Last Night in Japan!

June 3, 2014

This may have been the perfect night, and it was definitely the perfect capstone to my 3 weeks here in Japan. A picnic, crosswalk, amusement park, beach, giant robot, and a ferris wheel. All in one day! Gah. I love Tokyo.

In the morning we took the bullet train, once again, back to Tokyo, my favorite city of those I’ve visited in Japan, and one of my favorites of all time. 

Once we’d arrived and moved back in to our hotel rooms, Mary, Viet, Kirby, and I headed to Subway to get sandwiched to-go for our picnic!
It was a really nice day in Tokyo, and we took our lunches to a park at the foot of Tokyo Tower, near our hotel. 

We ate and played in the park, enjoying one another’s company and the beauty of our surroundings. 

When we’d finished eating, we headed to explore the tower more closely. Tokyo Tower looks a lot like the Parisian Eiffel Tower, and there is a beautiful park with a stream nearby where we hung out for a bit. 

We decided that we’d head back to Shibuya for a little bit since Mary wasn’t able to go the last time we visited, and we felt the crossing was worth returning to! 

It was fun going back there during the day! We didn’t spend much time there, just enough to give Mary the flavor of Shibuya, before getting on another train for Odaiba. 

Odaiba is the coolest place! Another one of those funky pockets of Tokyo. It’s a man-made island with strange and beautiful attractions like a beach, an indoor amusement park, a giant ferris wheel, an even more giant robot, a mall designed to look like an Italian piazza, and a miniature version of the Statue of Liberty. 

It’s much cooler in Odaiba than it is in the city, you can definitely feel the ocean breeze. The whole city feels very “beach town;” I could hardly believe I was still in Toyko.

Our first stop in Odaiba was a funky indoor amusement park/mall. We didn’t ride any rides; we were all getting low on yin and no one wanted to withdraw a bunch the last night in Japan! 

But the park was still a lot of fun! There was a whole area solely dedicated to takoyaki, or octopus balls (the ones I tried at the street fair in Asakusa at the beginning of the trip).

After exploring the mall/parl and its crazy attractions for a bit, we enjoyed our very last meal in Japan with a gorgeous view of the beach and Tokyo skyline. 

When we’d finished eating, we headed to the beach. It was so crazy being on the beach in Toyko! I felt like I was somewhere in California. 

The view was incredible. There were gorgeous colorful boats out, and we could see Tokyo Tower from where we stood! I tried and tried to get a good picture of the boats and the skyline, but I just couldn’t capture it! 

Viet was insistent that we go see a giant robot after that. I really don’t know what the robot is all about or why it’s there, but it was huge and looked really cool! So of course we spent a while hanging out and taking pictures with it. 

The best part of the night came next!

The four of us took a trip on the epic Odaiba ferris wheel, soaring high above the city. The view was magical. 

It was the perfect way to end the night and an even more perfect way to end an incredible three weeks in Japan!

I have so enjoyed my time here in Japan! It has been a really special few weeks for me. I love this country, the people, and the culture, and this has been a precious time for me to connect to my Japanese heritage. I cannot express how glad I am to have had this time here… and how badly I hope I can come back some day! But for now, it’s time for me to get back home to Dallas… at least for the next 3 months. Then it’s off to the British Isles for an entire semester! 

Texas, here I come!

Kyoto Day 2 and Nara

June 2, 2014

Last day of temples and shrines in Japan! I can’t believe this trip is already coming to an end.

We started the day with a visit to the Golden Pavilion. The Golden Pavilion is exactly what it sounds like: a beautiful lakeside temple coated in sheets of gold. Like Cuzco’s palace in The Emperor’s New Groove.

Next on our stop was a traditional zen garden. 

Zen gardens are designed to showcase certain Japanese ideals of beauty: simplicity, asymmetry, and tranquility to name a few.  

While the symbolism behind these gardens is interesting, I have to admit that I much prefer yesterday’s gardens! (Although the zen garden was much kinder to this allergy sufferer’s nose!) 

After the zen garden, the crew piled onto the bus for a day trip to Nara.

Once in Nara, a few hungry friends and I wandered into an awesome udon shop! Oh my goodness. Udon is usually not my favorite of the Japanese noodles, but this one was in a delicious ginger soup, full of at least half a dozen types of mushrooms. Mmm! 

Bellies full, we reunited with the rest of the group to head into a beautiful art museum.

I think something like 80% of Japan’s National Treasures are housed in the art museum we visited! I couldn’t take pictures, so take my word for it when I say that the art was full of spectacular and ancient statues. 

We left the museum and next headed to see the Big Buddha. The Big Buddha is the largest statue of Buddha in Japan (even bigger than the giant Buddha statue I saw in Kyoto!) and it is housed in the largest wooden building in Japan, possibly in the world!

But before I get to Buddha, I have to tell you about the DEER.
That’s right… There are deer in Nara! Right in the middle of this big, metropolitan city! The first time I saw one, right before walking into the museum, I started freaking out. It was just randomly right by the street, following some lady around. I started squealing and ran to take a selfie with it. 

Dr. Baba laughed at me and told me not to worry about getting a good picture of the deer, because I was about to be swarmed by them. 

He was right!
As we approached the Big Buddha temple, we found ourselves in a sea of deer. You’ve never seen so many deer! Nor have you ever seen such domesticated ones.

They live right outside of the museum and bother the visitors. 

Many vendors sell cookies for the deer just outside of the museum, and the deer will follow anyone with cookies around and beg for them just like puppies!
I found it funny that the only time during my whole three weeks that I was warned to watch my wallet was at the temple… because the deer like to eat anything that looks like paper, including money! 

The actual temple and the statues inside are beautiful. We all had a great time exploring the beautiful temple on another gorgeous day! 

When we’d all finished checking out the temple (and playing with the deer!), we got back on the bus and headed back to Kyoto. 

Once in Kyoto, a couple of friends and I went exploring in the subway mall near our hotel, and ended up finding these beautiful lit stairs and a terrace with a view of the Kyoto skyline. 

It has been a great trip and I cannot believe that tomorrow morning I return to Tokyo for the last time! I’m ready to see my family and friends again, but not at all ready to leave Japan! If I had my people and some real Tex Mex, I could stay here forever!

Kyoto

June 1, 2014

Early this morning I got up, packed a two-night bag, left my suitcase at the bag check, and headed to the subway to take the bullet train to Kyoto!

Kyoto, sometimes referred to as “the ancient city,” was the capital city before Tokyo, back in the days of Shogun and samara. The bright lights and busyness of Tokyo are replaced with rice paper sliding doors and matcha (green tea; popular all over Japan, but especially in Kyoto!).

Our first stop was the old Shogun’s Palace. This place. Is. Spectacular! 

For those that are unfamiliar with Japanese history, the Shogun was the ruler of Japan before the emperor became the primary leader. For a while the two would rule at the same time, the Emperor being the public face and the Shogun being the real decision-maker, but, through a peaceful revolution, the capital was changed to Tokyo and the Shogun was removed from power entirely. 

The Shogun’s Palace in Kyoto is now open to visitors. 

Every detail is incredibly ornate. The walls are painted with beautiful scenes, the moldings are intricately carved, and everything that isn’t carved and painted is covered in sheets of gold. I wish I could’ve taken pictures inside! It was really something. 

Another fun thing about the Palace: the floors sing! They’re called “nightingale floors.” Not only is it pretty, but it’s designed to warn the Shogun and his staff of any intruders. It’s the oldest security system in Japan!  

Outside of the spectacular Palace was a breathtaking garden. I love asian gardens! Lilly pads, bonsai trees, and turtles… just fantastic! I hear it’s even more beautiful in the spring when the gardens are in bloom! 

These funky, Seuss-like trees (below) are called Phoenix Trees and come with a pretty cool story! They are offspring of Phoenix Trees which survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb despite being 1.3 kilometers away from the center of the explosion. More offsprings of these trees are planted around Japan to represent the importance of peace and life for the next generation.

Finally, the time came to leave the beautiful garden… and head to another garden!

The next stop was another Shinto shrine. This one was uniquely painted orange and green! The shrine also featured 4 different gardens. Despite the heat of the day (we were there for Kyoto’s hottest day of the year; just under 100 degrees Fahrenheit), I really enjoyed the beauty of these gardens. 

 Next on the agenda was more sight-seeing from the bus (yay air conditioning!) and a little bit of walking through the streets of Kyoto. During our tour, our guide told us some about geishas as Kyoto is a big city for them and for geishas in training. 

Basically, I learned that every Western interpretation of geishas I’ve ever seen is totally wrong. They aren’t prostitutes at all! Memoirs of a Geisha is pure fiction! I feel very lied to. 

I ran into these two geishas in training on the street as I did my touring and snuck a picture! 

 Between the heat, hours of walking the gardens, and exhaustion from karaoke the night before, I was pretty beat for the day! I did a little window shopping with friends after dinner (where I found this gem:)

and then I headed in for an early night, ready to recharge for our full day of sight-seeing tomorrow!

Kamakura to Karaoke

May 31, 2014

Another full day here in Japan! I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but this was one of my favorite days and the best parts are at the end…

We left Tokyo early this morning for Kamakura. Kamakura is definitely urban, like Tokyo, but feels much older and more antique. 

The first thing we did was go see the Kamakura Shinto shrine. I’ve decided that I really like Shinto shrines over Buddhist temples. Since Shinto started as nature worship, the shrines tend to feature gardens or forested areas. 

The visitor enters through a gate and then ventures through a long, narrow path in the middle of the street, like a beautiful, walkable median. Then the path opens up to the actual shrine. There is a bridge, a beautiful mini-shrine, and a stone staircase leading to a much larger shrine on the side of a mountain. The pictures I got are of the mini-shrine at the foot of the mountain. The larger shrine was too tremendous to capture in a photo! 

But the best part about Kamakura, in my opinion, is the landscape. Kamakura is surrounded by mountains on three sides and an ocean on the fourth. Looking up at the mountains from the city, it feels like you’re in a glorious fish bowl. 

We left the shrine and were given free time to find something to eat. 

I went to a restaurant with some friends to enjoy the air conditioning and cold water, and I ordered a tiny bite, but I had my heart set on the beef bun shop I’d seen on the street!
I’d heard that beef buns were delicious, and I’d seen them all over Japan, but this was my first opportunity to actually get one!

It didn’t disappoint. 

The outside is a sweet, slightly sticky, soft bread and at the core is perfectly moist shredded beef. (And they’re pretty!) Yum!

The next stop for the day was the Kamakura Big Buddha statue.

This is a massive statue of Buddha, one of the oldest and the second largest in Japan.

It was really neat to hear about all of the symbolism, history, and detail in the one statue. 

I’ve also found it really interesting, throughout the whole trip, to learn about Japanese religion. There’s sort of a joke here that Japanese people are born Shintoists, married Christians, and die Buddhists. It seems that, in general, people are not so much “religious” as they are “spiritual.” There’s a great deal of blending going on between religions, and it comes out in a lot of the art, temples, and shrines I’ve seen. 

Next up was a spectacular Buddhist temple!
I know I said earlier that I prefer Shinto shrines to Buddhist temples because I so enjoy all of the natural elements at the shrines, but this Buddhist temple is an exception. It was more like a nature reserve than a temple! The actual indoor temple part was tiny in comparison to the lavish gardens, coy ponds, and even caves that we explored.  There was also a great view of the ocean from the temple! 

Okay so this is where the day gets crazy.

I casually told Dr. Baba that I hadn’t gotten ramen yet in Japan, and he organized a whole group event around the comment!
He took us to the ramen museum… one of the weirdest places I’ve ever seen.

I walked in, headed down a narrow stairway, and popped out in this very strange, underground pseudo-town. 

It’s been designed to look like an old Japanese town, with vintage movie posters, fake laundry hung to pretend-dry outside of uninhabited apartments… even a painted sky! All around this strange museum-town are a number of ramen shops. Each one has it’s own signature recipe; my friends and I stopped into a miso ramen shop. 

It was incredible! Very very rich and thick. Not anything like the ramen my college friends and I have gotten used to! 

Once I’d licked the bowl clean, my friends and I headed back to the “town square” just in time to see the weirdest magic show ever. The “magician” spoke in Japanese, and performed what was more like a strange one-man talent show than magic. First there was juggling, then speed stacking (Remember speed stacking? Like with the cups?), as well as a sort of funky dance routine. It was pretty weird, but definitely entertaining! And he loved me and my friends! There was a good crowd, but he talked and performed to us the whole time. He even posed for my picture! In the middle of his show!  

But the crazy night doesn’t end there!
Once we’d returned to Tokyo, we all took a few minutes to rest our tired feet, but then dragged ourselves out of bed to hit up the Japanese karaoke scene. 

Viet, Kirby, and I had agreed on Day 1 that we needed to go do karaoke while in Tokyo. It’s such a uniquely asian experience, very different from karaoke in the states! It took more convincing to get some of our other friends on board, but eventually we were able to get a group of seven folks to go!
It was probably the most fun thing I’ve done since getting here.

Unlike karaoke back home where you perform in a bar for strangers, asian karaoke places provide you and your friends a private room where you can hang out and only sing for one another. 

It’s hilariously popular! Walking down the street on any given night in Tokyo, I’d see crowds filling up the karaoke places, and there are dozens and dozens of these places! Some people even will get private rooms just to sleep for the night if they miss the last train home. I’d even see packs of business men in suits going in together! Can you imagine a bunch of lawyers or bankers gathering together after work for a little karaoke? That’s exactly what was happening!
Despite the fact that several members of our party insisted they would go but not sing, everyone ended up on their feet, singing their hearts out, after a few minutes.

One Direction really speaks to me

Don't ask my why there was a light show featuring ancient Greece...

(Note: Several of the beverages in these pics are nonalcoholic. It looks like we partied way harder than we did… I had chocolate milk.) 

We were pleased to find they had many hits we knew like… Royals, Twenty-Two, Love Story, That’s What Makes You Beautiful, Gold-Digger, Lady Marmalade, Zippadeedooda, a Backstreet Boys medley, and (of course) Let It Go. 

We only had the room for an hour, but we all agreed we could’ve stayed much longer!  

When it was finally time to leave (and I should note that the two people who were most apprehensive about going were the two we had to drag out of the room when our hour was up!), we all agreed that it was a thoroughly worthwhile experience, and ended the night hanging out in our hotel, having bonded over the majesty of Disney and 90’s jams.