Kansai

First I just want to say this may have been the longest I've gone without internet in years, it's been a full week since I've surfed the ever-expanding webs of cyberspace.

Last week we had spring break part 1. Since we are halfway through the semester (ah! it's going by so fast!) This is just a JSP (our program) spring break, so the other TIU students and the rest of the country were not on break. Their break comes next week, last week of April/ first week of May; it's called Golden Week. Schools and companies are all on break. We get Monday and Tuesday off from school, but it creates at 5 days weekend for us, since we don't have class on Wednesdays. Anyway, for spring break part 1 we went to Kansai, which is basically the area surrounding Kyoto, including Osaka, Kobe, and Hiroshima.

We left on Tuesday morning. I had to leave my house at 6:30 to get to Tokyo by 8, but I got a seat which was nice. By the time the train reached Ikebukuro station, it was packed, but that was nothing. From Ikebukuro we had to go to Tokyo Station in order to catch the Shinkansen. This 20 minute ride was the most ridiculous ride of life. The first few stops weren't too bad, pretty crowded but tolerable. Then all of the sudden there was a mad rush into the train, and when I thought it was full and no one else could get on, more people were pushed into the car. (Literally pushed, but men called "Pushers" who wear white gloves. It is their job to push people and make as many people as possible fit into the train.) It was ridiculous. I was standing next to my friend Jamie and she was off balance, so was basically supported by the people around her. She was eventually more or less sitting on my leg, as her shoulder jammed into my sternum. Breathing was not easy for about 5 minutes. No one could move at all. It was absolutely ridiculous, but I'm glad I got to experience it once. I feel bad for those salary men who have to go through that daily.

The Shinkansen was really nice. The seats were comfy, lots of leg room and there were power outlets (which came in handy when my DS died). The 4 hour ride went by really fast. Eventually, after more train rides, ferry rides (yes, we sang "I'm On A Boat") and walking, we arrived on Miyajima, an island outside of Hiroshima, known as "One of Japan's Three Most Scenic Spots," I don't know what the other two are.
Highlights:
• famous red gate in the water, O-Torii
• wild deer that just chilled around the city.
• big elevated shrine, because in high tide the water makes it way all the way to the shrine. There is a stage for a special kind on dance, that they didnt put the normal acoustic devices in underneath the stage, because in high tide the water makes perfect resonance.
• Rope way up to Mt. Misen, where there are monkeys, but we didn't get to see any. A friend went running up there the next morning and saw the monkeys, lucky.
• We stayed at an Onsen, (hot spring resort) which was fun. We slept on futon on tatami mats, very traditional. I went to the onsen, it was strange but I got over the nakedness.
• The food at this place was a little tough to handle. It was really fancy, traditional food. Lots of oysters, which I don't really like and everything seemed to taste like saltwater, which was not enjoyable. There were probably about 10 dishes, I didn't know what most of it was, and most of it was not very delicious. Breakfast was the same way. Oysters for breakfast? No thanks.

Wednesday we made our way to Hiroshima where we saw the A-bomb memorial Genbaku-Dome, which was almost directly underneath the explosion, so most of the foundation was still intact afterwards while everything around it was completely razed. It was pretty amazing. We also went to the Peace Park where there is a memorial for a girl who died of Leukemia, caused by exposure to the radiation. She heard that if you make 1000 paper cranes you will be granted a wish, so she started folding paper cranes until she died. She made over 1000. Her classmates, moved by her determination, earned money to build a memorial and continue to help other children. It was cool. After that we went to the Peace Memorial Museum, which was very moving, yet fascinating. There were many artifacts recovered after the bombing, including everything from burned clothes, watches stopped at 8:15 and even the skin and fingers of a boy who died.
In the Peace Park there were hundreds of school kids. It seemed that every school required the kids to go up to foreigners and say "Hello, may I ask you some questions? My name is ____. What is your name? I am from ____. Where are you from? Please sign here" and they'd hand you a notebook. We were bombarded by children. They just kept coming. If you spoke to them in Japanese they'd all freak out. It was hilarious. It was fun at first, but just became a nuisance, so we started telling them in Japanese that we didn't have time, then dart away as they gaped in awe at the fact we spoke Japanese.

One more 2 hour Shinkansen ride later we were in Kyoto. We walked around to the shopping/restaurant area, and met up with some Oxy kids that are studying in Kyoto right now. The next day we had a bus tour of Kyoto. We started out with the Kinkaku-ji or "Golden Pavilion," which was pretty cool, since the top two floors were coated in gold leaf. It was really crowded with more school kids, but this time they didn't talk to us (phew). Next stop was the shogun's castle. There were a lot of murals and nice wood work. The floors creaked in the more outer hallways. This was done on purpose and called Nightingale Floors, it was done so people couldn't sneak around and assassinate the shogun (because by "people" i mean "ninja".) After the castle we had a buffet lunch and an expensive hotel with a really nice view of Kyoto. The food was really really good. We worked the lunch off climbing up a huge hill that the next stop resided on. It is a Tendai Buddhist Temple, called Kyomizu-dera. The main attraction here is a waterfall/fountain that has three streams, one for intelligence, one for beauty and health, and one for love. You can drink the holy water from as many as you want, but if you drink all three you're greedy. I drank health and beauty, it tasted like water. Finally our tour ended with a trip to Gion, the geisha district. We saw the 137th Miyaka-Odori, a performance done by the Geiko and Maiko (geisha and their apprentices) to mark the beginning of spring. It was dark in the theater, kind of boring, in Japanese so I couldn't understand and at the end of a long day, so I and the the other JSP kids, kept falling asleep. From what I did see, the stage was really nice, there was live music/sound effects and the backdrop was really pretty.

Friday was a free day in Kyoto/ surrounding area. A few of us took a train out to Kobe to get some beef. We found some at a restaurant in a little shopping center by the harbor. Who knows how good it was or if it was really Kobe beef, but it was delicious and pretty cheap. I can say I ate Kobe beef, because it was beef in Kobe, good enough for me. On the menu there was a $200 steak you could buy, none of us felt like dropping that much on lunch, so we stuck with the lunch set. There was a mini-amusment park area which was pretty fun. We went on a mini rollercoaster. The boys were too big for the seats, so they had to sit sideways and take up a whole car each, which was hilarious. In the middle of this area were giant, fuzzy robot animals to ride. Obviously for kids, but we had fun riding them. I rode a panda, there was also a giraffe. On the way back to the station we stopped at a shrine. It was really pretty and quite, and obviously not much of a tourist attraction. It might be my favorite shrine so far for that reason. It was much more moving without tons of people, it was so peaceful.

Overall Kansai was fun. They ride the escalator on the opposite side than in Tokyo and everything was a little more expensive, but it was a good experience. In the end though, it was nice to come back to Tokyo.