#12 Kyoto and Future Plans

I think it’s safe to say that I’m pretty terrible at managing a blog. None the less I’m still trying for some reason. Probably because I’m rather bored at the moment and I’ve come to a standstill with all of my other projects for now.

My year in Japan is coming to a close now, and I’ve really only made a few posts, the last one promising stuff from Kyoto… Oops. I might get to that still. But anyway let’s move forward before go back and talk about my travels. First of all, my contract with AEON Amity ends on April 7^th, which I find to be a relief. The company was… an experience to say the least but I found that it wasn’t a good fit for me. I chose not to renew my contract even though I was offered lots of money if I stayed on for another year, however in this case, the money wasn’t worth another year. Kurashiki is a nice small city and would be really nice to live in if I had a family or something of the sort here, but I don’t and the city doesn’t have much to offer to a single woman in her mid 20’s. So I have opted to move on to bigger and better things.

Where to now?

Nothing could get bigger or better than: TOKYO. Yes that’s right folks! I am moving to Tokyo this year! It only seemed right since I spent nearly 100000 yen on trips to Tokyo in just Shinkansen fare alone. So I might as well save myself some money and just move there.

But you won’t be with Amity anymore, so what will you do?

I’m still going to teach. I’ve signed up with Interac and they definitely want me. (More details on my placement to come in another post.) So I’ll be teaching in public schools, I’ll have fewer, larger classes than before and I’ll be given the chance to help out with school club activities.  I’m definitely taking a pretty big pay cut, but I think it’ll be worth it to enjoy life in Japan more than I am now.

So when are you coming home?

Depending on when my contract starts I can roughly say that I will be home next year in either April or May 2013. But if all works out well enough, I want to make a visit home this summer. I miss my adorable Bichon and my family and I really do miss the USA like crazy!

And at the moment that is all I know about that. I’m hoping I’ll have the energy to write updates as they come. But we all know my track record…

Now, let’s jump backwards and cover what I should have covered a LONG time ago…

Kyoto.

Wish me luck. I’ll try and remember what details I can.

Kyoto was a weekend trip towards the end of the summer, so it was still BRUTALLY hot and humid outside, but it was the only time that was good for me and my travel buddy, Misty. We took the Shinkansen on a Saturday after work and got up to Kyoto no later than 10 pm. The hostel we stayed in was REALLY NICE. Seriously I don’t think there will ever be a hostel to match it. The common room is just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever been in. There was a very large kitchen and then a dining area and then the tatami mat section where there was a plethora of couches and bean bag chairs to sit in and computers to use too. The majority of the hostel was no shoes too. It was just so comfortable! If I wasn’t so determined to go shrine hopping, I would have hung out in the common room all day. Ha ha.

Here’s the link: http://www.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/Khaosan-Kyoto-Guest-House/Kyoto/45698

Okay, enough about the hostel. So Misty and I decided to go out on Saturday night since it was still early when we arrived. I wanted to wear my new flats that had crazy blinged out bows on them so I did. Buuut.. I didn’t realize in the store that the shoes were not going to stretch out at all. They technically fit, but not well enough, so the shoes ended up carving huge holes into the back of my heels while we were walking around. It resulted in the rest of my weekend being really painful for me as Kyoto is all walking. But the bars were still fun. I was hit on by a dentist that had no clue what a personal bubble was and kept trying to compliment my teeth. I got tipsy pretty quickly too because I didn’t have much to eat for dinner as I had forgotten that Misty was coming from a work dinner and I had thought we could get food in Kyoto. Ha ha I was wrong. So All I had for dinner was some apple bread from the French Bakery chain in Japan. We met some cool folks and they were interesting. I think one of them was from England and he was hitting on Misty in a very suave manner the whole night. It was cute. I think I would have enjoyed it more had I not made such a poor footwear choice that night.

So the next day we started right away as the Fushimi Inari shrine. It’s the shrine with all of the red gates and you see it a little in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. But this shrine is HUGE. It literally takes up and entire mountain. Misty and I were there for 4 hours and we still hadn’t reached the top. It was still really fun though and we did pretty well at climbing since we were both in decent shape from Bodyrocking (Bodyrock.TV is the home workout-person’s dream!) I still want to go back to Kyoto and try and reach the top. We stopped halfway up because so much time had passed and there were lots of other shrines to visit.

Lots of torii (gates) all lined up really closely

There's stuff written on the back of them!

These are all personal or family shrines

CAT. SUNBATHING.

Kyoto horizon

Delicious special Kyoto tofu-something... basically its fried tofu and udon.

Next was the Golden Pavilion. It’s literally covered entirely in gold plating. I remember learning about it in my Asian History classes in school, but the details escape me at the moment. It has a sister pavilion called the Silver Pavilion. But unfortunately it is not covered entirely in Silver.

They even had the bottom opened up that day!

Proof I was there!

Silver Pavilion

So on Sunday we managed to get to 3 shrines. But the end of it we were pretty tired. So we camped out at the hostel for a while, then got dolled up and went out to find us some Geisha….only to find out that you can only see them at their scheduled performances during the week….. blargh.. BUT. We found this neat restaurant with a Ducati in it and took pictures on it. :3 So either way, successful night.

pretty hot, huh?

On Monday, we stopped by the Geisha corner and I took photos of the display cases cause they had pretty things inside them. Then afterward we went to Kyomizudera Shrine. Which is probably the largest shrine in Kyoto and we gained a 3^rd member to our party! Her name was Hazuki and we saw her when we ask Turkish food on Sunday night and invited her out with us. She was already friends with Misty beforehand. (No we did not invite some random stranger to go sightseeing with us) Anyway, when we got to Kyomizudera, we took a lot of photos of the Kyoto horizon and of the super tall pavilion. Then we went on a “ride” so to speak. Basically you can go underground below the shrine where it is completely pitch black and you have to follow a rail on the wall. I’ve never been in that kind of darkness in my life before. Not even on Halloween “spooky rides” because I can always see the emergency exits. But this place was the genuine thing. And I was terrified. I could feel my innards shaking the whole time and while logically I knew that if I followed the rail and not bump my face on the person in front of me and not trip the person behind me I’d get out just fine, but my body wanted to crouch down and scream for someone to get me out. I had a little reprieve halfway through because there was a lit spot that was on this stone ball that I didn’t know what it’s significance was but I was thankful for the light and then we turned the corner and it was dark again. But we finally got out and I successfully managed not to scream like a child and burst into tears. So it was a successful scary ride for me.

Just past that gate at the top led to the scary basement

The tallest pavilion is also very pretty!

Kyoto horizon

this was a really neat "hand washing" fountain. usually they just have bamboo

Hazuki and I and the gorgeous scenery behind us!

Better view of the gorgeous scenery

one of the prayer spots.

varying Geshia hair ornaments.

After my near panic attack we walked around the rest of the shrine. There were TONS of people there which I was surprised by since it wasn’t a holiday anymore. The rest of the shrine was very large and very pretty and I wish I could see it at either the Spring with the Sakura blossoms or in the fall when the leaves change color.

After Kiyomizudera, it was almost time to hope back on the shinkansen to head home, but before we did that, we stopped by the International Manga Museum. It was super cute and kind of a giant library, but you can’t borrow anything. But you can sit there all day and read manga to your heart’s content. They even had an English section, and for Japan it was a pretty big English section. The museum was converted from an old school so there was a mini-museum to the old children’s school inside too on an upper floor. It was really fascinating to see the kind of school books they had and all of the photos of the previous Principals. (Some of them were pretty scary-looking.) There was also a REALLY INTERESTING room that had a section of wall dedicated to a year. So I looked at the 1987 section and of course at the 1991 section to smile at Sailor Moon and compare old and new releases of it and then in the middle was a nice display of all the different aspects of manga and even a place to place with making faces.

TOTORO

part of the English section

art in the museum

Surprising deliciousness!!!!

Before we left Kyoto, Misty wanted to do some shopping, so we stopped in a very “hippie” store of which I forget the name. But it was neat in there and there was a fabric shop on the second floor and I found myself wishing I had a project to buy any of it for but I didn’t… and Afterward we went to a hole in the wall pasta place. I wasn’t expecting much, but then we saw that there was 1 cook and you could see into the entire kitchen and that she made everything from SCRATCH. So I got pasta with “white” sauce and clams and spinach. And it was soooooooooooooo GOOD. Just. Wow. Definitely a surprise treat!

Once we finished eating we grabbed our bags and headed back to Okayama and Kurashiki!

And I’m all blogged out…  I know I still need to talk about the winter vacation but… who knows when that will happen plus I have few photos from it so remembering will not be as easy. (I remember easier when I’m looking at a timeline of photos, it’s how I remembered this entire Kyoto trip.)

Thanks for reading!