Golden Week in Tokyo

The night bus was no fun at all. It seems like Japanese buses aren't really designed with someone of my height in mind. I'm not super tall for a white guy; around 6'1"/185cm, but definitely taller than the average Japanese person. When I first got on the bus I thought it wasn't going to be too bad; there was just about enough room for my legs; so if I could just sit still long enough to fall asleep then I would be fine. But then the bus driver told everyone to recline their seats. The person in front of me tried to recline their seat all the way back but it only got about halfway before hitting my knees. They looked confused and tried to push the seat back a few more times; bashing it against my legs, before giving up and going to sleep. I was left in an uncomfortable, slightly contorted position where I couldn't quite get my legs behind the seat. Unfortunately I got allocated a window seat rather than an isle seat so there was no chance for me to stretch my legs out either. The bus from Kyoto to Tokyo takes 7 hours.


This is the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. I previously visited the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, which was open to the public for a spring event. This one wasn't open to the public.

Luckily there are a few rest room breaks in the trip. Even though I didn't really need to take a piss, I got up every time so I could stretch my legs. I didn't really get much sleep, but I think I did manage to doze off for an hour or two; before waking up with a stiff neck and back too. The coach left at 00:05 on Saturday and arrived in Tokyo at 07:00. At least Japanese public transport is usually on time. My girlfriend was waiting for me when I got off the bus, so everything went smoothly in the end.

The night bus is uncomfortable.

This is actually Yokohama's China Town, not Tokyo, but there were crowds like this in lots of places that we visited.

I taught my girlfriend's mum a new English phrase: "Country bumpkin", which she seemed find really funny. I suppose it describes me in Tokyo quite well.

One of the main reasons I didn't choose to study in Tokyo is because I don't really like big cities. I grew up in a small town and have always found visits to large cities stressful and exhausting. Tokyo is definitely a very big and busy city. Also Golden Week is a very popular time for travelling so it was extra busy. I think this was one of the main contributing factors to me feeling exhausted at the end of each day. Even though I was just following my girlfriend around as she navigated the subway, it was still a little bit much for me.

Despite the unpleasant journey and the crowds though, I had a really good time. This was probably mostly down to spending time with my girlfriend, whom I hadn't seen for several weeks, and because her family, particularly her mum, took really good care of me. I visited Meiji Shrine, Tokyo Sky Tree, Akihabara and a bunch of other places. I'm not really that big on seeing touristy stuff though; I had more fun meeting my girlfriend's friends and family and eating Tokyo food.

Unsuprisingly, Tokyo is pretty big and lots of people live there.

During Golden week in Tokyo, there were lots of festivals and events going on. At Meiji shrine, we saw some kind of traditional Japanese performance on stage, and also some kind of old-fashioned comedy show. I had no idea what was being said at any point, but people were laughing so I assume it was a comedy. I asked my girlfriend but she said it was really old Japanese and she didn't really understand it either.

At another temple, her dad, who is a Buddhist priest, was taking part in some kind of ceremony called Shomyo which we got tickets to go see. It was in a big hall with a stage at the front. 15 guys including my girlfriend's dad came on stage and started chanting. They spread out around the sides of the room so they were surrounding the crowd and continued chanting and making a rhythm with some wood blocks. There was also an extended drum solo from one of them at one point, which was pretty cool. Some of the priests had quite deep guttural voices while chanting too; it was kinda metal.


This is the temple we went to for the ceremony and Zazen class. You can see Tokyo Tower lit up in the background.

Everyone in the crowd had been given a sheet with some words on that we were supposed to join in for in one section. The sheet was completely in Kanji (Chinese characters) and I only recognised a few of them. There was also Hiragana (phonetic Japanese characters) next to each Kanji though, because sometimes even Japanese people can't remember how to read certain Kanji. Unfortunately, even with the Hiragana, I couldn't really join in because the chanting was too fast. I can read Hiragana without problems, but wasn't capable of keeping in time with the chanting as well as focusing on reading.

We also went to a Zazen meditation class at the same temple. Zen Buddhism is a different school of Buddhism to my girlfriend's dad's school. There were various events held by different Buddhist groups all week I think. The monk teaching the class basically just explained to us the purpose of meditation, how to sit properly, and how to try to keep our minds clear. He used some kind of metaphor saying something about wanting to drink tea but focusing on drinking water instead, which didn't really make any sense, at least in English. He explained everything in English and Japanese.


Here's the same temple by day.

We then tried to meditate for 15 minutes at the end. I'm not a flexible guy, I'm not used to sitting on the floor, and I still hadn't really recovered from the night bus, so I was feeling a bit stiff right from the start. After about 5 minutes my right foot went completely numb. My neck and shoulders and back all started hurting too. The monk was going round with a stick and you could request from him to hit you on the shoulders with it to help you focus. I wanted to do it, mostly just so I could say that I monk beat me with a stick, but I was in enough pain already and didn't really want to add to it.

In the end I didn't really succeed in clearing my mind, because I was too focused on the pain in various parts of my body, and worrying how long it would take before I did serious damage to my right foot. However, I do think that meditation is something that I would like to try again. Even though I have no intention of becoming a Buddhist, I think that being able to clear my mind and spend time meditating would be good for me. I sometimes feel like I have loads of thoughts cluttering my head which prevent me from sleeping properly or concentrating on work, which is one of the reasons I started writing these blogs actually. I thought maybe if I wrote some stuff down then it would help organise it and get it out of my head. Maybe if I could spend some time meditating first I would be able to concentrate or sleep better.

I think I'm going to have to practise sitting on the floor for extended periods of time, and do some stretches and stuff before-hand before I try again though. It seems kinda pathetic that I need to train before I'm capable of sitting on the floor without hurting myself, but I guess this is what I get for not taking care of my body properly up to this point in my life.


This dude was doing a dance on the steps that lead up to the temple entrance. There was a lady too, but I don't seem to have any photos of her.

I did some Buddhist stuff. I'm not very good at meditating.

Sushi

On the first night, we went out for dinner with my girlfriend's parents to a Shabu-shabu restaurant. Shabu-shabu is like a Japanese hot-pot type thing with really thinly sliced beef and some vegetables and tofu. The place we went to had like a pot of boiling water set into the table in front of every seat. They then provided you with the raw beef and vegetables and a selection of sauces. You throw in whatever things you want to eat and cook them yourself; it's kinda fun.

The name Shabu-shabu is apparently onomatopoeia for the sound the beef makes as you stir it around in the pot. Because it's so thinly sliced, you just have to dip it into the water and swirl it around for less than 10 seconds and it's ready to eat. You then dip it in whatever sauces you want and eat it.

The next day we went out for lunch with my girlfriend's mum. This time she took us to a Thai buffet. The Japanese word for buffet is バイキング ('baikingu' which is like a Japanese pronunciation of 'Viking'); I guess Vikings would enjoy an all-you-can-eat buffet, but I doubt they ever had much Thai food. It was all really nice, and the restaurant was on the second-from-top floor of a massive department store so the view was nice too.


The view from the Thai buffet.

I can't really remember which days the other stuff I ate was on, but we also went out for Sushi with my girlfriend's parents too. I've eaten sushi before; but only the crappy stuff you buy in the take-away section of a supermarket. This was one of those restaurants where the sushi goes round on a conveyor belt. There were 3 chefs who stood in the middle of the circular conveyor belt; and all the customers sit at a bar around the outside edge. You could wait for stuff to come round and take it off the belt or request something off the menu and the chefs would make it for you. Everything was really good except for the sea urchin. It had the texture of snot and tasted like mephedrone. My girlfriend's mum said that it's normally better; maybe they just didn't have any fresh sea urchin or something.

One time in the UK my girlfriend got me some cup ramen called Nakamoto Ramen which was really spicy but really good. I kinda like spicy food so I wanted to have it again, but unfortunately they don't seem to sell it in Kyoto. Nakamoto is a chain of Ramen restaurants in Tokyo (and maybe other places), and they also sell an instant version in Seven Eleven. Since I was in Tokyo we went to one of the restaurants.


Nakamoto before.

We had to queue for about 25 minutes; but this seems pretty common for Japanese restaurants; at least popular ones. Lots of places seem to have really limited seating; for example this Nakamoto place only had a line of benches that could seat maybe 10 people. In the UK, if I went to a restaurant and saw a queue, I would just turn around and go somewhere else. Japanese people seem to be happy to join the back of a queue that has about 3x as many people in it as there are seats in the whole place. Having said that; ramen places are basically fast food restaurants so the customer turn-around time is fairly quick.

Nakamoto has a spiciness guide next to all of the things on their menu with a scale of 0 - 10. I just went for the normal one which is a 5 out of 10; but it was really fucking hot. There is another one on the menu that is 6 out of 10 which is the same as the 5 out of 10 ones but they give you the noodles and the soup separate; I suppose the noodles don't have a chance to soak up any of the soup so it seems hotter. Maybe I'll try the 6 or 8 out of 10 next time if I get the chance. Each place at the bench had a massive jug of ice water and a box of tissues at it, both of which were definitely needed.


Nakamoto after.

We visited Yokohama on one of the days. We went to China town and ate some Xiaolongbao and other dumpling like things which I don't know the names of; I think one of them had shark in it. When eating the Xiaolongbao, my girlfriend said "be careful, there's soup inside, don't spill it!" before biting into one and spraying soup all over me -_-.

My girlfriend's mum also cooked us Sukiyaki; which is similar to Shabu-shabu in that it is thinly sliced meat and vegetables cooked in a pot at the table; except it's cooked in a sauce rather than just boiling water. Also you crack a raw egg into a bowl and whisk it up and then use that to dip your meat and vegetables in. We don't eat raw eggs in the UK, and the texture is a bit weird for me, but it tasted really good!

In other non-Japanese food news; my girlfriend's friend, who lives in the UK, came to visit Japan and brought some Marmite and baked beans with her! We managed to get together most of the ingredients for a fry-up. The bacon wasn't quite right, but it was pretty good. It was nice to eat something familiar. I'm now armed with a pot of Marmite which I can put on toast or use to scare Japanese people off from ever trying British food again.


My secret weapon. Also baked beans.

Japanese food is tasty. Some stuffy is a bit weird, but if you go in with an open mind it's mostly really good.

I had to speak a lot of Japanese this week. Normally I have to for at least 3 hours a day anyway at school, and maybe a little bit extra if I need to go shopping or go somewhere else, but outside of that I don't necessarily have to, since all of my house mates and friends from school speak at least a conversational level of English. Of course I try to practise Japanese outside of school when I can, but speaking a foreign language that you are not very good at is bloody exhausting and sometimes my brain just gives up and I can't understand any Japanese or seem to get any coherent sentences out.

My girlfriend speaks English fluently, and her mum speaks it quite well too, but her dad doesn't speak any at all, and I don't think a few of her friends that we met were able to speak much English either. Anyway, I wanted to practise Japanese and was also trying to make a good impression so I was doing my best to speak Japanese regardless of whether the person I was talking to could speak English or not.

I think I did quite well, at least at first, considering that I've only been at school for 1 month. I managed to follow a few conversations at dinner with my girlfriend's parents and add a few (hopefully) coherent comments. I can tell when people are dumbing down their Japanese so that I can understand it though. They speak a bit slower and suddenly start using more formal grammar because they know that's what I'm more familiar with, when they were previously using casual grammar. I'm glad people did do that though, otherwise I wouldn't be able to follow anything at all.


These girls were doing some kind of Jpop performance on the street in Akihabara. They were on after a professional Yo-yo performer.

Towards the end of the trip I was getting a bit exhausted though, probably from a combination of being in Tokyo, doing lots of walking, and trying hard to listen to and speak Japanese, and my girlfriend had to start more frequently saying the same thing twice; once in Japanese to her friend, and then again in English to me so that I could join in the conversation. I was a little disappointed whenever this had to happen, but I was doing my best so it's ok. Maybe next time I'll be able to keep up a bit better.

My girlfriend said she was surprised by my ability to speak Japanese after dinner with her parents on the first day. We do write in Japanese to each other quite often online, but our speaking is probably like 95% English. I can say a bunch of basic stuff in Japanese but if I want to have a conversation with any more depth then I have to switch to English.

As my Japanese has got better though, I think our conversations have started including slightly more and more Japanese words and phrases. But rather than having proper Japanese conversations we end up speaking in some kind of broken Japanglish that doesn't really make sense in either language. It's quite fun to have like a private language, but it's not really very good practise for me. Anyway, she said she was surprised that I was capable of forming proper sentences and stuff. I'm glad she was impressed, but maybe it's a sign that I don't try to speak Japanese enough with her that she wasn't aware of my actual ability level.


We wanted to use the toilet at this place by the water in Yokohama, but they wouldn't let us in because there was some kind of furry convention going on.

Trying to speak a language that you aren't very good at requires a lot of energy.

I don't know what this is. Welcome to Japan.

I finally got round to sending an application to an English teaching company. The only basic requirements were a degree and being a native English speaker, both of which I have. My ex-house mate works for them and recommended them to me. He said that the classes are all 1-to-1 and you get to choose the hours that you are available to work each week which sounds really nice. It also pays significantly better than working in like a supermarket or something, so hopefully I can get a job there.

They said they prefer candidates who have teaching experience or some kind of teaching qualification, which I don't, but my friend also said that they don't have enough staff at the Kyoto studios at the moment, so hopefully they'll want me anyway. Even if they don't, there seems to be pretty high demand for English teaching in Japan and I can probably find a job elsewhere. I'm not really sure how many Japanese people want to learn British English rather than American though.

I've got to go to an interview on the 28th of May. Unfortunately it's in Osaka and on a Thursday so I'm going to have to miss a day of school probably. I'm also going to have to buy a suit which I'm not looking forward to because I probably won't be able to find something cheap off the rack that will fit me, and getting a tailored suit would be fucking expensive.

I have a suit in the UK, but it doesn't fit me at all. I got it when I was 21, and all I did when I was 21 was eat pizza and play StarCraft. I weigh about 15kg less than that now; last time I put it on I had to buy a new belt and the trousers still felt like they were at risk of falling down at any second. I guess a new suit will be a necessary investment in the long run if I'm gonna get a job, but it feels like a frustrating additional expense considering I'm trying to live off fairly limited savings at the moment.

I've got an interview for a teaching job, but I need to buy a suit.

A rare view of Fushimi Inari Taisha that isn't filled with Chinese tourists.

I recently went to visit Fushimi Inari Taisha which is a famous shrine in Kyoto. There are thousands of Torii (gateways) which mark paths that go up the side of a mountain. It's really cool, but it's also really popular so when I went there was loads of other people walking up the pathways too. I was getting kinda sick of wading through crowds of people so when I saw a small path leading off in to the woods away from the main Torii path I took it.

There was suddenly very few people. I kept following the path and found a few small quiet shrines. Then I found another smaller path which eventually disappeared and left me wandering in the woods on my own. I realised that this was the first time I had been outside of a city in Japan, and the first time I hadn't been surrounded by people in weeks. I was still only like a 10 minute walk from all of the crowds at Fushimi Inari Taisha, but it felt nice to be out in nature. I climbed to the top via small pathways in the woods and eventually rejoined the main trail again at the top. I then walked back down via the Torii path.


A path through the woods in the mountains near Nanzen-ji.

The next day I went to see Nanzen-ji, which is another temple in Kyoto (there's loads of them here). To be honest I wasn't that interested in it, but it was a nice day and I wanted somewhere new to go, and the guide book said it was free. When I got there I found that it wasn't free. It was only like £2 to get in but I felt like I've seen enough temples in the past few weeks, and this one didn't seem like it was anything special in comparison. Instead I saw a path leading up in to the woods, and since I had had a good time the previous day I decided to follow it.

I didn't really have any plan, and I hadn't eaten lunch yet. I just figured that I would follow the path until it ended or I got bored and then come back and have lunch somewhere. But it was really fun wandering through the woods again, and the path didn't end; in fact it opened up into multiple additional paths. I ended up on some hiking trail through the mountains. It was quite hard work since I'm not very fit, but occasionally I would see a few old Japanese people coming the other way. Despite being about 80 years old they all seemed to be having a much easier time than me.


A nice view of Kyoto.

After an hour or so, there was a break in the trees and I got to see how high I had climbed. Kyoto is on a flat piece of land between a few mountain ranges, and I could see the whole of Kyoto laid out in front of me, shining in the sun. I kept going, but after another hour or so I realised how hungry I was. By this point it would take me 2 hours to go back the way I had come so I decided to just keep going and find a different way down. There were occasionally sign posts marking the different trails, which luckily were written in English as well as Japanese because I didn't recognise any of the Kanji in the Japanese names of places.

I finally saw a sign that said there was a trail which led down to Ginkaku-ji which is a temple that I've already been to. Since it was the first familiar thing I had seen, and I knew it was on the edge of Kyoto so I would be able to get home from there, I decided to go that way. I started following the trail down. After a little while I heard the sound of water. I found a tiny stream bubbling out from under some rocks. The path went alongside the stream so I kept following it down. As I went down, more little streams appeared and joined the one I was following. Eventually it was like a proper river.


Waterfalluu

After another hour so I saw some houses in the distance, I kept going and found myself on the edge of Kyoto (although not near Ginkaku-ji). From there I walked home because it was still a nice day and I didn't want to take a bus. It was really fun; I plan to find some other trails through the mountains in the future. I also saw some cool lizards and birds and bugs that I wouldn't have seen if I was in the city. Luckily Japan doesn't seem to have large spiders, because I have a pretty severe phobia of them, but there were some large beetles and stuff which were cool.


A friendly lizard.


Somewhere deep in the woods.

I wandered around in the woods. I'm less fit than an 80 year old Japanese lady.