We will leave notes and thoughts from our trip on this page for you!

 

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6/29/07 (Christine's version)

Friday morning

Flight:  very easy.  we only discovered the direct TV at our individual seats about six hours into the flight (an 11 hour marathon).  thank god.  i watched bad action adventures and yelled aloud.  CC elbowed me while sniffling through sappy family dramas.  Food was good - recommendation - order the hindu/indian version before you fly so as not to get stuck with the chicken teriyaki or beef brisket.  yuck.  poor CC.  Emily picked us up at the Kansai Airport - which is VERY COOL - gotta love Renzo Piano - and we took a high-speed train to Kyoto.  The built environment  here is phenominal - all these tall wacky buildings crammed together with occassional rice paddies thrown in.  We passed an amusement park that looked like a space station with a roller coaster popping through the wall.  Ate dinner at the 11th floor of the department store sitting on top of our train station.  YUM noodles.  Then we took the subway to Em's and crashed on the lovely futons that she so kindly acquired for us.  This morning we're having coffee and planning our day.  More updates later. 

 

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6/29/07 (C.C.'s version)

Friday morning

I told Christine I would add my own entry to correct all her lies.  Our flight was very smooth--I'd like to give my girlfriend, Cheryl, a shout-out for touching the ceramic paw of one of those cat sculptures for good travel luck.  The flight was filled with extremely well-behaved Japanese children between the age of 6 and infant.  They sat quietly, watching their personal TV screens' cartoons, and chewed their snacks quietly, and basically acted like what you imagine your kids will be like on your best days.  Christine did watch bad TV; she always watches bad TV.  I shed a few tears during The Namesake, which was based on a novel that I loved, and vowed to call my parents more.  When we arrived, we saw that Emily had grown her hair out.  It looked cute, and she greeted me with, "Ybarra!" in that same Emily voice.  Then the train, the buildings, Christine told you about all that. 

 

Christine and I took turns getting really tired during dinner, until Emily finally brought us home and let us go to sleep on the floor of her cute studio apartment.  (Rental prices are about the same as in LA, in my opinion.)  I discovered that I forgot to pack shorts, so I'm sitting here typing without pants on.  I wanted to explain myself before Christine or Emily started rumors.

 

We're gonna take this town by storm today, Godzilla-style.

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 6/30/07 (C.C.'s version)

Saturday morning

Christine just asked me to update, since I was on Emily's computer checking my work email.  My co-worker told me to quit looking at my work email and have fun, but I actually think that is a VERY BAD IDEA.  Stuff going on at work.

 

Anyway, yesterday Christine and Emily and I had an early lunch at Bon Bon Cafe, which is a French spot on the river and one of Emily's favorite cafes in Kyoto.  Very cute, a rolled-up sheet of paper stuffed in a glass jar served as the menu, written in both French and Japanese.  We ordered little baguette sandwiches and a salad.  Emily and Christine drank capuccinos.  I sipped water and felt superior for not being addicted to caffeine.  I'm a laugh riot at parties.

 

Anyway again, we visited two shrines in the northeast section of Kyoto.  Lots of tourists, mostly Japanese tourists, actually--so they don't look like tourists to C. and me at first glance.  During our walk around the second shrine, the darkened clouds finally broke and poured rain.  I huddled under C.'s umbrella with her.  We hiked up these ancient stone steps and reached one vista, where there was a tiny stream of a waterfall.  Lovely.  Emily talked about the belief in mountaintop devils, demons, and ghosts, which is strong in (even current) Japanese society.

 

We took the bus to Kyoto Station, which has a department store and restaurants.  On the bus, Christine made friends with a Japanese man in his mid-50s or so who has visited the US three times.  He invited her to view his rice paddies, which are an hour outside of Kyoto.  I think he was just being friendly.  We shopped at the department store-ish Uni-Qlo (Emily says it's the equivalent of Old Navy) and finally bought me some shorts and umbrella.

 

Dinner was pork cutlets, so tasty and very reasonably priced.  The stuff here is totally reasonably priced, don't believe the hype.  Or maybe it's hanging out with frugal Emily.

 

Today we're visitng the southern section of Kyoto, still touristy, still lots of shrines and temples.  Emily gives good lecture; we're hearing a lot of history.  The weather is in the 80s, humid, with sun and then rain and then sun.  Very live-able and not oppressive.  Once again, don't believe the weather hype, which makes you think July is the worst time ever to visit.

 

Also bought small gifts for Sarabeth (Christine) and Cheryl (C.C.)  They'll see them when we get back!

 

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6/30/07 (Christine)

Sunday morning

 

Yesterday (Saturday) was awesome.  We walked from Emily's to brunch along a major street, passing the Imperial Palace and Kyoto University along the way.  Numerous bicyclists nearly ran us down several times.  They ride on the sidewalk with the pedestrians and the sidewalks are not very wide.  Most of them do have bells which is helpful.  Several of the young ladies wore long gloves while cycling to protect their skin from the sun.  It was a strange sight.  We also saw a lady wearing a darth vador visor while cycling.  The best I comparison I can offer is like a motorcyle helmet visor, without the helmet.  Again, quite an odd sight, but one that Emily says is relatively common.  I had a killer nicoise salad at the japanese french cafe.  Then we crossed the kamogawa river and i had a total urban planning moment - in class last year one group used this section of the kamogawa river as a model for redeveloping the LA river.  it was a strange moment trying to place why and where i know this part of this foreign river. the section we were at was a confluence of two rivers and there was a stone walking path across the river made out of large boulders with flattened tops.  Apparrently the buddhist monks from the 11th - mid 16th centuries used to come down the nearby mountain, cross the river, and leave shinto gods in the emperor's yard as a way to extract favors.  Only religious figures were allowed to move gods, so the emperors would pay off the monks to take the shinto god away.  Then in the mid-16th century one of the emperors torched the monestary up in the mountains (there were something like 3000 temples up in the hills - the center of tendo buddhism - and all were burned down!).

 

Then we walked and walked and walked to various temples and shrines.  Temples:  Buddhist.  Shrines:  Shinto.  Saw carp in the many streams along the way, and also got to look at the aqueduct by the nanzenji temple.  It was amazing.  Rounded out the day by riding the bus and shopping and eating fried pork cutlets for dinner.  Prices are great - Emily has been great giving us tips and advice and taking us to various fun shops.  I did get Sarabeth a present that is totally hipster Japanese. 

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 7/1/07 (Christine)

Sunday morning

 

CC and I have been waking up early.  Way earlier than our lovely hostess, in fact.  Generally we sit around and read our books and snack on breakfast type foods.  Emily doesn't have a drip coffee maker and I am afraid to use the last coffee filter in the old fashioned boil & filter method in case I mess up and then we have no filter for when Em actually wakes up and does it right.  But I'm getting a little desperate...

 

Yesterday (Saturday) was another excellent day.  We took a subway (Kyoto has 2 different subway COMPANIES) to the Gion district and had a noodle lunch.  The Gion area is home to traditional Geisha theaters and tons of shopping.  We saw many Geisha-in-training walking around the area in kimonos and full makeup and white socks with wooden flip flops.  They were regularly stopped by Japanese tourists (and the occassional gringo) for photos.  Kind of how young kids take pictures with Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.  Very strange.  Emily told us that a full on silk kimono with all the appropriate accessories costs about $1000.  And most women don't know how to put them on, so if you do own one you will often go to a special shop and pay someone to dress you properly.  Traditionally women wear kimonos at their coming of age parties (20 years old), at college graduation, and at their wedding.  There is a cotton version of the kimono that is coming back into style also for younger women.

 

Lunch was great - noodle soup.  I wish I could eat noodles every day.  I had a beef curry udon that was delicious.  CC had a fish udon that was also very good.  I will try to order that today.  :)  For dinner we went to a sushi buffet (www.sushinomusashi.com) where you the sushi went past us on little plates on a conveyor belt.  Everyone sits side by side around a rotunda.  Inside the rotunda are four of five sushi chefs who plate up different things and set them on the conveyor which then goes around in circles.  Each plate had between 1 and 4 pieces of sushi and cost 110Yen (about $0.90).  It was excellent.  There was horse sushi but I did not try it.  Still, I managed to stuff myself silly and have a beef for about $12.  Did I mention that I love the food here?

 

After dinner, we sat on the banks of the river and had dessert from Sta-bu (Starbucks).  The city has paved the river with medium sized stones, about the size of a basketball,  to help control flooding.  It's gorgeous, and so much more natural looking than what the Army Corps of Engineers has done to most of the US urban rivers that they got their hands on.  Both sides of the river have asphalt paths for walking, bicyling, running, etc.  The river walk was packed with people last night.  We got to see (and hear) a hippy dippy drum circle going across the river.  They were providing music (if you can call it that) for a fire-spinning show!  Did you know that my building manager is a fire-spinner?  It was very odd to imagine those folks were like my landlady.  She spins fire in the driveway... they spin fire along the Keihan River.  Strange. 

 

Today we are going to visit the monkeys near Amanohashidate.  Hopefully CC will give you a more thorough update on the cultural events of our day.

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 7/1/07 (C.C.)

Sunday morning

 

I was interested in attending Emily's English-language Episcapalean church with her this morning, where worship music is provided by an expat who plays the flute or the hurdy-gurdy (how great does that sound?).  But the service starts at 8:30 am, and Emily realized last night she was too tired to be ready that early.  So we all slept in, which for Christine and me means we woke up after 8.  Actually, our jet lag is improving, since we were still awake when my digital travel clock struck midnight last night.

 

Yesterday was fun--the narrow streets surrouding the Syaska shrine, dedicated to the patron saint of the geisha, was packed with tourists and small, delicate,  medium-priced tourist items.  Gorgeous textiles, cloth decorated with traditional Japanese images or just cute designs, are sold at most shops here.  Emily admitted that she used to hate the cute little Japanese girls who walked around carrying decorated cloths to blot their brows, but after this summer she gets it.  Now she has her own little cloth.

 

The Kiyomizu temple crawled with tourists, including school groups.  Very beautiful ceremony going on as we watched.  We put our shoes into plastic bags provided outside the temple, which you carried with you; when you walk back outside, you take your shoes out and stuff the bags back into a wooden box, where the next tourists grab their plastic bags.

 

Another temple was dedicated to a god of love, whose messenger is a large rabbit.  We watched a traditional-looking ceremony in which white-clad men walked through a bamboo-woven hoop, and a large group of tourists followed.  Emily explained ths superstition / belief that if you touch this one rock with your eyes closed, then walk with your eyes still closed to a second rock about 40 feet away, then made your way back, your love wish will come true.  Two school-age girls were holding hands with their eyes closed and doing the walk.  An older guy, obviously their teacher, was laughing and giving them tips aloud, I'm sure something like, "Walk to the left! Be careful!  OK, turn a little right!"  It was pretty hilarious.

 

After temple-hopping, we ended up in a downtown section of Kyoto, Sanjo (translation = 3rd St, just like Third St. Promenade in Santa Monica).  Emily related that she heard on some news story, "Sanjo is a tough neighborhood after dark; watch yourself after 10 pm."  After walking through the shopping crowds, visiting a beautiful Benneton store, and picking up drinks at Starbucks (Starbu) before sitting on the river to watch the fire-tossers, we were unconvinced.  It was a yuppie neighborhood, more than anything else.  At the river, a stylish young couple in their 20s sat down near us.  The young man had a guitar in his lap.  He started to strum and you could hear snatches of music while we sat, listening to the water run over the basketball-sized rocks.  Christine said, "This might be the nicest place I've ever visited."

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7/1/07

We've posted some photos (9 of them, to be precise).  Still figuring out how to use Flickr.

Check us out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46974299@N00/ 

 

***MORE PHOTOS***

We've now posted our complete photo album via flickr.

Check us out (new address):  http://tinyurl.com/yrx3sf

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7/1/07 (Christine)

Sunday

 

One word: MONKEYS!

 

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7/2/07 (Christine)

 

Monday

 

Today we took a 2.5 hour express train to Amanohashidate on the "Japan" Sea.  (Emily suggested the quotations - there are apparently tensions with the Koreans and Chinese about the actual name of the body of water - whatever it is, it's on Japan's eastern seaboard.)  Amanohashidate is the site of an oooold Shinto shrine and is one of three pilgrimmage sites that all Japanese are supposed to visit at least once in their lives.  There is a 4 kilometer sandbar running across the bay that joins two mountains.  Really, they're two rather large and beautiful hills.  We rented bicycles and rode across the sandbar on a sand and gravel path, toured through a very quaint seaside town, and parked at the bottom of a big hill.  sort of like we were going to a Shinto amusement park.  We walked past a snapping turtle 'exhibit' that had several turtles caged into a small area with turtle statues and a small pool.  It was awesome.  Reminded me of when I was young and would catch boxing turtles with my next door neighbor and build them a cage, with a little muddy hollowed out "pond", behind the wellhouse. 

 

Today's highlights:  1) The single person chairlift from the bottom of the hill to the top.  The chairs were in bright primary colors and did not have seatbelts!  We took off our flip-flops so as not to lose them on the way up.  I bounced the chair line a bit and Emily yelped.  Apparently there was a sign right about then (in Japanese) instructing one NOT to bounce the chairs.  Oops.  2) Climbing to the higher observatory and catching a glimpse of the true Japan sea off in the distance.  3)  The older Japanese ladies bending over at the observatory and looking at the sandbar upside down in between their legs.  There are lots of signs that suggest this view.  It apparently makes the sandbar look like a "bridge to heaven."  4)  Pulling my own soft-serve at the concession stand.  I thought maybe we were supposed to pay at the lower observatory, on the honor system.  Turns out the fellow minding the shop was in the back.  Oops.  5) Riding our bicycles back across the sandbar in the pouring rain while holding our umbrellas.  You hold the umbrella in one hand and steer with the other.  By the time we got back to the bike shop my hand was cramping and we were still soaked.  6)  Turning in our bikes and walking out of the shop to find the rain had stopped.  7) Finally getting the point of my book.  I'm 10 pages from the end.  It's a sci-fi action adventure and has only just made sense.

 

Emily has a washer/dryer that is a single unit.  Apparently in most apartments you can hang the laundry to dry over the bathtub and turn on a special built-in heater fan to speed the process.  Not in her current apartment because it is cheaper construction.  However, you can hook the washer up to the bathtub to use the tub water as the wash water.  A traditional shower/bath involves washing outside the tub, then soaking while clean in the tub.  So efficient!  We have neither showered nor bathed this evening so the water is straight from the tap.

 

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 7/3/07 (Christine)

Monday

 

We took the Bullet Train (called the Shinkansen) from Kyoto to Tokyo.  2.5 hours to go about 320 miles.  It was FAST. FURIOUS.  FUN.  Actually we slept most of the trip so I don`t know how much fun it was.  We tried to see Mt. Fuji but the weather did not cooperate.  Landed in Toyko around 6 pm, called our Tokyo host, Mark, and went to meet him at his office in the neighborhood of Roopongii Hills.  There is a large spider sculpture out in the plaza in front of his building, and a Le Corbusier (famous Urban Planner/architect) exhibit going on in the museum attached to the plaza.  Unfortunately the movie theater there was not playing TRANSFORMERS.  :(   Transformers is on our list of THINGS TO DO WHILE IN JAPAN.

 

Mark is great, a big guy with stacks of muscles and short curly hair.  He grew up in SF, went to Davis, and moved to Japan after college to teach English.  Then he worked for Bloomberg and now Lehmen Brothers (in operations).  CC knows Cheryl who knows Mark from her roommate during college.  Mark just got back to Japan from a vacation in San Francisco and so has jetlag, poor chap.  He did take us out to a great korean bbq place where we got good and drunk on sake (I wrote the brand name down, Jody) and sho chu.  We also ate no less than 5 or 6 lbs of meat, grilled at the table.  YUM.  Took a cab home and did you know that the cab doors open automatically?  CC got some great pictures and we will post them sooner or later.

 

Mark`s apartment is in the V tower building connected to the Shinagawa train station in Tokyo.  It`s a 10 min walk from the station exit to his high rise mansion (what they call condos here).  He just moved in about 3 months ago and the building is about 3 years old.  It`s about the size of a NY apartment - 1 main bedroom, smallish; 1 guest bedroom, tiny; living room and tiny kitchen that opens onto living room; a patio the length of the living room and bedroom; and a killer bathroom.  The toilet is in its own room, and has all the fixin`s - heated seat, 3 types of bidet, heavy and light flush control.  Also a nice innovation is the way the toilet has a faucet built into the top so you can wash your hands after you flush, and the water drains into the tank for the next fluch.  There`s also a regular sink in a separate washroom, and a hermetically sealed shower room that includes a tub and a standup shower.  You`re supposed to shower in the main part of the room, then fill up the tub with hot water and soak in it while you`re clean.  It`s quite civilized.  Afterwards you hang your towel in there and a special fan runs for a couple of hours to dry everything off.  I love the bathroom.

 

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7/4/07 (Christine)

Tuesday

 

We failed in our quest to see Transformers.

We ate Indian for dinner and it was a strange experience ordering - coins into an ordering machine outside the door, buttons for the food you want, inside give tickets to the waiter, waiter brings out the food.  Food was damn good.  I was able to order another glass of water entirely in Japanese:

  Shimasen (excuse me)

   misa mo (another water)

    ku da sai shimas (if you please)

 

Now we`re in an internet cafe and trying not to miss the last subway back to Mark`s.

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  Friends, Please keep leaving comments - Amy you are great!  That first one is actually from Jody.  :)

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7/5/07 (C.C.)

 

Happy 4th of July, everybody!  (All 4 of our readers.)  You are anywhere from 16-18 hours behind Tokyo, so it is still Independence Day in your honorable country.

 

Mark, who we`re staying with, just left for work at Lehman.  We chatted for a few minutes about our wandering yesterday in Harajuku and Shinjuku.  Harajuku is a Tokyo neighborhood described in every guidebook as `the center of youth culture and cutting-edge fashion!`.  I kept wishing they would leave the exclamation points !!! out.  Gwen Stefani has a song called Harajuku Girls, featuring backup singers dressed like Tokyo club kids.  Like any hipster neighborhood, Harajuku featured lots of young men in ironic American T-shirts and ripped jeans, and lots of young women in in femmey print shirts and high heels.  The small shops had cute clothes and accessories, but prices were about what you`d find in LA or New York.  After an excellent curry soup lunch, we drifted away from the small shops on the small alleyways into the major boulevards, where major stores like Brooks Brothers and Tiffany & Co. line the streets.  A few dogs dressed in coats walked past us; one had barettes in her hair.  Harajuku dogs.

 

We took the Yamanote train back home, read for 30 minutes, then left to find a movie theater in Shinjuku.  This Tokyo neighborhood was euphemistically called `a major entertainment center` in our guidebook. Shinjuku is distinguished by flashing neon signs, tons of bars and restaurants, punctuated by an ocean of people and umbrellas.  Navigating sidewalks in Shinjuku involved pushing through throngs of people who are polite, stylish, and in a hurry--most of them wielding umbrellas.  Since early July is the tail-end of the rainy season, some jostling and bumping can result in what Christine calls`umbrella wars.`  Since we are such obvious foreigners (Christine is tall, I am dark, we both had American shoes on), the battles were pretty mild.

 

This morning Mark laughed when I told him about visiting Shinjuku.  `You went to the red-light district!` he said.  `If you`re a guy walking through there, you get hassled by these guys in cheap suits, shouting for you to come inside their seedy bars.`  I told him, `We did walk past that one video store...with booths...`

 

After hitting an internet cafe, we walked back to the JR train station.  All trains quit running at midnight.  For such a major metropolis, you might think the trains would run later.  We dove into the crowd at Shinjuku station and rode to Shinagawa, where Mark lives.  In the train Christine admired everyone`s haircuts, which are incredibly stylish here.  A gentleman in his mid-50s with a shock of white hair had a fabulous haircut that would look great on anybody; he had on a nice suit and carried a beautiful umbrella.  At Shinagawa station, panic set in; people started dashing across the station floor, trying to make their final connection, and we remembered Emily`s description of unfortunate train-missers who sleep all night on the floors of major stations.  The noise seemed turned up a notch, as people walked briskly before breaking into a run.  I pulled out my clock, which was set to international time, and it read:

 

0:00

 

`Midnight,` I told Christine, holding up the clock.

 

We walked back in silence, detouring slightly so we could walk through the trees planted outside Mark`s V-tower building.  It was almost ghostly empty.  Rain had become fog.  One man stood outside in the hazy lights, watching his three little dogs--Pomeranians?--trot around the courtyard.