Japan Study Abroad!: May 6-8

Airplanes, buses, and Onsen; oh my!

Oh man! 21 hours of travel later, but I’m finally in Kyoto! I got to LAX around 1:30ish and decided to kick of my trip by standing in line for a wrong airline for ~an hour…So that was fun! Upon realizing that I was in the wrong place, I quickly moved to the right line and zipped through everything in almost 20 minutes! Fastest security check ever! Ooh ooh! Coldplay was also traveling somewhere at the same time, so I was able to freak out at a celebrity sighting, too =).

Waiting for the plane wasn’t bad at all; and the 11 hour flight wasn’t too bad either. I watched 5 movies, and 20 minutes of “Pirates of the Carribean 4” before deciding that it was suuuuuuuuuuuuuper boring, and about 40 minutes of a horribly directed and scripted Ewan McGregor film. It was pretty bad. But the other movies kept me entertained enough to forget that it was an eleven hour flight, hehe =P. Upon landing, my flight partner (who is also in my group) and I only had a window of 40 minutes to get through immigrations and customs before our overnight bus from Tokyo to Kyoto left. To make things even better, my customs agent decided to play 20 questions with the gaijin (foreigner). It was humbling to know that when I’m put on the spot that my Japanese can only go so far…But I somehow passed 20 questions and Bladden and I made our way to the bus depot to catch our bus.

Some more embarrassing situations arose having to use Japanese, but we adapted and trucked through it all and finally got on the overnight bus! It was actually really neat! The bus manager took a keen interest in making sure we were comfortable and that we had everything we needed, and even went as far to give us each 400 yen to make sure that we had money to buy something to eat when we arrived at Kyoto. The Japanese seem to have a real generous heart for foreigners, and it showed! The bus itself was quiet, dark and a good environment to sleep in, and knowing that jetlag would completely destroy us if we had no sleep, we forced our bodies to sleep most of the 10 hour trip. We had a scare when I thought that we had missed Kyoto Station, but that only lasted for a few minutes until we looked at the bus route and found that Kyoto was the last stop! Phew!

After touching base in Kyoto at 6am, we had NO CLUE what to do. None. We both were wide-eyed (I’m still not sure if it was nerves, anxiety, fear, or a volatile cocktail of all three), and very hungry. So we put that 400 yen to good use and went to McDonalds =P. The food tasted about the same, but the medium orange juice that I ordered was just a teeeeeeeeeeensy bit bigger than the size that most complimentary water cups are at fast food joints in America! Neither of us had our program director’s phone number written down, and even if we did neither of us had a cell phone, so we decided to go across the street to an internet café that advertised that it was open 24/7. We bought a membership (couldn’t get in w/o one) and made sure to look up the director’s phone number, and the address of the church that the group was going to meet at that evening.

Once we had the directors phone number, we managed to reach him via payphone and make some plans to meet up with him (Miller-sensei), his 2 children that accompanied him on the trip (Joe—12, and McKayla—16), and one of our group-mates (Tyler) at 11am. Since we had about 2-3 hours to kill before that, he recommended that we find a coin-locker to stow our heavy luggage in (they cost 500 yen to rent for 24 hours—just a little over 6 US $’s), and that we make our way to Kyoto Tower. He told us that if we wanted to bathe/shower/clean up from our 2 day ordeal that there was an ‘Onsen’ in the basement (more on that in a minute). So we have some more embarrassing and humbling conversations with people trying to figure out where the Tower was, and how to get there. We even managed to somehow sneak onto the subway system without paying (stupid, stupid, stupid!), and got stuck there for a good hour while trying to figure out how to get OFF also without paying (we were running very low on money after everything >.<). We finally just said ‘screw it’ and bustled our way past a guard when he wasn’t looking, lol.

We made our way to the Onsen with a change of clothes and some toiletries in our backpacks, and had one of the most relaxing experiences of my life! Onsen are Japanese public baths that function very, very differently from what Americans are used to. You buy a ticket, and are given a small towel to bathe/wash with. Upon entering the actual bath portion, you strip down to your birthday suit, stow everything you brought in with you in a locker, and enter the actual bathing area. You sit down and shower/wash yourself like you normally would in America (minus the sitting down part…that was a little weird at first =P), and after bathing, you enter the bath itself—a really clean/steaming hot Jacuzzi. You can relax and just soak for however long you want, usually alternating between soaking in the bath, and slowly re-emerging to re-rinse yourself at some standing showers along the perimeter to cool off before re-entering. Bathing in Japan in this manner is one of the many traditions that have been preserved throughout the centuries, and has a very large history. It was an amazing experience to have, and I enjoyed it a LOT!

After the Onsen, Bladden and I killed the rest of the time before meeting up with the other group by poking around Kyoto and exploring. It was so awesome! Here we are in a downtown-like area in Kyoto Tower, and 2 minutes later we were standing in front of a Buddhist Temple (Otera) named Shinshu Hombyou. We also learned that one of the buildings in the complex is considered to be one of the oldest and biggest wooden structures in the world! =O! After taking some pictures there, we headed back to the tower and met up with Miller-Sensei and the others.

We then went to a 7-11 to get some money (Bladden paid me back for the past day and half), and then walked for about 30 minutes to the other side of the city to visit an AMAZING Buddhist Temple (remember, Otera) slash museum called Sanjusangen-do. I had studied the Buddhist Bodhisattva Konnan for years, and I was finally able to see the temple that houses one thousand gold-plated wooden carvings of Konnan! All the signs and explinations for the different carvings were both in Japanese and English (yay!), and photography of the actual carvings/statues on the inside of the Otera were prohibited, but I was able to snag some pictures of the outside and a picture of a picture of the statues, haha =P! One cool thing at this particular temple is an archer contest that has been held every year on New Years Eve right on the temple grounds themselves. Archers kneel on the ground and have to shoot a distance of 36 ken (1 ken = 8 yards). The catch? They do it right below the outside awning of the temple. That means that if they arc the arrow too much that instead of hitting the target, they instead get it lodged into the rafters, haha! In addition to the pictures of the beautiful ponds on the temple grounds, I also took a picture of a gingya (Shinto Shrine. So we have Otera = Buddhist temple, and Gingya = Shinto shrine) that is also on the Otera grounds! It’s somewhat funny, but there is a large homogenization between Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan, and is not out of the ordinary to see gingya on Otera grounds.

After the Museum, we grabbed some lunch (curry!), and then made our way to the church for orientation with the rest of the group. We were the first to get there, and just vegged/talked/wandered around the church for ~3 hours waiting for everyone else to show up. After everyone was gathered, we all walked ~20 minutes (I’ll be doing a ton of walking for the next 5 weeks, haha =P) to a KFC for dinner and orientation. After the meal, we went back to the church building and met our home-stay families! I’m staying with the Sakai family; mother, father, and a 17 year-old son (Seya). The mother and father were the ones that picked me up from the church, and we drove home shortly after. There are only 2 rooms in the house—1 for the parents, and 1 for Seya, but for the duration of my stay (2 weeks), Seya is going to be sleeping downstairs while I’m in his room…I felt really bad once hearing that was the case, and tried to offer to sleep downstairs, but they would have none of it! We ate and chatted for about 45 minutes before it became increasingly obvious that I was so tired before okaasan (mother) gave me a tour of the house and showed me to my room.

It was a jam-packed few days, and I’m sorry for the wall of text that I just bludgeoned everyone with, but the entries from here on out should be much shorter once the semester starts tomorrow! I think I’ll end each of the entries with a funny/embarrassing moment I had that day while speaking Japanese (though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to top todays =P):

What I meant to say: I’m planning on taking the overnight bus to Kyoto. 京都の行くときに、よるのバスで行くつもりです。