No Cure Like Travel (Part 2 of 3)

But before I get to the pictures, I’d like to randomly link to this guy. His videos are well made, and his arguments are more respectful than some, but I’m not quite convinced. (Well, I couldn’t be “convinced”, anyway, seeing as how I already share most of his end-views – I mean that I’m not entirely sure his arguments are sound. Fun videos, though.) Thoughts?

I’m probably the world’s least enthusiastic photographer, which explains why I tend to have a lot of photos of the same thing and then few of anything else: once I’m in a photo-taking mood, I snap away, but the passion quickly wears off, and then I put my camera away in order to, you know, actually enjoy the moment. So some areas from the second half of my Japan trip are better represented than others. Nevertheless, this entry is photo-heavy under the cut.

I started off my second week in Japan by taking the shinkansen – bullet train – to Tokyo.

When I arrived in Tokyo, I was determined to check out all the cool shops and nifty places my guide told me were somewhere in Ginza, but there was a problem: it was raining. Really heavily and windily. Luckily, I had a rain coat, but unluckily, no one in Japan uses raincoats; they all have umbrellas that can be handily furled and tucked into plastic bags for indoor shopping. As opposed to raincoats, which drip all over the floor and various articles of merchandise.

The rain was so bad that I eventually gave up and went to check in at my hostel. When I got there, I found out that everything I owned was completely soaked, including my clothing, passport, and important documents. Not being able to do much else, I spread everything out under my bed and hoped for the best.

Later, when I was on the bus to Kawaguchi-ko to see Fuji-san, the girl beside me informed me that what I’d experienced the previous evening was a typhoon. Go figure.

Anyhow, I woke up quite early in the morning to go see Tsukiji fish market, which opens at 5am and finishes most of its business before 9am. I got there around 6:30.

I have to admit, after a 7am sashimi breakfast (admittedly quite fresh), I may not want to eat fish ever again.

After about two hours of looking for the bus station (you win again, Tokyo!) I finally managed to catch a morning bus to Kawaguchi-ko, one of the smaller towns in the foothills of Fuji-san. I had neither the time nor the stamina to climb the mountain, but I did take the cable car up to a look-out point to catch a glimpse of it. Unfortunately, fall and late summer are cloudy seasons, and you couldn’t really see the peak through the gloom, but it was still pretty nifty. Even if the cable car company had some pretty creepy mascots.

I look only slightly less creepy in this picture, taken outside the Sumo Museum. I didn’t actually see any sumo wrestlers (the major Tokyo sumo tournament took place about a week after I left), but they did have some neat instructional videos on the various sumo moves.

But the highlight of my trip to Tokyo was definitely getting to see a show at the kabuki-za theatre.

As you see, I watched very pensively. It was strange to hear the English audio guide and watch the actors going through it onstage; almost as strange as having terminology and knowledge pop up from DRAM 210 Theatre History and whisper, “Hey, that’s the hana-michi! Here comes an onnagata!” The format was pretty nifty – the shows last four hours and three acts, but there’s about a thirty-minute intermission between each act (people go out and eat their dinners while the set changes). Each act showed one or two important scenes from an important play of a particular time. It was like if an evening at the Royal Shakespeare Company went: the closet scene and the gravedigger scene from Hamlet – intermission for dinner – the screen scene from A School for Scandal – intermission – the first act of The Importance of Being Earnest – end of show.

When I got back to Osaka, Diana generously treated us to a takarazuka performance. Takarazuka is the female counterpart of kabuki in a lot of ways. Kabuki performers are all male, and takarazuka performers are all female. Both are lighthearted and fun. The takarazuka performance we saw was an adaptation of an anime called The Rose of Cairo. There were no English audio-guides, which was a shame, because the story would have made a lot more sense if we’d understood that one of the women dressed as men was actually playing a character who was woman dressed as a man. But the musical revue at the end was pretty good at crossing language barriers.

That’s not a picture of the takarazuka performance, though, since I don’t have any. It’s a picture of the waterfall in Minoh where we hiked before going to takarazuka. And the picture that follows is cool Japanese Pizza Hut pizzas.

Last but not least, we took a day trip to Hiroshima and the nearby island Miyajima, where the ferry instructions are very explicit. A public toilet is not a giant ashtray!

Miyajima is considered one of the loveliest places in Japan, in no little part because there are wild deer that happily roam the streets, eating the papers and towels of unsuspecting or careless tourists. Here’s Diana being Snow White.

There are also a number of beautiful temples and shrines on Miyajima, including the five-storey pagoda.

And both Hiroshima and Miyajima are famous for huge, delicious oysters.

One of our most memorable misadventures was the hike we decided to take in the middle of the day.

(Diana: “He always buys one, and then everyone stares at us for the rest of the day!”)

In the heat of a summer afternoon, without any water, we decided to walk up to the lookout point. Which was at the top of a mountain. You can see how high it was from the cable car we took down once we reached the top, because there was no way our shaky legs could handle a downwards journey.

Also, I’m afraid of heights.

I guess I lied about that being “last”, because I also visited the Osaka aquarium later in the week while Diana and Jason were at work and found Nemo. (I had no idea clownfish were so tiny!)

In a nearby mall, you could pay 300 yen for a fairground-type game where you threw ninja stars at paper targets. I did, and the guy operating the booth was also kind enough to take a picture of me posing with a ninja sword.

The next day, I took a stroll around Kyoto, which is pretty much beautiful Japanese tourist locations central. Just walking around, I ran into a temple.

I had to figure out how to take the bus to get to the Silver Pavilion, though.

There was lots more stuff we did in Japan, but the last picture I have is of my final night (even though Diana’s expression is all “Why are you taking a picture of me, Sarah???”), when we went to karaoke. I thought I’d be down for maybe 30 minutes, tops, but it was awesomely fun, and we wound up staying over two hours.

Thanks again, Diana and Jason, for being wonderful hosts and plain all-around cool people!

Next week: Singapore.