Leaving Fuji

Tuesday began rather innocuously. I got up as late as I could, checked out, and realized I had lost a towel somewhere in the shuffle, my UCSD towel. Kinda sad to have missed it, as it was one of the few things I had with me that showed where I came from, but life goes on. I signed up for a shuttle to take me to the nearest bus station, which would be used to take me on to Kyoto, and did my laundry. I saw a couple of blonde girls that were getting ready to take the shuttle as well; soon we found out we were going in the same direction, so we coupled our fates together for a spell, and got breakfast together while waiting for the bus to Kyoto.

We actually had breakfast at the same place I had the day before, prior to scaling Fuji, but I neglected to mention in my last post. It was just a simple café, but it offered some scrumptious cinnamon toast that looked like gold to my eyes. Here it is:

It was a simple meal, and perhaps calling it a meal is a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but it was filling nevertheless, and that’s really all that mattered. The girls got some sandwiches, and soon we were off to Kyoto.

The first leg of this trip was comprised of a 2.5 hour bus ride, that would take us to a certain station somewhere (I forget where, to be honest), followed by a 2.5 hour shinkansen ride. I probably could have found a better way to go about this, but I ended up paying about 100 dollars for the shinkansen ticket. Shinkansen, by the way, is the Japanese bullet train. It certainly did go fast, and smooth at that. A hundred dollars still seemed like a lot, though, and I think I could have somehow gotten to the same place at half the price, albeit perhaps twice as long of a period of time to get there or more.

Both of these went without a hitch, though, and the rides showed that the Minnesota girls and myself had little in common beyond basic pleasantries, so conversation fell into disuse, and we led our separate lives. In fact, we were going to the same hostel in Kyoto, but that didn’t really make the bond any more strong for the day.

We got off shortly at Kyoto station, which is a giant complex of a station.

The walk from there to K’s House (the hostel) in Kyoto wasn’t too long, although I was doing it carrying 60 lbs of luggage (25kg) on my back/shoulders. When I got there, though, I found out I didn’t have a reservation for that day! Instead, my 2 days of reservations there started the next day. So, the staff there were quite helpful and did their best to find another hostel for me, and soon I found myself walking towards some place called “Iriya’s” in South Kyoto.

To get there, though, I had to wander through some back alleys in South Kyoto, which is a pretty terrible way of trying to find places in Japan. Their address system works totally different than in the States and many other places in the world (although the same as in Korea, where I’m actually waiting in a ferry terminal to go to as I type this), and is totally not useful for someone from any of these other parts of the world.

I knew I was lost the instant I set foot in these alleys, but figured I had nothing to lose by continuing to wander anyway; soon, I found myself crossing paths with a few kids who were playing in the alley. They had big smiles on their faces as they shouted “Hello!” Their boldness was refreshing, as most Japanese people, regardless of age, will do their best to avoid eye contact and mutual acknowledgement of people they don’t know, so I figured, well, fuck it, maybe these kids can show me where to go!

So I ended up enlisting the help of about 6 kids, aged probably from about 5 to 12, who led me through the winding alleys towards a place that was actually called Ilia’s, and was in fact a gigantic gym complex, that apparently had a small backpacker’s lodge in one of the floors. This was not readily apparent from outside, however, and it took the help of one final person, a guy who had just come out of the gym, to get me the rest of the way.

The kids were pretty cute, and if I had had the chance, I would’ve offered to get them some candy or something for their help, but by the time I got back downstairs, they were long gone.

The lodgings here were Spartan; two rooms for the two genders, each room packed with 20 or more bunk beds, but the amenities were actually pretty well developed all things considered, and as is the case with every other place I’ve stayed in Japan thus far, it felt incredibly safe, like you could leave a bag of gold ingots on your mattress and people wouldn’t even think of touching it. I didn’t actually have enough cash on me at the time to book the place, and Japan is still basically a cash-based society, with few places that accept cards for payment of any kind, so I had to run to the nearest 7-11, which offers the only ATMs that work with international cards other than Citibank. The former is far more ubiquitous than the latter, however, you can only withdraw money in denominations of 10,000 yen, or about 100 dollars. Once you break a 10,000 yen bill, the rest of it disappears surprisingly fast, especially once the paper’s been subdivided into coins. The usage of 100 and 500 yen coins, or about 1 and 5 dollars respectively, is widespread and seemingly everything costs multiples of 100 yen, even stuff you’d think would be free, so it all vanishes pretty quick.

But I had to pay the guy, so I went to 7-11 and got 10,000 yen to cover the cost of the night, and have more money on me to cover the costs of whatever else.

I’d like to take a moment to just say that the guy who was working there that night was really nice, all around. He was older, probably around 60, and apparently had studied English briefly in the U.K. some years ago, and had full communicative ability in English, though he still had a fairly strong accent, and did everything he could to help me out. They had an interesting system where there was no curfew, but doors would be locked after a certain time, so they gave us keys to both the entire facility and for the backpacker’s lodge itself, as you’d have to go through two sets of locked doors. For some reason I just don’t envision this level of trust in many other places.

After taking care of things there, I figured I should head out on the town for the evening, so I skipped out of South Kyoto to go to Pochongo, which is a nightlife district in central, slightly eastern Kyoto. I took a subway to get me most of the way, then walked for the remainder, down Kyoto’s primary shopping promenade, an onslaught of fashionable stores and fashionable people, trying really too hard to be fashionable, loitering on the streets to show off just how fashionable they’ve managed to make themselves be. This is definitely the sketchiest place I had been thus far, with guys brazenly cooing at girls walking along the streets, actually trying to catch their attention, as opposed to just being jackasses from the sidelines.

Eventually I got beyond the promenade, and into the destination I had in mind, Pochongo. This place was something else. Both it, and some of the streets in Gion, across the river from Pochongo, are lines of wooden buildings with silent names and quiet corners, dimly lit walkways beckoning you to another reality only hinted at by wooden clogs seen at the feet of an entranceway here and there, curtains hung so gingerly less as a way to barricade people from coming in, and more as a subtle statement saying there is nothing there for you.

You see, although there are plenty of bars and such in Pochongo and Gion, many of them are quite exclusive. Many are on invitation only, and a good number of them are also used as the grounds by which geishas do their thing.

Geishas, as you would be told by anyone who’s actively interested in the culture, are not prostitutes, so much as they are jack-of-all-trade performers, plying their clients with music, dance, story, tea rituals, etc. If you were to ask anyone who claims to be an expert on the subject, they’d maintain that there are no sexual shenanigans involved, and that this is just a basic misconception of the role of the geisha.

Personally, I’m not so convinced. This protestation reeks of an attempt at revisionist history to me, and although I believe certainly that geishas do all the things listed above, their clients are obscenely wealthy old men, mostly, and if you have an obscenely wealthy old man in a room alone with a beautiful woman who is performing all kinds of entertainment upon request, well, what do you think is going to happen?

Admittedly, their hairstyles and makeup would require for them to be careful in such circumstances, as it’s expensive and time-costing to do both. In fact, their hair style is supposed to last a week, until they get it re-set. Those who’ve seen or read Memoirs of a Geisha might be aware of the special sleeping arrangements they have in order to maintain the condition of their hair.

Anyway, I didn’t see any geishas that night, but the streets spoke volumes for themselves. They spoke of another world that I will never know, and perhaps have been the strongest statement thus far in my travels as to the few distinctions that do still exist between cultures, that simply cannot be bridged.

At some point, I crossed a bridge over the river, past a group of people who were merrymaking on the riverbank, with some music instruments and fire juggling and the like, and over into Gion. I didn’t go to the part of the district where the geishas are, I went to the normal modern nightlife areas, trying to find some place to hang out. I eventually found my way to an Irish pub, where I found myself eating roast lamb and potatoes, and talking to a Swedish man and a Swiss man, about the standard things people talk about with strangers at bars, i.e. the life, universe, and everything.

I made my way back to the hostel shortly thereafter, having exited the bar early enough to catch a metro back in that direction. The night pretty much had come to a close, with the exception of a . . . Russian guy, I think, knocking on the door of the hostel late at night. Oddly enough, this guy had checked in about 10 minutes after I had, and was coming back about 10 minutes after I had. He had been given the same set of keys that I had been given to unlock the doors of the gym complex, but, apparently, though he used it on the first door, when crossing into the elevator, he dropped them down the elevator shaft.

What an unfortunate moron. Anyway, that was my end to the day. No pictures to speak of for this post, but the next entry will have plenty, rest assured.