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this past week was golden week here in japan. its the busiest week of travel with people taking advantage of the 5 day weekend and warming weather to leave the country or make trips to other cities. it was also my last opportunity to travel somewhat extensively before i return home, so i decided to take it.
diego, italian laura and i had been planning on perhaps going to kyuushu for golden week, but as of monday had yet to make any actual decisions. monday afternoon diego and i began to look into hotel and travel reservations only to discover golden week was indeed as we'd been warned, and everything was either booked or outrageously expensive. so, we thought, why not go somewhere else? a couple hours later diego and i were boarding the shinkansen "bullet train" to yokohama (laura ended up not coming along; she'd already been to the cities we had initially planned on seeing.).
the shinkansen round trip cost us a little over 20,000yen (~$200USD), but was definitely worth it. a night bus would cost maybe $90 and take 10 hours to reach yokohama, whereas the shinkansen got us there in little over 2 hours. diego and i sat next to a woman with a chihuahua in her purse; diego of course got his picture taken with the dog before we arrived.
once in yokohama, we made our way to yokohama station and met up with my friend andrew brasher from UGA who is studying abroad there. we walked around the station while andrew and i exchanged gossip from athens until diego and i thought we'd pass out from the humidity and the weight of our hiking backpacks. the area around the station reminded me a bit of parts of osaka and downtown kyoto.. lights and karaoke and mcdonalds and not much exciting. however, in one of the train stations what did i behold but.. MOUNTAIN DEW. i love mountain dew, and i haven't seen it since i left america. it was worth the trip up just to have a can. we hopped on the subway and made our way to andrew's campus to spend the night in his dorm. it smelt and looked like creswell and was.. natsukashii.
the next morning diego and i awoke to a monsoon. it was absolutely pouring and even produced a couple thunder claps (there aren't many thunder storms here for some reason.) it wasn't very encouraging. the rain held off at around 11 though and diego and i hurried to yokohama station to leave our backpacks and go look around. yokohama is directly south west of tokyo and is a major port city. the area around the port turned out to be really nice, as i'd heard from my friends who'd been before. it's a spacious city for japan with tons of flowers and trees around the docks. we walked all around the docks, stopping in for a sandwich in the ferry station. immediately after eating, it once again began to pour. we were both soaked, and diego's paper bag full of new clothes broke, scattering his purchases on the sidewalk much to my delight. we made our way through the hurricane to yokohama's renowned china town where we each bought nikoman as big as our heads, they were truly amazing. nikoman is this weird doughy dumpling with a meat filling that we get at the local convenience stores, but these were the real deal. we took pictures eating them and diego took what i think is probably the most unattractive photo of me ever, which none of you will ever see. after chinatown, which ended up consisting primarily of restaurants and nikoman stands, we walked over to motomachi shopping district and had some coffee.
there were a lot of white young people there, and i think this is when diego and i started identifying what we've since dubbed the "gaijin look." this has been the source of mental anguish to me in the past couple months but i think has only just begun to bother diego. basically, it's when one foreign person is walking down the street in japan, spots another foreign person, and gives them a little smile just because they're both foreign to the country they're in. it's a recognition of the gaijin bond, something i don't usually want part of. i know that if i were to walk past the same person in new york, for example, they'd probably not even look at me let alone smile, and for some reason it bothers me that because we're in japan, we're all supposed to relate to each other and be friendly. i think i just dont like people looking at me all the time. anyway, from then on when that would happen diego and i would errupt into fits of laughter and say something to each other in japanese about "stupid foreigners." apparently we're both so assimilated in japanese culture that we no longer consider ourselves foreign (although we're definitely not japanese!).
after we'd had our fill of nasty weather in yokohama, we made our way to city number 2: motohakone. this consisted of a half hour packed trainride followed by a 50 minute $10 dollar bus ride into small town japan. we'd called ahead to a ryokan, kind of a japanese bed and breakfast, and arrived to discover the entire town shuts down at 6pm and so were left to have tea for dinner. the owner was a really nice older man, fluent in english, who took us on a tour explaining every little thing in the house (this is the shower, this is the kitchen, this is tea, this is origami..) a typical ryokan provides you with a small tatami room with futon and sheets and communal bathrooms; the motohakone guest house also supplied towels, a western style breakfast and to our amusement, yukata. yukata are light cotton summer kimono for relaxation. diego and i immediately donned ours, tying towels around our heads and had a mini photo shoot. we both passed out shortly after.
bright and early in the morning at 7:30am, we were called to breakfast. we stumbled downstairs to eat with a couple in their late 20s from london.. he was originally from canada and works for j.p. morgan and she is in merchandizing for f.c.u.k. they asked diego and i a bunch of questions about living in japan and advice for what to do when they went on to stay at a japanese friend's house the next night. they were both really nice and it made me feel funny and old to be staying at a ryokan in japan and talking to strangers about banking and giving them advice about japan. i think it was funny to me that i was able to give someone advice about anything in the first place. i felt like some kind of japan consultant.
after a catnap, diego and i went exploring the town. the weather was beautiful and clear, and after walking a bit through the hills around the ashino lake, we were met with a fantastic view of mount fuji. it looked just like a post card and i was excited to see the landmark for the first time. after taking 4,000 pictures, we made our way down to the lake to see... a pirate ship! what else. there were two "pirate ship" tour boats giving tours of the area, and how could we pass up such a tacky opportunity. they were such a cyst on the beautiful surroundings, they had to be celebrated. diego and i chose a half tour and boarded a giant model of a american paddle boat which had a giant poster announcing it's destinations as st. louis, new orleans, and apparently motohakone japan. i felt like the designer of epcot had a stroke and i was in his theme park. i loved it. following our cruise, we visited the hakone shrine, had lunch, and hiked a bit of the old tokkaido highway which connected edo (now tokyo) to kyoto a long time ago for trade purposes. when we'd had enough, it was only about 3pm and we'd seen all motohakone had to offer and decided to move onto city #3, kamakura.
we arrived in kamakura at about 7pm and after asking for directions several times, found our ryokan. we had initially been told it was right next to a chapel, but i dismissed the woman who directed us as crazy because we couldn't find a chapel anywhere in the area. but, when we found the place, it turned out to be directly next to a huge gaudy chapel on "marriage avenue", also next to some large white plantation looking building with a texas flag and a sign proclaiming it as "the white house." again, amazing japan. the ryokan obaachan (grandmother) was a lovely elderly woman who gave us huge homemade mochi, real tea, and a ten o'clock curfew. we walked around "shopping street" a bit but in japan, unless you're in a large city, pretty much everything shuts down by 7 or 8. we ended up eating at KFC and talking about the O.C. (turns out diego is a fan!!). this ryokan was more like the one i stayed at in nagano.. it was a little rough around the edges and it cost a dollar an hour or so to watch the tv, but was fantastic for us budget travellers. we didn't have any change so we amused ourselves by calculating the money we'd spent so far. after about 3 days of traveling in japan, we'd spent nearly $300USD. the kicker is, that was just on travel! japan is ridiculously easy to get around in with all the public transport available, but boy does it rack up. the ryokans we stayed in cost us $40 each a night, and we'd primarily been eating in convenience stores, so our entire budget was being put towards train, bus and subway fare. that night diego insisted that we should get up at 6:30am the next day to get a jumpstart on sightseeing. i told him i'd buy him startbucks the next morning if he actually woke up and did 10 jumping jacks at 6:30. the next morning when the alarm went off, he announced he didn't want coffee anyway and we slept until 8:30.
after a brief scuffle with some women for the ofuro, a farewell to the house obaachan and some coffee, diego and i sent off to see the sights of kamakura, which ended up being a million temples. first off was tokei-ji which is known for granting women a divorce after they'd spent 3 years as a nun at the temple. next off was jochi-ji, then engaku-ji. each was really beautiful, the entire area has tons of ancient trees, and if there hadn't been about 4,000 people making the temple rounds for golden week with us, i imagine it would have been serene. after a combini lunch break, we hoped the train back to main kamakura where we got to stand in a ridiculously long line to take the train to minami-kamakura to see the daibutsu (giant buddha) with half the population of japan. after we made it to minami-kamakura, we headed to hasedera which turned out to be a spectacular temple, and i'm really sorry it's not closer to kyoto. it has an amazing view of the coast where a lot of people were wind surfing at the time. it also contains a couple thousand statues of kannon, some of which are clothed by believers to protect the souls of deceased children. the main altar was a 9.18 meter high gold leaf wooden statue of kannon, and the legend goes that two kannon statues were sculpted out of a camphor tree in nara. one of the statues was dedicated to the hasedera temple in nara and the other was thrown into the sea "with a wish to relieve living things wherever region the statue might reach." that statue washed up on shore in 736ad and was enshrined in hasedera temple in kamakura, where i saw it. pretty impressive. the temple compound was large with several different altars and thousands of kannons all around, not to mention the ridiculous amounts of flowers. i swear to god some of the flowers were as big as my head. diego said that now hasedera is his favorite temple in japan and i'd have to say it's definitely up there for me, too, with tenryu-ji and chiion-in in kyoto.
after hasedera, we elbowed our way to the daibutsu, the second largest sitting buddha statue in japan. it was packed, but worth seeing, and for 20 cents we got to go inside the buddha (along with a million more people crammed inside!). i'd never been inside a statue before so that was pretty cool, i must say. the entire time in kamakura was very enjoyable, especially since i love temples and all the buddhist artwork, so even though it was incredibly crowded i'm glad we went and want to go back before i leave japan.
let's see.. after the daibutsu, we smashed onto the train back to main kamakura and then jumped two trains, a ferry, and another train to get to tateyama to stay with diego's uncle. his uncle is mexican, but has lived in japan for 10 years and is currently married to a japanese woman, has two children, and teaches spanish to employees of mitsubishi in tokyo. he was gracious enough to let diego and i crash in their tatami room (an all-purpose room in japanese houses that has the traditional tatami mat flooring) on the condition that we drink tequila with him and diego speak to him entirely in spanish. the kids were adorable (ryo is 4 and rena 9 months) and i had a good time playing around and watching tom and jerry with them and mulan in spanish (which is WEIRD). tateyama is a really small town so diego and i were the only foreigners. our first full day we spent biking around, first to a small temple where one of the monks was nice enough to explain the altar's meaning to us, then along the beach even though it was crazy windy and we ended up covered in sand. we made our way up to tateyama shiro, a pretty white castle replica up in the hills. that day was kodomo no hi (childrens day), so there were a lot of kids at the castle being dressed up in fake samurai armor for pictures. we slinked around trying to get pictures of the kids until the man in charge of the armor spotted us, grabbed diego, and dressed him all up. since its such a small town, the japanese people were really surprised to see us foreigners there and when diego was dressed up, people started pointing and laughing and taking pictures, calling him the last samurai. diego was kind of embarassed. after that we had fantastic sushi, sat on the beach, and headed home to watch a movie and talk with diego's aunt and uncle.
the next morning diego's uncle carted us all around to see some more sights.. first was the largest reclining buddha in japan where we prayed on the buddha's feet. next we visited some tunnels that were dug through the mountains during world war 2 by japanese soldiers and used as a training area/hospital. there were no lights in the place save for our flash lights and needless to say, i was entirely creeped out. we also saw some huge, monster-mutant bug. i was more than ready to get out of there. after we escaped, diego and i grabbed our backpacks and got on a train bound for city number 5.. TOKYO.
i've been in japan 8 months now and still hadn't made it over to tokyo, so when diego suggested we spend our last night there, i was pumped. it's everything you think it is. it's bright and flashy and tall and packed with a million people. i've never seen so many people in my life. our first neighborhood was shibuya, where the busiest intersection in the world is. when you're standing on the sidewalk, waiting to cross the street it doesn't seem too bad, but once the lights change, everyone crosses the street at once straight, to the side, diagonally.. it was the most intense street crossing of my life. there were a lot of 'yanquis' hanging around; japanese people characterized by unhealthy extremely dark tans, bleached out straighted hair, way too much makeup and not near enough clothing. they seem to like to congregate in front of mcdonalds, maybe to add to the "american" image they try to cultivate. we walked around a while and then headed to shinjuku. on one side of the station is a large financial, business center with enormous important looking buildings and people in suits. then you walk around to the other side of the station and it's crazy land. i saw a bunch of lolitas and gothic lolitas (the girls who dress in really frilly short dresses with lacy aprons and stuff.. lolitas wear white and gothic lolitas obviously dress in black). diego took me into a clothing store for people into lolita and it was crazy. it seems to me that japanese culture is all about being the same, and so the people who rebel against it go REALLY far to break the mold. it seems crazy to americans but once you've lived over here a while, you begin to understand it more. we walked around shinjuku seeing everything and ate in a little ramen shop. after that we headed to ginza which is rich man's land in tokyo.. all versace and cartier and chanel. they say if you lay down an 10000yen bill (roughly $100USD) on the sidewalk in ginza, the area of land the bill covers is worth how much the bill is worth. some of the most expensive real estate in the world. so, we didn't stay for too long in ginza. on we went to our final destination, roppongi, known for its night life and bar scene. diego's uncle recommended we go to a bar named amanis, where he knew the manager. he was really nice and gave us discounts (instead of $10 for a normal sized heineken, we only paid $5!). after a while we headed over to gaspanic, a crazy club/bar reminiscent of athen's firehouse on halloween. a corona cost $10. we hung for a while there watching people, but we were pretty beat and low on cash, so we headed to hard rock cafe to sit down and have one last beer before we headed to an all night internet cafe to rest before we caught the shinkansen home the next morning.
so! that was my golden week in japan. by the end of it, i was exhausted. i slept the entire way on the shinkansen, fell into bed as soon as i got into my apartment, and slept until 5pm. it was tiring but it was really worth it.. i saw so much stuff within the week and who knows what opportunities if any i'll have to travel more before i have to go home. it's hard to believe i only have 3 more months left.