Kyoto Part II: One Night in Fushimi Inari

I will now begin the tale of part two of our first day in Kyoto. This day’s experience would come to be one of the most stressful and harrowing tales in my travels. But first I will start with a happier tale, one of my discovery of what I consider Japan’s finest culinary innovations. That is to say, of course, kaitenzushi establishments.

After we left the Zen Buddhist garden of Ryoanji, it was far past time for lunch and so we were dismissed for an hour to scrounge up some vittles. Half of us went in search of a convenience store and their wealth of bento choices, while I joined the other half in trying a kaitenzushi restaurant we saw during our walk. 

Kaitenzushi employs the kanji for conveyor belt and sushi, the Japanese serving of prepared, raw fish. After being seated at either a booth or stool at a bar, customers will watch as a conveyor belt carries plates upon plates of a variety of different types of sushi, with or without wasabi sauce, in groups of one, two or three. There is also a screen at each seat that enables patrons to personally order their favorite sushi or drinks or even some desserts and noodle choices.  When you see something you like, you simply grab the plate and keep it until the end of your meal to calculate your bill. 

The beauty of these places is that typically each plate costs only 100 yen, about $1 US dollar. Sometimes it will cost more for special orders. Once you have eaten your fill, you use the order screen again to call for one of the wait staff who tallies your bill. They typically have a measuring tool that tallies the number of plates you’ve consumed and then adds the special orders. From a palm pilot-like device, they will print you out a receipt to be taken to the front register for payment. This was the first of many visits to kaitenzushi restaurants and I will one day have a post about my personal favorite types of sushi and others I’m not so fond of.

Now we come to the meat of our story. We were supposed to reconvene at a bus stop to catch a ride to our final destination of the day, the Fushimi Inari Shinto shrine, made famous in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha for its seemingly countless red torii gates, a common symbol of the Shinto religion. My group, enchanted by kaitenzushi, lost track of time and ended up missing the meeting time. As such, we were forced to catch a subway train to the station nearest to the shrine. We arrived close to a half hour later than our fellow students and as such, we weren’t afforded as much time to explore the base of the temple grounds.

From the base we were allowed to begin the climb up the side of the mountain to the actual shrine at the mountain’s peak. The entire maze of paths was lined with the bright red torii gates and in groups of two or three we set about exploring them in their entirety. As we would see later, some of us took the exploration a bit too far.

By chance we met up again with most of our group members at a rest area just before the final push to the summit. After a brief respite and hitting up the ever conveniently placed vending machine at this spot, we again set off in groups of two and three, some to the left and some to the right. After close to a half hour further hike through the woods, we reached the actual shrine at the mountain’s peak. Nearly all the groups made it to the top and back down successfully. I say nearly because this is where our troubles began. The last group to head towards the shrine was the infamous Peter and our friend Joseph. While we waited for them, we acquainted ourselves with fellow foreign travelers and rested. However, it started to get dark and the pair had yet to return. Two groups, each taking the separate path, went off to locate our missing companions. But, alas, to no avail, each group returned without spotting the missing duo.

While groups continued to go back and search, some took the opportunity to venture to the other peak, which went through a graveyard, a somewhat harrowing experience in the dark of night, but the view of Kyoto at night from the view of the peak was nearly as breathtaking as Nara, and I think the lights of the city rivaled that of the greatest in the world. We came back down to the fork in the road and discovered Peter and Joseph were still missing. Other travelers joined in our search but eventually with the now completely set sun, we reasoned that they must have taken a different, unknown path, Peter must have convinced Joseph to take, ever the irksome exploring deviant that he is. So we in turn, as a whole group this time, raced back down the shrine to the temple base.

However, we were met with an empty temple grounds and silence. The only people around were the sparse security and Peter and Joseph were nowhere in sight. We alerted security to the missing students, however, after a brief effort, they too believed it to be too dark to conduct a thorough search. We spent an additional hour or so searching and filing a report before heading back to the station to get to our hostel. By this time, there were mixed emotions in our group, due to exhaustion and worry. Half, including myself, halfheartedly joked “Fushimi Inari has them now” and “They’ve been spirited away” but our melancholic demeanor quickly changed to anger as we had yet to check into our hostel and we were quite irritable after a long day of travel.

Almost sarcastically, I remember someone, perhaps even myself, joked aloud “If we come to find out they’re back at the hostel, they’re going to wish they’d gotten lost on the mountain.” This somewhat bothered the other half of our group, who were visibly and earnestly worried about our companions. Don’t get me wrong, I too was worried, but due to Peter’s history, I was more than certain it was his mistake that put us all in this predicament.

We caught the train back to Kyoto station to collect our luggage and then boarded the bus back to our hostel, which I might add was once rated the nicest youth hostel in the world, the Utano Youth Hostel.  Thankfully, we were finally shown some mercy and the bus stop was directly in front of the hostel. We dragged ourselves through the door and walked to the front desk to check-in, exhausted.

Sure enough, our worst fears were confirmed when we turned around and lo and behold, up walks Peter, licking an ice cream cone, then sarcastically asking “what took you guys so long?” It was then that it all just became too much. Several of us had some very choice words for Peter throughout the night, none of which are fit to reprint here. Joseph, at least, was apologetic for the inconvenience he had caused us, but Peter showed no remorse, only proving to further infuriate nearly everyone in our group. Mentally and physically exhausted, we retired to a long bath in the open air bath in the hostel and then collapsed into our beds in our surprisingly spacious rooms.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

kaitenzushi - かいてんずし - 回転寿司

meaning: conveyor belt sushi

Kyoto Part I: Kinkakuji and Ryoanji

After our week-long stay in Nara, it was time to bid goodbye to my favorite city and so we boarded the train at the JR (Japan Railways) Nara Station and rode the Kintetsu Kyoto Line for a little under an hour before arriving at Kyoto Station. From this point, things get slightly hazy. For someone seeing it for the first time, Kyoto Station is almost as confusing as Shinjuku and is one of the largest stations in the country. I doubt I could retrace the exact steps after disembarking from the train as I simply followed our herd of foreigners as we were shepherded by our professor to the busses out front of the station.

We would not be getting into our hostel until much later that evening and our itinerary called for a rather full day of sight-seeing. While Nara most certainly has my heart, Kyoto is by no means a second-rate city. Kyoto is a city steeped in a rich cultural history and is probably the most popular tourist destination, second, perhaps, to Tokyo. My professor, Martin Holman, who had lived in Kyoto for nearly a decade, said, "You could live in Kyoto for 10 years, as I have, and still not have seen all there is to see or do all there is to do."

After spending a week living in the city and visiting Kyoto multiple times throughout my tenure in Japan, I couldn't agree more with my professor's assessment. I still have quite an extensive list of places to visit in Kyoto that I don't know if I'll ever be able to complete it. My professor has lived in Japan off and on for 30-plus years and if he is any indication, Kyoto might just be too big a city to ever conquer completely.

Our first stop in Kyoto was a visit to Kinkakuji on the North side of the city. Also known as the "Temple of the Golden Pavilion," Kinkakuji is a Zen Buddhist temple founded in 1397. The current temple, the entire structure of which shines in gilded radiance, is actually a reconstruction of the original built in 1955. The original temple was burned to the ground in 1950 by a mentally-addled novice monk, who then unsuccessfully attempted suicide on the hill behind the temple. The gilded leaves that cover the temple stem from the Muromachi period as a symbol to ward off pollution and negativity. Words cannot express the beauty that has been captured on the grounds of the Kinkakuji complex. The Temple sits on a small, picturesque pond dotted with islands and trees in the middle of a Buddhist garden.

After completely exploring the temple grounds, or at least as far as we were able, we left Kinkakuji and boarded the bus bound for our next sight-seeing spot, the Zen Buddhist temple, Ryoanji. While both places are famous Zen sites, Ryoanji is particularly famous for its painstakingly cultivated garden and the rock meditation garden in the center of the complex. As we did, one could spend hours taking in the elegance and serenity of the garden. We followed the lead of other Japanese people we saw in the temple and spoke only in a hushed whisper so as not to disturb the halcyon scene. I felt, as did many of my companions, a real sense of inner-peace as we were afforded the opportunity to meditate in the temple and explore the grounds.

While Kinkakuji and Ryoanji should most certainly be on the top of everyone's list of places to see while in Kyoto, these two stops were only the first half our first day in Kyoto. In next week's post I will share with you one of Japan's greatest treasures for the food-savvy, as well as share the horror story that was our first visit to the Fushimi Inari Shrine, popularized by the movie Memoirs of a Geisha.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

Kinkakuji - きんかくじ - 金閣寺

meaning: Temple of the Golden Pavilion

The Yamanobe-no-Michi: The Worst "Greatest Decision Ever" Part II

Continuing from where we left off, my traveling companions, John, Peter, Kristin, Steven and I left the lake in the early hours of dusk with renewed spirits, unaware our journey was barely half over. Our path skirted the mountains for a bit and then turned into the foothills. This was a part of the trip that truly encapsulated the essence of hiking. Shortly into the forest, the trees quickly turned to bamboo and we quickly found ourselves in the setting of an samurai movie, with the take lining the path seemed to give off a glow that had us in awe. It was the second most beautiful scene we would have on this experience.

After we left the bamboo forest, we found ourself at someone's home that also served as a rather grande local shrine. We saw a monk tending to the shrine and we approached him to ask for directions as we were quite sure we were lost at this point. We hadn't seen a sign or trail marking for quite some time and were basically following what could have been any mountain path leading away from that lake. We spoke in very broken Japanese that we were trying to get to Nara to our hostel. When he heard Nara, he said in English, "Ooh, very far." Not exactly the most encouraging thing to hear after several hours of hiking.

The monk was able to give us directions to get back to the correct trail and wished us luck as he sent us on our way. At this point, it became less of a mountain trail and was more of walking on paved roads past rice paddy upon rice paddy seeing only the occasional local tending the field. We kept along the roads and followed signs we managed to make out were for the Yamanobe-no-Michi. After close to another hour of walking, we saw a train station and debated on hopping on the rails and getting back to Nara station. We must have been delirious at this point because we reasoned that we were so close to Nara and backing out now would delegitimize our accomplishment.

We had agreed that despite our struggles, we would never let our other program members know. As far as they were concerned, this was the greatest decision ever and we regret nothing. And so we sojourned on, continuing along seemingly endless fields of rice until we finally saw the fringes of the city on the horizon. We prematurely started celebrating the close-at-hand end of our travels. I say prematurely because once we reached the city limits, we encountered a sign saying it would be another four kilometers to the side of the city that our hostel was in. At this point we were stopped by a passerby biker asking us the standard 'where are you from? what are you doing? where are you going?' questions. And again, much to our chagrin, he answered us with "ooh, very far." We were polite in conveying our disappointment and after thanking the biker for his inquiry, we parted ways and continued on.

Shortly we finally reached the oasis, an open Lawson's convenience store. Myself being particularly low on money at the time, Kristin being the generous person that she is agreed to split her gallon of water with me. I nearly cried tears of joy when my thirst was quenched as I had ran out of water much earlier than anticipated on the trip. Between the two of us we quickly downed nearly three-fourths of the bottle almost instantly. At this point we all had to focus on ignoring the throbbing in our feet and exhaustion in the rest of our bodies and soldiered on to the other side of the city.

We started to reach areas of town that looked somewhat familiar and finally stumbled upon signs leading to Nara station, aka our landmark to find our hostel. We arrived at our hostel shortly before 9 p.m. and had to stop ourselves from completely collapsing in heaps on the floor. The first thing we all did was relax in the bath and then we gathered in the cafeteria to feast on our bread reserves and down a couple cold beers before calling it a night. We regaled our fellow students with tales of our travels, of course embellishing a bit so that they would be green with envy. Our exhaustion quickly got the better of us though and we retired to our futons right around 10 p.m., quickly passing out for the day.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

take - たけ - 竹

meaning: bamboo

The Yamanobe-no-Michi: The Worst "Greatest Decision Ever" Part I

About midway through our stay in Nara, it was part of the program that we travel to Tenri, a nearby city about 15 kilometers away from Nara. We not only traveled to Tenri, but several other small towns in the countryside visiting various Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples.  To be honest, the names of the shrines themselves escape me at the moment, but what I remember most is that the last shrine we visited that day in Tenri was nearly overrun with ondori, an important symbol for that shrine.

After we visited this last shrine, our program activities for the day were over and we had the option to ride the train back to Nara with our professor or some of us had asked that we be allowed to hike back to Nara down the famous Yamanobe-no-Michi. This was a hiking trail through the Nara mountainside stretching the entire 15 kilometer distance back to our hostel.

Again, our estimation of distance sorely betrayed us as we failed to realize how far away 15 kilometers really was. We also overestimated just how well this trail was marked. Our professor had said that it would be fairly easy to find our way, however he could not have been more wrong. Myself, John, Peter, Steven and Kristin were the only ones who elected to attempt the hike back to Nara. After we said our goodbyes to the other students and our professor, we set off on what we thought was going to be an easy afternoon hike.

I sorely suspect we were directed down the wrong path to begin with, as the path we started down weren't very well kept and was denoted with a single lamp stone statue. We could not have been more than 15 minutes down the trail when we reached our first crossroads, one trail seemed to lead deeper into the heart of the mountains while the other seemed to skirt around. John, Kristin, Steven and I voted that we should take the mountainside path, but Peter obstinately insisted that we try the overgrown path, challenging our sense of adventure. Really we were just being rational. As we quickly came to the conclusion this was the wrong way when the path died at a stagnant pond.

This would not be the last time Peter attempted to lead us astray, as we will see in the next installment of this story. We backtracked and chose the trail that led around the side of the mountain, which also seemed to run parallel to the highway from Tenri to Nara. We were hiking before we came to what I consider the highlight of the whole day, a pristine lake nestled right in the foothills of the mountain.

We were in luck as the weather that day was particularly perfect, sunny with a few clouds and light breeze rolling across the water. Something about the halcyon scene really stuck with me and to this day I can remember the indescribable feeling I had as I looked out across the water. For me, it was transcendental; here I was, exhausted from our hike and running low on water, but something about the light rippling of the water's surface and the mountains reflected across its depths seemed to bring on a moment of clarity as we all sat in silence on the lake's bank, just taking it all in. The momentary respite and glory of nature rejuvenated us and we set off to finish our journey home, unaware that our trials were far from over and our hostel further still.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

ondori - おんどり - 雄鳥

meaning: rooster

Feeding the Deer in Nara

On June 6, 2012, my summer program with the University of Missouri began in the cafeteria common area of the Nara Seishonen-Kaikan youth hostel with 10 of my fellow Mizzou students, our student leader, Christian, and our program leader, Professor Martin Holman, the head of the Japanese department at MU. We held a short program meeting to go over the itinerary for the remainder of our summer, a preliminary one at least, detailing how long we would be on the move and when we would finally settle down with our host families in Iida of Nagano prefecture, on June 25.

My companions and I had arrived in Nara about a day prior to the start of the program and needless to say that we were still so charged with the excitement of being in a new country that we didn't sit idly by while we waited for our sensei to arrive. After our first order of business being to locate our food source, the Lawson's convenience center just down the street past a middle school, and our cash reserves, the international ATM at the 7-11 in downtown Nara, we explored the myriad of cultural landmarks that dot the city of Nara. Little did we know that we would later be repeating our adventures as many of the sites we visited, we would see again as part of the program, and then I would later visit these shrines a third time in my tenure at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities.

Chief among the shrines in Nara is the Buddhist Todai-ji, the Eastern Great Temple, the largest wooden structure in the world despite the fact that it is now a fraction of it's former size. Besides it's vast dimensions, another reason this stands as the most popular spot in the city is that it is also home to the Daibutsu, or Great Buddha. It is the largest bronze statue of the Buddha in the world and stands at a towering 49 feet tall. Originally the temple had two 100-meter-tall pagodas, who in their prime rivaled the pyramids of Egypt as the tallest structures in the world.

While Nara is home to a host of important cultural landmarks, perhaps what the city is most famous for is the shika deer. The deer, regarded as messengers of the gods in the Shinto religion, roam temple grounds freely. It is quite the attraction to be able to pet and feed the deer with specialty cookies sold from countless vendors around the temple. Although all the deer have their antlers removed by city workers, it is not surprising to see the deer mobbing visitors and biting at pockets for food. In fact, when it's not happening to you it is one of the funniest sites to see.

After visiting the primary temples in Nara, our program activities were concluded for the day and we were free to return to the hostel, but a few of us, myself, John and our friend Kristin, were feeling adventurous and decided to go on a three kilometer hike around the mountain to the top of Wakayama hill. We underestimated what three kilometers up a mountain actually was and I had neglected to bring water, so we spent the better part of the afternoon and evening making it to the top of this mountain.

But man, was it worth it. We reached the top, an overlook we later found out we could've drove to, the fact none of us could drive was moot, right at twilight. The view of Nara at this time is when I started to fall in love with the city. It was transcendentally beautiful with the rosy hue of the setting sun stretched out over the contrasting dark mountains causing the city to glow.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

Daibutsu - だいぶつ - 大仏

meaning: Great Buddha

The Nara Seishonen-Kaikan Youth Hostel

For this post, I think it a good time to talk about the hostel I stayed in while in Nara. It's name was the Nara-ken Seishonen-Kaikan youth hostel. It was equal parts normal hostel as one would see anywhere in the world with several rooms capable of occupation of eight people or more and parts ryoukan - a traditional Japanese-style inn. I felt very fortunate in that our professor had booked the ryoukan-style rooms, meaning we were able to have the traditional experience during our stay.

We had a total of three rooms, one for the three females in the group and then rooms of four and six for the guys. I was in the room of four with John and Peter and our student leader, Christian. These floors of these rooms were tatami mats, flooring made of interwoven, fine straw and each had a low coffee table in the middle. In lieu of beds, we instead slept on futon mats that we were expected to fold up every day, a very traditional way of sleeping in Japan.

Amenities the hostel offered was a cafeteria-style room with a fridge for guest use and of course the essential vending machines. It also boasted a laundry room with a free washer but a charging dryer. Electricity is at a premium in Japan and so usually Japanese families will hang their clothes on a line to air dry. Being as poor as I was and also finding the dryer to be rather weak after one use, I chose to hang my laundry outside to air. It was fairly nice for most of the time we were in Nara and I believe there was only one day in which it rained. However, during the course of the week we spent in Nara one of my favorite shirts I had brought along went missing, I presume snatched off the line while drying. An unfortunate risk you run at hostels - thieves.

A somewhat unique aspect of this hostel is the Japanese-style communal bath. There were two rooms for men and women and in these rooms you had one tub that fit about three people comfortably and about six shower-heads with accompanying bucket and seat. It was expected that people would bathe together and despite embarrassment or modesty, it was against the rules of the hostel to wear anything but your birthday suit in the baths. It was actually considered rude to wear anything into the baths in Japan.

Hostels are a relatively cheap way to live if you're only going to be spending a week or so in Japan. Prices range from as low as $20 with even some of the higher end hostels topping out at $50. The reason for the low price is that hostels provided you basically with just a roof over your head, without various luxuries provided at higher end hotels. As long as your willing to put up with sometimes less than ideal sleeping arrangements in favor of saving some money, hostels are key.

A particular benefit to our hostel in Nara was it's proximity not only to a Lawson's convenience store which would prove to be our breakfast spot for the whole week, mainly due to their deliciously fried chicken and cheese nuggets, but also to a cheap local supermarket which had a small, but cheap selection of food and drink that we were able to store in the fridge at the hostel. Many of us made our meals that week from the discount bread sold at the supermarket.

It was also here that I bought my first legal beer, the drinking age in Japan being a younger 20. I had no clue about Japanese beer and thus made the unfortunate decision to buy Asahi Clear as my first beer. I have tasted worse beers before and I'm sure I will again in the future, but a word of advice, I would avoid this particular draft when choosing from among Asahi's vast stock. In a later post, I'll break down some of the more popular beers, including my particular favorite, Asahi Super Dry Black.'

Useful phrase in this week's post:

ryoukan - りょかん　旅館

meaning: Japanese-style inn

I Bless the Rains Down in Ueno

Sorry, I have to admit I'm a Toto fan and couldn't resist an "Africa" pun to kick off my post about the final day I spent in Tokyo before heading off to Nara to start my Mizzou summer program, Japanese Language, Culture & Bunraku Puppetry.

There were two ways for us to get to Nara from Tokyo to get to our next youth hostel. One route, the more expensive and luxurious option, was to take the shinkansen, or bullet train, direct from Ueno station in the Ueno special ward of downtown Tokyo to Nara station. Depending on where you're going, shinkansen tickets could run you upwards of 20,000 yen, about $200 US dollar, but you are definitely getting what you pay for as this is the fastest way to travel long distances on land and the seat options are incredibly comfortable and spacious. If you're wanting to travel across the country during your visit, a shinkansen ride is both a novelty one should try at least once and a great way to see far reaches of the country you wouldn't normally have had the opportunity to see. Another advantage of the shinkansen is that there are trains leaving the station from all different times of the day to different places, so you could leave pretty much whatever time of day you wanted.

Option two was to take an overnight bus from Shinjuku station in the Shinjuku special ward, making minimal stops and arriving the next morning at Nara station. Tickets for the night bus are considerably cheaper than the shinkansen, with tickets ranging from 4000 to 6000 yen, about $40 to $60 US dollar. The seating accommodations vary depending on how much extra you are willing to pay for a more luxurious bus, but are comparable to the US Greyhound bus or the Megabus. You are not sacrificing much in the way of comfort, and, in the numerous experiences I've had with this cheap mode of travel, I've found you can sleep quite comfortably in the cushioned seats. The obvious inconvenience of the night bus is the sheer amount of time it takes to get places, which is the main reason these buses primarily run at night. For instance, from Tokyo to Nara by shinkansen it would generally take about 2 hours. If the nigh tbus is more your fancy, it will take about seven or eight hours. Another downside is that night buses are just that, buses at night; so the usually will not leave until later than 11 p.m. for farther destinations.

As I was beginning my travels on a rather tight budget, as I would unfortunately spend the remainder of my time in Japan, I chose the cheaper option of the night bus. Originally the plan was for John to accompany me on the overnight journey, but was lured away by the luxury and novelty of the shinkansen, so that left just me to wait the night bus while Peter and John left early to catch a midday shinkansen to Nara. Check-out time at our hostel was at 10 a.m. so after we all settled our bills, John and Peter left to catch a taxi to the station while I waited around in the hostel.

The weather that day was particularly awful with on and off heavy rain so my will to venture out unless necessary was rapidly waning. Luckily for me, one of our fellow classmates, Steven, had arrived to spend a day in Tokyo before himself going to Nara, so he kept me company for the day. We hit a bit of a dry spell in the late afternoon so we decided that we would walk to Ueno to see the famous Ueno Park and it seemed logical to me that I simply carry my stuff with me so that I could catch a train to Shinjuku when it got closer to my bus departure time. I dropped my baggage off in a locker at Ueno station after we visited the park and Steven and I decided to try one last trip to Akihabara before I had to leave. As it turns out, two days was not a sufficient amount of time to learn how to get around metropolitan Tokyo and we spent the better part of two hours just wandering in what would turn out to be a fruitless effort to get there. By then the rain had started back up and Steven decided to head back to the hostel so we parted ways while I was walking back to Ueno station. I grabbed my bags and caught the train to arrive in Shinjuku station around 9 p.m. Let me tell you, off all the stations in Tokyo, to me Shinjuku was the most confusing. It is a very intricate system and it is quite easy to get lost if you don't know the way to go.

I had a few hours to kill before my bus was scheduled to leave, but due to the rain, I was forced to sit in the bus station and read a book I had brought along for entertainment. Don't get me wrong, I was reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" so I wasn't too upset at not being able to venture out, but I would learn later that Shinjuku at night is really something see. I also had my travel music to keep me company so the hours seemed to melt away until finally I boarded the bus and was bound for Nara.

Like I said, these buses were pretty reasonably comfortable, so I was able to sleep for most of the ride there, until the sun rose around 4:30 and peeped through the shades on the bus. By then we were making our last few stops before arriving in Nara promptly at 7 a.m. It was a beautiful morning in the city I would come to love, but all I had to go on to get to the right Nara youth hostel were some rather questionable directions given to all of us by our professor.

Here again I experienced the great lengths Japanese people will go to help others. I was visibly unsure of where I should be going, looking around with my bags on the ground, and a young Japanese man carrying a guitar who had arrived on the same bus came over and asked me where I was trying to go in pretty good English. He later explained he had lived in New York for a few years as a kid, so he got to know English pretty well. He read the directions and immediately told me the directions were wrong. He had been to the youth hostel before so he offered to walk me part of the way there. Fortunately, it only ended up being about a 20 minute walk, so once we reached the road the hostel was on, I thanked him profusely for his help and he went on his way. Finally, I had arrived at the Nara youth hostel and after checking in, I was able to move my bags immediately into my room as John and Peter had arrived the day before and were already in the room. I'll be sharing more about the hostel amenities in the next post, but I will say that one of the best experiences I had in those first few days was being able to stay in a traditional tatami mat room that was one of the many features in this hostel.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

shinkansen - しんかんせん - 新幹線

meaning: bullet train

Lost in Translation: First Time in Tokyo

If you're planning on making Tokyo your jumping off point for your own Japan adventure, as many do, you should make an effort to watch the Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson cinematic masterpiece, "Lost in Translation." People who come to Japan with little to no understanding of the language or culture, like our good friend Mr. Murray did, you may feel the same type of distance as the actor portrayed in the film. However, much of the language barrier in that movie was exaggerated, and I'm not saying Japanese will sound remotely understandable to someone who speaks English, but in the ten years since the movie's debut, it has become much easier to get by in Tokyo without speaking the language. English is spoken in abundance in the capitol city and while speaking with strangers is hit and miss, a lot of the staff members working train stations as well as other stores have at least a basic knowledge of the language and will be able to help you out with basic things such as how to get somewhere or where to find something.

Now, on to my first experience running the streets of the capitol. My traveling companions and I awoke the next day bright and early, that was a nice effect of jet lag, and while we still weren't completely acclimated, we were at least much more rested and charged than the day before. As such we made our first mission to find perhaps the most famous special ward of the Tokyo metropolitan area, Akihabara.

First off, I guess I should explain a little bit about me. I would refer to myself as somewhat of an otaku. To put it simply, this is the Japanese equivalent of "nerd." It's acquired somewhat of a negative connotation over the years, but those who call themselves otaku do so with pride. An otaku is someone who takes a particular interest in some aspect of Japanese pop-culture, be it manga and anime or music or video games. Just something that avidly grabs your attention and for which you buy sometimes exorbitant amounts of media. For example, I have several volumes of Japanese manga, countless gigabytes of anime on my hard drive as well as some figures and posters of my favorite shows and characters. I would consider myself a fairly average otaku, but just like with any fandom, there are those who take it to extremes and it is life-consuming. This is where the term otaku derives it's negative meaning. But for everyone, otaku and normal alike, Akihabara is one site you cannot miss when in Tokyo.

For fans, there are buildings upon buildings dedicated solely to the sale of memorabilia for manga and anime and the same could be said for video games and music as well. There is not a time during the day where one could go to Akihabara and the streets be not absolutely packed with people. Other noteworthy facets, such as adult entertainment stores and maid cafes, are also in abundance in Akihabara.

As you could imagine, this was all quite overwhelming for us at first. We spent nearly two hours just looking in two stores. Admittedly these stores each had a good nine or 10 small floors, but still we were so engrossed with awe at the sheer volume of memorabilia that it was all we could do to take it all in. A fun little nugget we also gleaned from these first two stores is that as a general rule, the top floors of stores in Akihabara are generally dedicated to more adult themes in their merchandise. While not outright pornography, in some cases, the contents were very erotic and for three foreign students, it was pretty surprising at the lack of boundary between the more wholesome side of the fandom and the less wholesome sect. Even after living in the country for a year I can still say that in many cases there is no boundary between the normal genres of shounen and shoujo manga and the more erotic topics of yuri and yaoi doujins. Lesson of the day - be careful and attentive when walking around Akihabara or you may find content you weren't looking for.

We spent the greater part of the day in Akihabara perusing stores and game centers, filled with games of various genres and of course the quintessential claw machines. After my year abroad, there are two things I've come to learn about claw machines in Japan. One, they are the most addicting contraptions imaginable with colorful, flashing lights and above average prizes in most of them depending on the cost. Two, each and every one of these behemoths is designed and built by the best physics minds to ever come out of MIT. While the prizes in the claw machines are better than any I've come across in America, they are painstakingly set up to look incredibly easy but near impossible to master. I've watched people sink over four times what the prize inside is worth just trying to win the game. The greatest example of claw machine addiction I've seen came from a good friend of mine I met during my academic year at JCMU, who we'll call Bruce. He once spent 30,000 yen on claw machines at a local game center in Minami-Hikone. For those of you not up to date with international exchange rates, that's just about 300 US dollar spent on claw machines for prizes that probably topped out at $50.

After our trip to Akihabara, we hiked our way back to the hostel, stopping to buy some dinner at a convenience store. We arrived as exhausted as the day before and our wallets slightly lighter after a full day of shopping. We showered, grabbed some snacks and our computers and went to relax in the free wi-fi and television in the hostel lobby. Luckily for us, the Japanese national soccer team was playing a friendly and sports is a joy that has no language barrier. And yes, I used soccer. I'm an American. I apologize to the futbol aficionados.  The true entertainment, though, came from a very avid fan who I believe owned the hostel and sat next to us on the couch the whole game, drinking beer and providing very excited commentary throughout. We couldn't quite understand all he was saying but we got the gist just the same. We stayed up long enough to watch the end of the game and by then the sun had long set on our second day in Japan.

Useful phrase in this week's post (and bonuses!):

shounen - しょうねん　少年

meaning: young boy; genre of manga more targeted to the male demographic

shoujo - しょうじょ　少女

meaning: young girl; genre of manga more targeted to the female demographic

yuri - ユリ　百合

meaning: girl love; manga on the theme of female homosexuality

yaoi - やおい

meaning: guy love; manga on the theme of male homosexual love

Strangers in a Strange Land

This week’s post will be slightly shorter than the others as the topic, my first full day in Japan, was also a rather short one. To pick up where we left off, we successfully checked out of our hotel and caught a local train to the Asakusa area of Tokyo in order to find the Sakura Youth Hostel, our home for the next three days. For anyone looking to travel abroad on a budget, like many students, then utilizing the cheap and efficient living conditions of a hostel are absolutely essential. The Sakura is the quintessential hostel with both male and female dorm-style accommodations with up to eight people sharing the same room.

Now while I mentioned that one can feel completely at ease while travelling in Japan, it is at places like hostels one has to be most wary, due to the high amount of people coming and going, many of whom are not Japanese. At the Sakura, we encountered no problems, but they do provide each guest with a locker in their rooms to store valuables while they may be out during the day. If you’re worried about more expensive items such as a laptop, I would recommend renting a locker, as it’s cheap and allows you to walk around without being burdened with extra items to carry. Although we went straight from our hotel to the hostel, our rooms weren’t quite ready so we decided to store our luggage in the basement of the Sakura, and venture out to explore Asakusa. We were lucky enough that the area surrounding the Sakura had a wealth of interesting places to see, including a very picturesque park dotted with several shrines large and small and a wealth of shopping centers selling a variety of food and trinkets.

Needless to say we were still quite exhausted both from our flight and from carrying our luggage all over Tokyo in our search for a place to stay, so we only chose to explore for a few hours before returning to the Sakura to rest up. Because we were going to be in Tokyo for a few days, the first outing was more of a scouting expedition to find places to go when we had regained our strength. Even though our first day was rather short-lived as we spent the rest of the day at the hostel getting ourselves situated and relaxing, one moment became one of the highlights of my journey.

For some reason we never quite figured out, on that first day, Asakusa was quite overrun with what seemed like hundreds of elementary and middle school students. Our best guess is that it was some sort of district field trip, as we couldn’t hardly keep track of the number of different uniforms we saw.

As the three of us were walking through the central shopping area of Asakusa, we happened to pass a group of middle school girls who were waiting in front of one of the stands. Apparently one of them was still inside and had been separated from the group. Just as we passed in between the group and the stand, the last member of the middle-schoolers came bolting out of the small shop. After almost running into us, the girl shouted “ah, gaijin!” (pronounced guy-jean), before side-stepping us and joining her friends. Although our knowledge of Japanese was limited, we all knew that gaijin meant foreigner and when we heard the exclamation, we all looked at each other and burst out laughing, It had really struck home that we weren’t in America anymore and we were truly strangers in a strange land.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

gaijin - がいじん - 外人

meaning: foreigner

First Night of Fun: Dancing with the Devil Called Jet Lag

I think the best place to start when recounting the glorious time I spent in Japan would be where my adventure began - Tokyo in the summer.

My plane left my hometown of Cincinnati at 4 p.m. to begin a 14-hour flight to Haneda airport in Tokyo with a 2 hour layover in Detroit. It was in Detroit that I met up with my fellow travelers, who, for the sake of their privacy, we'll call John and Peter. We departed from Detroit in the late evening and to our luck, we were all sitting in the same section of the plane.

As the flight wore on and we partook of the international flight snack cart multiple times, we agreed that it would be best to stay awake for the entirety of our flight in the hopes of combating jet lag - our flight was expected to land at 11 p.m. local time. We, in our very incomplete knowledge of how jet lag works, reasoned that if we stayed up the whole flight, the equivalent of the night in our home time zones, then we would be exhausted and ready to sleep on a normal schedule once we made our way through immigrations and customs.

None of us had any problems coming through the gates, I mean, come on, who's going to question three college students who say they're in the country to study puppets? Again our naivete showed when we thought that, after sending our luggage on ahead to our host families in Iida city in the Nagano prefecture, we could simply walk out the front doors of the airport and walk to our hotel. It took all of 15 minutes of walking before we realized we were about to walk on to a major highway. It was hear I first came across the phrase ki wo tsukete, which John said when he was the first to realize our mistake.

Begrudgingly we turned around and eventually figured out we had to take the train from the airport to the district where our hotel was located. This is where things started to go south. Upon arrival in the Chuuo special ward, we left the station to discover that Peter, who had made the reservations for us, failed to get directions or a map of where this place is. All we had was a name, which escapes me at the moment as I was too exhausted to really pay attention to it at the time. Well, that, and a questionable GPS smartphone that didn't seem to know downtown Tokyo too well.

Luckily for us, we were so pumped up to be in Japan in Tokyo that we didn't really care, it was 12:30 a.m. and here we were, three foreigners wandering around the streets carrying our duffle bags of clothes for the next two weeks, just taking it all in.

It was during our exploration that we first discovered the magic of the Japanese vending machines. These things put their American counterparts to shame in terms of not only variety of selection but in the quality as well. John, Peter and I each selected a different drink, myself electing for the Dragonball Z-themed orange drink while John and Peter each selected different types of teas. This was perhaps the greatest thing about the vending machines in Japan is that you have the option to select warm or cold beverages. So depending on your feeling you could have a hot coffee or an ice cold Pocari Sweat, the Japanese Gatorade. There are a wide array of vending machine offerings, but that'll be for another post.

By some magic or guardian deity we managed to arrive at our hotel around 1:30 in the morning, to find, much to my surprise, a concierge awaiting our check-in. I had thought we would have missed the mark, but apparently Peter had the foresight to request a late check-in time for us. We soldiered on in our broken Japanese to let them know we had a reservation, which they politely and patiently managed to decipher and we got into our room around 2 a.m. After some much needed uses of the restroom, we all got ready for bed expecting to be passed out for several hours, thus thwarting the devil jet lag and adjusting our biological clocks in under 24 hours.

We awoke to light pouring in a crack in our window and we thought that surely it must be 10 or 11 a.m. We looked at the clock and were shocked to see that it was 4:30 a.m. We struggled to go back to sleep and could feel that our bodies were hardwired not to be sleeping at this time back home, so we eventually trudged out of bed at 6 a.m. Japan is known as the Land of the Rising Sun for a reason. They are at the very edge of their time zone and as such the sun will rise sometimes as early as 3:30 in the morning, or so I'm told.

After showering and repacking our bags, we headed downstairs to check out and make our way to our hostel in the Asakusa special ward. We left the hotel expect Japan to still be somewhat asleep, but we continued to be wrong as everyone from grandparents to businessmen heading to work to high schoolers catching the morning train to school. After giving vending machine roulette another go, this time with coffee, we were betrayed again by our lack of language proficiency as we held up the ticket line for awhile trying to figure out the kanji for Asakusa, it's 浅草 by the way. Eventually, a businessman, clearly seeing we were new to the country and struggling, stepped up and helped us buy our tickets. We knew enough Japanese to say we wanted to go to Asakusa, thank goodness. After awkwardly making our way onto the train balancing our bags, we experienced for the first time Japanese train rush hour as we were packed like sardines into these underground metal tubes. People poured out at popular spots such as Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Akihabara before we finally made it to our stop. We got off and left the station, only to realize Peter had lost his ticket in the shuffle. The Japanese station workers couldn't understand our fractured attempt to explain the situation and eventually let us pass.

Luck decided to finally smile on us and we were able to find our hostel with minimal effort and after dropping off our bags to wait for check in, we found a local convenience store to grab breakfast. It didn't take us long to realize that these convenience stores, called コンビニ or conbini, would become our life-blood during our time there as again, the Japanese outclassed the American version, with not only a plethora of cheap food options but also microwave capabilities and international ATM access. Our stomachs full and our wallets replenished we headed back to the Sakura Youth Hostel to check in and start exploring the cultural center that is the Asakusa special ward of downtown Tokyo.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

ki wo tsukete - きをつけて　気を付けて

meaning: Be careful!

The Adventure Begins...

In June of last year, I began what was to be the biggest undertaking in my life to date. From June 2012 to May 2013, I lived in Japan as a foreign exchange student in various cities across the Chubu and Kanto regions. For the summer, I participated in a cultural studies program for my home University of Missouri while I spent the academic year studying the Japanese language at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities in Hikone, Japan.

The summer I spent traveling across Japan, being primarily based in the city of Iida in the Nagano Prefecture, as a member of Bunraku Bay Puppet Theater. Our cultural studies program took the form of spending eight weeks living in Iida and learning the art of ningyou joururi, puppet theater, from the oldest active puppet troupe in Japan, the good people of the Imada Puppet Theater. This all culminated in our participation in the annual International Puppet Fest hosted in Iida, performing both as students of Imada and as members of Bunraku Bay.

I began my travels as most foreigners do on their first time in Japan, in the capital city of Tokyo. I was traveling with some classmates of mine, Joe Shadduck and David Parker, who were also on the summer program with me. From the get-go, our time in Japan was one of exploration and discovery as we struggled to find our hotel on the first night and carried our luggage into the wee hours of the morning on the streets of downtown Tokyo.

After a couple days in Asakusa, a district of metropolitan Tokyo, we made our way to Nara, a city I came to call my favorite in Japan, for the beginning of our summer program. There again we met challenges as people began to gather at our youth hostel in Nara for the start of the summer. But that's a story for another post.

After all 12 members of our group, 10 students, one student leader and our professor, Martin Holman, the head of the Japanese Department at Mizzou as well as the founder and head of Bunraku Bay, found their way to Nara, we spent a week taking in the sites, rapidly learning japanese just from sheer exposure and learning about the rich history in the former capital in ancient Japan.

We spent nearly a week and a half in Nara, after which we moved to Kyoto where we stayed for a week in the best youth hostel in Kyoto according to many travel guides, the Utano Youth Hostel. Although so much of the country is steeped in history, many consider Kyoto to be the cultural capital of the country, including my sensei, who said, "You could spend ten years living in Kyoto, which I have done, and still not see all there is to see or do all there is to do in this city."

Our time in Kyoto was all too brief, but I would be making many trips back to the city in the coming year. After leaving Kyoto, we got into the meat of our summer program, living with Japanese host families for eight weeks in the rural mountain city of Iida. During this time we practiced learning puppetry for 15 hours a week in addition to language classes with Holman-sensei and cultural opportunities such as learning kyuudo, Japanese archery, and volunteering at a local daycare.

As busy as we were, the summer flew by and before I knew it, it was time for my friends and classmates to return home, while I readied myself for spending my academic year in Hikone at JCMU. There was a month gap between the end of my summer program and the beginning of my academic year, but I was lucky enough that one of the host families allowed me to stay with them for that time, which allowed me to get comfortable with everyday japanese without the added pressures of practice and classes. It was during this time and the beginnings of my studies at JCMU that really saw the greatest change as I became more adapted to life in Japan.

In this blog, I will be sharing my experiences in the Land of the Rising Sun, the good, the bad and the ugly, now that I've had a full summer living back in the good ol' US of A to process what happened in my year abroad. Because it's become such an integral part of my current vocabulary I will also be sharing some useful Japanese phrases I've come to love as well as provide a little advice and tips to people looking to have their own daibouken in the isles of Japan.

Useful phrase in this week's post:

daibouken - だいぼうけん　大冒険

meaning: great adventure