Kyoto is Japan’s historic capital, a UNESCO heritage site which contains temples and businesses which are hundreds upon hundreds of years old. It was thus with some surprise that I discovered that almost every trace that I had lived here only 3 years earlier had already disappeared.
So much more fun than going to a Jays game. The fans are crazy, there’s continuous singing and music and lots and lots of balloons. Oh, and they’re totally cool with outside food (and even give you cups for your bottled drinks).
There are three big festivals (or matsuri) in Kyoto: Gion, Jidai and Aoi. I never saw the Aoi matsuri when I lived here because after seeing the Gion and Jidai ones I learned that it was all the same thing over and over again and so not worth the crowds. However as we were here and the Aoi matsuri was on, it felt like a waste not to attend.
The crowds were terrible though.
This is a temple in Kyoto that has lots of stone statues of the buddha’s disciples. As you can see the statues are a bit out of the ordinary. Way back when I’d seen an ad for the place on a train but never got around to actually seeing it. This was my chance.
After visiting the temple I went for a short hike in the rain along a nearby river. It was really nice, but after seeing warning signs for bears and snakes I became aware of the face that if anything did happen to me, with no phone and not having told anyone where I was, things wouldn’t be looking so good. The hike wasn’t so enjoyable after that.
Shin and Akane’s wedding was the official reason for coming to Japan and the reason we had to leave Winnipeg so quickly. It was easily the best wedding I’ve been to – the food was amazing, the program wasn’t too long and it was dominated by their friends so it was fairly entertaining to boot.
I’m back-dating stuff because it’s taken me so long to get in front of a computer and don’t want to lose chronology.
Because my mom was going to be in town for graduation we figured it would make the most sense if her flight was at the same time as ours so that we could all go to the airport together and no one would have to wait by themselves for too long. So when she was getting her tickets my mom called me up to find out what time our flight was. I told her it was around 8am so she should book her return for the same time. Unfortunately I was thinking about the time for a different flight and ours actually left around 10:30 – in other words we had a bit of a wait ahead of us.
Even getting to the airport was a hassle. Because there were three of us with two suitcases each, a normal taxi wasn’t going to do it, we needed a van. So the previous night I called around and reserved a taxi for the next morning. Come the appointed time and we rush to the hotel lobby to check out and the taxi wasn’t there. We wait a few minutes, still no taxi. I call the company and they say they have my reservation and that the cab is running a bit late. We wait some more. Finally the cab pulls up a good 15 minutes late and we make our way to the biggest line I have ever seen at the Winnipeg airport. We begin to panic as my mom’s flight is supposed to leave fairly soon, but I see on the departures board that the flight is running late and that we have time. So we wait patiently, not worrying about a thing until we get to the counter where the counter-person lets us know that the flight is boarding and that we need to rush my mom to that plane ASAP. Cue frenzied rushing through the airport and a painfully slow trip through airline security resulting in me waiting outside the gate wondering if my mom made it on to the plane or not. After a few minutes without any pages over the intercom or calls to my cell phone I figured she got on OK and made my way back to Tomoko so that we could start waiting for our flight.
Because the tickets together were $800 cheaper with Northwest we decided to go with them. Sadly their flight to Kansai airport was booked solid so we had to fly out to Nagoya instead and then take the bullet train to Kyoto. But before that could happen we had to change airplanes a few times. First we flew on a tiny Canadair jet to Minneapolis. Then we waited in the airport for a few hours, doing some shopping and killing time (and checking out some very impressive vending machines – iPods, PSPs, digital cameras) before getting on our plane to Tokyo. The flight was alright and I spent most of it talking to the person seated next to me – a marine who was making his way to Okinawa for his first assignment. He knew nothing about Japan or the language beyond what his Lonely Planet guide told him and had no one waiting for him in Japan, he was just expected to report for duty in two days time at his new base. When I first heard this I thought it was pretty harsh, but the dude is a marine so he should be able to handle himself. Once we arrived in Tokyo we waited around for a bit and then got on our final flight – a short hop to Nagoya.
When I left Japan I didn’t surrender my alien registration (gaijin) card because it meant filling out paper work, and as I was going out on a return ticket they had no reason to expect I wasn’t coming back. So on this trip I was slightly apprehensive that my previous laziness might cause me some problems at immigration this time around. Thankfully there were no questions about previous stays, or anything else, and I was safely in Japan.
After some misadventures with the airport ATMs we got some cash, bought our bullet train tickets and 40 minutes later were in Kyoto where Shin was waiting to pick us up. Our 20 hour trip was over and we could move on to the business of preparing for Shin and Akane’s wedding.
tariq.ca 