Japan, Day 12 (Part I)

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Dad really wanted to take me to Osaka Castle, but I chatted with Margaret online when we were at the Kyoto Station and she said that Osaka Castle was lame and too "cementy" compared to Himeji Castle. Determined to prove Margaret wrong (he didn't), Dad decided that we would go to Himeji instead.

We had to take the bullet train to Himeji from Kyoto, but then to get to the castle, we just had to walk for about ten minutes. Even from the train station, the castle is impressive. But first, the Teddy Bear Shop for Zoey:

Here's the castle from far away.

And the gate leading up to it (this after we crossed the giant moat).

Getting closer...

The thing in front of the castle is one of the many walls surrounding the castle. The walls are actually very narrow buildings with room for guards to walk around inside.

Despite the castle's size, it is covered in tiny, beautiful details. The marks on the ends of the tiles are the family's crest.

And yet another gate to get to the castle.

It really was tiring to climb all this way, but there were so many old ladies with their canes who were beating me to the top, which was somewhat inspiring to at least get there.

Originally when building the castle, the community had a lot of trouble getting everything together. The story is that an old lady brought a rock from her house to help build the base of the castle. Her example made everyone in the town of Himeji get inspired to help out, and soon, everyone was bringing rocks to the castle.

I think this is the last door that we had to go through to get into the castle. At this point, we had to take off our shoes so that we didn't ruin the beautiful wood floors throughout.

The main tower has five stories, and what makes this castle particularly cool is the fact that it has never been destroyed by warfare, unlike most castles. Everywhere you look, there are little holes in the walls near the floor, which are rock throwing holes. They are angled just right to hit anyone walking up the road to the castle. Higher up, there are holes for shooting arrows. As I looked along the walls, I noticed a bunch of hooks all over the place. We later learned that they were all for storing weapons. The entire castle seemed to be devoted to storing weapons--there are hooks everywhere you look, and where there are no hooks, there are closets for storing more weapons.

Also lining the hallways are artifacts that have been found throughout the years. One of the neatest things was some old samurai armor. It was made for someone who was about 3 feet tall! There was also a lot of artwork.

Here's a view from the top:

Also at the top is a shrine.

The stairs on the way up and the way down were really steep and slippery. Yes, we minded our heads. I ended up having to take off my slippers and just walk around in my socks.

This diorama shows the layout of the city of Himeji. The English sign said that the city is divided into three different parts. The city itself is surrounded by a wall, which defined what was a part of Himeji and what wasn't. The people who lived in the outermost part of the city were the farmers. The people who lived inside the second wall were the samurai and skilled workers. Finally, inside the moat and third wall was the royal family (plus as you saw, tons of walls and doors past that).

A view from right in front of the castle.

This area is where people were allowed to commit suicide--the English signs literally said, "Suicide Quarters." As we walked down into this area, we had to go through a dark, cave-like structure. It was really weird because it seemed to get darker the second we entered this area. The black crow making creepy noises didn't help the mood.

Also creepy was this well--supposedly a woman was drowned in it and her screams could be heard from the well until her body was finally removed.

And on that happy note, that about finished our trip to Himeji Castle. The only other thing that for some reason I don't have any pictures of would be the Princess's Quarters. The area built for the Princess is a long, narrow building to the side of the castle. Instead of being hard wood, her room had tatami mats and a dressing area. The entire building was for women to live in.

What a cool place! Dad did admit that Margaret was right, this place is waayyyy cooler.

Japan, Day 11 (Part II)

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

After Shugakuin, we headed over to Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion. This temple is covered in real gold leaf and surrounded by water. The water is covered with geese and lily pads.

This part was actually kind of gross--there were like 50 koi all in an area of about 3 cubic feet (oh no, that really is the Chemistry class having an effect). That many of them all together in such a tiny space was really sick. But, looking up and seeing the lake as a whole along with the gold building to my left, I got over it.

Just about a ten minute walk away from Kinkakuji is Ryoanji, a temple with the most famous Zen rock garden in Japan. The garden consists only of rocks, raked pebbles, and moss. It is set up in a way so that no matter where one sits to view the garden, they can never see every single rock. I'm not sure I get this place...The people who come in to visit the garden are allowed to sit all along a deck that runs along one side. Everyone just kind of sits there silently. I tried it for a while...Still not sure I got it.

Here's another view...

And another view...It is a peaceful place but I still am not sure I get it.

We tried to then take the bus to our next destination (this is a huge departure from everything else we did that day) and got lost. Just wait, this was unexpectedly one of the coolest places we went and it was worth walking around and getting angry and not being able to find a cab for over an hour.

Uncle Lionel had recommended that we go to a samurai movie studio lot. When we first pulled up in the cab, it looked awful--a huge warehouse with huge pink, green, and blue characters on the front. The tickets, bought at a movie theater ticket booth, were half off because it was so close to closing time.

When we first entered, we just saw the inside of a warehouse that just had movie posters everywhere. I was disappointed until we turned the corner and saw this:

It's a universal studios for Japanese samurai films!!!! It felt like I was at Disneyland, except it was almost cooler because no one was there and we could walk around like we owned the place.

It's too bad I haven't seen more samurai movies, though, otherwise maybe I'd recognize some of these sets. The signs posted around the lot say that the sets are used for all types of movies.

The sign next to this bridge says that it has been used in almost every single Japanese movie. The curved bridges are really stereotypical of Japanese movies, and they said that they just put a different sign up next to the bridge each time, and it becomes whatever they want.

Just like at Disneyland, they have samurai character guys walking around!!!

I guess you can compare this building to that magic show building on Main Street USA. Inside, there was a guy putting on a show about special effects.

I couldn't understand him, but I got the gist of his show. He was showing off how sharp his sword was, and then pretended to cut himself, but it turns out it was just special effects stuff.

Here are some more sets...

Don't you just feel like you're looking at a scene from the middle of old-time Japan?

Dad and I both were starving at this point (we pretty much got kicked out of the movie studio because it was closing). After being taken for a ride by our cab driver, we decided that we were craving gyoza (Japanese pot stickers). We tried to find some good places, but I was really really really sick of the Kyoto Station restaurants.

So, we headed over to the ever-reliable Hotel Granvia and asked the concierge for a recommendation. We just pretended that we were guests at the hotel and he recommended a really cool place.

It was about a 15 minute cab ride away, very close to the path of philosophy near Chionin. This place is definitely worth a trip, especially late at night. The restaurant has a diner-like style. We were able to sit at the bar on stools, and got to watch everything get cooked.

There were three things on the menu: gyoza, pickles, and beer. Everything was delicious. My mouth waters just thinking about this place. The gyoza are cooked to order, so they are always fresh, hot, and crispy.

For a while I thought our waiters were laughing at us for continuing to order more (the cucumbers were served by the plate, and the gyoza were ten to a plate), but then I looked at the Japanese couple next to us, and they each started out with two orders by themselves of everything.

The gyoza place is open really late, so I can only imagine the kind of crowd they get after people finish partying...Here is our cook putting some fresh gyoza onto the freshly oiled grill.

He then dumps some water on them and cover them to let them steam.

It got to the point where all I could do was count the seconds for him to take the top off and come to our table with another order of gyoza. I think we ended up eating at least 30 gyoza each, plus about 3 cucumbers worth of pickles.

I even may have ordered a beer! Dad did have to finish it for me after I drank half, but it seemed only appropriate to have at least one. You can see here how tiny the restaurant was.

Here's the menu--everything was really affordable, which was even cooler, especially in Japan. I know, it's in Japanese, but I think you can get the idea. I think the conversion rate from dollars to yen is about 80 cents to 100 yen.

Mmmm sooo gooood. I think it's time for a midnight snack. Maybe you'll get lucky and I'll post once more.

Japan, Day 11 (Part I)

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

This post is in honor of everyone's comments and me setting the curve in my Chemistry class (applause, please)!

The two imperial gardens that we got tickets for in Kyoto were Katsura and Shugaku-in Imperial Villa. On Wednesday, we took our tour of Shugaku-in. As we pulled up in the cab, we noticed that the couple from Southern California was at this tour too! Shugaku-in is a very popular tour (Dad said it's one of his favorites), but wow.

The garden is split into three different villas, at varying levels on the hillside. We started at the middle garden, where there is a temple built by a Japanese princess. Here is a photo of the gate to the middle garden. The tour guide spent a lot of time talking about it, but my translator tape didn't really mention it, so I'm not sure what is significant about it...

I think he was pointing out the changing fall colors when he pointed in this direction. There was one lady who kept picking up the maple leaves off the ground.

This lamp is outside of the temple at the middle garden. Dad pointed out that during a different tour, it was explained to him that the lamps have some sort of Christian significance, despite most Japanese being Buddhist. These lamps are very cool in person, though, because they are carved out of a single stone and have a lot of attention to detail.

The lady snapping the picture is one of the people from LA...She told us that the trick for staying out of trouble for taking photos when we're not supposed to "linger" on the pathways is to just stand, take the photo, and talk in English.

This was something I was curious about. I have no idea what it's for...Basically there is a wooden stick structure and it holds up some branches about three feet off the ground. No idea what it is.

This is a tea room. The shelves on the back wall are supposed to hold the morning mist and dew.

I really like the fence here. Since the entire villa is on the mountainside, there are streams flowing everywhere.

We then headed up to to the upper villa, which has a large artificial lake, formed by another stream coming down from the mountain. On the way up to the villa, we passed through what looked to be farmland.

The walk up to the top actually took my breath away in two senses. For one, it was kind of a tough climb, but also, when we turned around and got over the tall bushes, we saw these beautiful scenes...

There are tea houses all over the entire upper villa. There was one at the top where we took the photo, and there was another right next to the water. On the way to the next tea house, we passed the waterfall that feeds into the artificial lake. Notice also the stone lamp!

This is a view from the walk to that second tea house. Unfortunately, we couldn't get onto this little bridge. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can kind of see on the top of the bridge that there is a gold bird statue on top.

We did get to cross this bridge, though! It's pretty steep here, but fortunately the bridge wasn't as narrow as it seemed.

Here's a photo of the tea house that I was talking about. The windows are particularly interesting on this building.

Here's a closeup of the artificial lake. It's pretty huge, the emperor used to ride his boat around it. Even though it looks really murky, when I got closer to it, I noticed that there were tons of koi fish swimming around.

Over on the left is the boat, docked to the side of the lake.

I promise, another post coming soon...Maybe even in the next 10 minutes because I am on a roll--posting AND watching Ugly Betty.