So, it turns out that Japan is awesome.
Last Friday was a national holiday in Korea for Buddha’s Birthday and about a month or two beforehand, my friend Lauren and I thought why not go to Japan? We left last Thursday night after work and came back yesterday, Sunday, in the evening, and it turns out that Japan is pretty awesome.
Heeding the advice of many people, we stayed mostly in Kyoto, which was an excellent decision, but that’s not where this story starts, so we’ll get to Kyoto when we get there.
Before leaving, Lauren and I got a ton of awesome advice about Japan. My friend Danielle who studied abroad there and speaks Japanese sent me a 4 page e-mail that helped us to get around Japan, my friend Jose who was there for 2 weeks gave us a few recommendations, and different people who we know in Korea gave us bits and pieces that were extremely helpful. Almost everyone recommended Kyoto, saying that it’s an extremely historical city and most people’s image of Japan in based on Kyoto.
We arrived on Thursday night to the Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan and headed over to our hostel in Osaka that we were staying in for the first night. We got dinner from the convenience store, as it was late and there were no restaurants around that were still opened. We probably went to sleep somewhere between midnight and 1am, only to wake up around 6:30 to get ready to meet my friend in the city of Fuji. Two weeks ago in Taiwan I met a mountain guide from Tokyo named Tomo and Lauren and I met up with him and two of his friends in Fuji. They then drove us to Mount Ashitaka, a mountain right next to Mt Fuji – this time of year Mt. Fuji is still relatively snowy and only recommended for very experienced hikers, so Tomo took us to Mt. Ashitaka instead and it was really gorgeous. It was a clear day and the path, while occasionally steep, was a lot of fun.
Afterwards we walked around the park that the mountain is located in and then around 5:30 or so we parted ways and Lauren and I took the bus to Kyoto.
We found and checked into our hostel around 9 or 10PM and got dinner at a local restaurant. The food was amazing, though the portions were a little small. Lauren had sushi and I had vegetable and tofu tempura – tempura is essentially deep-fried food. After dinner we made it back to the hostel and crashed after making tentative plans for the next day.
The next morning we woke up early and had breakfast in the hostel. There we met a girl, Eunice, who was traveling alone. She had graduated from college in California the week before and was traveling throughout Japan until the next week when she would meet her family in Korea. Her parents are immigrants from Korea and her father works in California, but for the Korean company, Samsung. He was going to be given an award the following week in Korea and her entire family was going to Seoul for the ceremony, but she wanted to explore Japan first.
We invited Eunice to come along with us while we explored Kyoto. First we walked to two Buddhist temples near the hostel. The first one is famous because it features 1,000 hand carved statues of Buddha that are all about 5 feet and five inches, as well as an 11 foot statue of Buddha. It was incredible. Most of the statues were carved in the 13th century and they were so detailed. All of the statues had 42 arms. Each pair of arms were in different positions or holding different items, to represent the different ideas and beliefs of Buddhism.
Afterwards we walked to a temple that my friend recommended. This friend, Danielle, studied abroad in Japan a few years ago and she recommended that we go to the Kiyomizu Temple. To get there we had to walk through a mausoleum that was essentially a giant grave yard, but it was interesting because all of the tombstones were interesting and intricate. When we got there, we understood why Danielle recommended it – out of all of the Buddhist temples I have been to in Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, the Kiyomizu Temple so far has been my favorite. There are multiple buildings and they are all beautiful, intricate and pretty large. The temple features a few gardens and several shrines. While we were there, we saw a short play that was based on ancient Japanese Buddhist rituals and the people participating in it were wearing traditional Japanese clothing and a few of the men held kitana swords.
Lauren and I noticed that while Korean Buddhist temples are usually either darker colors or are blue and pink, Japanese temples are often bright orange. It’s interesting to see how one religion developed differently in so many different countries – not just in terms of the color of the temples, but what the temples emphasize and how the culture of each country influenced how Buddhism was practiced in that country.
After spending a couple of hours between the two temples, we felt “templed out” and took the subway to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens. My dad recommended this because a friend of his who was a landscaper based a lot of his ideas on the gardens he saw in Kyoto and I can see why. The garden we went to was huge and featured traditional Japanese and European style gardens. A lot of the flowers were in bloom fortunately and it was really beautiful.
Afterwards, we took the subway to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is a Shinto shrine in Kyoto that is made up of 10,000 bright orange arches. All of the arches have Japanese inscriptions on them and are well maintained, though several are very old. We couldn’t walk through all 10,000 of them, but we got through a lot of them and along the way saw multiple Shinto shrines.
After this, we decided to go to downtown Kyoto for dinner. The area was nice, though oddly enough Lauren really wanted sushi and we had trouble finding a sushi restaurant, which you wouldn’t expect in Japan. We wound up finding a restaurant eventually and I got tempura again, and it was quite delicious.
Unfortunately, after dinner Eunice was feeling tired so she returned to the hostel and Lauren and I walked around for a bit longer. We sat near the subway station for awhile because a street band was performing there. Then we walked around and walked towards what looked like another temple, but it turned out it was a park. There, we met four or five graduate students from New Orleans who were on a school trip to Japan for two weeks. We hung out with them for about two hours and left just in time to catch the last subway back to the hostel.
The next morning Lauren and I woke up and decided to spend the morning in Kyoto Station. We had to catch the airport bus in the morning and another friend of mine who had been to Japan recommended spending some time in the station because the architecture is amazing, and it really is. The building looks modern and efficient, but not cold and spiritless either. It’s a huge and really interesting station. We got breakfast at a restaurant there and walked around for awhile. It worked out especially because while it had been sunny every other day we were in Japan, it was pouring on Sunday morning.
Later on, we got on the airport bus and got on the plane back home. It was an amazing trip, but it was nice getting home. It’s interesting to see how Korea and Japan are similar, yet different. I felt that from what I saw, Koreans are a little more anxious than Japanese people and it was nice not getting pushed while getting in and off of the subway, like in Seoul. Lauren and I realized that we were comparing Japan and Korea and that most of these comparisons were in Japan’s favor, but then again we realized that we have been in Korea for eight months and we only spent three days in Japan; we’ve had much much more time to learn about Korea and have a more complex understanding of Korean culture than we do about Japanese culture obviously. Neither of the two cultures is better or worse than the other, just different and it was cool to experience the differences, along with the similarities.
