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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
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