Kyoto shopping & hiking

So far, the majority of my time in Kyoto has been spent doing cultural things, like visiting temples. This weekend I finally got to explore the other things Kyoto has to offer. I met up with the family on Friday night, but it was too late to do anything. Luckily I had also met up with them in Nara the previous night, so I got to hear all about their Tokyo adventures over dinner. On Saturday morning, we managed to fit in a little bit of shopping at the station before they left. I spent the rest of the day shopping in Kyoto station - there are so many stores within the station, it's crazy! I think I had just as much fun looking at all the sales girls as I did shopping. They all have hair dyed light brown/blond, lots of make up, crazy clothes, and very tall shoes (and even then, I think I'm still taller than many of them hehe).

On Sunday, I went hiking at Hirasan, which is north of Kyoto. I've never done any kind of hiking like this before. We walked upstream through the river the entire way - wading through the water, swimming past the deep parts, and even doing some mini-rock climbing :) Two of my friends got leeches, but they come off as soon as you sprinkle salt on them. At the end of the hike, there was a waterfall that we could swim to.

Picture from my labmate, Yu

After the hike, we went to a sento to wash up and relax (a type of Japanese communal bath, but not an onsens because it doesn't use water from natural hot springs).

Gibo kazoku ga Nihon ni imasu!

The family came to visit in Japan! On Friday evening, I met up with them in Kyoto and went to check out the festivities the night before Gion Matsuri, one of the biggest festivals in Japan. The night before the matsuri is called yoiyama, and three nights before is yoiyoiyoiyama. Try saying that a few times fast. The main streets of Gion were closed off to cars and filled with tons of people, many wearing yukatas, and street vendors selling food. I've never seen a Japanese street so dirty before - there was actually litter on the ground!

Saturday morning, we woke up early to get a good viewing spot for the Gion Matsuri parade. We were at the start of the parade, so we got to see all of the preparation for the parade and the floats (hoko). We watched as tons of people piled into the first hoko. At the end, a little boy dressed in a fancy robe with his face painted white was carried up to the float - his feet were never allowed to touch the ground. It was super crowded by the time the parade started, and the old ladies were especially pushy!

Hoko - big float

Yama - small float

Next stop was Miyajima. We were immediately greeted by a bunch of hungry deer, who ate my aunt's fan. We stayed in a gorgeous little ryokan on the island. We went to dinner dressed in our yukatas and enjoyed the wide variety of dishes - raw fish, soups, chicken, pickled veggies, etc. Michelle and I also relaxed in the Japanese-style bath. Afterwards, walked outside to see the torii, beautiful as always...

The girls in our yukatas

The fam at the torii

Sunday was spent exploring Miyajima. It was low tide in the morning, so we walked out to the torii. We spent most of the day walking around Daisho-in Temple. I came here last year, but I still love it, and you always seem to stumble upon different statues. In the evening, we took the ferry back to Hiroshima and had okonomiyaki for dinner. I loved our cook - an adorable old man who sang and had posters and a video playing of his favorite Japanese singer.


It was a national holiday on Monday, so I stayed in Hiroshima with the family. We went to the Peace Memorial Museum and walked around the park. It was my second time coming here, but it really is a very moving museum and I'd highly recommend it.

Sighting in the lunchroom

Today in the cafeteria, I saw Hiroshi Ishiguro – at least I’m pretty sure it was him, and not his robot doppelganger… He's famous for having built a humanoid robot that looks exactly like him. Ishiguro-san was wearing all black, and I’ve heard from many people that he always dresses in all black - just like his robot.

"He who climbs Mount Fuji once is a wise man, he who climbs it twice is a fool."

I could not agree more with that Japanese saying.

It probably would have been a good idea to get a good night’s rest the night before the climb, but there was a party at work on Friday night and I had to catch a train at 5:30am the next morning. So a night of wine and sake and less than four hours of sleep was probably not the best way to start the day off…

It’s still a bit early in the climbing season (which is only July-August), so we couldn’t take the southern route because the summit was still covered in snow. The northern route (Yoshida Trail) is the most popular, but it was harder for us to get to (1 hour on two trains + 5 hour bus ride + another 1 hour bus ride).

We had a lot of time to kill before starting the climb, so we went to an onsen. This was my first time experiencing a public bath in Japan. After getting used to the fact that everyone was naked, it turned out to be quite relaxing.

After taking a bus up to the 5^th station (at 2300 m), we were shocked at how cold it was! We had heard that the Japanese are usually overly prepared for climbing Fuji, but now we all wished that we had more warm layers too. Our group of 7 students from my program joined forces with 2 other Americans and 4 Norwegians, and we nicknamed ourselves Apollo 13… We started hiking at 10pm.

The hike got surprisingly steep and strenuous. It was especially shocking to see all the old people on the mountain! Towards the end, the trail was very congested and the huge procession of people made forward progress very slow. It was really an incredible sight to see all these people slowly marching up Fuji, appearing as a zigzag of lights crawling up the mountain. There was such a strong sense of camaraderie among everyone.

Around 4am, Apollo 13 made it to the summit (3776 m)! It was freezing and super windy. Half an hour later, we got our sunrise on Fuji.

Afterwards, we crammed into a lodge with other tired hikers, I bought an overpriced bowl of miso soup (¥800!), and tried to sleep. We started the descent around 7:30am. It was very steep and rocky, so we ended up running/sliding down the entire way. Back at the base of the mountain, we went to relax and nap back at the onsen. This was the most exhausting weekend of my life.

I’ve been waiting to climb Fuji since my last trip to Japan and I thought this was an incredible experience…but never again...

Robot wedding

The other day, I had lunch with Shibata-sensei - a robotics professor at Nara Institute of Science and Technology, and more importantly, the first guy to get married by a robot. They made sure that I understood that it was by a robot, and not to a robot...

Robot wedding

Revisiting Kyoto

I went back to Kyoto again this weekend since two friends from my program were visiting from Tsukuba. Four of us somehow managed to cram into our other friend’s teeny tiny apartment.

Apparently it’s still rainy season because it was pouring all Saturday, so we spent the day exploring Kyoto in our soggy shoes. We spent most of the day in Arashiyama, a beautiful forested area in the western part of the city. We explored the gardens at Tenryuji Temple, but I especially enjoyed the bamboo forest behind the temple grounds (except for all the mosquitoes, who only went after me). With the rain and fog, it really looked like a magical forest.

Next, we hiked up a hill to Monkey Park Iwatayama. There are 150 Japanese monkeys living on this mountain. I especially enjoyed watching the tiny baby monkeys. We arrived just before feeding time, which was a bit touristy but really funny to watch - the monkeys went crazy! I also bought some chestnuts to feed to the monkeys.

In the evening, we rented a karoke room for 1.5 hours and relived our middle school years by singing Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. Afterwards, we went clubbing with some German couch surfers we met on the streets of Gion. It was a long day, but it was so much fun to go out and explore Kyoto’s nightlife.

Since we hadn’t gone to sleep until about 5am, we “slept in” until 10am (since I’ve been in Japan, I can wake up at 7am without an alarm). I spent Sunday hiking around Fushimi Inari Shrine. There were many paths up the mountain, lined with thousands of red torii, leading to other smaller shrines with little torii and fox statues. We also got a nice view overlooking Kyoto about halfway up the mountain.

This was by far the most fun weekend so far, minus the swarms of mosquitoes. I just counted – I got 40 mosquito bites from this weekend…

Hot and humid and rainy in Kyoto

This weekend I went to Kyoto and met up with other students in my program living in the Kansai area. It was nice to be able to speak English freely with other people. It rained all Saturday, but we still managed to see some sights and explore the city. At Nijo Castle, we walked through the palace corridors on the Nightingale floorboards (designed to squeak to detect intruders) and the gardens.

Next, we headed over to Gion, the downtown area of Kyoto. We walked through the Nishiki Market and enjoyed taking pictures of all the strange foods, including takotamago (octopus with a quail egg stuffed inside the head…yum).

We also went to Yasaka Shrine, which I had visited last year, but this time there was a big ring made out of some plant which you had to walk through in a figure eight pattern (I’m not sure what the significance of it was…).
After a lot more wandering around, we were all pretty hungry and tired (finding a bench in Japan is rare). Gion was super crowded and most of the restaurants were too small to accommodate our party of nine, so we settled on a Mexican restaurant! The couple running the restaurant wore Mexican style clothes and the man played the guitar and sang songs in Spanish, while we got to play along with tambourines :) We wanted to stay out to go karaoke-ing, but the buses stop running around 10 so we decided to call it a night.

On Sunday, I explored the northern part of the city. I went to Kamigamo Shrine, which was near the hills and seemed to be visited by few foreign tourists. There also happened to be a market at the shrine with tons of stands selling food and crafts. My favorite sight was a man walking around with a cat sitting on his shoulder.

Next stop was Kinkakuji Temple, the famous Golden Pavilion. I’ve heard that this temple is a bit hyped up, but I thought it was actually very pretty. A bunch of school kids approached my friend Tim to ask him questions in English, but they ignored me (as usual). They asked their teacher to take a picture of them with Tim, and I think the teacher felt bad and told me I could get in their picture too.

Last stop of the day was Ryoanji Temple, with its famous rock garden. I wasn’t too impressed with the rock garden though – I think I like normal gardens better.

Some observations: Japanese people never seem to put their bags on the ground or eat while walking (which we heard is kind of taboo). We ended up doing both quite often though, since we were hungry and tired of carrying our backpacks around…