Super Exciting Amusement World

This should be a fairly gargantuan post.


We left Kanazawa around 9:00 Saturday morning, hoping to stop by a couple places on our way to Osaka, an otherwise 3-4 hour drive. Half of the drive goes along Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan. Jeff, a fellow JET who speaks 5 languages and is working with a town hall instead of a school, bought an 8 seater van just for roadtrips like this. 6 of us splitting the cost helped the tolls and gas situation greatly.

Tolls are a funny/disturbing thing in Japan. From Kanazawa to Osaka it costs more than $60 in tolls. To get to Tokyo, $130 one way. I tell some people here that you can drive across America essentially for free and they are astounded. The new Prime Minister, however, has proposed making Japan's highways free beginning this coming April to encourage tourism.



Road trips, it seems, look pretty much the same anywhere you go, at least from this point of view.


In Nagahama, we first stopped at a 19th century house owned by a Japanese lord that has been kept in incredible condition. We got a private tour and were allowed to walk around the garden as well. I must say that the Japanese building style is pretty amazing. I was about to get a chance to see lots of different expressions of that...

Example 34,985,001 of me not being the right size for this country. These were the largest available.

We wandered around the town some and found a western-style micro-brewery, the Nagahama Brewery. Having recently gone on a bit of a west-US-coast brewery tour, this was right up my alley and we stopped for lunch.

This one's for you, Ari. Their stout was too harsh on the coffee and a little thin, but their ale was amazing, full and hoppy.

I love Japanese mis-translations. Even more than things that are just wrong, I like things like this that are grammatically correct but absurd because of tone and context.

Shopping in a mall in Nagahama.

Colin with quite the manly-man outside of a figurine store/museum. Something I didn't feel like posting pictures of were the many disturbingly pornographic figures placed right alongside toys for little kids. Families just wandered through, and we were pretty astounded. These aren't just naked figurines, by the way, there were some pretty weird bondage/pedophilic things going on. Can't say I really understand how that's ok to put in a family store.

After Nagahama we continued a little ways south to Hikone, home of Hikone Castle. Hikone is an amazingly well preserved castle and we were able to go inside and look around a bit--there was quite a logjam to get in, though.

These crossbeams are fascinating, because the original architects worked with the shape of the wood instead of always trying to get straight boards and beams.

From inside the castle looking out towards Lake Biwa.

Now, if you clicked on the link in my last mini-post, you know that Silver Week won't happen again until 2015. "Silver Week" is in fact only a term invented this year to correspond with the more normal 5-day holiday of Golden Week that occurs in the spring. Because of a funny Japanese law and the proximity of two other holidays, we got Silver Week.

That means that the whole world was traveling when we were traveling, and that resulted in horrific traffic. From Hikone to Osaka should have taken an hour and a half, but it took 4. We had picked up Jeff's friend Geannie in Hikone so the 7 of us tried to make the best of it (helped along by DJ Creighton).

A road trip...

...is a road trip...

...is a road trip

Osaka! (We saw the actual "Super Exciting Amusement World" sign soon after this)

As soon as we got checked into our hotel in one of the seediest parts of town (huzzah!) we headed into Dotonburi, one of the flashiest parts of town. We had an unbelievably good ramen dinner then met up with some other JETs on the riverside.

Excellent sign near the elevator in our hotel.

Based on recommendations from veteran JETs, the Osaka aquarium was on our list for the first full day in Osaka. It was a really cool area, but also absolutely packed with people. When we finally got into the aquarium, I was very impressed. There were way too many people inside, of course, making it a claustrophobic experience at times, but they have an amazingly huge main tank starring two whale sharks. I'd never seen a whale shark before, and the size of them as they swam by the window gave me goosebumps. I did take a picture, but pictures so often fail completely to capture the enormity of an object or experience, so I'll save you the let down.

Just try to see a whale shark sometime.

We played around in the arcade beforehand, where Colin was able to cheesily snatch a bear for Ashley from one of the claw machines.

These things were hanging around by the line. Disturbing as hell--I hope they gave those kids some fantastic nightmares.

After the aquarium, we took a ride on the huge adjacent Ferris Wheel (in 1997 it was the biggest in the world) before heading to the highly recommended El Pancho, a Mexican restaurant. I was skeptical, but it was one of the best Mexican meals I've ever had.

On Monday it was time for a day trip to Himeji, about an hour away from Osaka on the local train. Himeji is home to Himeji Castle, one of three national treasure castles and absolutely stunning. However, I've never seen more people waiting for anything in my life. The line to get inside the castle was more than three hours long. We decided to ditch that and just walk around the grounds, which was pretty amazing just by itself, and we saved ourselves the soul-killing experience of that line.

Himeji is going into renovations next month for several years, so this was our one chance to see it. I'm definitely ok with having only seeing the outside, as Japanese castles seem to be pretty similar inside.

This is my hand on a 600 year old metal castle door. My life is cool.

On the train ride in, I had noticed a section of the tourist map dedicated to the Shosazen Engyoji, a collection of temples outside Himeji. Part of The Last Samurai was filmed there, and it seemed pretty accessible. We decided to head out and got to spend two hours walking around one of the most unique and incredible locations I have experienced in my life.


After riding Himeji Bus #8 to the end of the line, visitors board a gondola and take a breathtaking four minute ride to the top of a mountain. It was much much less crowded than Himeji, and with less foreigners. I hate foreigners....



The sound this bell made is unlike anything I've ever heard. When you stand next to it the resonance is overwhelming. Every object and building around the temples reinforced the sacredness and simplicity and essential nature of a single moment. The sense of pause and focus was indelible, even as these buildings have gone unused for quite some time.







Something mindblowing I realized recently is that most old Japanese buildings have no nails and little metal in them. They are joined and reinforced by precisely cut wood in interlocking patterns. And they have lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years. Wood. There have always been some renovations that take place, but the foundations and the pillars are original, as well as much of the rest of the buildings.



Inside this temple no pictures were allowed, but it was a singular experience. I'm reminded of when I visited the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh, where no pictures were allowed either. In both cases, I'm eternally grateful for the injunction against pictures, because it allowed me to focus on my own experience inside.

As I walked in, an older woman was praying at one of the shrines, chanting. It was haunting and beautiful and full of devotion and care. This only helped set the mood in addition to ancient figures of Buddhist gods, low lighting, and incense. Even in the midst of a tourist location, I have rarely felt such peace and clarity about my own existence. There was something about the construction of the temple and its location in the midst of beautiful forests on a mountain that seemed to freeze time. I believe it would touch a chord in anyone who visited it, to one degree or another--be that a religious chord of a particular denomination or a general spiritual chord or merely a human chord of resonance between people and through time. I guess I think those chords are all the same thing.

Ok, I'll get out of my rambling ruminations and move on to pure Hollywood. The next stop was the location of the Last Samurai filming; they were essentially three buildings housing a training facility for Buddhist priests, and they were old and massive. Pictures tell the story best.

It was getting a little dark, but I love this picture. The scale is ridiculous.

We headed back to the entrance and the gondola in time to catch a bit of the gorgeous city below us at night.

My life is cool. (And occasionally staged...)

Back in Osaka later at night, we found a good dinner in the basement of the Umeda Sky Building, then met up with other friends and went up to the top of the building, riding clear elevators and then crazy escalators all the way up. Pretty nuts all around.

And then, why not, let's take a weird picture.

Then it was off to karaoke until 4 in the morning, because what else do you do in Japan?

To finish off our trip we went to Osaka Castle, surrounded by gargantuan walls in the middle of a Central Park-like area. Stunning again, with more gold leaf on the outside. We opted to stay outside, wander around, and eat one of the local delicacies, octopus balls, or "takoyaki".  Can't say they were my favorite, but a good experience.  Most people love them.




 



We then went off to do some shopping and see the downtown districts some more, then left town around 4:30. An exhausting and expensive trip, but well worth it.