I went out again on Sunday night to Doyamo-cho (the gay "district") for a drink, and to meet up with a couple of people I'd met the night before. One is a bar-owner called Hideki, who coincidentally knows Paul Jones' friends in Tokyo. It's a small (gay) world after all. The other guy is Dominick, a German rice queen who now lives in Singapore. His English is quite good, having studied in Florida. Unfortunately, he is a little self-absorbed. But I am so desperate for contact with westerners right now, that it was fine at the time. He asked me how old I thought he was (can you get more self-absorbed than that), and when I said 31-32 (which frankly as a conservative guess) he seemed shocked. He asked me if I thought he was that old because he's a writer/producer for a Singaporean television network. I said "yes", but thought to myself "whatever". Turns out he's 25. Whoops. Anyhow, Dominick seemed intent to rain on my parade by crashing my sightseeing progam. At fir
st the suggestion seemed a good idea, and I said yes. But I didn't realise how much I am enjoying travelling by myself until we tied to put this into practice. All of a sudden I was at the mercy of his schedule, which would be fine if he didn't turn up an hour late to things (three times running). Also, he's a penny-pincher, which I can't abide when on holidays. He didn't want to go to the Kyoto Tower observatino deck because it was ¥700, but he was more than happy to spend ¥1200 on dinner at Subway. Oh yeah, that was where he suggested having dinner. So I ditched Domninick and went to Nara by myself today.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Yesterday was my last day in Osaka. I checked out of my business hotel and after putting my bag in a locker at the shinkansen station, I headed to Osaka Castle. While not quiite as big as Himeji, Osaka Castle was still pretty impressive. Like Okayama, and Hiroshima, Osaka Castle was destroyed in WW2, and rebuilt in the 50s or 60s. And like Okayama, the restoration guys had the good sense to install an elevator and airconditiong. So considerate for hot Osaka days (where the humidiity feels like 95% all day and night).
I made my way back to the shikansen station, feeling a lot more confident about Osaka's train network. But that has more to do with experience than usability. I still think Osaka Station (as well as Osaka for that matter) is a mess. From Shin-Osaka I took a 15 minute shinkansen ride to Kyoto. It would have been about 35-40 minutes by normal train.
The little I have seen of Kyoto suggests to me that it is a beautiful city. The population is around 1.5 million. One of Kyoto's focal points (like every other Japanese city) is the area around the train station. This is where the Kyoto Tower is located. At only 100 metres above ground level, and with an observation deck about 20 metres wide, it wasn't exactly the most thrilling experience. But still I love observation decks to get my bearings on a new town.
Unlike the other cities I have visited, Kyoto has a brand-new station that is unlike any other I have seen. The twelve-storey complex combines a hotel and commercial and retail space with the city's shinkansen and local train lines. The Isetan department store spans at least 10 of those floors, with each floor staggered horizontally, thereby creating two diagonal atriums through the building. As impressive as the building may be, it courted huge controversy when it was opened in 1997 as it blocks the view across the Kyoto skyline.
I am actually staying right near Kyoto Station in the New Miyako Hotel. This is a beautiful, large, Western-styled hotel with around 700 rooms. My room is actually nearly normal size. In Japan, the business hotels are notoriously small. And at the New Miyako I almost have a normal bathroom. The hotel room bathrooms are like a self-contained unit in their own right, that have somehow been inserted into the room by crane. The place where I stayed in Osaka (Shin-Osaka Station Hotel) took this even one step further. Not only was it ridiculously small, the whole bathroom (sink, bath, walls, ceiling, floor) was a fibreglass shell, consisting of just two separate pieces. The join was about three feet above ground and extended right around the room. It was cool in a futuristic kind of way, but the bathroom was so small that I had to go outside to the bedroom to dry off. Also, if I sat on the toilet my knees were three inches from the door, and only two inches from the wall
by my side.
Before Tokyo was the capital, that honour belonged to Kyoto. Which is why Kyoto is home to many important cultural and religious sites. Furthermore, Kyoto was spared by the Americans during WW2 carpet-bombing campaigns (because of its cultural treasures) and so these sites are still accessible today. Kyoto is reputed to have more than 1000 shrines (or is that temples), and no less than 17 UNESCO World Heritage sites. I will be sightseeing in Kyoto tomorrow.
Today I visited Nara, which was Japan's first capital (for only about 70 years), and right before the capital was moved to Kyoto. Nara is a beautiful, rustic town that prides itself on the Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines that make up Nara Park. My favourite spot was the Buddhist Todaiji Temple. This is the world's largest wooden building. In photos it looks pretty impressive, as I had observed from my pre-trip planning. But still my jaw dropped when I saw it in person. It is huge. There have been two other temples on the same site, both destroyed in war, and one of them was even larger than the temple that presently stands. Inside was a huge golden Buddha, along with four other suitably-impressive statues. Todaiji is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, along with several other sites in Nara. I think I have visited almost ten World Heritage sites in my two weeks in Japan, and almost all were registered in te late 1990s. It's like Japan went World Heritage crazy.
Anyhow, enough for now. As interesting as Kyoto will be, I am actually looking forward to getting to Tokyo where my time will be spent doing stuff other than just sightseeing. I am actually sick of looking at things and taking photos. And my feet hurt from walking a hundred kilometres every day. But on the upside I have lost a little weight from my gut, so I can’t complain. :-)
