teamEggers

Kyoto [part 1]

[Note: Similar to the 5-part Seoul trip, this was a big weekend. There's a lot of story to tell you about. I hope you don't mind.]

While it wasn’t a ryokan, we did manage to locate a hotel for Saturday night. You know how when you go to a hotel in America, and they charge you extra on top of the advertised rate when you have two people? That always drove me crazy. Over half of their rooms have to be taken by couples of some sort. Why wouldn’t you make your advertised price for TWO people and then offer a friendly “single traveler” discount? It’s all about framing in a positive way, you know?

I digress. In Japan, the room rate is often *doubled* for two people. I will never complain about that extra $10 in America again.

At 6am we loaded ourselves up on one of the fastest trains in the world, which has incredible amounts of legroom, sells whiskey and sandwiches, and travels 300 miles in 2 hours. With a book and an inclination to nap, it was not a terrible way to spend the morning.

I may have mentioned that this was supposed to be one of the most beautiful weekends in all of the year. The fleeting “sakura season” is approaching.

That is, unless you get an unexpected cold-weather front and none of the buds pop yet. The crazy thing about cherry trees is that they don’t unfold their leaves until after their blossoms, so before sakura season all you have is a bunch of barren sticks. This is what that scene REALLY looked like:

But you know, despite all odds, we still had a good time. Some background: In years before the democratization of Japan, a new capitol was established every time there was a new emperor. In the course of history, all of those cities have been destroyed by bombs or fire. All, except one.

Kyoto is the longest standing original capitol in the country. (Most others, like Tokyo for instance, had been rebuilt at some point in time.)  The city is rich with temples, shrines, and even a castle. The juxtaposition of old and new was even more jarring than usual.  But enough talking. Let’s get to the photos!

No trip in japan is complete without a “jon is too tall for this country” photo. By this point in the morning (it was like, 8:30am) he had hit his head about three times. I will now refer to him as “lumpy”.

Our first stop of the day was… under construction. What the hell, you know? For the record, they still charged full price to get in. This was the “silver temple”, though it was actually made entirely of wood. (There were unfulfilled plans for it to be covered in silver, to rival the “gold temple” which we’ll see tomorrow.) There’s also a sand sculpture to represent Mt. Fuji. There’s a lot of fuji-love. (for those of you in west allis, your sushi house called “fujiyama” is really named after “Mt. Fuji”! (yama = mountain))

As an architectural feature, there were circles everywhere in the city.

Near the gift shop of the silver temple, we found (what I think to be) one of the highlights of the trip. At first we thought what we found was a journal. After the woman behind the counter asked us if we wanted it signed for $3 more (Again, with the language barrier, we had no idea what we were getting. We generally say “yes” and hand over our money when something like this happens.) We realized that at every temple, there are little old men hired to record your travel in calligraphy. Each temple has a unique signature and set of stamps, and your page is recorded with the date. I thought it was great because it added another dimension to visiting temples. Now it’s temples… crazy-japanese-adventure-style.

Lumpy-Jon spent a lot of the day with his nose in a book, walking down pathways. He’s a great impromptu tour guide:

So we’re walking along this path called the “philosopher’s stroll” (named because it’s supposed to be so beautiful during cherry blossom season that it’s been said to have inspired some of the great philosophers of the time.) and we’re admiring the day and standing in line to pose for pictures in front of the few blossoming trees…

…and then tragedy struck. This was the last photo ever taken with our beautiful new camera, the cannon g9. That camera, just under 1 year old, has served us well. It’s taken many great photos, it’s sturdy, it’s portable. it’s a great camera. It wasn’t cheap.

And now its a paperweight. I know what you’re thinking. And you’re wrong. I did not drop the camera. This whole situation would be a lot easier to cope with had I taken some part in the malfunction of the camera.

So that’s a good spot to end part 1. Continue on for a visually barren look at part 2.

Kyoto [Part 2]

We pick up our story, confused, weary, and kind of sad towards the general injustices of the world. Why me? Why now?

But we persevered. And the story has a happier ending, so don’t you worry your pretty little heads.

After the silver temple, we were off to the main highlight of the day, which was the Kiyomizu temple. It’s crazy… on the way we found a handful MORE temples. They were honestly *everywhere*. As a Kyotan practicing Shinto or Buddhism, your really need not fear for your soul. Salvation is near. Etc.

Anyhow, on the way we picked up a disposable camera. I dont think I’ve held one of those in five years. It was weird. We’ll get the pictures when we’re back in Seattle, I’m sure, but it’s good to know that there’s a record of our travels somewhere. You may wonder why I always take so many pictures. Well, see… I have a terrible memory. Terrible. If I don’t take a million photos and blog about everything we do, I forget before the week is over.

I’m like a goldfish.

If it’s any surprise then, I can’t recall clearly how the rest of the afternoon went. I know we greatly enjoyed Kiyumizu. I fell in love with moss, proclaiming it a far superior choice for ground coverage over grass, and we got a few more temple signatures in our new stamp-book. Jon thinks they’ve got a racket going on. I… don’t care. I just hope the little old men writing in my books get a cut of the $3 I fork over.

After some quick Google’ing back at the train station, we stopped entertaining the idea that “maybe the battery wasn’t really charged?” and other battery-related user-error theories. It sounds like this is a fairly common problem with cannons. Which… sucks. Let me elaborate for just a second.

Canon is, we believe, the best company for a digital camera. Nikon makes great film-cameras, but Canon seems to do a great job digitally. Even after this experience, I would still recommend getting one. We were considering buying the same camera again, knowing full well that if it’s a hardware malfunction, it could happen to us a second time. They’re good cameras. So why, then, does Canon’s tech support suck so hardcore that they won’t eliminate this known error? Okay, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. We haven’t even sent in the camera to be repaired yet. We only have google-fueled theories about what’s wrong.

We bought a new camera. It’s smaller. It’s a Canon point-and-shoot variety, but it still takes fine photos and it definitely gets the job done. I hate it a little bit, just because of what it stands for, but looking at the photos afterwards there isn’t a HUGE difference between the two.

I will leave you with the first photo taken with our new Canon PowerShot AS100. (this is the Kyoto Tower)

Kyoto

Jon recently found out he’s “on call” this weekend and not working in the office!  This may not be that exciting to you, but it means that we get to take a long-awaited weekend trip to Kyoto!

Kyoto is the former capitol of Japan, about 2.5 hours away by bullet train.  Not only will it be exciting to see the city, which is supposed to ooze with history (it is one of the only majour cities in Japan that was not burned to the ground during warfare.  Most japanese buildings have been rebuilt.), but it’s cherry blossom season and we get to take the bullet train!

This is so awesome, for so many reasons.  Kyoto is one of the best places in the country to stay in a ryokan, or traditional Japanese style lodging.  They’re tremendously expensive but are supposed to be one of the best ways to “splurge” on your Japanese vacation. Everything is good, right? Because it’s cherry blossom season, we’re going on what will potentially be the most beautiful weekend of the year.

Good. Well.  We apparently are not the only ones with such high thoughts of Kyoto. Nearly every ryokan, hotel, and hostel is completely booked.  We can’t even find one of those cheap “back up plan” hotels.

For all that, we MAY have to sleep in the train station.

Adulthood.

Feeling wistful. Between the wedding, San Diego, and Japan, the past year feels like a blur. And time seems to be going faster and faster – I hear that happens as you age.  Sucks. Remember when the summers lasted for lifetimes?  Now I can blink away entire weeks if I don’t concentrate on being “present in the moment”.

I miss having grass. I’m trying to talk jon into moving to a townhouse when we get back to Seattle. He’s trying to talk me into buying a condo.

Also, this summed up my day yesterday.  I love that everything I’ll ever feel has already been described in a web cartoon:

I hate spring.

I’ve been going on and on for days about how great spring is.  And how happy i am that spring is here. And spring spring spring.

puke.

you know what I forgot?  Spring makes my throat itch. in a bad way.

I hate you, spring.