World's Fair

After our great time at Mt. Koya, we got back on the Shinkansen and headed towards Nagoya where the World's Fair was held. We read about the World's Fair being in Japan before we left, and thought it sounded interesting.

We heard the crowds were really bad on the weekend, so we decided to plan it for during the week.

We hopped on a local train after getting off the bullet train in Nagoya, and started the long trip to the fair grounds which is in the country.

We met a couple on the local train. He was from Ohio, and was in Japan to study Japanese. His girlfriend was Japanese and didn't know much English. They helped to pass the time on the way to the Fair.

When we arrived at the Fair, we went our separate ways since we wanted to see different things. The crowds didn't look too bad from the gates, but there were plenty of people already inside. We didn't know what we were in for!

At the gate, I did see something I remember reading about in Wired, which was a robotic information guide. She would answer questions that you asked and gave you info. There was a line for this, but we could see it from between people so we moved on.


So, they couldn't get anyone alive to wear that uniform, huh?
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We decided to wander around and get our bearings before seeing an exhibit (perhaps our biggest mistake). You're supposed to wait in a long line to get a ticket for a certain time where you wait in an equally long line to see the shows.

These were the longest lines Ann and I have ever seen! Here are some pictures of the fairgrounds, followed by some pictures of the lines (Japanese will wait in line for HOURS if they want to see something.


Hitachi: Inspire the Next (is there a word missing here, or what's the deal?) Cool building witha waterfall cutting into it.
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Part of the center of the fair grounds
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They had exhibits for each country that was contributing. Didn't see any of these, lines too long.
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Global House in the middle of the fairgrounds, supposed to be cool exhibit. Longer than a 2 hour wait in the line to get tickets. (Is that an Asahi sign across the way? Let's go get a beer).
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Walls of Greenery. This was cool, it's a way to grow grass and plants on walls. Great for greening up the urban plight (and supposed to help suck up some CO2.)
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This is the line for Global House tickets (see the building in the distance? That's where they give out tickets.)
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Wow, that's a long line winding around. Let's go see if we can find a shorter line...
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Here's one of the few shows that had a short line! Great, we don't have to wait half the day to see one show!! wait.....that line is looking better and better...(notice all the adults watching this show without a kid to be seen). The show consisted of the two dancing adults in weird costumes and the slightly moving robots in the background.
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We were dissapointed by the World's Fair, which was definitely the low-light of our trip.

I think if we knew the procedure for seeing the big shows it would have been better. Oh well, back to Tokyo...

Koya-san

The last post was getting a little long so I decided to tell you about the fabulous night's stay we had our last night in Kyoto. The Tour Club hostel we were staying at the last 3 nights didn't have an opening for the third, so Ann and I spent some time in the afternoon the day before Himeji looking for a place.

I learned my lesson. I've always had places booked before we left on a trip, but this time we decided to keep it open so we could be flexible. The decision actually wasted some time for us since we had to look around to find a place to stay.

We checked a couple of places that turned out to have no vacancies until we ended up at Kyoto Pension Station. It wasn't bad looking when we visited in the middle of the day, but it turned out to be a very noisy place when we were tired after Himeji and just wanted to crash.

The Tour Club had a no noise after 11 policy which we took for granted when we were there. They also had super comfy futons that were basically feather beds.

It wasn't the lack of amenities that bothered us at Kyoto Pension Station, it was the noise.

We stayed in a traditional Japanese room which consisted of tatami mats and futons which were in the closet. The futons seemed musty and thin compared to our stay at Tour Club, but we were very tired and piled a few futons on top of others to make then a bit more comfortable.

We hunkered down for the night, and were a bit restless since we were right next to the Japanese baths. Japanese bathe at night before dinner or before going to bed, we did the same thing but at maybe 9 o'clock at night, not 11:30 or midnight!

We thought we could sleep through it, not a big deal. Then at around midnight the room which we thought was a stairwell (we thought we were at the end of the hall, looked nice and quiet) was suddenly occupied by the noisiest largest family I think I've ever encountered.

No, they weren't Americans, they were speaking a foreign language, not sure if it was Japanese or another language, but all I know is that it somehow traveled through the walls as if they were in the same room as we were.

I proceeded to stuff tissue in my ears, and that helped, but still we couldn't get to sleep. I ended up making a trip to the front desk to complain, which apparently they don't get much of in Japan.

There was this nice little Japanese lady probably in her early 20s. I pantomimed and said that it's too noisy thinking she may knock on the door of the noisy room and ask them to keep it down. I thought she was going to crack under my relentless thrashing with words that I was giving her (I basically said very nicely "too loud, can't sleep" and that was about it).

She kept bowing and saying "sumimasen" (I'm sorry) over and over again until I smiled and said it's OK but we want our money back for the next two nights we planned to stay there.

So then I felt guilty, but still annoyed that the next room was so loud.

When I returned to the room, I stuffed more tissue paper in my ears, kissed Ann good night, and was lulled to sleep by a combination of Loud talking, Kids yelling, showers running and some unidentified sound near the corner of our room which sounded like water was running into our room. Off to dreamland.....

When we awoke from our peaceful slumber, we said goodbye to Kyoto and headed for Mount Koya which is a spiritual mountain south of Kyoto. You need to take a long train trip to get there, but we felt it would be worth it from what we read about it.

We had a stop in Osaka where we had to transfer trains. It was a bit confusing on how we got on the next train, but after some wandering we figured it out.

As we were trying to find the next train, we were on a bridge over a busy street in Osaka, and we heard loudspeakers with angry sounding voices coming towards us.

The sound was coming from these ominous looking buses with loudspeakers on top. We couldn't understand what they were saying, but picked out "Americans" and it didn't sound like they were saying how great we are.

I think this was the right-wing party in Japan demonstrating as they were earlier in the trip at the Chinese embassy near Mike and Alicia's apartment.

We did finally find our train, and headed on the next leg of the trip to Mt. Koya.

After departing from Osaka, we started seeing some really beautiful country hills. Everything was really green and lush and we started seeing more pines and mountain like terrain.


On the way to Koya-san
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More and more pines closer to Koya-san
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After some napping and watching the scenery, we arrived at the final station on the line from Osaka. At this point, its straight up so we boarded the cable car to get up to the mountain town of Koya.


Cable car to Mt. Koya
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In the book I was reading before and during the trip, Mt. Koya was the home to some of the schools of martial arts that the main character Musashi visited.

Also, Mt. Koya is currently the "headquarters" of Shingon Buddhism. It's also the burial place for a famous Buddhist monk named Kobo Daishi who is the founder of Shingon Buddhism.

He's buried atop the mountain, and his followers are buried down the mountain, wanting to be buried close by. The cemetery extends 1 Km down the mountain, and is supposed to be a great place to tour (especially at night!)

We got to the top of the cable car ride, and headed on buses to make the winding trip to the town of Koya.

The town itself is dedicated to catering to the many practicing Buddhists that make a pilgrimage year round. There weren't many other foreigners, so it made us feel like this is a Japan that not all travelers get to see.

The town itself kind of reminded me of a small mountain town in the Rocky Mountains. There were pines all around, and the town was small with lots of nature surrounding it.


Arriving at Koya-san
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We decided to get something to eat, and took a walk through town to see if we could find a good place to eat. There weren't too many choices, so we went into a place close by that had a good crowd eating lunch.

A good thing about being in Japan, you don't have to worry about the quality of the food or water. Seems like every restaurant we visited was clean and friendly.

This restaurant, like many in Japan, had a display of plastic food to show patrons what they serve. This turned out to be very handy for us, since we had to take the waiter outside with us to tell him what we wanted since the entire menu was in Japanese and I guess I wasn't saying "tempera" correctly.

So we said a few sumimasens and the young waiter was very patient with us.

We had a great meal, we both had a tempura shrimp (about 6 in long) and noodles. We sat at the sushi bar and we were able to watch the sushi chef prepare the food while we ate.

In this picture of Ann enjoying her lunch you can see some sushi and what look like samosas (deep fried spicy egg roll type triangle shaped thingy).

I have a few pics of Ann eating, she especially likes it when I take pictures of her enjoying the local cuisine.


MMMmmmmm tempura shrimp and noodles..
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There are temples all over Mt. Koya. We didn't spend time in too many of them (We had seen a few shrines by this point of the trip).

After a short walk through town, we arrived at the gates to the cemetery. You go from a busy city street to an old forest with huge cedar trees. It was an amazing walk.

There were lots of Buddhist followers praying there, and tours going through, but it made you feel like you were in another time.


A bridge and huge cedar trees mark the entrance to the Kobo-Daishi cemetery.
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Hundreds of shrines and grave markers line the stone walkway...
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All along the walk you see little statues clothed in mostly home made doll sized clothes. I can't quite remember if these are statues of Buddha, or represent the loved ones who've passed (that's what I get for writing this a few months after the trip!).


Keeping the little guys warm..
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Long row of statues.
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We continued walking through the cemetery,and were in complete awe the whole time. The size of the cedar trees, and the amount of ancient gravestones was amazing.


Ann heading down the path
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Crowded gravestones..
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Tour group of Buddhists ahead of us
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The photographer in me was going crazy with all of the incredible picture taking opportunities here, but I was resisting taking up the rest of the memory on my camera in this one place.

Photos don't quite do it justice, either, you have to see it to believe it.

We walked about 1/2 way through the cemetery (we wanted to save some for the evening tour we were planning on later), and followed the tour groups to a little restaurant serving some snacks. We had some ice cream (for some reason I was craving ice cream all along this trip), and noticed these interesting looking snacks. Didn't quite get up the nerve to try some, but it had an interesting smell. Kind of a sweet smell, but not sweet enough to get me to try some...


Snack shop (we had ice cream)
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We had some ice cream and waited for the bus to get back to town since it's a bit of a walk back.

Here's a picture of Ann trying to get the last of the ice cream cone before boarding the bus (after we got on we realized you can eat on the bus).


Quick Ann! Shovel it in!!
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We checked with the tourist information center (they have one at just about every train stop, great place to get ideas on things to do and where to stay), on where to stay and they suggested a monastery. We had read in our guidebook that you can stay at these, and thought it would be interesting. It's a bit more expensive than your hostel, but dinner and breakfast is included and they often have Japanese baths included.

We weren't sure what to expect, but when we arrived at the monastery, I knew we were in for a great experience. We walked down a quiet road and came across a beautiful front gate with a large zen rock garden and an impressive shrine near the entrance.


Front gate and zen garden from walkway in monastery.
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Shrine of the monastery (just to the left of the picture is the monastery)
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monastery on left, shrine on right (notice the carefully raked rocks in the foreground of the zen garden).
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We were greeted at the front entrance by one of the monks. He was a young guy with a shaved head, very friendly.

We left our shoes at the front door and put on the slippers (once again, I asked for a larger size, but no luck).

We were led past the giftshop, full bar, and the beer and saki machines that they apparently have at all of the monasteries. For some reason I would think they didn't drink, but there's nothing that restricts drinking in Buddhism.


Beer and saki machines inside the monastery
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We were led to our room, which is down a non-descript hallway with lots of doors. Looks like they had about 10 rooms for guests.

We proceeded to enter the room, and Ann decided to walk on the tatami mats with her shoes on causing the monk to freak out for a second. Ann caught her faux pas quickly and recovered without starting an international incident.

Our room was great. It was a traditional Japanese room complete with futons, a low table with tea provided. We also had the kimonos that were very comfortable (hopefully we didn't put them on incorrectly!).

The room had a little patio divided off from the main room by a shoji which overlooked the Japanese garden in the courtyard of the monastery. They didn't have any screens (which I thought was interesting), so if you want fresh air you have to take the insects with it! (That's Buddhism for you). I was trying not to swat the mosquitoes while I was there. Actually, we cracked the windows and had no trouble with bugs.


Our room at the monastery
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View of the Japanese garden from our room
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We went to dinner, at which time I think we were supposed to have our kimonos on. Didn't know we had them at the time, but we tried them on later.

Here's the spread. It's all vegetarian, and most of it was quite good. The one thing I really couldn't get into the entire trip was the pickled vegetables. They had a really (I mean really) strong ginger taste. The other things shown are (from front to back, best I can remember) pickled veggies in front, some sort of seaweed type noodles or something on the right, and corn, mochi, 2nd row is tofu on the left, can't remember in the middle, last row is orange slices and the closed bowl is veggies in tempura (yum).


Dinner at monastery
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Dinner closeup
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Picture of the ever beautiful Ann, and the dining area in the background (also, to a lesser extent, beautiful).
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Ann and I digging in
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While we were eating, we noticed a bunch of guys sharing a dinner near us. I asked if I could take their picture, then I'm sure I seemed really rude because I didn't offer to take one of their group with their camera. I'm hoping I seemed like I was misunderstanding the language or something, but they didn't seem to mind.

Turns out these guys have known each other for 75 years!! They know each other from the same office, and head up to Koya-san every year for a retreat.

They were really nice, and gave us some of their beer since we got the "cheap" meal plan which didn't include alcohol.


Dinner gang
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We thought it was funny that there was one guy who didn't want to wear the kimono in the above picture.

After dinner, we decided to take a walk through the cemetery at night. In any other country, you may be nervous about touring something like this at night, and we kept thinking that someone would mug us, or something. This is a small town of devoted Buddhists, so we really shouldn't be worried about that, plus Japan is such a safe place as a whole, we had nothing to worry about.

The cemetery is lit at night by overhead lights, but they're spread out enough where it still gives you a mysterious feeling. I wouldn't have been surprised by some ancient spirit floating by the tombstones, seems like it would happen for sure, but alas, no ghosts.

Actually, Ann and I were talking about these deceased being so at peace at the place they want to be buried, that maybe they wouldn't need to be restless. Anyway, it was fun to talk about that stuff while walking through an ancient 1 Km long cemetery at night in Japan.

We arrived at Kobo Daishi's shrine at the end of the cemetery. There was a really religious feeling there, and we felt a little obtrusive walking around the shrine since there were a few people praying and giving offerings.

One moment that was especially memorable, was when we were walking along the outside edge of the shrine, and a whitish shape flew from the shrine to a tree right above me. At first, I was wondering if I did see a ghost! Turns out this was a flying squirrel. It was neat to see one of these in such a holy Buddhist location.

We took our time walking back along the trail, and headed back to the monastery.

We decided to try the Japanese bath that was supposed to be nice at this monastery. We changed back into our kimonos, and headed to the (separate) baths.

We were both a little shy about baring it all for the baths, but we thought we may only be in Japan once, and wanted to try a real "onsen".

We were glad we were able to experience it. We had read about them, so luckily knew a little about the etiquette. You first go up to the faucets on the walls and sit on a little tiny stool to soap up and clean before getting into the bath. Then you ease into the bath (it's very hot) and soak for a while.

I met a guy in there that was friendly and we talked about where we were from and that sort of thing. He let me know which was the shampoo, and which was the soap which was helpful.

After our nice steamy bath, we went back to our room and had a great night's sleep.

The next day we travel to the World's Fair. The following are pictures we took leaving Koya-san the next morning...


Road from monastery to bus stop
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Shrine along the way back to the bus stop.
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Bell Tower
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Shrine along the main road
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Cable car back down the mountain
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Town along railway back towards Osaka station
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Himeji

Our next stop on the trip is Himeji. This castle is one of the most famous castles in Japan. It's called the white heron because of its structure, and of course color.
We took the bullet train from our home base of Kyoto to Himeji.

The castle used to encompass the entire town of Himeji with walls around the entire city. Only the inner castle remains but it's still very impressive.

As we approached the main gate of the castle grounds, we noticed what we at first thought was a construction area. Turned out they were excavating another section of the castle. Not sure if they are going to expand the castle ground, but it was interesting to see something uncovered that's been hidden for so long.


New Excavation
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There's an adjacent Japanese Garden that we decided to check out before going on the castle grounds. It seems this is a common theme to temples and tourist cites. You can see the top of Himeji castle above the trees in this picture.


Japanese Garden near Himeji Castle
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Japanese Garden near Himeji
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There are small wooden shelters throughout the garden, which was a good place to hang out and rest surrounded by the beautiful gardens. (Don't forget to take off your shoes!)


Taking a Break
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We then headed for the castle. As you walk through the gates, there's a large open park in front of the hill where the castle is built. You turn the corner from the entrance, and immediately you see this impressive castle towering in front of you.


Himeji Castle
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As you walk closer to the castle, there were multiple artists painting the castle, as well as musicians playing traditional Japanese stringed instruments.

After paying our fee to get in, we started on the walking tour. Here's a picture of the castle with some perfectly trimmed landscaping in the foreground.


Himeji Castle from on the Grounds
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We tried to have some Japanese tourist take our picture in the same shot so we could use it on a Christmas card (part of our obsession with getting a good pic for our Christmas cards this year). The guy I asked didn't seem too into it. After the first picture didn't look too good, I asked him to take one more and he kind of grumbled and gave me my camera back. I would think we were being annoying Americans, but I figured the Japanese love to take pictures, thought he would be into it. That will teach me to generalize.

Here's the pic that's not bad, but definitely not Christmas card worthy:


Ok, but not Christmas card worthy picture at Himeji.
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From there we went inside the first section of the castle, which is the wall that surrounds the area. Inside are places where they used to pour fun stuff like hot oil and throw rocks at people who are scaling the walls. Also inside was an example of one of the tower rooms where the honored guests stayed while visiting the castle.


Corner of surrounding castle wall which was used for pouring hot oil and defending with archers.
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Recreation of how a room would look in the castle tower. Note: These are not real people no matter how real they may look. I'm pretty sure the shells were real, though (but not the cat).
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You kind of wind your way up and up as you get closer to the castle with interesting things to see along the way. Great place to visit.


View as we get closer to the castle (looks like the castle is getting smaller?)
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Making our way up the winding stairs to the castle.
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Closer yet...
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The Christian influence of late feudal Japan is shown subtly in this picture. The tiles that cover the roofs have the seal of whatever lord was ruling at the time of construction. This particular building had a Christian Cross just below the middle prominent seal.


Lord's Seals and Cross
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As we made our way closer to the main part of the castle, we visited a store house that used to hold salt and rice. I thought it was interesting that you can still see the salt residue from so many hundreds of years ago. You can see it easily in this picture. They've cleaned off the lower part of the storehouse to show the difference:


Storehouse showing salt residue.
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We suddenly turned a corner to see the main castle. It was a very impressive sight. There was a courtyard at the base of the castle which used to be full of wooden structures as a small town was present.


Main Castle
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It was great going to these sights during the week. The only groups we had to fight were the school kids, and we were bigger than them, so it wasn't too bad.

We went inside the castle, and all along the walls were these metal spikes which turned out to be used for hanging weapons and gunpowder (cool).


Weapons racks inside Himeji Castle.
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We climbed up to the top of the castle and had a great view from the very peak. The first shot is the main street all the way back to the train station (short trip to the castle from there). I made a panoramic picture with my camera, as soon as I figure out how to piece it together, it should be pretty cool.


View from the top of Himeji Castle, train station is at the end of the center street.
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Nice view of the hills near Himeji
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We headed back down from the castle, and I took a picture of what it would look like if you were trying to scale the castle walls just before they poured hot oil on you or shot you full of arrows. Not a good place to be:


Looking up Himeji Castle's skirt
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Also on our way down, we saw a good example of what they did when they were running out of stone for the castle's walls. They would use any stone available such as this stone coffin that they took from some poor dead guy to patch up a hole in the wall.


coffin in the castle wall
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Another interesting site is Okiku's well: (this is an excerpt from a random website I came across trying to recall the story)

"It is sight of a famous ghost story known as Nanshu Sara-Yashiki, about a servant known as Okiku who overheard the chief retainer's plot to kill the lord and usurp his castle. Okiku saved the lord by telling her lover, who was loyal to the lord and the plot was foiled. The retainer got revenge by stealing one of ten important dishes belonging to the lord, who blamed it on Okiku and had her executed by throwing her in the well. It was said that you can still hear her counting the dishes but she always stops at nine, and that screams came from the well until her former master was driven insane. To read about this, and other Japanese ghost stories, visit: http://www.i5ive.com/article.cfm/4817/29027"

scarrrrrry.


Okiku's Well

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We had a great time at Himeji, was really worth the visit.

That night, we took the bullet train back to Kyoto because we wanted to take the evening walking tour of the "Floating World", or the world of the geisha. This is back at the Gion area of Kyoto. Our Lonely Planet guidebook had a map of a great walking tour.

I wasn't able to take many pictures because it was nighttime, but we had a great time walking along the narrow streets peeking into windows of tea houses where geisha were entertaining. We saw across a stream a tea house with the Geisha's back to us, and about 6 men around the sides of a table taking part in a tea ceremony.

Also along the tour were areas where the local kids hang out along the river, and some interesting looking clubs further from the river.

It's really an interesting place with the juxtaposition of old world tea houses and new world dance clubs. Here are a couple of pictures from the walk:


Railing and lights along a path. To the left across a small stream is where we saw the geisha performing a tea ceremony in a tea house.
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Pontocho-Dorii at night
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Path to a dimly lit teahouse. This is down a side "alley" along Pontocho-Dorii
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Looks like a fun nightclub. Maybe next time.
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That was a fun day in Japan, we covered a lot of sights. After our walk through the "Floating World" we decided to head back to our hostel and get a good night's sleep...

But first, I just had to head into the 6 story Namco "Game Tower". Ann was nice to oblige. This was off a busy street in the Gion area which is more modern. The first couple of floors were dedicated to "Skill Cranes", which no one was using. After that you had some "Medallion" games, which looked similar to pachinko where you watch little balls cascade down your game machine and hope they end up in the right spot.

The top couple of floors had some great video games, and lots of multiplayer internet games where players would use playing cards to interact with the action on the screen as they play with players from other arcades. We say a kid using soccer trading cards manipulating them so the players on the screen corresponded to the players on his cards.

I just stuck to the traditional games and kept it short since it was a long day.


Steve in Namco Game Tower in Kyoto. Note the zombie-like attention at which he's concentrating on the game.
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Next we head to Mt. Koya, which is a mountain town south of Kyoto where Shingon Buddism got its start. We stay at a monastery and walk through a mile long ancient graveyard at night...