Japan Days 3 & 4: Kyoto

Kyoto is revered as one of the few remaining examples of traditional Japanese culture, in that there are a huge number of shrines, temples, palaces, and gardens that date back to at least the 9th century. The city served as the capital of Japan for more than a thousand years, ending in the mid-19th century when the title was transferred to Tokyo. There's so much to see in this city, and the history of the country so complex, and the Buddhist and Shinto sects represented by the temples and shrines so numerous, that I quickly gave up trying to tie everything together into one big coherent picture. Instead, I just tried to understand and appreciate each individual site for what it was.

The plethora of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples is overwhelming; there are more than 2000 of them in Kyoto alone. While the architecture is largely the same, the contrast of the aesthetics of Japanese Buddhist temples with those of Korea is stark: whereas the former are almost exclusively made of muted white, brown, or black painted wood or tiles, the latter tend to be much more colorful and vibrant. Buddhist temples in general mesmerize me; their entire being seems to encapsulate and exude calm and tranquility, which seems ironic (or essential?) considering the intensely jarring potential of truly understanding Buddhist teachings. The more of them I see, and observe, and soak in, the more I feel that there is a definite place for this kind of environment in my future. I've been well aware for some time that I could - and should? - benefit immensely from the kind of disciplined introspection and self-realization that Buddhist teachings strive to impart and attain. For now, though, the question is simply - when?

Anyway, Kyoto is packed with far too many amazing sights to describe with any degree of justice, so I won't even bother trying. It's a big city, and we only had time to see the city center and north- and southwest areas. Aside from temples and shrines, highlights included the introspection-inducing, closed-to-traffic, kilometer-long Tetsugaku-no-michi (Path of Philosophy), which winds along a canal among cherry trees; the Gion district, known for geisha sightings and associated closed-to-outsiders entertainment establishments; Nishiki Market, a huge food market where you can find everything from fresh fish to doughnuts to green-tea-everything; the multiple arcades full of shops; and Ponto-cho, the ritzy but beautiful area along a waterway, full of restaurants that generally "prefer Japanese customers" by not bothering to translate any of their menus or signs outside.

I feel as if I'm only appreciating Kyoto properly now, in retrospect. While there, we were trying to get up early and see as many sites as possible before our curfew of 11PM - set by the nice old lady who ran the ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) where we were staying. Because Ladan had the Lonely Planet Japan book with her, and she was in Japan a week before I arrived, I didn't have much chance to study up on what we'd be seeing ahead of time. At the end of each day, we'd come back and look through the book, deciding what to see the next day.

Now that I'm back, though, and looking through the pictures, and projecting myself back into how I felt while there - well, aside from the sweat and aching feet - I'm fully realizing how much fun it all was. Having so many amazing things to see no matter which way you turn, or which metro stop you get off at, is just blissfully enjoyable. I suppose it's not hard to feel that way in contrast to my average uninspired working day back here in the US; but it's more than that. Now I have time to research some of the places we went on the internet, and it's been fascinating to read more of the background behind the cities, towns, shrines, and temples that we visited.

Kyoto, although being a large, modern, busy city, has an enormous number of areas that really do feel as if they haven't changed in a thousand years. You can almost forget that Tokyo or Osaka even exists, and convince yourself that this is the Imperial Japan of long ago. It's an incredible experience.

Japan Days 1 & 2: Nagoya

On the 13th I flew into Nagoya's Central Japan International Airport, which is 35km away from the city itself and is built on a man-made island. As we were landing, just as I feel when coming into San Francisco, I was looking out the window and wondering whether land was going to show up at some point or whether the plane was going to ditch in the water. Luckily for my non-swimming self, the runway eventually appeared below us.

Ladan met me at the airport and we took a commuter train back to Nagoya. It was a hot, humid, rainy day, and the weather reports said the entire next week would be rainy - aww, man! As it turned out, though, it only rained for part of one more day.

After arriving at the very cool 52-story Marriott Associa Nagoya twin towers, and dropping my stuff off in our 44th-floor room (thanks, Intel!), Ladan had to return to work for the rest of the afternoon while I went out to explore the city.

The first thing I notice is that people are driving on the wrong side of the road. Not only that, but their steering wheels have been put on the wrong side, too. How odd. Next thing I notice is how clean everything is; the streets and sidewalks are smoothly paved and bare of litter. Then I notice how everything looks relatively new - and this is because much of Japan was bombed flat during World War II, Nagoya included. Thus everything in sight is, by definition, not more than 60 years old.

As I walk around, I'm amazed at how courteous drivers are to pedestrians and bikers. It makes sense, because there are just so many of them that is impossible to speed wrecklessly down any street. In the cities, it seems as if most people get to work by means other than personal cars, aided by public transportation that's fast and clean. What a novel idea!

On that first day, I checked out Nagoya-jo, a large castle complex originally built in 1612 but rebuilt in 1959 after being destroyed during the war. As I walked the grounds, groups of schoolchildren enthusiastically shouted "harro!" at me, and some even asked "how are you?" It's not that they never see tourists - because they're actually relatively common - but rather that they seem eager to test out their English. I felt pretty popular after a few hours, as successive groups of children watched me and excitedly waited until I got close enough for them to greet me.

Ladan and I later went to see the park-life Atsuta Jingu, a huge area containing a Shinto shrine that was originally founded 1900 years ago. It's been destroyed multiple times since then (including, of course, burning completely to the ground during WWII) and rebuilt every time. It supposedly once enshrined a sacred sword, an important Imperial symbol. As we walked around near the main shrine and tried to guess what the Japanese signs meant, a security guard approached us with two brochures, handing them to us: "English", he offered. Ah, thanks!

All in all, it was a good introduction to Japan: good sized city, with some interesting sights, but more importantly, it gave me time to just walk among the people, watch them and try to observe everyday life. Lots of little things caught my attention: the extreme rarity of people talking on cell phones; the absolute lack of people talking loudly on cellphones; the prevalence of people typing text messages or surfing the net on cellphones; the efficient use of vertical space evident in so many building designs; the lack of newspaper vending machines; the prevalence of drink (not just soda) vending machines; the lack of billboards shoving ads in your face every second (although the ad-plastered walls of trains, buses, and some buildings pick up some of the slack); the busyness of main streets in the city at every hour of the day; I could go on for hours. These are the things that fascinate me the most about visiting other countries.

After spending Thursday and Friday nights in Nagoya, on Saturday morning we checked out and took a train to Kyoto, where we were based for the remainder of our trip. Those stories coming up. In the meantime, I've posted some pictures from Nagoya.

Do Unto Others ...

I took out a bunch of cash from an ATM before leaving for Japan. I used hardly any of it while there, and brought it back with me, so today I went by Bank of America to deposit it again. I walk up to the machine, the guy in front of me leaves, I count my money and put it in an envelope, go to put my card in - and the screen is asking me "Another transaction, or exit?" Oh nice, the tool left his card in the machine. I turn around and see he's nowhere to be found, and anyway I didn't get a look at him so couldn't find him regardless.

I spit his card out, do my deposit, and my receipt pushes his receipt out, which he also forgot. Dude took out 300 bucks and has $8616 left in his account! Maaaaan! I was thinking about it, what if I'd just taken a cool grand out to teach him to value personal responsibility a little more? Woulda been a fair trade, right? I mean life is hard.

Alas, being the good guy that I am - and realizing that multiple cameras had already got me - I took the guy's card inside and gave it to an Authorized Bank Employee.

But damn ... I coulda had some FUN with a thousand bucks in cash. Hookers, blow, and video cards, baby! Well - maybe just the videocards: two of 'em. So, er - change that to: SLI, baby!

Time Travel

A few weeks ago a co-worker asked me if I believe in time travel; he'd been reading about black holes and the time-space continuum. Outside of the theory-of-relativity sense (which my gut still tells me is a load of crap), I told him no, I don't believe in it.

But after just returning from Japan for a week's vacation, I'm starting to reconsider. There's something undeniably novel while unavoidably jarring about flying halfway around the world. I left San Francisco last Wednesday at 11AM; after a 10-hour flight, I arrived in Nagoya, Japan, at 3PM on Thursday. Going to bed at midnight Japan time made it a 24-hour day for me. Yesterday - today? - I left Japan at 4PM Wednesday, had a 10-hour flight, and made it to San Francisco at 9AM. So after already having half of a day in Japan, I spent 10 hours working toward starting yet another day back in the US, an almost full work day. By the time I go to bed in two hours, I will have been up for 35 hours. I've had two breakfasts and two lunches and almost no sleep. Right now I'm just mentally thrown off; in a day or two will come the like-running-into-a-brick-wall physical side of the jetlag.

Getting to the point, the trip was awesome. In six and a half days we saw Nagoya (flew in there and spent a day exploring the city), Kyoto (home to hundreds of historic temples, shrines, and most of the remaining population of real-life geishas), Himeji (site of Japan's most famous original castle), Hiroshima (horribly heart-wrenching museum and monuments to the atomic bomb - I stood at ground zero), Nara (seven UN World Heritage Sites packed into one town), and Osaka (second largest city after Tokyo with 2.4 million people). The extensive train system, especially the high-speed shinkansen bullet trains (which are waaay cool), made getting around easy.

It certainly helped that on my flights, I got bumped up to Business Class not once, but twice - both on the way there and back, and man is that the way to travel: enough legroom to stretch out completely, a fully-reclining seat with footrest, great (both in quantity and quality) food, and bottomless drink supply. I also, uncharacteristically for me, watched some movies with audio: The Number 23 (pretty good; I really like Jim Carrey in serious roles), I Think I Love My Wife (moments of classic hilarity; I was in tears) and Breach (great true story). I also got completely sucked into Ayn Rand's 1957 classic Atlas Shrugged. She was recommended to me years ago by friends, but I never found the time to read the book until I recently learned that it served as partial inspiration for Bioshock's storyline. It's an 1100-page behemoth, but I can't put it down.

As usual when I visit other countries, I was enthralled with their un-American-ness. I feel so much more relaxed and at peace when I'm away from here. This trip was one more rung in the ladder that I hope to eventually use to climb out of here.

Wanting to avoid the pitfall of promising lofty and extensive commentary on the trip, as I naively did after Nicaragua, suffice it to say that there'll be a brief flurry of activity in the coming week as I recount some of the things I observed while there, as well as post links to pictures.