Japan 2012 Travel Diary, Day 11

Posted Wednesday, 6th March 2013 under Travel
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To juxtapose a half-nerd day on Thursday, on Friday we caught the regional train to Nara, which was only about an hour away from where we were staying. The town promised plenty of awesome, and it certainly delivered.

After getting off the train we headed down to the sightseeing bus terminals and jumped on board to see Toudai-ji, or as we remembered it – the temple with the giant Buddha. Nara is a really pretty city – not too fast-paced with a blend of old and new that was reminiscent of Kyoto, but more welcoming in some intangible way that’s difficult to describe.

After arriving at our stop we wandered through the park that lead to the temple, going through the closed-off pedestrian street with souvenir and food shops to one side, with the native deer walking or lazing around the place. It’s amazing to see all the deer at relative ease with everything without the need to have the areas closed off with fences and what-not.

Following the growing surge of tourists, including hordes of amusing middle school students attending as class groups, we made our way to the enormous outer gates, then followed the crowd to the main entrance. After paying the fee to attend, we walked through the inner entrance that opened up to a stunning view of the carefully cultured lawns and gardens that led the way into the main temple. In all seriousness, I figured the place was going to be big, but the scale and immaculate state of everything really was incredible.

After making an offering at the gates of the main temple and lighting some incense, we crossed the threshold to behold the amazing statues therein. It is inconceivable that human hands so long ago put such amazing works of art together. Like a lot of the aspects of this trip, it’s hard to succinctly put into words the awe and reverence of this place, suffice to say that it was an intense and awe-inspiring experience.

After picking up a couple of goodies from the temple we exited back onto the main leading street after I made a stop at the men’s room (and was greeted by another amusing drop toilet) to adjust my prosthesis for the wander back to the train station. On the way we picked up a few more skewered dango from a street vendor and Wifey fed some of the native deer. Because I’m daft I decided to grab another matcha soft-serve ice cream cone on the way out and we walked back probably about half way to the main Nara train Station before jumping aboard another sightseeing bus for the final bit.

As we were pulling up to the final stop opposite the train station I spotted a shop out the corner of my eye that might have been packing nerd stuff, so after jumping off the train we walked around the corner and came upon a local Geo store. Having never been inside one I wasn’t sure what to expect, but drilling to the back of the store was the game section. Like most of the mainstream second hand places the majority of the stock was NDS, PS3 and PSP games, with a small selection of PS2 and PSone for reasonable prices. I decided to snap up a handful of PSone titles, then we were off again on the train back to Osaka.

The original plan was to grab some ramen at the Osaka station, so we assumed this wouldn’t be an issue given the prevalence of amazing (and cheap) ramen places in all of the other major stations we travelled through. After hunting through the convoluted complex several times, it appears as though Osaka Station, unlike pretty much every station we had travelled to at this point, had no cheap and awesome ramen places, at least that we could find. Instead we eventually settled on tea and waffles in a posh-looking restaurant modelled after the Japanese interpretation of an English tea house. It wasn’t what we were craving, but it was still yum!

While we were at Osaka Station we also had another stop, this time especially for Wifey – we visited the official Pokemon Center! The massive store is located within the labything selection of buildings and is packed with all sorts of goodies that celebrate the franchise’s past and ongoing evolution. We picked up some plushies, candy, bento boxes and all sorts of stuff here. We were tempted to pick up some of the Pokemon-themed kitchen appliances and bakeware but decided to err on the side of caution since we only had limited space and weight for our luggage.

With our fun over, from Osaka Station we travelled back to the Dotonburi shopping precinct, with Wifey getting some overdue shopping for herself (instead of being dragged by me to nerd places). We ended up dropping into the Sakaisuji shopping mall (near/off Dotonburi, I can’t remember exactly as we approached it via the Crystalis underground mall), and lo and behold if I didn’t see the warming glowing warmness of a Book Off towards the tail end of the mall.

Like most Book Offs, the selection was mainly geared towards current gen consoles – PS3, XB360, NDS, PSP and PS2, with a reasonable selection of cheap PSone titles and a smaller selections of Famicom, Super Famicom, Saturn and Dreamcast titles. I picked up a couple of games across most of the systems (including some very reasonably priced Famicom titles), and from there we made the trek back to the hotel.

We decided to eat lightly that night since we were catching a 3-hour Shinkansen ride back to Tokyo the next day, so we ate some delicious sushi at a place near our hotel that served up fresh morsels of yum on a conveyer belt (just like our beloved Sushi Train at home), and grabbed another crepe to eat back in the hotel.

We did the usual pack-up when we got back to the hotel, this time taking advantage of the extra piece of luggage we picked up at Tokyu Hands the day before, and got ready for an entertaining day of travel to follow!

To view all posts on the Japan 2012 Travel Diary, just use the 2012 Japan Trip tag, as the whole series will be added to it over time.

Japan 2012 Travel Diary, Day 7

Posted Sunday, 24th February 2013 under Travel
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Day two in Kyoto continued the cultural expeditions. We started off by heading to Kyoto Station and jumping on the tourist bus to visit the Ginkakuji Temple – the place was absolutely mind-blowing and picturesque, and the grounds were much bigger than we had anticipated.

At this stage in the trip my prosthesis had started causing me some grief due to all the walking/getting lost/exploring, so we decided to cut the walk around the temple grounds short and get started on the Philosopher’s Path. When my brother Tank and his wife visited earlier in the year during the cherry blossom viewing season the place looked beautiful, so it was awesome to get a chance to see it in autumn when the leaves were changing colour. As the rain and clouds had cleared up, it was also nice and sunny out (though a bit chilly since the humidity had gone with the cloud cover), so we made our way leisurely down the path, stopping to take photos, and at one point we dropped into a neighbourhood tea and coffee place for a couple of cake sets (Wifey has the cheesecake and coffee, while I enjoyed a green tea rolled cake with fresh cream and stuffed with red beans paste with a cup of tea).

The real magic though happened at the end of the trail. As part of my Shenmue obsession I found a small deserted park with some play equipment at the end of the street, and so I asked myself – “What would Ryo Hazuki do in this situation?”. That’s right, he’d take the time to work on his moves. So, announcing to nobody in particular “Let’s get sweaty”, I decided to get my karate on and run through a couple of techniques, with the ever-patient Wifey indulging the experience by snapping some photos. Not having trained over the last 18+ months due to some health concerns my form was pretty rubbish, but the experience was worth it 🙂

After making an arse of myself in public (again), we finished off the Philosopher’s Park walk to wander down along the backstreets of Kyoto to either grab a bus or walk to a nearby precinct some fellow martial artists had recommended I check out whilst in Kyoto. We ended up walking the whole way (probably about 40 minutes since we were taking our time), with Wifey’s iPhone (still on iOS5 and therefore still with the native Google Maps app) taking care of tracking our way thanks to a cached map of this area in Kyoto, because even with no mobile data, the GPS still kicked in. This eventually lead us to our next destination, the Kyoto Handicraft Centre.

On account of some renovations, the bottom floor of the building was unavailable, which meant the usually-extensive selection on the street level of this complex was not available (the bottom floor of the neighbouring building was the acting substitute, but it was much smaller than the original one). Unperturbed we headed up a few floors to check out things, and were greeted by a large range of regional crafts, including ceramics, lacquerware, dolls, display swords (not suitable for training in kenjutsu or iaido) and one large iaito. Since I had already picked up a small wakizashi-sized iaito in Suidobashi I wasn’t specifically looking for another one, but was curious to see what was there just in case 😉 Looking at the lovely iaoto, due to the size of the sword it wasn’t appropriate to bring back since it wouldn’t fit in the suitcase, but it did look nice 🙂 For those keen on bringing something back, the display sword sets started around ¥8,000 and topped out around ¥13,000; the iaito was around the ¥84,000 mark.

While we were down this end of Kyoto, we also wandered across the road (literally) to visit Tozando, a specialist store for iaito, kendo equipment (shinai and protective gear), kobudo equipment, general training garments (including protector pads and mitts) and on the second floor they had an array of stunning swords and armour, including original antiques from various eras in Japan’s history. For those interested in bringing back an antique sword, you’re looking at investing a huge chunk of cash (and apparently it can be tricky bringing them out of the country as antique swords are considered part of Japan’s history and are thus treated as national treasures), but for the rest of us, simply walking through this area is an amazing experience. Luckily for Wifey, they have the unintended presence of girlfriend/wife/”I dragged along my other half” seats in front of a TV playing a documentary on the second floor that houses their mini-museum of antique pieces, so she sat there while I gushed. Tozando did have some very nice wakizashi iaito, but at this stage I was happy with my purchase from Suidobashi and decided to leave it be. If ever I came back to Japan and was heading to Kyoto though, I suspect I’d probably hit Tozando for another iaito – they’ve had some great reviews amongst other iaido practitioners and the gear looked really nice.

After wandering to the end of the street and grabbing a subway train back to Karasuma-Oike, we stopped off for a quick bite at Caffe Excelsior – I grabbed a beef stew wrap (literally, beef stew goodies/gravy inside a wholemeal wrap lightly toasted) and Wifey enjoyed a Paris Sandwich, which was a delightful roll filled with chicken, a yummy white sauce with fresh mushrooms, and melted Camembert cheese. Next on the list for Day 2 was a short meander up Karasuma-dori to visit another spot of hallowed ground – the Kyoto Manga Museum.

Given anime and manga fanboyisms seem happy to collocate themselves in a gamer’s psyche (I was a gaming nerd before I jumped aboard the anime and manga nerd train in the early-mid 90s), it probably isn’t too surprising this visit was another unforgettable experience. The museum is actually housed within an old Kyoto primary school that was vacated in the mid-90s, and contains an enormous collection of manga in serialised book format, manga in magazine format, displays, artwork and miniature exhibitions. The cool thing is that almost all the manga in book format can be taken off the shelves and read, with the majority of the available books the resulting donation of a commercial manga library run for many years when the owner closed up his business. This means when you’re picking up a copy of Ranma 1/2 or Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon (which I did!), you’re enjoying the same book that was originally printed when the title was released, and the same book has also been through the hands of so many other readers. It’s not just a piece of cultural history, it’s equally a tangible piece of social history as well. The museum actually offers pre-paid passes during the year so if you want to drop in on a regular basis (such as after school or work) to have a read before going home, you can do so and treat it as a reference library of manga.

One of the permanent exhibitions is a room that houses manga in chronological order, from the 50s onwards. Walking around this meant you were also able to see how the magazines have changed, alongside the stylistic evolution of manga over the years. I held original copies of Ranma 1/2, 3×3 Eyes, Berserk, Urusei Yatsura, Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon, Kare Kano, Astro Boy, Ghost in the Shell, You’re Under Arrest, Rurouni Kenshin, the list goes on and on and on. As hyperbolic as this whole thing is, there was a bit of magic nerd in the air that day.

As an extra bonus, the museum’s current special exhibition was one focused on acclaimed anime studio Gainax, who have carved a delightful spot in my nerd heart for the likes of Kare Kano, FLCL, Nadia, Abenobashi and of course, Eva. The exhibition ran over two of their gallery spaces, the focus being to recreate the working studio environment to give visitors an insight to how they create their anime productions from start to finish. This means we’re seeing representations of the staff brainstorming, going through concept phases, animation checks, keyframing, colouring and compositing (showing both the traditional cel methods and contemporary digital methods), recording (dialogue, music and foley) and celebrating the end product (with various members of the studio looking suitably drunk!). This meant I was able to walk through and look at original sketches, keyframes and cells from some of my favourite series’, which is an experience I never thought I would have.

The only disappointing thing was that the museum hadn’t produced a publication to coincide with the Gainax exhibition I could take home with me, but they did have some awesome Astro Boy memorial coins that I picked up 🙂

After finishing up at the museum we went back to Kyoto Station to sort out our Shinkansen tickets for the next leg(s) of the trip, then it was time to hit the tourist buses again to visit Gion!

For those unaware, Gion is the traditional quarter of Kyoto and houses some (ultra expensive) restaurants serving up some amazing cuisine among a variety of traditionally-styled houses and buildings. It’s also the spot where most Westerners would look at and associate with “traditional” conceptions of Japan. One of the reason’s it’s also popular is because it is where you can often spot geisha walking to and from businesses and occasions where their expertise and skills are requested. On the night we were there, Wifey and I happened to catch a glimpse of someone coasting along in their full attire – I think she was a maiko, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to discern from appearance alone if they were an apprentice or a qualified geisha. Regardless, I’ve never seen anyone in traditional geta move across the slippery surface with such poise and speed, so that was cool to see in motion.

Given the cost of eating (and not being as comfortable in my spoken Japanese as I would have liked), the trip to Gion was more about getting a glimpse of the area and walking around. By far my favourite part of the evening though was walking past a middle aged Japanese man having a heated conversation with the person he was standing with about foreigners visiting Gion. Given this was the first and only time I heard a local grumble about foreigners, I was pretty surprised – while a lot of the tourists we saw were reasonably well behaved, there were plenty who could do with brushing up on their manners and learning how to go with the flow a bit better, especially when the human sea phenomenon kicks in.

After enjoying the wander, we went back up the hill to catch the bus back to Kyoto Station, where we grabbed a delicious meal of tonkatsu in all its delightful glory. Bellies full, it was back to the hotel to consolidate our luggage and get ready for the next step of the journey – Hiroshima.

To view all posts on the Japan 2012 Travel Diary, just use the 2012 Japan Trip tag, as the whole series will be added to it over time.