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…

Lab

After orientation, I took the Nozomi (the super fast bullet train) for the first time down to Kyoto. I have since moved into my apartment and began working in my lab at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International). I’m somewhere between Kyoto and Nara, kind of in the middle of nowhere. My apartment is surprisingly big. I have a bedroom with a futon, Japanese-style shower/bath, kitchen area, living room, and balcony. The garbage system in Japan seems pretty complicated – you need to separate your trash into eight categories and there are various schedules to pick up the different bags. Surprisingly, you’ll rarely find any trash cans on the streets of Japan, yet the sidewalks are somehow kept very clean.

There are only two other people in my lab and my host advisor is currently in Tokyo at her other lab. At orientation for my lab, I was surprised at how much they stressed that work hours were from 9am-6pm, you should leave at 5:30pm on Wednesdays, and you need to ask your supervisor for permission to work on the weekends or overtime on the weekdays. I later asked my labmate about these rules, and he said people don’t actually follow them, but companies are probably required to say this to prevent people from overworking (which I’ve heard Japanese workers are known to do).

On Friday evening, I went out with my labmates to Gion, Kyoto. It’s been raining all week, so we all brought umbrellas. I was told to hang onto my umbrella because, although the Japanese are good about returning lost laptops and cameras, umbrellas and bikes are frequently stolen. We had dinner at a tapas-like restaurant. They had some strange items on the menu, including whale and raw chicken, but the weirdest thing we ordered was chicken neck. Afterwards, we went out for some good ol’ Japanese karaoke!

Orientation

I haven’t had much internet access the past week, so I’ve been bad about posting entries. The first week in Japan was orientation with other graduate students from the US, Canada, Germany, France, and the UK. The orientation consisted of intense Japanese language courses, lectures, and cultural activities, including a weekend homestay with a Japanese family.

I really enjoyed my stay with the Kosaka family, and I especially loved playing with the two girls. Over the weekend, I played Super Mario Brothers on the Wii (which I was horrible at) and learned a lot about Pokemon. The family was super nice and everyone spoke surprisingly good English. Highlights included:

- Visiting the girls’ grandparents and seeing old pictures of the family

- Trying out a 3D television and playing with some science exhibits with the girls at the Panasonic Center in Tokyo

- Visiting Kamakura and learning about the various rituals at one of the shrines

- Making pottery

- And of course, eating! Soba, warabi mochi, sushi (although I didn’t enjoy the raw shrimp…)

Me and the Kosaka family

Trying on a kimono

Making a tea cup out of clay from Kyoto

Back in Japan

June 15, 2010

Back in Japan again, this time for a whole summer to do research. I flew in to Narita yesterday and took a bus to the hotel, where I was amused by the hotel across the street. This Christmas themed hotel was complete with Christmas trees, decorations, and Santa statues. We later realized from the hourly rate sign that this was probably a love hotel.


More quirky Japan pics to come...

Sayonara to Japan

May 28, 2009

Last day in Japan :(

After packing everything up, we left Nara and went to Osaka. Tamas was staying at a hotel there, so we were able to leave our luggage in his room. This is by far the smallest hotel room I've ever seen. His "room" is just big enough for a person to sleep. Very minimalistic - just tatami mats, and sheets and a mat for sleeping (well, and a tv - every hotel room in Japan seems has a tv).

(picture from Tamas)

We took the train one stop over to see the arcade in Osaka. This was one of the bigger and busier arcades I've been to. There were some funny restaurants and advertisements.


Soon it was time for me to go to the airport and say bye to Tamas and Japan. Tamas will be staying a few extra days to stay in a temple in Mount Koya and hike in Wakayama. On the flight back, I had no problem sleeping and I soon woke up in San Francisco. My parents are awesome and visited me at SFO, even though I only got to see them for about an hour. It was funny because I had bought mochi for them, but my mom also brought me mochi - so we traded :) One more flight, and I was back in Baltimore.

Overall, this Japan trip was amazing. It was a great professional and personal experience. I loved playing with the robots, sampling the food (especially the mochi!), staying in Japanese-style rooms, seeing everything from beautiful moutain temples to the crazy crowds of Tokyo. And of course, there's so much more that I haven't done or seen yet...but that's for next time :)

Nara

May 27, 2009

We started off the day with a cute Japanese-style breakfast at our ryokan. There were a bunch of little dishes, rice, miso soup, and tea. It was interesting to try so many different flavors - from sweet to salty to whatever taste pickled veggies have - so early in the morning (8:30am was on the later end of when breakfast was served!)


We walked around Nara and visited many temples today. The first was Kofukuji Temple, and here we began to see deer everywhere. The deer in Nara are considered to be national treasures. These deer seemed to be well-behaved, content with eating the grass surrounding the temple - unlike the little beggars in Miyajima. Every shop and stand was selling stacks of senbei (deer crackers), so we decided to buy some. Turns out our first impression of the Nara deer was very very wrong. They were even worse! Some would nudge us with their antlers and others even bit our shirts!


The coolest temple was Todaiji Temple, which has a huge Buddha statue sitting in the world's largest woodest structure. In the gate in front of this temple, there are two huge wooden guardians - they're probably the most impressive wooden statues I've ever seen. In the back of the temple, there's a column with a hole cut out in the bottom, the same size as the Buddha's nostril. If you can crawl through it, you'll supposedly reach enlightenment (we made it!)


We saw many other temples as we hiked through the hills and side streets. Another impressive one was Kasuga-Taisha Shrine, which had pathways through the forest that were lined with thousands of lanterns. Nara Park was also nice, especially with the gazebo on the lake. Another thing about bathrooms (I know I've made lots of comments about this already), but I really can't stress enough how nice Japanese bathrooms are. The one in the park, for example, even had a little garden in it!

Tonight we moved to a hostel since our ryokan only had availability for one night. This hostel has a great, quirky atmosphere. It's funny because we had a private Japanese-style room, but it was really just an enclosed area of one of the bunkbed dormatory-style rooms.

Himeji

May 26, 2009

This morning we boarded the train to Himeji to see the castle. It's actually really big - 6 stories tall - and each floor is very spacious. After touring the castle, we walked through the arcade (here, arcade means a covered street of shops and restaurants). We tried a local favorite – okonomiyaki – at a restaurant in the basement of a department store. It’s like a pancake with noodles, egg and cabbage.


Our visit to Himeji was pretty short, and we were soon on our way to Nara. In Nara, we're staying in a ryokan which used to be a geisha house. You can tell it's old, but I really like the atmosphere of the place. In our room, there was hot tea waiting for us. We have a room on the second floor facing the cute garden in the center of the ryokan. They have Japanese-style baths, with mini shower stations for washing with shampoo and soap, and a hot bath for soaking.