A Few Days in Kyoto

left: Baseball at the temple

Kyoto’s grounds are not pierced with the pointy lances of skyscrapers or cluttered with the trash of her inhabitants. She is a clean, quaint city, one that flaunts her history by way of her dozens of historical temples, gardens, and shrines. Modernity has been pestering Kyoto for decades trying to get its sneaky foot in the door, and although Kyoto has allowed contemporary fashion to permeate her cloak of quiet, functional dress, and even though she has allowed a large, bumpy, obnoxious rail station mole to sprout on the peach-fuzzed swath of baby skin on her lower tummy, she has managed to safely incubate her parks and temples for centuries. The temples are her organs, and early each morning, as the monks and the bleary-eyed take their places on their cushions to get lost and found in meditative zazen ecstasy, as avian arias drown out the rapid-fire screams of alarm clock orgasms and the gassy grumbles of automotive belching, the temples open their gates and shake out their skirts as they know that, without their lure, Kyoto would fade and atrophy. The tourists make their pilgrimages to Kyoto by the thousands each day, bounce from temple to temple by tour bus much in the same way their camera flashes bounce off only the most picturesque temple walls and trees, and shamelessly undress her with their eyes without forgiveness. As they make their mass exodus each night, they honestly believe they have captured pieces of her with the lenses of their digital cameras and think they have caught her essence in photographic snares. Little do they know, she can’t be harnessed or dismembered, she can’t be transported or tamed, because like a chemistry lab concoction, Kyoto is only complete when certain components are combined in correct proportion, when human and traditional architecture bow deeply and exchange business cards: when her ripe maple leaves fall in front of you like dead stars beautifully painted with too much lipstick, pulling you further down their garden galaxies, when the wet, scrubbed pavement of her narrow, winding restaurant allies (the fat man’s red carpet) glows like black ice under your feet at dusk, when the rays of morning sun warm your back and light up your clouds of spent oxygen in a crisp, weathered temple meditation room.

left: The Golden Pavilion

We drove five hours from Ueda down to Kyoto and paid about $55 in tolls in the process. We made reservations at a place called Bon Guesthouse, and when, after about an hour and a half of driving around the confusing, unlabeled back streets of downtown Kyoto, the owner, Kazsuo, met us a few blocks away from the guesthouse and, bathed in the glow of our headlights, jogged back to the house (we offered a ride but he refused), I knew that we would be pleasantly smothered in hospitality for the next four days. He apologized profusely for the guesthouse’s location and the vague maps on his Internet website and showed us around the property. The guesthouse is located in the aorta of Kyoto’s heart, and, in the mornings, you can hear the city’s heartbeats, the gongs of the temples, while lying in bed. Like most hostels, the guesthouse has a communal room for eating, socializing, and computing, a communal washtub for brushing teeth, and a few small shower stalls.

left: (from left to right) Kazuo is standing on the far left sporting one of his smiles, Tomoko is 20 years-old and is Kazuo's only employee, I didn't catch the names of the three Japanese men in the picture but one specializes in making donuts, one is an ex-travel agent looking to switch careers, find an apartment in Kyoto, and marry his girlfriend in a no-frills ceremony, and the man behind Colleen does seasonal work full-time and makes a point never to stay in one country longer than a few months at a time. When Kazuo introduced me to him, he said, "This man has traveled much more than I have..."

The owner of the guesthouse is a man by the name of Kazuo, a 45 year-old wiry chef who spent most of his life cooking Japanese cuisine in restaurants all over the world. When Kazuo laughs, his eyelids squish and form narrow, black slits and his grin fills up so much of his face that one cannot help but smile in return (see picture). He is filled and overflowing with stories and knowledge obtained from the six years of traveling he did while in his 20’s. He explained that the sudden death of his mother when she was only 47 years old caused him to rethink his life plan and forcibly inject a potent dose of traveling into a life routine that stubbornly accepted change. In six years, he visited 50 countries, often spending one or two months in a country before moving on. He proudly tells of the good times and bad times he had while traveling, of the many nights spent sleeping outside after giving up on finding a place to stay for the night, of working from 4:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. before starting his journey to save up money, of staying and making sushi in a dangerous section of Jackson Heights, New York, of encountering anti-Asian sentiment in numerous countries around the world. Toward the end of our stay, when two girls from Norway came to the guesthouse after spending a month in India and a few weeks in Thailand and Cambodia, Kazuo asked questions that started with things like, “Do the busses in India still…” or “What did you think of the way Cambodian people …” or “I met someone in Argentina that told me that Norway…Is that still the case?” Colleen and I sat quietly and listened to discussion that was born from experiences and nursed with a mutually understood, unstated respect for other cultures. It was refreshing to have those long, after-dinner hostel talks again, those conversations that force participants to inch up to the edge of their seats and stare intently at the speaker because new information is constantly shooting around the room from mouths to ears, mouths to ears, weaving new future plans and new dreams so quickly in the minds of listeners that to complacently talk and listen without focus would be unfair to one’s future life goals.

left: One of two sushi platters prepared by Kazuo and Tomoko

As Kazuo practiced cooking Japanese cuisine for many years before opening the guesthouse last year, all of the prepared meals at the guesthouse are extraordinary. Each day Kazuo goes to the market and buys different vegetables and fishes to cook for breakfast and dinner. Colleen and I were amazed at the variety and quality of the meals that Kazuo prepared. Each morning, we feasted on fish, different kinds of miso soup, rice, vegetables, and a few different cold salads. For dinner, we had fish, tofu, soups, rice, and on one of the nights Kazuo spent three hours rolling and slicing dozens of pieces of sushi. The breakfasts cost about $3.00, the dinners cost about $8.50, and the lodging cost about $17.00 a night. By Japanese standards, these prices are extremely low and I’m still trying to figure out how Kazuo makes a profit by charging so little for such excellent food.

left: The Silver Temple

With maps in hand, Col and I spent our days riding around on bikes and skateboards visiting the different temples and gardens. Some of the temple grounds were extremely crowded because many Japanese tourists visit Kyoto in mid-November to stare in awe at the fall foliage. Most varieties of trees hadn’t started turning when we visited, but all of the Japanese maples glowed as if they had been watered with LSD, radiated as if they donned their vibrant leaf medals for the sole purpose of inspiring the shamans, outshined the drab greens of their evergreen peers as if maples alone had evolved through a fairytale period of Earth's existence in which the planet was filled like a fresh, plump mammary implant with neon red, orange, and yellow goo that leaked its seemingly radioactive life juice into every plant, animal, and stone, washing the planet with a solid shade of Bayoing! or some other fictional color that inspires nothing but amazement in the human mind.

Before dinner one day, we visited the Golden Pavilion, a temple completely encased in a thin sheet of gold that is perched on the edge of a maple-lined lake. At dusk, the sun lazily bounced weak rays off of the temple’s walls and showed us a side of the temple that remains hidden under the harsh blaze of midday sunshine: the radiant face of the temple without it’s afternoon eye shadow and blinding blush. The gold amplified the last few rays of sunlight and actually made it seem as if a dim electric light, one descended from low wattage ancestors, was faintly illuminating the landscape around the temple’s west wall. The Golden Pavilion grounds at dusk were serene, inspiring, and refreshingly devoid of gawking masses of tourists.

left: Maples and sand sculpture at the Silver Temple

The Silver Temple in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday, however, is a seething, picture-posing, jostling, Oooing-and-Ahhing! tangled mess of people. Any shred of tranquility originally sought after centuries ago by the temple’s original designers is impaled, disemboweled, and physically violated over and over again during every moment the temple is open to paying tourists. Humans flock to beautiful things and places with such unbridled intensity that they often can’t see, hear, or feel through the mask of thick, excitement-born froth the foams from their mouths to notice the damage they are inflicting upon their chosen objects of obsession; they trample when they should tip-toe and tip-toe when should stand on the sidelines and watch. Fortunately and unfortunately, the current maintenance staff of the Silver Temple has idiot-proofed the temple grounds with a combination of fences, ropes, and signposts. As much as these means of protection help preserve some of the temple’s most delicate moss fields and maple groves, they don’t seem to blend in well with the natural scenery and funnel slow-marching visitors into narrow channels that snake through the temple grounds. Visiting the Silver Temple during a beautiful fall weekend is something one endures rather than enjoys. Nonetheless, the immaculate landscaping and the Japan-ness that the place exudes amazed me.

left: Bamboo and maples

We followed a similar routine for a few days and visited temples during the day and feasted back at the guesthouse at night. Kazuo kept us updated on different events and hotspots in Kyoto that he thought we should check out during our stay. Following his recommendation, we went to Toji Temple for a once-a-month outdoor market that proved to be the biggest and most active outdoor market I had ever been too. Hundreds of tents and stalls sold almost anything and everything a Japanese person could want or need to make Japanese life more convenient and/or enjoyable: tools, bonsai trees, live food, fried food, dried food, dyed food, clothes, antiques, pottery, maps, herbal medicines, trinkets, and chatchkis (there must be a Japanese word for trash treasure, but I don’t know it). The market walkways were packed with customers and the calls of “Irrashaimasen!” (“How can I help you?!?” in English) shot from each market stall every few seconds--verbal missiles that could penetrate and burrow into even the thickest of skulls . After about an hour and a half of walking and haggling over prices, our eyes and ears could take no more stimulation and we decided to leave.

left: The Japanese love this variety of mushroom. It cannot be grown in a greenhouse and must be harvested naturally overseas. The bunches on the left and in the middle cost about $650!

One late afternoon, we ventured to a commercial section of the city marked by tiny, quaint alleyways and carried out a futile search for the famed geishas of Japan. Kazuo said that we would have our best chance of seeing a geisha at around dusk, the most common time during which the geishas walk to work to meet up with customers. Apparently, there are only 1,000 working geishas left in all of Japan, and about 100 of them work in Kyoto. Wealthy men hire geishas for upwards of $3,000 a night so they can sip on drinks poured by a geisha and respond to conversation spilled from a geisha’s powdered face. These fabled women are hard to find, and only a well-connected customer with deep pockets will ever be allowed to see the innards of Kyoto’s tea houses, the hidden private rooms in which the stringy fibers of new age pleasure braid with the worn linens of the past, the rooms in which History herself will pour a drink for a price, where men gaze into the dark eyes of centuries passed that have long been fed to the hungry mouths of legends and wallow in the comforting aura of the geisha, the aura of elderly wisdom that never fails in soothing modern anxiety.

left: TVs broadcasting a service to an empty tatami room at a temple












left: Monks posing for a photo













left: Garden a few blocks up from Kyoto Station













left: Bonsai for sale at the outdoor market













left: The Golden Pavilion

















left: One of the walkways through the woods of the Silver Temple

The Genius of Tom Robbins

I've been briskly walking home from school each day like a soccer mom in jeopardy of being a few precious moments late for her daily dose of Oprah so that I can put slippers on, sprawl out on the couch, and read Tom Robbins' latest book, Wild Ducks Flying Backwards. As one would expect, his new book, a collection of short writings, is inspirational and, in typical Robbins fashion, brilliantly creative and witty. Here is a gem from the book in which Robbins explains the relationship between humor and illusions of grandiosity:

Norman N. Holland asked a similar question in Laughing: A Psychology of Humor, concluding that comedy is deemed inferior to tragedy primarily because of the social prevalence of narcissistic pathology. In other words, people who are too self-important to laugh at their own frequently ridiculous behavior have a vested interest in gravity because it supports their illusions of grandiosity. According to Professor Donald Kuspit, many people are unable to function without such illusions.

"Capitalism," wrote Kuspit, "encourages the pathologically grandiose self because it encourages the conspicuous consumption of possessions which symbolize one's grandiosity." I would add that rigid, unquestioning allegiance to a particular religious or political affiliation is in much the same way also symptomatic of disease.

Ironically, it's this same malignant narcissism, revealing itself through whining, arrogance, avarice, pique, anxiety, severity, defensive cynicism, and aggressive ambition, that is keeping the vainglorious out of their paradise. Among our egocentric sadsacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation. Taken out on others, depression becomes a weapon. But for those willing to reduce and permeate their ego, to laugh--or meow--it into submission, heaven on earth is a distinct psychological possibility.

In light of a recent discussion I had with a relative that is thankfully distant and not related to me by blood, I've decided to post an insightful passage from a Robbins' book I just read called Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. In it, a character named Larry Diamond describes "progress," its dangers, and what he calls "The Lie":

The Lie of progress. The Lie of unlimited expansion. The Lie of 'grow-or-perish.' Listen. We built ourselves a fine commercial bonfire, but then instead of basking in its warmth, toasting marshmallows over it, and reading the classics by its light, we became obsessed with making it bigger and hotter, bigger and hotter, until if the flames didn't leap higher from one quarter to the next, it was cause for great worry and dissatisfaction. Well, any Bozo on the riverbank could have told us that if you keep feeding and feeding and feeding a bonfire, sooner or later you burn up all the fuel and the fire goes cold; or else the fire gets too huge to manage and eventually engulfs the countryside and chars its inhabitants. Nature has always set limits on growth: limits on the physical size of individual species, limits on the size of populations. Did we really believe capitalism was exempt from the laws of nature? Did we really confuse endless consumption with endless progress?

Maybe I read the Unabomber's Manifesto too early in life during that stage of one's academic career and cognitive development in which the brain tries in vain to slip through cracks in the skull to desperately escape the body and absorb and apply new information with intensity and yet-untainted passion, but, for the past few years, I've been shaking hands with technological progress with my fingers behind my back and trepidation muscling caution into my glare and sweaty handshake. It seems as if most people in America and abroad unwaveringly support technological advancement and often quickly mistake it with "progress." Sure we can make two dogs from one like a cheap magician with a big hat, small rabbits, and a drunken circus audience, and we can separate twins who share both last names and jiggly cerebral real estate, but we often fail to look up and away from our screens, those appropriately named portals that lead us with arms outstretched, two perpendicular extremity erections, to our cozy, shag-carpeted, fireside, cell phone and television and computer safe havens.

When we can only focus on our bonfire, as Robbins describes, or our material possessions that are used like merit badges to help us prove our level of grandiosity to ourselves and others, we miss everything that happens in between adding logs to the flames or adding tennis bracelets to the already jangly wrists that never glow quite gold enough. This is the danger that seeps into the nightmares of the conscious few and slinks around unacknowledged in the actions and short bursts of choppy yet collectively powerful thought of the many. It's a threat more real than any elusive terrorist and more destructive than any bomb. Is it any wonder then that the thinkers and poets of the world cry out, no, shriek out in fear when the U.S. government attempts to spread a thick, buttery coat of this material preoccupation, this love for unnecessary pyrotechnics, on the seemingly inviting landscapes of other countries with a wide bladed butter knife of good ol' Western aggression? I couldn't agree with Robbins more--when you feed a fire until the flames touch the clouds, you stroll arm in arm with the risk of either running out of logs (which will subsequently leave you shivering with tiny, teeth-clanging, mouth earthquakes by the side of a pathetic pile of smoldering ashes) or scorching yourself to dry, ashy oblivion...or both.

more to come as life unfolds,

Andrew

More Free Accomodation for Broke Travelers

So you want to travel all over the world but you're broke. Fret not. These four websites allow traveling people to link up with hospitable folks all over the world. Why stay in a crowded hostel when you can stay with a knowledgeable host instead?

www.globalfreeloaders.com

www.hospitalityclub.org

www.travelhoo.com

www.couchsurfing.com

Enjoy!

Andrew

It`s official: I have been invited to join the Japanese mafia!

The slow-rising, swirling clouds of mist, the bastard children of hot air balloons and lazy pinwheels, rose from the hot waters of the onsen into the still night air, transforming the onsen pool into a witch's cauldron complete with children jumping and frantically swimming around like live, warty toads added to the mix for their magical properties and red-faced bathers stewing in groups of two and three along the sides of the pool like eyeballs and rabbit's feet that, as a result of constant witch stirring (which unlike 'normal' stirring continues for hours and is often unnecessary and simply for show) and hours of boiling, float in clusters and get pushed to the edges of the pot. I slid my way along the huge granite rocks that lined the pool and searched for a rock that mirrored the curve of my spine, a rock that would allow me to lounge and sit upright at the same time. When I stopped moving, exhaled, and looked up at the manicured landscape that surrounded the outdoor onsen pool, I understood why other JETs said this was the best onsen in Nagano: huge boulders guarded the delicate, multi-colored leaf dresses and jewelry of the surrounding trees like bodyguards with pinkie rings (the kinds worn on thick pinkies used to leave a specific imprint on the foreheads or cheeks of trespassers) and the main pool was studded with tiny islands of rock and sectioned into smaller pools of varying temperatures. The "cold pool" seemed as if it contained some chemical that allowed the water to sit calmly below water's normal freezing point, and, to my friend Mike, this is what made the pool appealing. He would cook his insides and redden his entire body in the hot pool and then jump into the cold pool, yelp and roll in the waters like a submerged dog who hates being wet, and then quickly scurry back into the hot pool. After listening to him eagerly endorse this type of extreme bathing behavior, behavior that seemed to go against the traditional and tranquil bathing method favored by all of the non-foreigners who sat in comatose states in the onsen, I agreed to soak my legs in the cold pool (I couldn't muster up enough machismo to dunk my entire body). After a few shivering minutes, I hobbled back into the hot pool like a frail, fur-less, runt of a penguin that had just been pushed into the icey sea by the local iceberg bully, the big one who grew plump and turned black before all of his friends. To say that the blood in my legs turned into liquid fire would be an understatement: it felt as if electricity surged through my legs from the inside out; two albino moray eels dangled from my torso, and if any passing children had happened to accidentally brush against my leg hairs in the first few moments after I returned to the hot pool, surely their lives would have ended in jaw-clenched, electric misery.

Mike, Ryan, and I soaked and talked for about an hour and tried to act as if our nakedness was no big deal. This type of acting was hard to pull off, however, because all three of us were raised in America, a hive that has yet to embrace naked socializing even though its worker bees tease the eyes and tempt the mind on a daily basis with advertisements and shows that are glossed over with a clear, cheap coat of exaggerated sexuality, the kind that disintegrates during a heavy downpour or after prolonged scrubbing. To practice proper onsen etiquette, one must look people in the eye during conversation, completely avoid looking at the birthday-suited children that endlessly circle, crash into one another during games of tag, and zigzag around their nucleic parents like over-charged electrons, and avoid staring at the tiny, jiggling, fleshy kings that rule perched high above (or sometimes barely atop) their black mountains of wiry brambles.

Now that I've grown accustomed to covering up with what I affectionately call "My Jimmy Towel" (a dangerously small washcloth that is a modern day fig leaf of sorts used by onsen regulars) I can saunter around the onsen with a swagger that is usually possessed only by droopy-skinned, gray-haired, onsen masters and men with freakishly large, rhinoceros genitalia. I can complete an onsen mission without my trusty towel, but having it rounds out the experience and makes a white guy feel a little less white. Mike refuses to use the "vanity towels," and he thinks the popular custom of putting the towel on one's head while soaking in the onsen to keep the head warm is repulsive. He explained, "No one thing should ever cover a guy's dick AND the top of his head!"

When I went back into the locker room to dry off, I saw the tell tale signs of the Japanese mafia etched into the skin of a bather a few lockers down: massive tattoos on the back and arms. I couldn't resist complimenting the man on his tattoos despite the fact that other JETs have warned me not to talk to the members of the yakuza, or Japanese mafia. I pointed to the dragon that wrapped up his arm from his wrist to his shoulder and said, "Tattoo, I like." He smiled and said that he liked my tattoos. In broken English, with the aid of his friend's choppy translation help, he explained that he started the outline for his back tattoo when he was 16 years old. He said he was currently 29 years old and that he will get a full body, traditional style Japanese tattoo that will extend from his ankles and wrists up to his neck by the time he dies (when I saw him he had a completed full sleeve and the outline of a large dragon on his back with a small patch of color). He said his arm was completed with machine, but the faded, red areas of flames on his back were completed using the point of an ivory bone, a steady hand, and a whole lot of red ink. He enjoyed a good laugh when he heard that I was a teacher at a Japanese high school, and I had to explain that I wore long sleeves in school to cover-up the tattoo on my arm. We struggled to communicate for a few minutes, and I eventually gave up trying to talk in English with a person who knew only a few English words. I went to get my things, and as I walked past the tattooed man, I was shocked by the way in which he chose to say good-bye—he firmly patted my butt twice with his right hand! I didn't know what to make of this strange gesture at first, but I continued walking and exited the onsen locker room. I'm convinced that the man's butt tap can obviously mean only one thing: I have officially been accepted into the Japanese mafia.

More to come as my new, seedy, life in the Japanese underworld unfolds,

Andrew

Halloween Fun

left: This is what it looks like when one of your students shows up at a Halloween party on Saturday night. I was shocked to see this little girl in a witch's costume dancing next to me, and when I looked over, I realized it was one of my students. We said hello to each other and went about our business. It was a strange feeling seeing my student in a local bar, but I didn't ask any questions. She wasn't drinking and I think she came to the party alone, but she had a great time, as is evident by the smile.




left: Our friend Mike + samurai sword sheath + tight pants = good laugh
















left: The prettiest White Stripe busting a move before the dance floor fills up. The bar we visited, The Wise Owl, was filled with custom woodwork and rafters installed by the bar owner Udo. He is an antique dealer and the walls were lined with really cool Japanese antiques. The crowd at the party: 3/4 Japanese 1/4 foreigners. The Japanese people were extremely excited to partake in the odd Western holiday and dress up in costumes, and from the looks of the sweaty faces at the end of the night, they had a great time dancing to good tunes pushed through the speakers by our friend Ryan (DJ Curious George).