Days 8 and 9: Easy Segues from Japan to Korea

The day after my trip through Nara park, I checked out of the hostel, saying farewell to it's very kind owner. She was an impressive woman, running the entire place by herself - checking guests in, doing all of the cleaning, answering all the calls, maintaining security, etc. I was heading for Osaka and had, at this point, about 2,000 yen left in my pockets (that's about $20). A word of advice for future travelers: Japan is expensive. Be prepared to overspend your budget twofold.

I was very excited for this leg of my trip in Japan because I was getting to stay with close family friends - Professor Eunja Lee and her husband and teenage daughter. Being in a home would be a nice change. Arriving at Shin-Osaka station, I fidgeted around the payphones, finally getting the damned thing to work and called them up to receive a seemingly complicated slew of directions. The phone call ended abruptly when I could no longer provide for the payphone's insatiable appetite for 100 yen coins. I looked down at my scribbled directions.

"Uhh..."

They were, however, wonderfully thorough and easy to follow. I got to my destination where I was picked up by the professor and her husband on bicycles (though not without another elaborate tango with the Japanese payphones). Again, I looked kind of ghastly. I'd run out of fresh clothes (by fresh, I mean decent smelling) and (secret) I wasn't wearing a bra. Date me?

My bag was loaded on the back of one bicycle and I rode on the back of the other. There's nothing like a cool bicycle breeze after all of that walking. When we got to their house, I was introduced to Owen - a former student of Professor Lee, native of England but now living in Australia and in Japan to do research for his thesis. He was also staying as her guest.

We chatted it up and sat down for dinner. I love home cooked meals, especially when they involve kimchi. I missed that beautiful, spicy, red crunch attacking my tastebuds a lot. Despite my appetite for adventure, the familiar was also very welcomed.

I was talking to the teenage daughter, HaeJung, about school in Japan. She has a very interesting education, actually. Raised in New York, we've known each other since we were little. She spent her early, formative years speaking English in the New York public school system and speaking Korean at home. A few years back, her mom got a job teaching at Kansai University at they all moved to Japan. HaeJung didn't speak a word of Japanese when they got there. I think that's so brave - I can't imagine how much angst I'd have, being a teenager in a country where I couldn't speak the language. I would break so many things in the house. She's now fluent in English, Korean and Japanese, playing the saxaphone and trying to find her place in the thick bureaucracy of Japanese high school. So neat.

The next morning, Owen took it upon himself to take me around the Osaka area, introducing me to the local culture and history. We went out to Osaka Castle first which was pretty impressive, what with its giant moat and massive stone walls and gold ornamentation. Owen explained how the castle was deeply imbued in Korean-Japanese history, which was the rough of his thesis. Inside the castle was a museum where I was further able to learn about emperor Meiji, the Summer Wars and Japan's first invasion of the Korean peninsula.

It was really pretty interesting, though by the end of the eight story history lesson, I was ready for some good old brain rot. After a short snack break where I was introduced to the magic of Takoyaki (super hot balls of fried dough filled with squid and topped with saucy goodness ummmm), we headed to the aquarium. Owen also happens to be an avid diver and snorkeler with a really good vocabulary when it comes to marine life! So I got to hear some really cool stories to relate to all the different species of fish and underwater mammals I saw swimming behind the thick wall of acrylic glass. The manta rays hypnotized me. We also got to see whale sharks feeding. They look like hoover vacuums, it's really insane.

After that, we met up with the Professor and her Professor friend at the train station to get dinner. I was introduced to a dish called Okonomiyaki. According to Wikipedia, it is a Japanese savory pancake whose name literally translates to "what you like cooked". I can't really write this part of the entry without producing a lot of drool. Stop talking about food, Shannon. I'm kind of hungry.

Day 7: deer in Nara are less shy than the people

It had been a week since I had left home and I'd already felt like a different person in some respects. I'd met so many different people and had so many new experiences every single day that I'm having a hard time keeping track at this point. After checking into my new hostel in Nara, however, I was starting to really feel the anxiety and loneliness of being really alone. It seemed that each hostel I went to was progressively quieter and quieter. To overgeneralize a race: Japanese people are very shy. There wasn't much interaction with humans while I was in Nara - I had a good amount of fun, but it was mostly had with deer (they were EVERYWHERE!!!!!)

I'm being kind of harsh.

Perks: It was really tourist friendly, easy to get around and generally nice.

I visited Nara Park which was really neat and paid visit to the giant Buddha in Todaiji Temple. I think photos will better illustrate this day so I'm going to break off my reliance on text here...

okay... this is the point where i was basking unabashedly in 6 year old dreams coming true.

precocious deer, shy japanese

hi again

hold on a minute - I had a spiritual experience.

Despite the fact that the Daibutsu was like an active beehive of tourists, there were a few seconds that swept me off my feet. Before you enter the temple, there's a giant pot full of burning incense creating this thick veil of perfumed plumes. You walk through, squinting a little because smoke is sometimes unkind to the eyes. There's a moment where the cloud lifts revealing the giant holy body, hands poised to preach where you can't help but stand in awe, whispering a faint "wow". But that's just me talk-talk-talking.

(photos didn't really capture the size, but you can rest assured that these guys are massive)

ate my map...

On the way back to the hostel, I got to order for myself in Japanese! Well not really in Japanese... I ordered in broken English with Japanese words of courtesy thrown into the mix. Either way! I wasn't entirely sure of what I had ordered but it was very delicious - oiishi des! And eating alone was an interesting experience involving a lot of people watching and getting to eat as sloppily as I dared.

Days 5 and 6: Celebrity Rehab and the Beatles

Here is my current predicament: I'm in Korea already and I haven't even recorded half of what I've done in Japan! The moments are already slipping through the cracks in my memory. Of course, seeing as I'm watching the world cup (England vs. Slovenia), a Nike ad shows up. "Just do it," it says.

Right...

So the first ever post on this here blog mentioned me being on the shinkansen from Tokyo down to Kyoto. Back to that! It was really neat seeing the landscape change from the tightly knit concrete grids of the city to the classic Japanese mountain landscapes and miles and miles of rice patties. I've made the photo sizes larger after realizing how tiny and nondescript they've been. Sorry!

rolling through tokyo

!! imagine THIS being on your commute to work

I got to Kyoto station sometime around 8 pm. According to the directions on the hostel website, the next mode of transport was a bus. I asked the station master who, to my misfortune, didn't speak a word of English but managed to tell me that the "basu" no longer stopped at that station and that the hostel was about an hour's walk away. By this point, it was night-dark out and seeing as I was a total stranger to this quiet Kyoto suburb, I didn't exactly feel good about wandering. I walked into the local convenience store and struck out again - though the elderly man behind the counter was sweet and as helpful as can be, he also only spoke Japanese.

This was the first time I panicked; my thoughts a blizzard of expletives.

Finally, I mustered up the guts to walk into the local beauty salon to ask for directions. I say guts because I looked absolutely abysmal and the kids working in the salon looked absolutely pristine and shiny. I managed to "sumimasen" my way into their hearts and they called me a cab.

The hostel, as it turned out, was in the middle of nowhere and had the look and feel of a celebrity rehab facility. Here's what I rolled up to:

Through the glass windows, there was what appeared to be a studio with several people doing ballet. That's right. Ballet. I checked in with the same feeling of feeling like the ultimate ugly duckling trekking mud all over this pretty establishment. Not actual mud, of course. That's disgusting. The inside of the hostel was even more impressive than the outside if you can believe that. I threw my things into the corner of my bunk and got lost trying to find the bathroom.

I hung out in the lobby (see above photo) afterward, feeling the need for some sort of social interaction and a hug companion:

I found both! I struck up conversation with a group of 8th graders from Alaska who were on a school sponsored exchange program. I thought that was really cool (despite the fact they were 8th graders). After talking to them for a while about how Japanese food can be sometimes scary and other times amazing, I went back to my room where I met my bunk mate: a student from SAIC! I love art school, sometimes. We chatted it up about things to do in the area and went to bed. She left me a nice note with all her contact info. I should email her...

The next morning, out for a breath of fresh air in the hostel's COURT YARD, I started talking to a guy.

Rob was from Liverpool, which I gathered from the fact that he spoke like a member of the Beatles (you know... that band). He had been traveling all throughout Asia, mostly throughout the south-east. Having no plans for the day, I decided to join him on a day trip up to the orange gates of the Inari Shrines (the inspiration for the similarly colored (but dissimilarly ugly) gates in Central Park all those years back). Neither of us were prepared for the stairs. They were endless...

shrines to the fox gods!

cat

each gate has a prayer written for each day

hi!

back of rob

view from the top

We got back to the hostel at around 4 pm where I promptly packed my bags and started off again. I had just gotten off the bus a mere ten minutes before and the bus driver picking me up from the hostel happened to be the same one who dropped me off. He recognized me, and I recognized his dry, monotone beehive drone voice. He would make a really fantastic film character, I think.

My next destination was the neighboring city of Nara - a little day trip taking about an hour and a half to my next home where the rickshaw drivers roam; where the deer and the [japanese school children] play.