Japońska architektura

TOKIO

Yes, that’s right, it’s me. Just moments after I booked my pod at a capsule hotel in Tokyo. So stoked.

Takayama at night. Ostatnie zdjęcie

Takayama, powrót do przeszłości..

I’m really making an effort to include myself in some of these photos, although it’s ridiculously embarrassing, but here you go…

Forget what you’ve heard about not starting fires in the house.

All the best Sonya!

It’s my birthday! I took myself to this tea house and had chocolate cake and coffee. CAKE!

Ostatnie dni w Kioto

I’ve been meaning to get up on here and get all chatty, but I’m feeling pressed for time. I actually kind of have a schedule, and it’s stressing me out a little bit. I wanted to spend a month in Japan, but since it’s about three times as expensive as my other destinations I’ve decided to spend half the time. A friend of mine, and fellow photographer, had donated a bunch of his frequent flyer miles to the trip, so he’s booked me a ticket out of Japan to Taiwan, from Tokyo on the 27th. I’ve been trying to cram as much in as I can, so I haven’t had much time to type, now I’m wasting precious typing energy on the most boring topic of not having enough time to write.

Tomorrow I’m taking a bus to Takayama and I’m going to stay in a Temple for a couple of nights. I don’t think it’s the kind of Temple stay where they have you participate in their chores and prayers, but I’d like to do that at some point. In their confirmation email they called me Sonya-san. More, please.

As a birthday present to myself I was going to do this silly thing where they do your hair and make-up and get you all gussied up as a geisha for photos. I decided I didn’t want to spend the time or the money, so I ate a lot of desserts instead. Matcha ice cream with beans and chestnuts and jelly stuff on top, cake, donuts. Yummy, and almost as beautiful as geisha. I go bonkers over the geisha every time I see them in the streets. They’re sooooo pretty! I want to be them just as badly as I wanted to be Anne of Green Gables when I was in 5th grade. I also wanted to be a Borrible on the run in London, carrying around a slingshot and flying undetected under the sharp eye of the law, so I suppose I had a lot of contradictory goals.

OK, OK, gonna go eat some non-dessert type substance. Hopefully I’ll have time for typing once I get to the Temple, unless those monks start talking my ear off about monastic life, those chatterboxes…

P.S. These are little wooden prayer tablets. Cute, huh?

Geisha getting ice cream… Although I just heard these girls out during the day are fakes. Damn them. They’re still so pretty!

Kiyomizu-dera Temple Cemetery

A lovely place to have tea.

Kiyomizu-dera Temple

Kiyomizu-dera Temple Cemetery

Lotsa lamps

More temples, everywhere temples and shrines, they just don’t quit.

Nishiki Food Market

Iwatayama, Małpi Park

Monkeys are bananas over bananas.

I nearly got a beat down from a number of monkeys today. They don’t mind telling you how they feel if you’re in their personal space. This was in the feeding room. You could buy a bag of apples and hand them out. They would just stick their arms though the fence and hold their hands out, like “Gimme.” I tried just holding my hand out in return, and they would literally smack it away, like, “I don’t want your friendship, I want your apple slices.” Duh.

Uczta w Wielkim Stylu

Let the birthday celebrations begin.

I just ate the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life and I have no idea what it was. I stumbled upon this place because there was this weird little vignette outside of a boy having his drawers pulled off by a dog. I got pulled deeper inside when I saw what they were cooking. There was an outdoor grill / huge skillet where they were frying up pancakes with eggs and seafood and green stuff. I asked the lady what it was and she just told me to go sit down. I did as she requested. It was destined to be by the guiding hand of magic. I knew this after the first bite. 

I just kept wondering how I could find out what was in it. I wanted to tell the whole world, but I didn’t even know the name. I figured I could probably google it, but that didn’t seem sufficient, so on my way out I asked the lady who seated me the name and she walked over and pulled out this whole description, printed in English, of what it was and how it’s made. I guess I wasn’t the first foreigner to ask this question. The instructions say I should tell my friends, and trust me, I would have done that without being told to. So, if you’re ever in Kyoto, you have to go this this place.

I have something really fun planned for my birthday… I hope. Crossing fingers it works out…

Kioto, ład i porządek

Odrobina luksusu...

Camillia Ferry

Busan Harbor

The boat to Japan was pretty deluxe. All the kids on board were losing their minds over it. I overheard one girl talking to her mom in English saying, “I am the luckiest kid in the world, one of four lucky people, to be on this boat.”  Yes. I may have misled you about the hot tub situation, there was in fact a large and hot tub, but in a shower / bathroom setting, and divided by sex. The way I described it last, I may have led you to envision an Asian singles mixer, with bikini clad Japanese and Koreans, getting drunk on sake and soju, splashing each other flirtatiously and spraying hot streams of wet bubbles all over gawking passengers and the information desk in the lobby of the ship. Is that what you saw? That’s what I saw. Alas, no.

I would have totally hit up that tub. I was feeling sad about not having one last jimjilbang night in Korea before I left. I didn’t get in there though, because I made a friend. I have no problem getting naked in front of strangers. People I have conversed with are another story. Unless the first time we conversed we were both naked. Then it’s fine. I feel if you know me as a clothed person, I should remain that way forever after. It kind of makes dating hard. Just about everyone I’ve met so far, on this trip, has asked me why I’m single. I think I’ve just found the answer. I need to start walking around naked. I may not get a date but at the very least I’d probably have a free place to stay once the paddy wagon picked me up. Padded floors and walls, high comfort!

My new friend is a cute, twenty-year old Korean girl, who was on her way to Japan to visit her brother who is serving his two-year mandatory military term. Her birthday was on June 7^th, just eight days before mine, and her mother named her Saebom because of this. It means early spring in English. I broke out the talking translator, but most of our conversation was conducted through theatrical gestures such as fake crying and hysterical laughter in an effort to convey the proper emotion when our jimmy-rigged sign language fell flat. It gave the dialogue a cartoonish quality that I’d like to employ in my everyday style from this point forward.

Saebom didn’t want to walk around the ship alone. Koreans are really social, and they think things like going to dinner, a movie, or traveling around the world by yourself means you’re a little odd. I think there are pluses and minuses to both ways of seeing things. I saw a lot of teamwork going on in Korea; little siblings feeding each other, friends and relatives washing each other’s backs in the bathhouse, and people really making sure the older generation is looked after. I was putting my backpack on and Saebom helped my arm into the strap and said, “Friendship.” That is lovely. American individualism can often be an isolating social construct, but the hyper-social system puts people in a situation where their value is so dependant upon how others perceive them that they feel stuck and under constant pressure. South Korea had the highest suicide rate in the world in 2010. From what I heard from my professor friends, there’s so much weight placed on success that a lot of people can’t stand to let their family and friends down, so they throw themselves in front of a train instead. Sorry to get all Debbie Downer on you.

I don’t know if this will cheer you up or not, but here’s something I’m enjoying about Japan; the toilets start talking to you the moment you step into the stall. When you sit down they transition to a waterfall audio, presumably to mask any undesirable happenings during your bathroom visit. I wouldn’t know. Girls don’t poop.

I’m surprised by how different Chinese, Korean, and Japanese alphabets are. I never paid attention before, but they’re not really at all similar. In my opinion Chinese is the most beautiful, and I find Japanese typographically baffling. It’s completely inconsistent. Some characters are overwhelmingly complex, and others are equally as simplistic. A lot of it just looks like a straight up joke, all silly and sproingy, the kind of thing you’d see above a cartoon character that’s just been hit over the head with a mallet.

I haven’t done anything here yet, other than ride the bus to Hiroshima. It was the most beautiful bus ride I’ve ever been on. The whole way it was fluffy green mountains being swallowed by clouds and cute little Japanese houses. I’m in the Hiroshima bus station right now, waiting to catch an overnight bus to Kyoto. By the time I get to the internet to post this I’ll be in Kyoto.

In closing I’d like to tell you two things;

The other day I saw a small white dog that had a pair of blue eyebrows drawn on.

When we did our Karaoke in Jeju, it would rate your singing, if you got 100% it said, “Comgraturations.”