A Saturday of Sightseeing

Last weekend most of the JCMU took a field trip to Nara to see two of the primary temples in the city. July seems to be the hottest month here, and we were fortunate to have an air conditioned coach. This was the second time I rode on a chartered coach here, and both times the coaches had chandelier like crystals from the ceiling along with mirrors. I was informed that the reason for the gaudy decorations is that sometimes the coaches are rented for drinking parties. The trip to Nara took a few hours, and I fell in and out of sleep. My friend Steve is adamant to take as many pictures as he could, and every so often I would wake up to him shouting in surprise at finding a particularly nice shot. The drive to Nara was the first time I saw vast Japanese forests. The hillsides were wild and covered in pines.

About halfway between Hikone and Nara our two JCMU coaches stopped at a highway rest station. I made my way into the huge bathroom facility to find only two western toilets. Many of the Japanese bathrooms have one western toilet and one traditional trough in the floor. Besides the oddity that causes the environmentally conscious bathroom planners neglect to install towel dispensers. I was lucky to find a useful air blower to dry my hands, but I have noticed that many Japanese carry handkerchiefs with them to use.

The first temple we stopped at was the Todai-Ji temple. The grounds surrounding the temple are home to sacred Sika deer. Hawkers sell special crackers to feed to the deer. This is a bad idea. I watched one of my classmates surrounded by hungry deer which actually hopped into the air to grab the crackers from her. Steve conned a deer into running in a circle after him to get a cracker, but his plan was foiled by another group of deer. Our student services coordinator had her itinerary eaten by one of the deer.

The Todai-Ji is a large complex of temples and monasteries. As we made our way to the Great Buddha Hall, the group came upon a sight rather out of place. A group of Mexican high school students was performing dances in traditional Mexican costumes before one of the closed gates to the Great Buddha Hall. The whole sight was rather surreal and truly out of place. The Great Buddha Hall is home to a colossal Buddha statue. Entering the temple, surrounded by the smell of incense, is an awe inspiring experience. The hall is dimly lit, and the smell of wood and incense permeates the whole building. After leaving the Todai-Ji we walked around the nearby streets, bought some curry for lunch and then headed out to the second temple on our trip.

The second and last temple we visited was the Horyu-Ji, also in Nara. The temple was commissioned by the legendary Prince Shotoku and one of the buildings in the complex is an air conditioned museum displaying artifacts over a thousand years old. The grounds are immaculate; while we were there an army of attendants were sweeping paths and tending to the grounds. The Horyu-Ji is a sprawling complex of buildings, and walking through them gives a taste of a much older architectural style.

Our coach left the heat of Nara and made an hour long trek into Kyoto. I got out at Kyoto station, and a few of our number made their way inside to travel to Osaka. A group of JCMU ladies jumped into two cabs and headed to the Gion district to see the apprentice geisha, the maiko, who walk around the streets wearing gorgeous kimonos. Jason, Nathan, Scott and I planned on going shopping in Terumachi. The director of the JCMU, Dr. Reagan, accompanied us to Kyoto and the five of us grabbed cheeseburgers on the eleventh floor of the Kyoto station before Dr. Reagan translated our directions to a cab driver and saw us off.

I visited Terumachi street covered arcade before, but with a different group of friends. Nathan was looking for a pair of shoes, and we went into some rather wild shops until he found a pair of blue and green Puma sneakers. The shops in Terumachi are a neat assortment, and I regret that I wasn’t able to make it into the English language bookstore on this particular trip. I’m halfway into a book I purchased on the last outing, a translation of a historical fiction written about samurai. “The Samurai Banner of Furin Kazan” has proved to be a quick read. Terumachi Street was half closed when we arrived, so after moving through a few other arcades we made our way into Gion.

The four of us walked along ‘Third Avenue’, Sanjo, into Gion. The streets are packed with trendy Japanese bar hopping and listening to street performers. The musicians on the streets bring out amplifiers and blast pop music at small crowds of admirers in an attempt to land a recording contract. The Gion bars didn’t appeal to us that night, so we walked along the Kamo River, beers in hand. The sidewalk next to the Kamo is really a wide pedestrian boulevard packed with people at night. We sat down on the banks to drink and chat. A Korean businessman who knew English talked to Jason for a while. A group of performers setup nearby, and we watched them dance while twirling burning spheres of pitch on chains around their bodies accompanied by drumming.

After watching the fire dancing we found a small street full of people and walked back to the station to catch the last train. The street that ran parallel to the river had a few bars along it, and the patrons walked down the street dressed up in riotous clubbing attire. One bar had a stuffed bear in the window holding a sign reading: “My name is beer. Come on a my house.”

On the train ride back to Hikone we found a man passed out on the floor of the car we were in. At first I was worried, but once he started snoring we decided he would be fine. The passengers stepped over him and shared a laugh, and a conductor woke him when our express stopped at Yasu and we changed to a local.