From my last post, you will remember that for my first two months here I was more than a little homesick...up until the point when I decided to stop being such a little emo and get out more.
So this blog post is kind of a chronicle of the last 2 Fridays and Saturdays.
Friday before last, Keiko and I went to Fushimi-Inari, a shrine which sits at the base of a mountain in Kyoto's south-east. You'll have seen it in
Memoirs of a Geisha, the University of Sydney's
Japanese Studies Department's home page, or in
any kind of travel material about Japan. The path of the shrine - which takes you into the heavily wooden areas of the mountain - is peppered with stone statues of kitsune (foxes) with keys or sheaves of rice in their mouths. Inari is also the god of rice, you see, and the key in this instance is the key to the rice granary.
Below are little kistune faces on the back of which children have written their wishes - mostly to pass exams I think.
Lots of little toriis all lumped together.
Unfortunately, these stones felt heavy for both of us.
The day ended with dinner at Kyoto Station. My soba is actually called kitsune soba - apparently because it's the colour of a fox's fur.
Keiko has really been a great friend and SKP buddy since we all came here. She has the best laugh and a cheeky sense of humour, which I highly value in people - especially the Japanese ^-^
And Kyoto Tower at night (must climb it sometime soon):
The next day, Saturday, I met up with Dani at Kyoto Station and we took the bus to Arashiyama - the mountains in the north-west of Kyoto.
Arashiyama, according to the excellent resource Lonely Planet Kyoto, is the second most scenic area in Kyoto (after Higashiyama, which I visited
two months ago). Sadly, I'm forced to disagree with Chris Rowthorn on this - Arashiyama is defnitely the most beautiful place I have ever been to in Japan.
It was a real adventure to get there - neither of us had ever been there before, and we didn't even know the right stop to get off at.
While on the bus, I read about a really highly recommended restuarant in Arashiyama called Kameyama-ya. Rowthorn said: the food is cheap and the view unbeatable.
So we had to find it.
And once we got there, we didn't want to leave. We were sitting on low cushions on a little table on a platform above the ground (Japanese style), with a perfect view of the blue-green river and the mountains behind it.
We almost didn't get to Kameyama-ya though, being tempted along the way by these cute displays for another restaurant.
Next stop was of course the famous bamboo forest.
We were literally awe-struck by the beauty of the place. "No one could paint this" I said. Well, we found someone who was having a go!
The overall solemness of the place was only slightly marred by the graffiti we found on some of the trunks.
I was quite dissapointed not to see
Zhang Ziyi zooming around.
Speaking of the Chinese, on the way there, we found a monument to Zhou Enlai which I found really fascinating. Zhou was the first Premier of the PRC and actually quite an inspiring figure. Wish I could have read the monument.
The matcha softcream guilty face:
On our way back to the other side of the river, suddenly - and this was like out of a movie - we heard this haunting Japanese flute music. It was just like in Niimi Nankichi's fairytale 'Kitsune'. (On an unrelated note, did you know that the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of a flute is "hyuu-hya-rya-rya-rya-rya"? And dogs in Japan don't go woof woof, they go wan wan.)
We followed the sound of the flute until we saw a young woman in a long blue dress standing by the banks of the river
She got shy when we got our cameras out and stopped playing. The above shot was a sneaky attempt to get a snap of her. It failed ... but it's still pretty artistic, ne?
The public bathroom had some really weird creepy-crawlies in it.
Practising my Ron Weasley face.
We were a little tired by this time, so we decided to rest on the end of the bridge for a while. We talked about people, teachers, uni, Japan, study, travel, the future ... a really nice catch-up. Dani has been my Japanese buddy since first semester of uni. In fact I clearly remember a moment, while we were on our way to one of our tutes for Dany Celemajer's 'Global Studies: Themes and Approaches' (our first core subject) when she said "We should go on exchange to Japan together!" And I was like "Yay! Uni friends!" (To myself of course)
... and Dani had another icecream. Bad!
Of course, I did too.
What? I like lichen.
Arashiyama has a really famous monkey park, so that was our last stop for the day.
We had to trek for 20 minutes up a steep mountain path to get there though.
However we were urged along by various amusing quizzes and signs about the monkeys.
Translation: Monkey quiz. Elementary questions. Will you understand? They are easy questions!
Translation: What do the monkeys in the monkey park not like / are scared by? 1 - Touching. 2 - Staring closely. 3 - Throwing stones.
(The answer was - all of the above)
Lol'ed at the last line of the second last paragraph here:
At long last we reached the top:
You can walk around outside with the monkeys or go into the enclosure and pay 100Y for a packet of chestnuts, peanuts or fruit to feed them through the wire.
Some asked very nicely:
Some not so nicely:
Some had great PR skills and new how to attract attention:
One naughty little monkey attracted the wrong kind of attention - he stole my water bottle, ran up a tree with it and drank it all. One of the keepers, in a fit of bushido (or chivalry, or something) ran up to the base of the tree and began throwing branches and rocks at the offender to make him drop, all the while yelling at him in a really tough samurai voice. Hot.
A few videos of the monkeys can be found on my new youtube channel
here.
The next Friday night was when I finally got to meet up with Sarah, another University of Sydney kid who is studying at Doshisha. We kept saying we'd meet up, and found the best opportunity to - Metro's monthly drag night.
A video of the 5 or so drag queen performers was also uploaded
here.
I am under no illusions of you wanting to watch the whole 13 minutes of it (it was so loud, the sound quality is quite bad). But it's fun to skip through the acts to see the costumes - and the makeup! I particularly recommend a stop at 9 minutes and 10.50 minutes. Seriously. Even you, Mum and Dad.
Why are they all eating bananas at the end? Hmmm. Freudian.
Maybe some anime/JPOP fanatics can discern the song the 'schoolgirl' was singing at 0.55? Great body, I mean song.
Sorry all, turns out the title of this blog is really misleading. I was meant to talk about the Maiko (apprentice geisha) who visited our class last week. But I feel like this is enough for one post, and I really want to do justice to the whole geisha thing, seeing as it was this book which triggered my obsession with Japan:
So just a taster for now:
and just for randomness ...
SNAPSHOTS FROM DAILY LIFE
Paying a humble homange to the beautiful nails Japanese girls somehow manage to maintain
Some sweets I made in wagashi class (it's a chrysanthemum and a sakura).
