, because the hostel is completely full and yet I have not seen any of the other tenants in the day that I’ve been here. Part of that, I’m sure, is due to the fact that I’ve been passed out in bed for the better part of the day. Ah, well.

In direct response to my summer trip to Nagoya, I went out to find some temples and shrines. Being really tired, I kinda kept the trip confined to one temple. I went to the Honganji Buddhist temple, which houses one of the oldest wooden statues of the Amida Buddha in Japan. And while my goal was to go and see the statue, I was unprepared for the magnificence of the temple itself. There’s two main buildings and two smaller buildings, the former being the actual worship halls and the latter being the buildings where the monks live and the libraries filled with hundreds of sutras. While I was there, I was trying to think of a temple in Nagoya that I had visited that was similar to Honganji, but none of them really came close.

Like I said, the jet lag has kind of caught up with me, so I’m going to be a bit shorter in this post than the others. However, I do have a bunch of photos that I’m going to upload from my visit to the temple, so maybe that will make up for the brevity of this post.

Day Two: Haneda Airport

So here’s the deal, folks. I’m gonna go ahead and call this the second day, because it’s technically the second time I’ve woken up in the past…days. Time is weird on the plane, especially when there’s a huge delay between flights. I left the house at 3 AM EST, and caught the flight to Toronto from Boston at around 6:15 AM EST. Now, my own concept of time told me that it was around 8 in the morning when I reached Canada, but I’m not sure how time works in that country so I could be terribly wrong. Case-in-point, I asked one of those loveable Canucks if he had the time, and he said “On my mantle, eh.” Sarcasm? Hopefully. Communication breakdown between English speakers? More likely. Regardless.

So I was in Canada from around 8 in the morning to 6 in the evening after a delay with the flight. It was one of those delays where we spent 30 more minutes than necessary on the plane before the pilot came over the intercom to tell us that there was something wrong with their navigation system, and that it would have to be fixed. Luckily, we all thought, he said it could be fixed with us all still on the plane, and we could take off once it was repaired. Well, fifteen minutes turned to a half hour, and that slowly and painfully became an hour, and finally that rolled over into about an hour and a half when the pilot came on and said, and I quote, “We just can’t do it,” so we had to “deplane immediately,” and catch a flight at 6:30 that day. Couple things.

One: I really don’t mind delays at airports. With my track record, I’m surprised all of my flights don’t take forty hours. Now, that being said, I have catalogued a fairly substantial list of reasons why there have been delays in my flights, and the mishap with Air Canada flight 5 non-stop to Tokyo Haneda airport falls into that glorious category of, “We just didn’t check the plane before we got in it.” I think Seinfeld has a bit about forgetting the keys to the plane, and that’s basically what this feels like.  But again! Things like this are to be expected when you travel. Although I still find it hilarious that at no point did anyone on the plane or in the airport ask why the navigation system, i.e. the thing that tells you where you’re going in the fucking SKY, was not like…the third thing checked on the plane before it was working. Keys, gas, GPS. Let’s go, folks.

Second: Delays suck, especially when they force you to stay on the plane. I’ve flown enough and had enough problems to know that if the pilot comes on the speaker and says the words, “We seem to be having trouble with blank,” then blank is going to be stopping the flight. Every time. Every. Time. I’ve never been on a flight where the landing gear was having some trouble, and then after 90 minutes of forced existential contemplation in the most ergonomically impossible chairs did the pilot come back on and say, “Good news, folks. Our people have fixed every problem and we’re good to go without issue.” So I knew the plane wasn’t going to be taking off, but they had us sit there for so long. I appreciate their optimism, I really do, but the statistics don’t lie. There should be a cut-off time, like if you’re waiting for thirty minutes and the problem still isn’t fixed, you should be able to get off the plane and find a comfortable seat in the terminal for the no doubt six hour wait that will follow. But whatever! No trouble, really. I mean I’m either sitting in Toronto or sitting on a thirteen hour flight, and I’m not exactly eager to be trapped in the upper limits of the troposphere.

Third: Guys, he literally said “We just can’t do it.” We just can’t do it? Can’t you flower up the language a little bit before coming over the intercom and spewing unfiltered depression at us like that? “It’s just not gonna happen, folks. I wish things had been different.” That just tickled me, I dunno.

But as I am typing this in Haneda airport, I certainly made it to Japan. I did miss my connecting flight to Osaka last night, but thanks to my mother’s valiant efforts, I was able to stay in a rather nice hotel. My head hit the pillow and I soaked up that five hours like nobody’s business, folks.

One thing Air Canada did really well was make up for the delay in the flight. Having flown Southwest or whatever rinky-dink airline flies out of Ithaca airport, it was absolutely unexpected when I got help finding a new flight and a paid taxi to my hotel by the good folks at Air Canada. Granted, I had to wait in line for an hour and a half to get this done, but still. It was either that or have no flight at all, right?

So I spent a lot of time in the air and at airports, but I was able to find a nice bed at the end of it. And here I sit, enjoying the incredibly fruits of Japanese vending machines while listening to David Bowie and waiting to head over to Osaka. Things are good, man.

Oh, I also saw Mt. Fuji on the drive back to the airport. I had seen it on my trip to Nagoya on the bullet train, but man. It really is one of those things that takes your breath away. The shuttle driver and I were the only ones on the bus, and we started chatting after he saw how awestruck I was. One thing that never gets old being in Japan is the way people react when you use the language competently. I find people are always more willing to tell jokes when they know you’ll understand them.

See ya tomorrow!

POST-SCRIPT: Happy New Year, by the way! Music and photos to follow. Internet’s a little dodgy for uploadin’ right now.