I arrived in Tokyo on April 4--late at night. I thought it was a miracle that I found the hotel. Julianne met me the next morning--we had sashimi for breakfast at the fish market. We got there at 10am, and by that time, its activities had already lulled, but the fish and rice bowl was delicious. And we saw all sorts of things--like squid in plastic bags floating in water, and these strange barrel-on-a-platform-on-wheels things that were driven madly all over the place. It is the most chaos I have seen in Japan.
Tokyo feels like a blur, honestly. That night we went to an onsen theme park, we had our first day of hanami (cherry blossom viewing), went to the national museum where they were showing art that had to do with cherry blossom-viewing, explored the different neighborhoods of the city, tried to find the national Kabuki theater, then realized we had walked past where it once stood like 5 times--it was just knocked down and they are rebuilding it (so sadly no Kabuki). we watched masses of people cross the crosswalks and men and women in business suites and nice shoes biking all over the place, wandered through the department stores, I ate some really strange,slimy yam soup that came with my soba noodle set. We went to the Ghibli museum--it is a museum about Miyazaki's animation studio--they had these wonderful animation models (I think that is a good term for them). They were large, multi-tiered, mechanical animation sculptures where each phase of movement was an individual figurine, and each tier was a different character. The machine would start, a strobe light would begin flashing and each tier would spin and everything would come alive--a little girl jumping rope, a cat-bus crawling along, some strange creature flying, a little girl's hair being swept by the wind. it was very beautiful. At the restaurant you could order things like "the fruit sandwich of your dreams."
After three days in Tokyo, Jules headed north to Toyama and I went east to Kyoto. I sat for a long time on the sidewalk waiting for my bus, I felt the small after shocks of anther earthquake. That was the only thing I had seen so far that reminded me that there was a disaster happening in this country.
I got to Kyoto very early the next morning. I was trying to find somewhere to eat and a Japanese woman drove me to a restaurant in her car. People here are friendly. I had ramen for breakfast. I went into this noodle shop where men wear pale blue uniforms and whenever someone enters or leaves, they all call out the same greeting, i don't know what it is but i like the way it sounds. in the tiny kitchen there is a vat of broth that is just steaming, and someone dips it up into bowls, and adds fresh noodles, pork and vegetables. I walked the philospher's path that day. it was sort of rainy, but that weather made the mossy gardens all sort of glow a little. i like that when you look down the alleyways, you see potted gardens in front of people's houses. this path follows a canal and links two main temples/shrines in Kyoto. When I needed food again, another woman led me to an Udon shop where I had wonderful noodles in a smoky broth, and the most amazing tempura. they gave me some free almond pudding for dessert and kept asking my if everything tasted alright. That day was somewhat disorienting. somewhere between two big and delicious bowls of noodles I had seen bits of Kyoto but it is hard to say much more about it. I got back to Kyoto station so I could make my way to the temple where I was staying (Shunk0-in, it was lovely) the bus ride there was long and crowded and i spent an hour just wandering around the station trying to figure out how to get to the train platform. the arrows seemed to be leading me up and down the stairs and in a giant circle. I got to the temple and felt strange and alone. it was very dark and very quiet and rainy and I had spent most of the day feeling glazed over. It was only 830 but I thought that maybe I would just lie on my futon until I fell asleep. But then I told myself that I was in Japan and should probably go out and walk around. This remains true today--excluding the big sights we saw in Kyoto, everywhere I go seems deserted. I always seem to be the only one going somewhere. That is something erie and new. I have never traveled somewhere, where I so often feel like I am the only one wandering around. I kind of like it. everything feels hushed and poised and serene. It might have something to do with the earthquakes, but the emptiness is not foreboding. it is serene. it is like I am existing on one side of a veil that had dropped down into the world. I don't know what Japan in like when it isn't cherry blossom season, and it isn't in the wake of a national disaster, but I feel like this quiet happens no matter what. I walked alone in the rain and got to a local restaurant. the hand-drawn map that I was given at the temple had it marked. I walked past and there was just a guy inside watching tv. I almost didn't go in but at that point I was pretty rain-soaked, so I opened the door, the man switched off the tv, switched on some music and cooked a meal for me on the spot. it felt cozy. I couldn't read the menu so the man who hangs out there/cooks just asked me what i liked and i told him that i wasn't a picky eater. I sat at the bar, facing the kitchen while he started assembling my food bit by bit. he put a plate in front of me, made some tea, and started placing little piles of food here and there. It was the best meal I had, and it made me feel like I could wake up the next day and see things. If i could, I would go back to Kyoto before I left just to have dinner there again. The next morning, I borrowed one of the temple bicycles and began riding around the section of the city that I was in. it was a little remote, but it was one of my favorite days so far. I felt better on a bicycle. I could actually follow the map and i felt like i could really see things. I saw two more temples, the Golden Pavillion and Ryoan-ji (a famous zen garden, later i learned that a lot of the popular tourist attractions glue the pebbles in place. a bird land in a rock garden and not a single stone moved). then i wound all the way around town. it was sort of overcast and breezy, i felt like i was actually seeing Japan. I went to a pickle shop and tried to have lunch, but they were booked, so they brought me a cup of tea and let me sample all their pickles. I bought spices from an old man that wore a checkered wool jacket and hat, who ground a mixture of dried scallions, chilis and sesame in a mortar and pestle and packed them for me in a little tin. i had some delicious sweets--mochi filled with red bean and a surprise fresh strawberry, and another sakura flavored one wrapped in a savory pickled perilla leaf. I wandered around a temple that I didn't have to pay to see, it was full of mossy crooked trees. I sat in a cafe for a while and then went to a small onsen. I ended the night at a bar--an old sake brewery where everyone sits on barrels on the stone floor. a japanese girl sat next to me pretended to read the paper until her friend came over and told me that she wanted to talk. I said that I was the one that was too shy to say hello, they made a list of thing i should see in Japan. Jules got to Kyoto the next morning. I remember thinking that it was impossible that I had been in Japan for less than a week at that point. We had a great lunch in Gion, a very picturesque part of the city. we had sakura mousse for dessert, it was heavenly. we followed the crowd to kiomizu temple. A large temple that is built on stilts. Then we had sake and a few snacks under the cherry blossoms. It was actually a magical thing to do.
