Travel journal: Temples, clubs and ninjas!

We have exhausted our supply of transportation karma in Kyoto! We started out so well...with no planning we saw what we wanted to see, caught the buses on time...and then our luck started to run out. We found ourselves on our last full day in Kyoto missing buses by less than a minute on a number of occasions. This morning we somehow got on the rapid train (on the advice of one of the ticket vendors), found ourselves realizing we missed the stop a number of stops later, getting on a local train back and getting so involved in sudoku that we missed the stop! We caught it on the third try and had a lovely morning walking around the fushimi-inari taisha, a shrine complex dedicated to the gods of rice and sake in the 8th century. The entire complex sprawls across the wooded slopes of Inari-Yama. We took the pathway (yay MORE stairs!) up almost to the top and were amazed at the richness in colour of the thousands of red torii (gates).

After an uneventful return we made our way to Nagoya to meet our friend Rheanne. It was so great to see her again after almost a year and a half. She is always great to provide funny stories and more information about the country. On our way to the Nagoya castle, while drinking a lovely alcoholic drink she introduced us to called chuhai, she talked about some of her experiences teaching English, some of the challenges of the education system and some insight into the Japanese culture. For example, there is a fairly high population of Brazilian-Japanese people because a number of years back, brazil needed help with their computers so they hired a large number of Japanese workers to come to brazil where they settled down eventually and got married to Brazilian women. A number of them came back to Japan married so there are mixed Japanese-Brazilian kids. In Nagoya we noticed signs are written in Japanese, English and Portuguese. We also learned that Japanese mothers are very competitive; Tuesday is the one day a week that kids bring their own lunches into school (they are all on a meal plan) so Monday night all of the mothers spend hours making bento boxes for their kids and will arrange food into different shapes like hello kitty veggies, pieces of hot dogs shaped into octopus, that kind of thing. We learned as well that it's less important what kids learn in university than it is where they go. It is all about working hard to get into a good university. Once they are there it sounds like they don't work as hard as we do in Canadian universities, and that most skills are acquired on the job.

We noticed as well that kids are always in their school uniform so asked about this. It seems that kids up to high school must wear their high school uniform from Monday-Saturday because if they misbehave, people need to know which school to go to so that they can complain about their behavior and the children can get reprimanded. In the train kids are taught to be quiet.

Being in Japan has definitely given me a new appreciation for quietness. On trains everyone most people are quiet. When we take the bullet train there is an announcement not to talk on the phone. I think I will go home with a newfound appreciation for silence. There doesn't seem to be the mindless chatter and space taking that we have at home.

Japan seems to have a love affair with France. There are a number of French bakeries in each city; I see French a lot in stationery stores, shopping malls and various store names....which is funny because I doubt most Japanese people can speak French! We also found out about Paris shock syndrome, which is what some polite Japanese tourists suffer when they discover that Parisians can be rude or the city does not meet their expectations. There is even insurance for it. Funny eh? Maybe the insurance money could be put to better use, like cultural awareness...? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6197921.stm

We walked around Nagoya, checked out a festival, had my picture taken with a Japanese guy in a cheerleader outfit wearing a red clown wig, hung out with the mascot from Nagoya's football team and went to Oasis 21, a sort of spaceship-looking glass installation that has water in the middle like a pond, making it feel like you're in a completely quiet part of the city.

We had dinner at an Aussie bar (side note crocodile nuggets kinda taste like chicken nuggets and kangaroo pie tastes similarly to minced meat) then got ready to go out...after a nap of course! We went to a club called IDcafe where there were 5 floors of music. I haven't had that much fun at a club in years! It was PACKED! There was an amazing energy, with a lot of people dancing, jumping around and singing along (especially during Nicky Minaj's "starships" song, which played three times on three different floors!) Almost everyone there was Japanese and mostly guys. What was great was that we could dance and have a great time without being hounded by guys on the dance floor grinding up against us. I randomly struck up conversations with a number of people, which was hilarious and a ton of fun!

After a slow morning we made our way to Kanazawa. We have been spoiled with the Shinkansen (bullet train) so the three hour regular train felt slow, noisy and not as smooth...kind of like via rail!

Our guest house in Kanazawa is wonderful! It's really close to the train station and its with a couple who completely renovated their house about 6 months ago and turned it into a guest house. It's clean, modern and brand new. Best of all we are the only ones there so we have it all to ourselves. To top it off, we have REAL PILLOWS!! :)

It was a pretty lazy day, between waking up hungover, making our way to Kanazawa and feeling sleepy. We had more tasty conveyor belt sushi and watched Iron Man 3 in English with subtitles. Movie theaters are cool here. You can pick your seat AND drink beer in the theatre!! :)

The downside is that instead of quirky trivia before the previews they showed reminders of what we can't do, like "no smoking", "no handy phone" and "silent please", along with elevator music. As if once wasn't enough, they played the series of don'ts five times. Other than that the movie was super amazing!

Today we spent the day walking around Kanazawa. Kyoto was an amazing city but Kanazawa is a very close second. There seems to have been a lot of work put into designing the city for tourism. There is a lot of green space and flowers; they have an amazing loop bus that loops around all of the major sites; and of all of the cities we have visited, I find that the quality of English here seems to be superior to the other cities we have visited. We checked out the Kanazawa castle park and took part in a great tour of the castle grounds.

From there we had a lovely picnic lunch in Kenrokuen garden, one of the top gardens in Japan. The park is impeccably maintained, with the trees regularly being trimmed in funky shapes, and streams and ponds flowing all along the park.

From there we went to the ninja temple, which was a temple that was completed in 1643. It was designed a hideout in case of attack, and contains hidden stairway, escape routes, secret chambers, concealed tunnels and trick doors.

We toured around a part of the city that that was once inhabited by samurai. This district featured winding cobblestone streets lined with tile-roofed mud walls. Very cool! This wasn't far from a shopping street that I was in love with. I almost squealed with excitement in some of the stores that sold super cute stuff like little doll dresses complete with bows and lace, very cool Victoria-style jackets, funky accessories...I keep telling myself that's what shopping in Tokyo is for but it's hard to stop myself!

Tomorrow we leave for four days in Osaka. The reviews on the place we are staying at are mixed but we are only there for a few nights and its cheap so we will see what happens!

I am forever grateful to have such an amazing travel buddy as Yosha. We have a great relationship when it comes to travelling. We plan everything sort of, talk about what we want to do, giggle and talk all day...we are having a blast! Tonight I tried on one of the honey masks that I bought at the convenience store. It's basically a mask cut out that you stick on your face. I think we almost peed ourselves laughing at how ridiculous I look. Picture the scene from Mrs. Doubtfire where Robin Williams sticks his face in the pie, then sort of mix in the Mexican wrestler from the Koodoo commercials and that`s how silly I looked!

Here are a few photos from our last days in Kyoto and our day in Nagoya. Photos from today will be on their way shortly!