Kyoto Kimonos and Tall Americans

Alright, so, back from Kyoto and still a little tired two days later. I'm the kind of guy that, when I go on vacation, I just have a few ideas for things I'd like to do or places I'd like to go. The order doesn't matter and it's fun to do random stuff in between. Naoko is... apparently not so much. She showed up at my place the night before we left with a guide book and an hour-by-hour itinerary (okay, not quite that detailed, but close). I have since been informed by numerous people that this is the standard for Japanese women. It wasn't bad or anything, just tiring. LOTS of walking.

As always, I'm cutting out A LOT of pictures here. More than normal. Way more. Between Naoko and myself, we came back with about 850 pictures. They're not all here. Deal. I spent about 2 hours cherry picking these ones, and that's way more time than I wanted to spend. Not spending more time.

So, we left Sunday morning at some ungodly hour like 7 AM. I can't be bothered to remember these details. Oddly enough, I dealt with it better than Naoko. She slept for most of the train ride while I listened to music and watched gorgeous scenery. Her loss. She also had her first-ever tuna sandwich courtesy of me madre. Oh yeah, I also managed to do this on the shinkansen.

The baggage racks are really damn low and my head makes a loud sound when it slams into them while I'm trying to sit down. This bump will be a recurring reminder of my clumsiness throughout these photos. As a side note, here's another reason Naoko is awesome: she completely plays along with my random weirdness.  We joked around after this happened about how I was going to tell everyone I got it in a fight with five yakuza, and it only happened because I headbutted the last one. After that, I nicknamed the wound "Yakuza" and started referring to it by name. She went along with it without even skipping a beat. Seriously. I nicknamed a cut on my forward and she didn't even blink twice. Most of my friends don't even do that.

After getting off the train in Kyoto, we immediately got on a local train and went to our first stop. This is a good time to mention that I don't remember the names of half of these places. Naoko took me there, I just followed her and stared at stuff. I have no freaking clue how she got this picture. This place was packed as hell, and all of my pictures have at least one person. Obviously she's magic.

See? Always at least one person. >.>

Saw this and thought to myself "huh, I've never really seen a formation like this before. I have two soil scientists for parents that probably occasionally read this thing, maybe they'd like it?" So, is it actually something interesting, or did I take a picture of nothing special?

People actually live at this place. How insane is that? It took us like 40 minutes to walk to this point, what kind of poor mailman has to deliver to these people?

Oh no, Naoko is being squashed!

I could totally do this guy's job.

Apparently you can buy these snakes and put them in your sake to gain energy. In retrospect, I have no fucking clue why I didn't buy one. Obviously I'm an idiot.

Next, we got back on a train and went to a magical town called Arashiyama. This place is gorgeous, and I quite literally lost my breath when I first stepped off the train. I want to live there so bad. Except that there's about a million tourists there at all times apparently. I still want to live there.

After fighting our way through the crowds, we headed along a bamboo path to go to a garden and a temple. The place was once again full of people, but Naoko managed to be magic again. It's hard to see the path because she had to raise her camera above everyone's head to get the shot :(

I actually wasn't supposed to take this picture. Pictures were not allowed. In my defense, the sign saying this was facing away from the entrance on the opposite side of the room. I still feel kinda bad though. This was a huge painting on the ceiling, and apparently the eyes look at you no matter what part of the room you stand in. Naoko was amazed by this. I remember a cardboard cutout from an action movie that my friend Jimmy had when I was a kid doing the same thing, so I wasn't quite as impressed.

Some of the train stations there were pretty tiny. I though this one was small at the time, but later I saw one that literally let people off on a tiny cement divider in the middle of a busy street. WTF Japan?

We were supposed to go to Kinkakuji that day, but we ran out of time. One of my students that went to college in Kyoto said that evening is the best time to go there, so I was a little bummed, but whatever. Instead, we went to our hotel, which was a traditional Japanese style inn! 

I got to rest my feet for all of five minutes before Naoko said we were going to a castle to see everything lit up at night. It was actually really beautiful, but most of our pictures turned out like crap. Lots of cherry trees and all that.

This was like a VIP cafe on the castle grounds or something. I just like the green glow of the bamboo.

On the way back we got some food from what was essentially a bar (over 6,000 fucking yen for the meal. Most expensive bar food ever). One of our cooks/waiters made some awesome chopstick-holder origami for us.

After that it was time for a hot bath then sleep... the futons were a little bit short for me :( Naoko found this hilarious.

And now a breakfast in the life of Thomas, brought to you by Naoko's crazy ability to notice every weird face I make and demand I make it again for a picture.

Insane amounts of free breakfast food provided by the ryokan ain't got nothin on me. You're goin down, breakfast!

Oh god, why would you even pickle a plum? Umeboshi? More like Asseboshi. You're eating this stuff, Naoko.

Second wind, it's comeback time!

Damn you, last piece of tofu when I'm really full and still a little sick to my stomach from that awful umeboshi! PS - I totally ate it. Victory was mine.

Oh yeah, this was the front of our ryokan.

Suddenly, Kinkakuji! Naoko insisted that we go on Monday because I was sad about not going the day before.

This was pretty much THE spot for group photos. I think I saw about a half dozen other groups take a picture here.

Afterwards, we had some ice cream! Naoko convinced me to try green tea and vanilla mix, and I regretted it just as much as I knew I would. Oh well.

Then it was off to another temple/garden area that I don't remember the name of. It was one of the many places that we couldn't take pictures for most of. Large parts of it were closed anyway. Except for one of the buildings where we payed 400 yen a piece (about 5 bucks each) to walk around a "zen garden" that consisted of one building and a bunch of closed-off areas...

Then another bus ride! I couldn't stop laughing at this advertisement that I saw. Naoko doesn't understand why I think it's creepily hilarious. 

We got REALLY bored on the bus... it was also way hotter than a bus has a right to be. So was the train on the ride back home. Very uncomfortable.

After lunch, we went to that shop Naoko found that would let us play dress-up in kimonos. I'm still a little bit embarrassed about this, but whatever. Also not crazy about the color of mine, but it was literally all they had that would fit me. That's understandable. It's Japan and I'm a freaking giant.

I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so... yeah, this is about as generic "Japan" as you can get. Except for the tall white guy.

First stop after kimono dress-up was Kyomizu-dera. Of course, it was super, super crowded. Even on a Monday afternoon. No chance of no-people pictures here.

A very nice old couple took our picture for us.

And another dude did as well. I actually almost ran into him (literally) again about a half hour later. Also, I noticed at least one person taking our picture when they thought we weren't looking and Naoko noticed another as well... that's just uncomfortable ><

Yes, that's an Obama mask. Apparently they love Obama here.

Look at the cute tanuki family. I love how the baby also has giant balls.

Your information? Get your own damn map, loser!

Oh wait, you have a Naoko. Never mind.

Indubitably, good samurai. As a side note (har har pun), why the hell is this picture sideways? I didn't save it that way. On the same topic, the weird bus picture was taken upside down, but is rightside up here. THIS IS ALL WRONG OH NO! >.> 

Hey look, it's me in an arch at a little temple we went to towards the end of the day. There was a giant statue nearby, but the place was closed :(

This is easily one of my favorite pictures that I have ever taken.

Running out of things to say... so tired... must sleep...

Around this time, it started raining. You can see that the left side of me is kind of wet. That'd be because we didn't have an umbrella at this point, and had to run from awning to awning until we found a place to buy a tiny umbrella that was not big enough to cover both of us fully. Since I was holding the umbrella, this meant that Naoko stayed dry and my left sleeve looked like I had just walked through a crowd of fourteen-year-old girls that just found out Justin Bieber died. (Haha, history joke that nobody will understand mixed with pop culture! Damn, I'm awesome!)

Even though we had an hour or two to spare, the rain kind of put a damper (har har, pun number two) on our plans, so we looked around at the stores in the station for a bit. This particular shirt gave me no end of joy. Not only does it consist of nothing but lyrics to a mediocre rock song, it's got all kinds of Engrish. Excellent.

These heads moved back and forth. They were mesmerizing. And hilarious. That one too. Not pictured: the 11th story food court (why the fuck was it on the top floor?) with restaurants in the 8,000 yen ($100 a dish price range). We ate at a much cheaper place.

And that's it. Left at 7 AMish on Sunday, got back at 1 AMish on Tuesday. Damn that was a long trip. and a long post. I'm tired. Sleepy soon. But first, random shit!:

1.) Carrying a heavy backpack all around Kyoto for a full day is not fun. My shoulders are still tied up in all kinds of knots from that.

2.) This trip really drove home for me how much I hate large groups of people. I had a great time on this trip, and I was certainly impressed by many things I saw, but nothing except the location of Arashiyama actually connected with me, and even that was only the non-tourist part. It all just felt so... artificial. There was no sense of spirituality or history at the shrines and temples, just tourists and the shops that cater to them. In terms of connecting to the locations, I got much more out of my random walks around Matsue finding random, nearly abandoned places.

3.) Naoko HATES slang. For reals. Like most Japanese, she doesn't really openly state she dislikes anything, but when I threw out a little slang I learned from friends in an attempt to sound more natural, her response was a quick and adorable "NO!". Of course, since I'm a horrible bastard, this means I now occasionally use slang just to annoy her. Really, it's her fault for being hilarious when she's annoyed.

4.) I was at work last week, prepping some lessons, when my head teacher turned to me with a serious and troubled look on her face. She had a question, you see, and it was obviously something that had been bothering her for some time. What malignant mystery was plaguing her mind, you ask? What foul quandary was haunting her thoughts? "Do you know why Americans are so tall?" It took every ounce of willpower I had to not burst into uncontrollable laughter.

5.) Speaking of my head teacher, I HATE sharing a class with her. Before the last month or so, I'd managed to get through my whole time here without sharing a class with anyone (that is, teaching from the same textbook). Recently, however, I have been sharing a class with her. Now, we have two copies of most books and two CDs as well, so this shouldn't be a problem. However, very early on the first set started to go missing on a regular basis, so I started keeping the second set in the office instead of the store room. At that point, the first set just magically disappeared. I have no idea what she did with it. It's not in her classroom, it's not in the office, it's not in the storeroom, it's just fucking gone. Now, half the time I have a class that uses these materials, I have to track her down and ask her where the hell she put them. Because she can't be bothered to put them back where they belong like every other damn person at the school does. Oh, and I get to constantly reorganize lesson folders now too. You see, when I finish teaching a class I take the 1 or 2 minutes necessary to reorganize the materials and place them back in their folder in the correct order. It's easier this way. When you teach the class, you just pull the materials out and use them one by one. Simple, right? Apparently not for her. Twice now I've been mid-class only to discover that the materials are completely out of order and some are even missing. Now I get to waste time before every one of these classes checking the folders and reorganizing them. Hooray -.-

6.) Oh yeah, the school gave me a birthday present on Tuesday. It was a nice gesture, but I'm already kind of embittered towards them, so it didn't do much to change my temperament.

7.) Weed is a big thing here. Not in that everyone smokes it, just in that I see big pot leaves plastered all over the most interesting things. Shirts on school kids, stickers on bikes, and air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors in cars. Including the cars of numerous old people. I... don't think they know what weed is.

8.) There was apparently a pro wrestling event at the convention center near my house on Saturday night. Naoko and I saw the vans for it when we were walking back home. I really didn't know they had pro wrestling in Japan.

I feel like I'm missing stuff, but honestly, I don't care. I've spent over three hours on this post, and it's time to sleep. I need to find some way to not spend an entire evening on every one of these posts...

Obama wants YOU!... to comment on my blog so I will feel loved.