One Day in Kyoto

Here's a sample of the sidewalk traffic in Kyoto. Compared to Tokyo, there are a lot more tourists and a lot more women in traditional dress.

We get up early (for us, that means 10 am or so) and head back to the train station so we can get a subway to the Ninja Castle. Kyoto station, which was just a blur to us yesterday, turns out to be an amazing bit of modern architecture. Like many train depots in Japan, it's also the base of a vertical western-style shopping mall.



After a quick subway ride, we enter Nijo Castle, which was built by the Shogun in 1660 - around the time that Middletown, CT was just getting going. Shoes off, of course, and we circle through the receiving rooms, admiring the classical murals on the walls. We finally realize that the strange chirping noise in every corridor is from the "nightingale floors" that were designed to squeak with our every step. Tenzin climbs to the top of the guard tower to get a view of the whole complex, and the rest of us stroll the gardens.





Outside the castle, Mark and the kids are asked to sign a petition by a group of elderly women - it's August 6th, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and these Japanese activists are calling for an end to all nuclear weapons. It's a sobering moment - the kids wonder how they can be nice to us when they know we are from the US? The newspapers today were full of stories about the events remembering Hiroshima, and how the US was sending an official representative for the first time since the bombing, which was well received here. On the other hand, there was much written about how the US didn't want to be interpreted as "apologizing" for the event, and the pressure Obama faces to put more emphasis on eliminating nuclear arms.

The next stop is the International Manga Museum, which happens to be in Kyoto.



Anyone who knows our kids has probably seen them with their nose buried in one of these Japanese graphic novels. Unlike American comic books, manga are read by every age group and demographic in Japan. There are some with the familiar superhero theme, but there are also manga about sports, cooking, shopping, business and just about any topic you can think of. Our kids have been reading and collecting the English translations for several years, and their interest in all-things-Japanese is the reason why we are here!

We know that most of the museum will have books in Japanese, but they are hoping to find some in English as well... It turns out that they should have enough to keep them busy for a few hours...



Meanwhile, Mark and I hang out in the attached cafe, where all the visiting manga artists have signed the walls.




And here, we come to a temporary end of this blog...unfortuately, before I could post any more, we suffered a laptop crash, and our photos are either lost or buried!

Hopefully, you'll hear more from us soon!

Faster than a speeding bullet

We've only been in Tokyo for two nights, but we're heading to Kyoto today, and will return to Tokyo later in the week. It's not ideal to "city-hop" with a family, but we knew we wanted to be in Tokyo on the weekend (more on that later) so this was our only chance to see Japan's old capital city.

It's also a chance to ride the famous Shinkansen, the bullet train, which travels at up to 184 mph. Our train leaves Tokyo station at 1 pm, and now that we know how far away that is, we're petrified we'll miss it.

Amtrak, it's not; the train runs an average of 6 seconds within its scheduled time.

We store most of our luggage with the hostel, and get everyone out the door with a promise of breakfast at Denny's (yes, they have Denny's in Tokyo.) We are impressed with the superior level of technology...

electronic checks!



call buttons at every table!



But other than the fact that breakfast can include fish and miso soup, it's pretty much like Denny's everywhere.



For the most part, I was not successful in taking photos from the window of the bullet train.



In Kyoto station, I'm impressed with all the shops where you can buy a bento box to eat on the train - or gifts of candy and tea for a host.



We walk ten minutes or so to K's House Kyoto - this is what the street looks like...the hostel itself is a bit more modern.



After we all take a rest, we put our shoes back on, to explore Kyoto for the last few hours of the day. By the way, if you ever come to Japan, wear slip-ons. We are constantly putting 6 pairs of shoes on and off at every door.



We follow the advice of the folks at the K's house desk, and stroll through a covered market for a few hours before dinner.

We meet a guy who's been running a fruit stall for the past 54 years - he's a true brother of Ted Xenelis from the Middlesex Fruitery, because everytime we reach for a peach or a plum, he says - No, that one's no good. Try this one.



We devour a bunch of tiny and intensely flavored grapes and save some oranges and grapefruit for the hostel.

In between the shoe stores, tshirt shops and pachinko parlours, we find this tiny shrine, where people have tied their prayers to the branches of a tree so the wind can carry them away. Inside the shrine, there are a steady stream of worshippers, and Kobi experiments with praying Shinto style, first by doing a ritual cleansing of hands and mouth, then by making an offering, praying and clapping twice to release the prayer. He also puts 100 yen in a tiny diorama box, where an electronic yak does a dance and then spits out a paper fortune for him. Not quite sure what it says!



Dinner is at our first conveyor sushi joint - you don't order but just grab whatever looks interesting as it rides by. If you want something special, they send it to your table on a little electronic train. At the end, they collect all the empty plates (different colors mean different prices), and that's how they figure your bill. It's delicious.



On the way home, we stroll through the famous Gion district, where there are still geishas who work as hostesses. Although we don't actually see any geisha, this is a seriously beautiful street, with a canal down the middle and willows and peach trees creating a canopy of shade.



Back at K's House, it's hard to resist the cool backpackers from around the world, and Mark has a few glasses of sake with a guy from New Zealand, while the kids and I revel in the wicked-fast wifi connection.

Crossing Tokyo

Our first order of business in Japan is to figure out the public transportation system. We are staying in an older section of Northern Tokyo called Asakusa (a-sa-ku-sa). It's really cool, but some of the things we want to see are about an hour away on the other side of town.



There are lots of subway lines in Tokyo, but the kicker is that they are all run by different private companies, and connecting to another train sometimes means going back outside and walking a block or two.

Instead of having a flat rate for each trip, you are charged at the end of your ride as you exit the system. On top of that, each company has different prices. It's easier than it sounds, because we buy Passmo cards that can be used on all of them. Also, every gate has a "guard" - they help us find the platform every time.

The other task of the guards is to open up the turnstile when your card gets jammed. Mark can't understand why I think this is so funny, but I think it looks exactly like an old xerox machine, where you had to fish your jammed paper out from between the rolls.



We change trains twice to get to Tokyo station so that we can buy tickets for tomorrow's trip to Kyoto on the superfast "Shinkansen". After we get the tickets, we wander around the station, which is filled with cool shops and cooler teenagers all changing trains.



The JR Yamanote line is essentially the Beltway of Tokyo - it's an elevated train that circles the center of town.



We ride it to the Shinjuku station for our first taste of fashionable Tokyo. We're trying to find a branch of "Kinokuniya" - the Japanese bookstore that we've grown to love in NYC (41st & 6th ave). Of course, we know most of the books here will be in Japanese (it is Japan, after all) but we understand they also have an English floor.

The alleys of Shinjuku don't look that different from the usual market culture in Asia, till we start to notice the store names, like, for example, Barneys New York.

Here's a group of locals waiting at the back entrance of Studio Alta - a giant in the world of Japanese TV:



Soon, an SUV with tinted windows pulls up, the crowd screams and the security thugs wave us away.



It's not all glitz in Shinjuku, though, as we visit our first 100-yen shop on the same street - kind of like our dollar stores, since 100 yen equal about $1.25 in USD.



Maggie picks out some false eyelashes for friends back home, and finds a new variety of M&M's - orange, anyone?



We finally reach Kinokuniya, where the kids spend an hour or two blissed out in the manga section and we wind up with a small stack of manga that we probably could have gotten at the Borders in Meriden Mall -- though, as Karma points out, they are a little bit cheaper here!

We also get her a copy of "Alice in Wonderland", since that's on her summer reading list...and Kobi gets the first volume of "How to Train a Dragon." Mark gets a book called "100 questions to ask the Japanese", I get a Lonely Planet phrase book to help me explain "gluten-free" to waiters who don't speak English, Tenzin chooses a Conn Iggulden paperback...you get the picture. Anyone care to guess why our luggage keeps getting heavier?



Our long train ride home is broken up by a change at Ueno station, and while we are trying to find our connecting platform somewhere in the neighborhood, we come across a Uniqlo - which unlike its Soho branch (which has 3 stories of stuff) is about as big Vecchitto's. (A plug here for Uniqlo - which is kind of like the Gap was 20 years ago - basic, fun & cheap clothes. In Japan, it's everywhere, but in NYC, it's on W. Broadway b-twn Prince & Spring)



In the adjoining alley, we admire the efficient use of the space beneath the elevated train. There's a whole market here, nestled under the tracks, and you don't even notice the train is there. (Just think of all the highway underpasses in downtown Middletown that could be made livelier with this idea - like Union Street and River Road!)



At first glance, I don't think anything of the unusual number of gumball-type machines we've been seeing around town.



But when I take a closer look, I realize that the Japanese have elevated the sale of these trinkets to an art form. There is an infinite variety of things they will put in a little plastic canister and sell for 200 yen, like these classical busts that are also fridge magnets. How clever!



We somehow arrive at a station that is far, far north of where I thought we'd be, but we take advantage of the mishap to visit the Senshoji temple, and then walk the 20 blocks or so back to the hostel.




Here's our hostel in the daylight. Sweet, sweet K's House!

Hello Toyko!

So far, being in Japan is a bit like going through the looking glass. Many things are quite similar to the States, but just different enough to warrant a second look.

Coke is "refreshing and uplifting", not to mention unusually tall and cheap.



Haagen dazs has a flavor called;



You pay your bill by swiping your cell phone instead of your credit card:



We place our dinner order at a nice restaurant by punching our choices in this coin-op machine.





But...the bunkbeds are just like home.



I'd like to officially thank the kind strangers who helped this confused family cross town on two trains, miraculously getting off at the right stops and finding our way down the backstreets to K's House Hostel, where we were immediately cheered by the international set of wanderers inside.