Geisha paparazzi and cherry blossoms

So, it is a Friday night, and I am hanging at the Interneto Cafe-o wa with comic book nerds. Yes, this place features a bazillion comic books for people to read and sit in a booth while chain smoking (I miss Ohio anti-smoking!).　I am learning how to read Japanese on a computer, but I cannot figure out how to use apostrophes, and I keep hitting a button that turns my writing into Japanese. But I digress...

Gina and I have experienced our first full day in Kyoto, and we are having an amazing time. I cannot believe everything we have seen today.

Our ryokan rocks! It is quaint, reasonably priced and in a perfect location. The innkeeper speaks little English, but we are communicating just fine with the bits and pieces of Japanese we have learned.

We slept great last night and got up early to go to Murukama Koen, a park famous for cherry blossom viewing. The buds are just opening, and it is a sight to see! At the park at 10 a.m., tons of people had already spread out tarps and were staking ground for parties this evening beneath the trees.

The park hosts Chion-an, a temple that was built in 1234. The massive gate at the main entrance is the largest in Japan. There is a beautiful pink pagoda there and an ornate Buddha shrine.

Next, we walked a couple miles to Kiyomizu-dera, built in 798!!! to drink the Otowa-no taki spring of "golden water for healthy, long life," and visit the Love Shrine and Tainai-meguri, the belly of Buddha. At the Love Shrine, you walk from one stone to another 18 meters away with your eyes closed. If you succeed, you ensure success in love. I am happy to report that we each successfully navigated around the throng of tourists to accomplish our goal.

At Tainai-meguri, we walked down into darkness and navigated our way to turn the Buddha stone for good luck by holding onto a giant bead for guidance. It was unnerving, but really fun. I kept bumping into the girl in front of me, so I practiced sumimasen (excuse me) quite a bit.

On the way to Kiyomizu-dera, we spotted our first maiko (geisha-in-training). They were sweet and took a picture with me. Later this evening, we hired a guide to take us through Gion, where most of the geisha live. We walked down alleys to see the okiya (geisha boarding houses) and catch glimpses of maiko and geiko (how the Japanese refer to geisha) as they scurried on their way to appointments at tea houses. We stopped back at the park to sample octopus puffs (you can barely taste the suckers) and sweets. Then we walked down Pontocho, a famous alley in Gion by the river and headed back toward our inn to grab some dinner.

We felt like we were waiting for our check for a while when, like a rock star (per Gina), I remembered that you signal to your server that you want your check by making an X with your index fingers. It worked! We finished our sake and came here.

Tomorrow is our sushi cooking class at the home of a Japanese woman and more sightseeing.

Kombanwa (good night)!

Toilet humor

So, people, this is what a Japanese toilet looks like. Basically, it is a hole in the ground that is shielded by porcelain. It completely freaks me out. When we got to our subway stop near our inn after 29 hours of travel, I really, really had to pee. When I saw this bad boy in the subway restroom, I turned around and walked out. No freaking way.

After we found our ryokan (Louis Vuitton guided us well), I was relieved that we have a Western loo (albeit shared among guests in the seven rooms) and was pleasantly surprised by the heated seat (awesome). I told Gina when I got back to our room, and she looked at me like I was crazy because she thought the toilet was only a slight improvement from the subway one. Hours later, we realized that there are two toilets and she had been using the Japanese one. Hysterical!

Are we there yet?

We’ve been up for about 26 hours, with the exception of a couple cat naps on the plane, and we’re finally on leg four of five of our journey to Kyoto. Right now we’re riding on the Nozomi bullet train that travels between Tokyo and Kyoto and it is about 7:30 p.m. on Thursday (13 hours ahead of Cleveland).

I loved my first foray into first class for my flight from Cleveland to Houston. But, I felt like a loser when I asked for a mimosa (I thought you could get anything???) at 5:45 a.m. and the flight attendant turned me down. Apparently they don’t have sparkling wine. Pshaw!

I’ve had lots of questions about how to pass the time during a 14-hour flight, so here’s a snippet of my Tokyo flight:

Hours 1-3: read magazines, eat meal one of three, read even more magazines (ask Chuck about how many I pack for trips)
Hours 3-6: Watch Australia, bawl during four scenes and look like an idiot
Hours 7-8: Read one of Gina’s books on Kyoto
Hour 9: Eat meal #2, which reminds me of $2 Tuesday Chicken in Basket lunches in high school (w/o fries), sip a Mr. Pibb!!!
Hours 10-11: Watch Lost in Translation, feel relief that the sign in the movie for Kyoto Station is in English
Hour 12: “sleep”
Hours 13-14: reacquaint myself with my language guide, get really stir crazy

So far, we’ve navigated the trains pretty well. We took the Narita Express from the airport to Tokyo Station and it only took us three tries to find the correct seats. J (FYI, the Tokyo Narita Airport is as close to Tokyo as Toledo is to Cleveland.) From Tokyo Station, which was insanely busy since we were there during rush hour, we hopped on the Nozomi that I’m riding now, which will take us to Kyoto Station. We should be passing Mt. Fuji soon (or Fuji-san as the Japanese affectionately call it), but it will be too dark to see. Thankfully, we’ll have up-close views later on our trip.

Once we get to Kyoto Station, we’ll take a subway line a few stops, get out and look for the Louis Vuitton store since that’s the landmark our Ryokan owner gave us. To be continued…