Kyoto, I remain cautiously optimistic.

Kyoto, I remain cautiously optimistic.

I am going to attempt to talk about three things in this post:

1. The ride to Kyoto on the Shinkansen 

2. My first night in the Kyoto hotel 

3. My first few sights in Kyoto

The ride to Kyoto on the Shinkansen:

Every time I hear the word Shinkansen I instantly get reminded of some kind of shounen anime inspired sword or attack. "Baakana! kono jutsu no namae wa Shinkansen... Ovarida..". I looked the name up on the foremost authority on the Japanese language, Wikipedia and found out much to my disappointment that it literally translated into wide gauge rail or something to that technical effect referring to the type of track on which the Shinkansen runs. I hopped on the train from my beloved home away from home, my safe harbor, Oh dearest Shinjuku. Heading for Shinagawa on the yamanote line which I had only once ridden on before. The train was as crowded as I have seen, apparently everybody living in Shinjuku had decided to hop on to bid me a bientot ( mata ne ).

While on the train I kept seeing an advisory message on the monitors alerting people to a delay on the Tokkaido Shinkansen line. The cause was mentioned to be a blackout. I thought to myself "So glad that I am not one of the poor sods traveling on that train. No sir, I am going to Kyoto, on the Kyoto Shinkansen, YEAH!" and concluded the thought with a little hop in the air and self high five or perhaps that was just in my head.

Shinagawa was huge and that's just the station, I wonder how humongous the ward itself is. I walked around totally lost for a bit and then finally located the track for the Shinkansen to Kyoto which I discovered 15 minutes before riding on it was called the Tokkaido Shinkansen. The name sounded familiar, almost as if I had come across it before and then it hit me. I was one of the poor sods riding on the Tokkaido line.

I got on my platform and was waiting for my train to pull in when I had one of those brief moments of perfect satisfaction when I read the display boards for the train names and managed to read them as written in Japanese. It completely helped that the names were written in the hiragana which is the only Japanese alphabet that I know but it was a victory none the less. I remembered seeing a model of the Japanese bullet train from when I was a kid, I think I had a toy version which I used to play with but my memories of that time are weak and flee as soon as I call out to them. The Shinkansen pulled in, as majestic as a train can possibly manage to look. At some point of time when I am better versed in Japanese I will petition JR to rename the Shinkansen to something like Byakurai ( which my friend Tite Kubo tells me means white lightning ) because that is precisely what it looks like, predominantly white in color, sleek as an arrow and fast as lightning if not faster ( shut up physics!!! ). I got on the train and settled down as it pulled out of the station. It was immediately obvious how these trains could cover the massive distances they covered in the time that they did. The train was whistling within mere seconds of starting and it was all so smooth. Half an hour later found me nursing a whiskey ( no, it was only coffee. faithful followers of yours truly will remember the video bearing witness to this fact ) staring out of the window as the Japanese countryside blurred by. Delightful train journey, I only wish that the destination had welcomed me a bit better than it actually did.

2. My first night in the Kyoto hotel

As disappointments go this was a big one. I, like my father, have always loved good hotels. The ones that make you feel classy, almost like royalty ( which we technically are ). The rooms that seem prepped for your occupancy, ready and waiting for you to arrive. I knew that things were headed downhill as soon as I saw the outside of the building. It reminded me of one of those hotels in India which stick the word international or residency on to their names and instantly expect their quality to go shooting through the roof by some unknown turn of fate. My hotel was a similar offender, it had the word villa stuck on to its name. None of this would have mattered if not for a mistake I had made early on while reserving this room online. I accidentally reserved a smoking room. Finding hotels in Kyoto had been exceptionally difficult and so when I had seen this one open I had just jumped and locked it in without reading the fine print. The room reeked of stale smoke and believe you me, it was bad. I usually don't have a problem hanging out with smokers, even though I don't enjoy it, I can handle most normal levels of smoke emission. This room though had stale, old, dead smoke infused into the very walls from the smell of it. Opening the window, spraying an entire bottle of room freshener, praying to the gods, did nothing to alleviate the horrid smell. I went right back down to the lobby and talked to them about the problem at which point they told me that I would have to stay in the room for the night and that they would move me today. This experience of the horrid ghost smoke room sort of ruined Kyoto's first impression in my mind. Went out for a walk and everywhere I looked I found problems, narrow streets, not enough lights, too many boisterous people ( I had just been in Shinjuku and note how I am complaining about crowd density and boisterousness of folk ). I had heard that the JR Kyoto station was a modern marvel of construction and so on, with an underground mall in it and so I went to have a look. The only shops it had were boutiques of international fashion brands, most of which I had seen to sickness in the US. The non shop establishments were restaurants and that too mostly French, Italian, Vietnamese and even an Indian one. Almost every restaurant had a line outside it with people clutching shopping bags and dressed in their Saturday finest. I felt like a complete alien here, the situation not being helped by the fact that I had not had the chance to take a shower due to aforementioned nightmare room. After the amazing experiences I had in Shinjuku and Tokyo in general this was a horrible let down.

 Came back to the hotel with some food and coke and consumed it in my smoky cave. Post dinner, I drowned my sorrows in a few episodes of Gintama and then turned in for the night. 

3. My first few sights in Kyoto:

My first thought on regaining consciousness today was "hurray, I'm still alive!". I lay there for a bit activating various sub systems and checking their status reports on general system health. It appeared that the smoke had not managed to bypass my defenses. The hotel had told me that I could move into my new room at 1:00 pm and so I needed to burn time until that point. I checked out of smokey joe turned my key card and clothes bag in to reception and headed to a Starbucks to make a plan. I decided to check one of the nearby temples out and headed for it.

This is where things sort of started to turn around a bit which is why I am cautiously optimistic and not completely condemning this place ( as concerns my trip of course, not in general ). The temple was beautiful. Gigantic wooden halls, maintained so well, the wooden floors polished to shine, tatami mats stretching on as far as the hall ran. Walking on tatami mats is awesome by the way. On a pamphlet I picked up from the temple entrance I found that the temple had been built by the jodo-shin sect also known as the true pure land sect, one of the schools of contemporary Japanese Buddhism. There were also some lines written about believing in a true pure land into which followers are reborn as Buddhas and then immediately return to the world as we know it, in order to help others find enlightenment. Not sure about the whole true pure land idea since it sounds a little too much like the western concept of heaven which is a little too placebo like for my taste, but the parts about living open and free in this life knowing that there was a next appealed to me. It sounded free somehow. After seeing the temple and the founders hall and the amida hall I sat down on a stone step facing a small garden with a few trees. Looked at the sun. Looked at the aoi sora. Things started feeling a bit better. It was 1 pm and I headed back to the hotel full steam to see what fresh hell they were going to put me in to.

The new room was decent. It definitely had no smoke smell. Obviously the overall standard of the hotel was still the same and nothing to write home about, but just to have that infernal smell gone was relief enough.

After putting my heavy bags in the room I picked up my camera and headed out again. The temple I had gone to earlier had been called the nishi honganji and now I wanted to go to the higashi honganji it's sister temple. Higashi apparently also had a garden nearby that was supposed to be beautiful. By this point my spirits had recovered and I was once again in sightseeing mode. Pictures were taken a plenty and many a tatami mat was stepped on. Higashi honganji was as impressive as Nishi, perhaps a bit less but close. I decided to head for the garden. 

One of the things I have come to deeply appreciate about the Japanese is their skill at separating nature and otherwise. The minute I stepped into the garden, the city around me fell away. It was as if I was walking in a remote mountain side garden. Beautiful moss gardens, koi ponds, ancient tea houses preserved for display and a bamboo grove that looked as fresh as tomorrow feels. I did two slow circuits of the garden and sat in a couple of places for intervals.

The time was around 4 and the park was closing. The sun had started making her descent and the park was starting to embrace the evening. I sat on a stone looking at the water. Ripples, everywhere. The little insects on the surface of the water, propelling themselves with great speed, each time creating a ripple. Then, suddenly, almost stillness but not quite. Almost as if every being had decided to hold breath, the water became tranquil and in the reflection I saw the trees, the sky, the old buildings and other people both past and present but always moving. The trees stood still, they did not want to mar the reflection in the water. The sky liked the idea the trees had and agreed to stay still. The buildings around, had seen ages pass and their will or need to move had long since grown to be replaced by something beyond my conception. Within the water I saw the reflection. Only for a moment, a brief flash of stillness and then gone as quickly as it had come. The wind my old friend sang through the trees once more, the skies began to dance again and the ripples on the water bloomed forth, the reflection shattered, my window into that beautiful world of but a moment was closed. My breath escaped me.

After that I returned to the hotel, took a shower, had a coffee and now am sitting in Starbucks once again writing this. Tomorrow I head for Kifune jinja in the mountains.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

On a signing off note, if I do ever get the chance to live and work in Japan I am going to live and work in Tokyo. I love the city and it's energy. It reminds me of the best times I had in Dubai both alone and with my younger brother, simpler and more optimistic times where you could not help but grin at the possibilities held by the next moment.

Until we speak again,

Magus