Nara & Kyoto - Seeing historical Japan

(This post continues where I left off in my Planet Tokyo post and takes place from September 15-16. I originally began writing it on September 17^th).

Back on the ship in the morning we quickly packed some new clothes and waited until someone made an announcement about our trip to Nara & Kyoto which was supposed to leave at 8:30 A.M. The departure time passed and we got a bit worried so we headed to the Field Office desk to see what was going on. We met up with 5 other students and found out that the tour bus had left without us. We quickly decided to head out on our own, intent on getting to Nara before the bus. After much confusion we took a number of trains (including the shinkansen again) and a taxi to the second temple on our itinerary and waited for the group to arrive. Unfortunately we had missed out on lunch and the first temple, Horyu-Ji, which was built in 607 C.E and is the oldest temple in Japan. The temple that we met the group at, Todai-Ji, is supposedly the largest wooden building in the world and it houses a 52 ft. tall Buddha statue each of whose fingers are over 6 feet long. Tons of deer, regarded as messengers of the gods in the Shinto religion, roamed the extensive temple grounds. Vendors sold biscuits that you could feed to the deer though they tended to follow you around after the feeding. One deer walked up behind me and drooled on my book bag when I wasn’t looking.

We then visited the Kasuga shrine, a Shinto temple, which was originally built in 768 C.E. On the grounds there were hundreds of stone lanterns that are lit with candles twice a year, and of course, more deer. Afterwards, we drove to Kyoto and checked into a ryokan which is a traditional Japanese inn. Once there we took off our shoes and were given slippers. We were shown to our room which consisted of a single square room with tatami mats, small cushions as chairs (called zabuton), and a small squat table. Michael and I shared our room with two other guys. We were served tea and then quickly showered and changed into a type of cotton kimono called a yukata. Dinner was served in a banquet hall where we all sat cross-legged and ate suki yaki which consisted of cooking our own beef, noodles, and vegetables in front of us using portable woks. After dinner we sat around drinking beer out of the vending machines (yes they have beer vending machines in Japan) and finally got up enough courage to go into the communal baths. The idea of sharing a hot bath with several other naked guys was not appealing, but it ended up being really relaxing though the water was boiling hot.

After a relaxing sleep on futons we ate a quasi-western-style breakfast and piled back into the bus for another day of aggressive temple site-seeing. Our first stop was to see Kinkaku-Ji, the famous Golden Pavilion that is covered in 22 karat gold. The original structure of the Golden Pavilion was unfortunately burnt down by a mentally ill monk in 1950 who claimed he was jealous of the temple’s beauty and could stand it no longer. We then toured Nijo castle, once the residence of the Tokugawa shoguns in the 17^th century. Our second to last stop was Kiyomizu temple which is partly suspended over a gorge. Amazingly none of the support beams holding it over the gorge have nails in them, they were carefully interlocked and somehow hold the hordes of tourists that visit the temple daily. We then spent some time visiting the hundreds of shops around the temple that sell tea, ceramic-ware, swords, and all sorts of food and candy made out of tofu (tofu is a staple of the Buddhist monk diet in Japan). This finally gave me a chance to buy some gifts and some green tea for myself. Our final stop, Sanjusangen-do was incredibly impressive. The hall contains 1001 brass statues of a Buddhist deity called the Thousand Armed Kannon that surround a huge version of the same thousand-armed and multi-headed deity.

Sadly it was time to go. We rode back to the port in Kobe and boarded the ship; all of us were sad to leave Japan. I miss Japan and we haven’t even left yet. I’m sitting on one of the back decks watching Kobe recede as the ship pulls out of the port. People at the port terminal are lined up and waving at us as the ship departs. I was constantly impressed by the politeness of the Japanese I interacted with on this trip. Everything that anyone did was done with care and respect, and a sense that it really did matter how other people would feel about another person’s actions. I think it is precisely this mindset that is lacking in the U.S. that makes me dislike our culture sometimes.

There were a few interesting things about Japan that I haven’t mentioned yet, such as how there are vending machines everywhere that sell all sorts of drinks including beer. (The Sao Ri iced green tea that can be found in most of the vending machines in Japan is one of the best teas I’ve ever had.) The really strange thing about that is that there are very few trash cans anywhere. People obviously use the vending machines, otherwise they wouldn’t be everywhere. Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nara were spotlessly clean. So where do they put all of the trash? I assume most people do what I did and carry the bottles with them. I also noticed something else interesting, there were almost no public benches in Tokyo, and I rarely saw anyone eating in the streets. Apparently it is frowned upon in Japan if you eat while walking, and with the lack of public benches, that doesn’t leave any opportunity to litter. That still doesn’t explain where they put all of those empty plastic bottles though.

The last thing I wanted to mention was that our tour guide for the Nara & Kyoto trip, Harumi, was amazing. She was informative, funny, and extremely kind. It was sad when it was time for the group to part ways with her, I think we all really liked her. There is more I had wanted to say about Japan but now I’ve forgotten. Rushing around from place to place in each port city, and then only having a few days in between each port, gives me little time to process everything I’ve experienced. From time to time I reflect on it and think of things I want to share with others but then I forget about it. It will all come back to me eventually, probably as I’m comparing and contrasting Japan with the other countries I will have visited. It’s all happening so quickly, but I’m having a great time.