First two days in Kyoto

Yesterday the kids nixed the plan to go up Kyoto tower, and so we went to the Kyoto international Manga Museum instead. It turns out the place is realllly quiet during the week -- many of the more interactive exhibits that might be interesting to the kids seem to only take place on weekends and national holidays. Phooey! Since most of the books in the museum are in Japanese, we took a brief look around at the displays and gift shop, then moved on since it was time for lunch.

Lunch yesterday was our first experience of real, Japanese ramen. Calum was pretty excited about this since he loves the anime "Naruto" and the main character in that cartoon is a huge ramen fan. Ramen from a restaurant here is very different from the packaged, instant variety that we've had from the grocery store before. It comes in a huge bowl with real broth, and in addition to noodles you get meat, vegetables, and half of a hard-boiled egg floating in your broth. It is truly delicious. You eat the noodles and other stuff with chopsticks (it's customary to slurp the noodles loudly, to show your appreciation for the food) and then you pick up the bowl and drink the broth. My ramen came with a small side dish of rice with fatty tuna (aka "toro"). Oddly, this delicacy seems to usually come in a ground-up form here in Japan. It tastes good that way, but it looks way too much like raw ground beef for my liking.

After lunch we went hunting for an English-language bookstore we had heard about, since Calum has started reading the manga "One Piece" while we're here. Giving him a new book is always a guarantee of some prolonged silence so the quest for his books is always worthwhile. On our way to the bookstore, we stopped in at one of the local department stores; like its counterpart in Hiroshima, it had a huge basement full of food delights, so we came away with a cheesecake and some fresh fruit. As we continued walking toward the bookstore, we found ourselves in a large shopping arcade on a street called Teramachi-dori. The covered shopping arcade seems to be a fixture in Japanese cities -- we've seen them in every place we have stopped so far, and they contain a wonderful variety of shops that often seem to cater more to the locals than to tourists (hence the prices are fairly reasonable).

To get to the downtown area of Kyoto from the train station, which is near where we are staying, we decided to take a city bus. It seems that the system here is that you get onto the bus from the back door, and exit from the front; you pay the driver as you are leaving, based on which zone of the city you are in. The price is displayed on an electronic board at the front of the bus, which also shows the upcoming stop name in both Japanese and English. It's quite a handy system, yet another example of the famous Japanese efficiency.

After our shopping afternoon, we were thoroughly exhausted, so we took a taxi back to the hotel and sat around watching Japanese television. I could write a whole post on this subject alone; it's every bit as fun and unusual as I've heard. Everything from the commercials to the programs themselves have a quirky Japanese flavour to them; for instance, the weather forecasts feature lists of cities, temperatures and pictures of clouds, suns, etc just like the ones at home, but in the background while this is being displayed you see various scenes of the outdoors accompanied by peppy music, sometimes with high-pitched, childish sounding vocals. The first time we saw this, it took us a while to clue in that we were actually watching a weather forecast!

Yesterday's dinner was yet another Italian-Japanese affair, although we've now decided not to have any more Italian food; three times in one week does seem like a lot until you consider that we've been on a very restricted dining-out regime for the past couple of years, due to the gluten- and dairy- free thing I mentioned in the last post. Anyway, the restaurant is across from the ramen place we went to for lunch, and we had noticed it because of their display of plastic food in the window (yet another quirky Japanese custom -- almost every restaurant has a large variety of incredibly realistic plastic versions of their dishes in the window, to attract potential customers). This particular plastic-food display featured a rather generous selection of sundaes, floats and even a massive layered sundae-type dessert in a 2-litre juice pitcher.

On closer inspection, we discovered that the Japanese have some very interesting ideas about good sundae ingredients. For instance, each and every one of the ones at this restaurant contains corn flakes. Many also contain sweet red beans, which in my opinion is a bit of an acquired taste for Westerners. We ordered the strawberry parfait, which contained a few pieces of fresh strawberry, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, some whipped cream, canned peaches and a generous layer of corn flakes. Mmm, I love breakfast cereal in my desserts!

Did you notice how I said that there were only a few actual pieces of strawberry in the dessert? I've discovered that fruit here is very very expensive. The first couple of days of our trip, I found myself grumbling about the lack of fresh produce made available in our meals. This was before I visited a store that sold such things. I couldn't believe how much they were charging for simple things like a box of strawberries or a half-dozen peaches. I saw mangoes and melons for $30 apiece. Two peaches cost us $10. A small bag of cherries costs around $5-6. A large apple costs over a dollar. It's no wonder that so many Japanese people prefer to focus on eating rice and fish, since those are so plentiful and inexpensive around here.

This is already getting to be a ridiculously long post and I haven't even written about what we did today. I'll try not to ramble so much.

This morning dawned sunny and warm, so we decided to take a train out to Nara, which is a small city not too far from Kyoto which features a large number of interesting temples and historic sites. Unfortunately, we didn't time our journey very well for the rapid service trains, and ended up on a local service train which stops at every single one of the 20 or so stops between Kyoto station and Nara. Oh well - we got a chance to look at more of the beautiful Japanese countryside.

Nara's most famous sight is the Todai-ji temple, the largest wooden structure in the world and home to one heck of a large buddha statue. While we enjoyed looking at the temple, the experience of getting there and back and being around all the other sightseers was unforgettable in itself. You see, there were about fifty million Japanese high school and middle school students also visiting Todai-ji today. They all wore their adorable uniforms (in the case of the high school students) and bright yellow caps, and the leader of each group held up a colourful flag as a guide for the rest of the group. I just love Japanese schoolchildren so far. They are polite, funny and more inhibited than their North American counterparts - thus far less obnoxious, at least when out in public.

Anyway - there I go, rambling again. We loved the temple. The approach is somewhat hidden by trees and buildings, so as you walk toward it you gradually see more of the gate, an impressive monument in itself, and then as you approach the gate you gradually see the temple beyond. But it's not till you actually enter the temple grounds that you can see the building properly, in all its enormousness. Click the link above if you want a picture, but of course a photo does not do it justice. Once you get inside, almost the entire building is taken up by the massive Buddha statue I mentioned. It's painted gold all over, and is sitting behind a rather massive and beautiful buddhist altar, which has a monk presiding over it at all times.

When you go around behind the statue, one of the wooden posts holding up the building has a sort of tunnel cut through it. The story goes that it is the same size as the buddha statue's nostrils, and that if you can fit through the Buddha's nostril, you can achieve enlightenment. Calum got into the line of giggling schoolchildren and took his turn proving his potential for enlightenment, then proceeded to ask me what exactly "enlightenment" is. I swallowed my laughter and then gave him the short answer.

After we visited the temple, I suddenly noticed that ominous grey clouds had moved in above. Hmm. Seems like the weather here is changeable and once again we had not come prepared with umbrellas. Clearly, we are not very good representatives of Vancouver at all - that's twice in one week. This time, however, we were near some souvenir shops which helpfully featured inexpensive plastic umbrellas for 350 or 450 yen, so we bought a couple (Megan decided to tough it out with her fleece hoodie) and spent a delightful hour looking at the souvenir shops which line the approach to Todai-ji.

I nearly forgot to mention one of the most charming things about our visit to Nara. Most of the temples and other important sites in the city are situated in a large park, which is home to a large number of very tame deer. For 150 yen, you can buy a package of senbei (round, flat crackers about the same size as a doughnut) to feed to the deer. They are persistent, but extremely sweet animals who are quite happy for you to pet them in between bites of cracker. The kids bought quite a few packages of crackers. :-)

I have so much more that I could write about, but the 45 minutes I paid for are almost up and I have no more 100-yen coins in my pocket!