Why? Because the first thing I did this morning was trip down the stairs from my bed and rail my knee against the corner of my desk.
My treacherous stairs from my bed and the damned desk. They don't look all that dangerous.
Ahh, but they are deceptive. Notice how small and triangular they are. Yes, and my sleepy ass must have missed that top corner cuz next thing I know my knee tried to destroy the desk and lost, and I was hobbling around wondering if I broke my kneecap.
Aww, ya big wuss, that doesn't look so bad.
But what about from this angle?
Yesh, look at that lump! And this is 8 hours later.
But I wasn't going to let that stop me from going to Kyoto. Mainly because I heard there was a Burger King there and man could I go for a whopper and onion rings! Did I find it? Did I have fun in Kyoto? Did I hobble around like an old man? Stay tuned to find out! Except the last question, the answer is yes, yes I did hobble around like an old man.
Start!
Kyoto.
Kyoto is a very famous city in Japan for being old and full of temples. Apparently it was one of the only places in Japan not completely bombed out during WWII and then rebuilt in the 1950s. Therefore it has lots of old architecture and many many many temples from hundreds if not thousands of years ago. So that is pretty cool. Also, they apparently have a Burger King.
Some pictures of the mountains and trees heading from Tsuruga to Kyoto on the bullet train. Yup, got to ride a bullet train. Not the super fast bullet train, but a limited express bullet train that goes like 75 mph and makes no stops between Tsuruga and Kyoto. How nice is that? Tsuruga must be the next big place after Kyoto. Either that or the halfway point between Kyoto and Kanazawa (the other big city near me).
Going right by the ocean. Houses within 15 feet of the water. No beach per se. Just a small strip of rocky sand. From the little I could see of course.
Kind of like the speed blurry telephone pole on this one.
Get to Kyoto and first thing I have to do is walk up about 30 steps in the train station. Kyoto train station is huge and super busy compared to Tsuruga. Apparently Tsuruga is tiny. Kyoto train station reminded me of Grand Central station in NYC. It was huge, had many levels, and there were local trains, bullet trains, subways, and a bus depot all in the same place. Suffice it to say there were many many short yellow people running around, even on a Monday afternoon. Oh, and it was WAY better at 5:30 on the way back. There were traffic jams of people because tourists were stopping to take pictures of the lights (they have Christmas lights up, just like in America!) right in the middle of the walkway as hundreds of people were trying to get around them, and the Japanese are too polite to tell them to fuck off and keep moving so they just stop and one at a time walk around these people.
...anyway, had to walk up some stairs which is the first time I realized just how debilitating my knee was going to be. Knee not so bad walking, but bending and putting weight on it to go up stairs, not so much. I hobbled up the stairs like an old man while polite Japanese people were being slowed down behind me, but not a single person tried to move around me. It is a different world over here, I tell ya.
This is a tiny alley behind someone's home with a ton of empty beer bottles stacked in crates. Yup, they love their beer over here. Nah, I am sure this is a resturaunt, but the fact remains, could you imagine just leaving all that breakable glass outside of a bar in America? You would come outside to drunkards breaking glass all night long. I know I would do that. Man I love smashing stuff. I miss being a baggage handler sometimes.
Here is the deal with my pictures. I love having a digital camera. I love that I can take a picture of anything I want and not have to worry about wasting film. I love that it is so easy and convienent. I hate how big my camera is and how afraid of scratching the lcd view screen I am. I am such a slave to technology. On this trip I had my keys and coin cash, which by the way, I both love and hate that they use coins for one and five dollars here, but that is a rant for another time, in my front right pocket and therefore that pocket was uninhabitable for any gadgets. My front left pocket had my notebook with handy dandy travel phrases (such as, "When is the next train?" "Where is the train station?" and "Do you speak English?" but unfortunately not "where is Burger King?"), my cell phone and my ipod. My back pocket housed my camera and my wallet. Now, that is a crap load of stuff to have in your pockets. Oh, and I also had a book bag in case I bought anything, easier to carry it on the back then lug around a plastic shopping bag, so with all that crap in my pockets weighing me down, and a mostly empty backpack (contents: Katakana flash cards, Japanese lessons homework, one bottle of Coke, one empty bottle of Fanta orange soda, one empty bottle of green tea (important to note, full bottles before one hour train ride), tylenol, and peanuts for snacking.) after about an hour and half of walking around, I decided to put my camera and phone in my backpack. Figured if I found something cool, I would take the time to get the camera out and take a picture of it. Yeah, not so much. You will see.
Okay, back to Kyoto. Get off the train, go up the stairs in the massive and busy train station. Wander around looking for an exit, see many people going one direction, follow them. That is almost always my general plan for navigating an unknown area, follow the herd of people. I find my way outside of the station and....well...not impressed. Looks like any other place I have been in Japan. Lots of tightly compacted shops and houses, people, and not much else.
I wander around for a little while until I see this:
That is right, a bright pink trash truck! God I love this country sometimes.
I wandered around for awhile, not really looking for anything in particular, just kind of looking around for something cool. Big mistake. Cities in Japan are not like cities in America, or at least not like the cities I am used to, cities on the East coast. Kyoto is short buildings spread out for miles and miles, not tall buildings tightly packed together. Hence, walking around all I did was walk and walk and walk, without really getting anywhere.
Main street? Side street? Who can tell? Although many streets in Kyoto do have names, which was a nice change of pace. I, of course, couldn't read the street names, but nice to know that they are there for the future.
50 M to bunnies! I walked 50 M and saw no bunnies. Boo. :(
More walking around the city streets with no destination. Next time must remember to make a general plan of where to go while in a city. Didn't help that the knee was still killing me.
I just like the way Kyoto looks exactly like Tsuruga at street level. I am going back in the beginning of December to look at trees on the outskirts of the city. I wonder if the trees will look like this?
That is one stumpy ass tree.
Zoom back!
She is kind of small in this picture, but if you click for the big ass pic you will notice this woman is wearing the unofficial uniform for Japanese women age 13-35, short shorts with big boots. And now that it is cooler, stockings under the short shorts, but still the short shorts or a short skirt and big boots. The other option besides the big boots is high heels. That is all I ever see women in this country wear, huge boots or high heels. I saw a woman in sweatpants and high heels the other day. I guess because Japanese women don't have big boobs they show off their legs. As my friend said when I pointed out that Japanese women love short shorts, "Japanese men love short shorts too. On Japanese women."
I just think it is hilarious that probably 75% of the young women I see are wearing the exact same type of outfit. They probably think the same thing about American women. I dunno.
Back to Kyoto talk.
Walking along a street I eventually saw a giant pagoda tower sticking up above the skyline. Interesting.
As I got closer. Look at how it absolutely dominates the skyline. That is pretty cool. But if every other building is low because of earthquakes, how the heck does that old tower not fall over when an earthquake hits? I assume some kind of freaky shinto magic is keeping it erect.
(That's what she said)
I decided to go to the Temple that housed the giant pagoda tower, but couldn't cross the street to get to it for about five blocks. There was a pedestrian overpass near the entrance, but my knee was not liking going up and down stairs at this point, so I took the long route.
The giant entrance gate, so big I couldn't get a good picture of it.
Best I could do. Boy, this is a crappy photography blog.
Another woman in the unofficial uniform going through the gate.
I wish I knew what that lantern said. I really should learn some Japanese.
A fountain in the courtyard. This place was HUGE with all of these old buildings and tons of people milling around. I think I must have gone in the free way though because the buildings were fenced off from me and I couldn't get to them. I assume they have a pay entrance as well that you can use to go to everywhere.
I was so focused on tryin to find my way around the fencing I forgot to take a picture of the giant pagoda tower. D'oh!
Artsy view between two buildings.
Notice the trees starting to turn colors. And the fence blocking me from getting anywhere.
People lining up to pray to a god. I think it said it was a god of intelligence. Obviously I didn't go and pray to that guy, why bother, I am a super genius!
One of the buildings.
Look at the architecture. So intricate.
I am a big admirer of what people were able to accomplish hundreds if not thousands of years ago without modern technology to aid them. And consider this, how many buildings built today will be around in three hundred years?
My first favorite part of the day. The giant begging koi fish in the moat running through the middle of the temple grounds.
I don't know if these pictures convey just how huge these freakin' Koi were, but they were probably as big as the average housecat. They were huge! They are like the Americans of Koi! And they would come over and beg for food. If you leaned over the edge they would see you and swim over and then stick their little faces out of the water with their mouths open, little fins going backward to keep them swimming in place so they could beg for food.
Yeah, just like this guy, straight up begging for chow.
I held my arm out and fake threw something, and one of the fish that was begging me for food swam up to a leaf that had fallen in the water and ate it. Only to spit it back out when he realized it wasn't a french fry and swim off in disgust. I couldn't stop chuckling. Maybe I should seek some mental help.
After having some fun at the fat Kois' expense I continued my journey.
In almost the direct left middle of the shot there is a satellite dish pointed at the back of the building in front of it. Yeah.....betcha that guy gets great reception.
The Japanese love coffee. And there are coffee vending machines all over the place. Cold canned coffee. Yum. And they don't have the super sweet coffee like in America. I mean, they do have that, but they also have black coffee cold. The Japanese love bitter food. Anyway, one of the big coffee companies is called BOSS coffee. here is their vending machine
Two things, the boss of them all since 1992, really, THAT long! Wow! In a country as old as Japan proclaiming your length of superiority for 16 years seems a little silly. And second, look at that logo! That is a man right there, a man who drinks coffee! Fittingly, they recently signed Tommy Lee Jones as their celebrity spokesman
Give him a pipe and he would be that logo. Good call BOSS!
Here's a 7-11!
I didn't go in. I could only be disappointed when they didn't have Big Bites. I won't live in that world!
Door at a hair salon. Reads "We would like to share your happiness with you through your hair" That just sounds weird, and vaguely sexual. Or is that just to me?
I continued to wander around not really finding anything. NO BURGER KING! No cool clothes stores. I think I must have been in the wrong section of the city. But I had been walking around for close to four hours at this point and I was getting increasingly tired and angry at myself for not making a plan and my knee was getting to the point that every single step was painful, not just going up and down stairs, so I decided to call it a loss and head back to the train station.
Kyoto train station at 5:30 in the evening is not the least crowded place in the world. I tried to get a reserved seat for the train back, but all reserved seats were sold out until the 830 train. I wasn't going to walk around for another three hours so I took the unreserved seat. Unreserved seats don't even gaurentee a seat, so I had to head down to the platform right away to make sure I was on the next train at the beginning of the crowd. Except, there was no crowd. News to me, Japanese people line up for the trains. At Kyoto station there are signs on the platform telling you where each car's door is going to be (yes, they know to the foot where the train is going to stop, do you think they could ever do that in America?) and wether the particular car is reserved or unreserved for each train, and then people line up behind that sign and just wait. No milling around, no pushing to get on first, just lines. It was weird, and cool, and weird.
I was able to get a seat, yay!, in a smoking car, boo! Yes, they still allowing smoking in some cars on trains in Japan. I can't remember the last time I smelled smoke on a train. I know that I am old enough that at some point when I was a child I remember going into K-mart or some other department store and seeing ashtrays on the support beams in the middle of the aisles, and then wondering what they were going to do with all those ashtrays when the law changed, but I have not experienced being trapped in confined space with dozens of smokers (outside of a bar) in many many years. Yeah that was fun. Next time I am getting a big fat smelly cigar and am just going to be a complete ass about it. And of course the cute girl sitting across the aisle from me was chain smoking the entire time. Boo!
But, I don't want to end this blog on a negative note, so here is my absolute favorite part of my trip to Kyoto.
This smiley little dog! I was walking down some back street in a neighborhood and saw a woman walking her dog coming my way but across the street. Well that little dog went crazy and ran over and jumped up on me and was all happy and loving being petted. And the lady was nice and didn't immediately freak out that a white devil was petting her dog. Look how damned smiley that dog is! I love smiley dogs. And yes, I am holding him down in this photograph, he wouldn't stop jumping up towards me and the camera when I was trying to take his picture. Ahh, dogs. Good for what ails ya.
And that was my trip to Kyoto. All together a big flat flop. But now I know so next time I can have a better experience.
2 comments:
My god you've got chunky knees. Hope your ok. how about those redskins? br
11-9-08
Aaaaauuuurgh! You stopped your narrative at the tiny pink trash truck! More, please, more!
Hope your knee is better.....krt
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