Tokyo Tofu Japan » The start of cherry blossom season…

Friday saw the second to last test in Japanese class come and go, where I will probably get the worst grade of the entire semester. Luckily that was followed by the shortest and easiest Friday Project of the semester, which was me reading my speech to Melville for 10 minutes. I’m not really very happy with my speech this semester, content wise its fine and I’ve used quite a few unique grammar patterns, but subject wise its incredibly boring. The title is literally “Big Cities versus Little Cities” and basically its about, as a person studying Japanese, which one of those places is better to live in and why. What I really wanted to do was a history of Tendai Buddhism and its impact on Shiga but noooo, I wasn’t a historian and didn’t know anything on the subject according to my teacher. This coming from my speech last semester, “The Impact of the Heian Period on Modern Japan” which got me an A. Well….whatever.

So, after class was over Brian and I made sort-of spontaneous plans to go to Kyoto to find some good places for hanami. (Note: the word hanami literally means “flower viewing”, and in Japan the tradition is to find a suitable place, generally a park or other open/free area where you can bring along a large tarp, a bunch of friends, food, and alcohol, and sit under the flowering cherry blossoms and eat, drink and be merry. Also note: In Japanese, cherry blossom trees are called sakura.) One place that I have been waiting about 6 months to return to has been Heian Jingu in Kyoto. When I was there the last time, they had a large garden area that was 600yen to get into, but I didn’t go inside. I also bought a guidebook for the shrine, which has some AMAZING pictures of what the garden looks like during sakura season, where they have hundreds of trees, many growing on arbors that you can walk under, going around ponds and streams. So, I knew that that would be my #1 place to return to today, and thanks to the internet I also found a couple of other popular sites around Kyoto for sakura. I was a little worried because according to sakura forecasts the blossoms would open on March 25 and their peak would be from April 1-9 for Kyoto, so we might be a little too early. But mainly we just wanted to escape JCMU for the rest of the day, and maybe consume some alcohol as well. So, once we figured out where we wanted to go I asked around a little bit because I knew some people that wanted to do hanami, and I found that Kim wanted to come along. So, around 1pm we finally got our act together and hopped on our bikes to get to the station. We stopped at Al Plaza for a minute to check out what kind of wine they had (that’s kind of the traditional thing to drink for hanami), but we were a little disappointed with the selection so we decided to wait until we got to the foreign foods store in Kyoto station to make our decision. While we waited on the platform for the train to Kyoto to arrive, since we are all in 3rd year, we got to have a nice long extended bitching session over our tests (we all felt like it was a horrible test with the more difficult and obscure questions possible on it). This continued onto the train and at periods throughout the day, when ever someone would bring up a ukiuki or a gakkari, it would start anew. But it was ok, because the whole point of the trip was stress relief.

Arriving in Kyoto around 3pm, our first stop was Porta and of course the Sirotan store (just for a quick check for new merchandise). However to my shock and awe, the security gates to the store were down and there was a sign on them. I couldn’t really read the sign well so I don’t know the exact cause of why the store was closed. (Later checking the website for Creative Yoko, owner of Mother Garden, the Kyoto eki store is no longer listed…..did it close? ) Next stop was the foreign foods store, (which is an exciting place for me to go to see so many familiar foods) where we stopped for some cheese and chips, and then had a bit of a dilema as to what kind of wine to choose. Brian had a Swiss army knife, but unfortunately it didn’t have a cork screw on it so we instead of wine we had to settle for a bottle of champagne (which I’ve never had). So, after we finished our shopping, we headed out and bough a one-day bus pass, hopped on a bus and headed for Heian Jingu. When we walked into the main area of the shrine, it was pretty deserted, and looking into the garden area that we could see, we saw that the sakura really hadn’t bloomed yet, but we did see one white sakura tree flowering so we decided to plop down our 600yen and go inside. While it was sunny and probably in the upper 40’s, it was very windy and so it felt pretty chilly outside, that accompanied by the fact that 85% of the trees weren’t in bloom yet, meant that the huge garden area of Heian Jingu was all but deserted. Despite being a little disappointed, the gardens were very beautiful nonetheless, and it was great seeing the place without the inevitable crowds that will soon take it over.

After we walked around the grounds for an hour or so, we left Heian Jingu and headed for a suitable park-like area for us to put down the tarp and open up the champagne. On our way we ran into a rickshaw driver who looked like he had been punched in the lip, who asked us a few questions in English, and pointed us towards a park, Maruyama Koen, where we had planned on going anyway, which was only 1 kilometer away (which I guess he thought was a long way which would require a rickshaw ride). Walking the 1 kilometer, we passed by some incredible houses, which I can’t even fathom how expensive they would be. We also found a very large temple next to the park, which unfortunately was already closed, but it may be a place that I’d like to return to at some time. Finally getting to the park, there were a lot of little booths set up, selling traditional foods, and also some with carnival-like games. In the middle of the park was a very large weeping cherry tree, with many smaller trees in areas around in. Directly in front of the main tree, there were lanterns strung up in the trees, and people’s tarps all set up and ready for when the tree would be lit up, There was one group of college students, with their collection of chuhi (cocktail drinks) and sushi, and toilet paper (we’re guessing it wasn’t to TP the cherry trees). Well, we found a suitable place and I whipped out my tarp…..but unfortunately its really only big enough for one person, so instead we decided to sit on a bench to enjoy our hanami. It was really funny, sitting in this park drinking champagne from tiny paper cups we had managed to get from the foreign foods store (they were giving out free samples of tea..), eating red cheddar cheese slices because we figured buying a block of it would be too hard, shivering in the cold, and being the only gaijin around. It was great though and I can’t wait to go back when there are more trees in bloom. I only wish I had had a large enough tarp….oh well. There were multiple camera crews from what I would assume were news channels or other television shows filming people and the tree as it started to get dark and the effect of it being lit up was more apparent. As it got darker and darker it was getting more and more beautiful. Its really easy to see why, during sakura season, that every outdoor place with sakura gets absolutely flooded with people. They only get to enjoy it was about a week and then its all gone. The big question is, why don’t we have any in the US??

So, after we finished our champagne and most of our cheese, we decided that it was time to move on to the next place. Since we weren’t sure where we wanted to go next, we hit up a bus back to Kyoto station. (And since I didn’t mention it yet, I have to say that the bus we rode on the way to Heian Jingu was the most awesome thing ever….it was completely brand new, still had that new smell, had NO advertisements, and have this huge LCD screen with trilingual text to make sure you knew where you were going, and the announcements were not only in Japanese and English and could be heard very clearly, but the English announcements all had this woman telling you not only what the stop was, but what attractions were near the stop and even the history and cultural significance of the attractions. I mean, WOW. (Though, it was that new smell that I liked the best…hehe)) Getting back to the eki, we parted ways with Kim was tired and wanted to get back to JCMU (which I can understand since generally Fridays are my most sleep-deprived day, since I’m studying well into the night and get up early for the Friday test). Brian and I pondered what to do from there on, and figured we’d hit up Kawaramachi-dori, home of the Wonder Tower, Round 8 (the 7-story bowling and amusement center), various US fast food establishments, and many other cool things. Our first stop: Wonder Tower, where would goal was to go back to the 100yen for 30 minutes Counter Strike area. Luckily, they still had Counter Strike as the game of choice on their mock LAN setup. And for 100yen I SWEAR we played for at least an hour. We both agree that this the cheapest 30 minutes of entertainment in all of Japan. Moving on, we both indulged in a game of whack-a-mole only it was alligators instead of moles. I also managed to win two (*2*!) items from a UFO catcher like game, and they are both cute. And one almost looks like Sirotan. Heading down the street a ways, we made it to Round 8, where we played yet more arcade games, including Guitar Freaks and a game where you flailed around your arms a bit holding a mock sword to try and kill things on the screen. That one didn’t work out so well. Brian also showed off his DDR skills, which I’m not so good at, so I stood back and watched. When we had had our fill, we left and headed up the street in search of grub. Passed by such places such as a ’60’s Diner’, which had such menu items as “American Pizza” and “Crude Ham Sandwich”. Eventually we settled on a Wendy’s, where we had some baked potatoes that tasted like….nothing. The Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger wasn’t really the same either….not that I was really that surprised, that whole “its a copy of something from the US but it doesn’t taste the same!” thing stopped being surprising after the first month or so here.

After our meal, we headed back out to the now surprisingly almost deserted street, and heading for the nearest bus stop, we discovered that the busses in Kyoto actually stop running around 10:30pm. Um…what?? We kept walking thinking we could get another route’s stop, and as we were approaching one stop a bus pulled up but we missed it, and we then discovered that it was the last bus of the night. Well, I knew that we had to be near a subway station somehow, so we walked to the nearest large intersection and were lucky to find a station right there. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a line that was a part of the Kyoto subway system, but apparently a lot of gaijin come there with the same problem as us, because they didn’t have a map showing where their line (Hankyu) connected to the Kyoto subway line, but they hand a handy-dandy English pamphlet showing us exactly how to do it. Two trains later, we were back in Kyoto station. By this time, it was around 11:30, and to catch the rapid we had to wait about 20 minutes, and once we got on the train was filled with sooooo many drunk business men, it was insane. The entire train car smelled like beer. I think that’s pretty much the conclusion I’ve reached as to what Japanese people do at night to have fun, is drink, because everything else closes by midnight, even in a big city like Kyoto. Our rapid stopped at Yasu, and I almost missed the fact that the conductor was saying it was the shuten (last stop) over the PA, and as I saw most people getting off the train and exiting the station I had a sudden horrible vision in my head, thinking that this was the LAST last train, and that I had made a horrible mistake when reading the signboard in Kyoto station. But, to my relief, there was a train coming at 12:10am that would bring us all the way back to our destination. Getting back to Hikone, the bike ride back through the pitch black coldness was especially fun, and just as I expected, at 1am in the morning both the front sliding doors and the side security door (with a keycode pad, because after 10pm that’s supposed to be the only door that you can open to get in) also wide open for anyone to get in. Got back to my room and after cleaning some dishes and doing other OCish cleaning things, I hit the sack for a good 9 hours of sleep…..

Heian Jingu gardens: