After bringing back the bike I discussed what a good place to eat would be with Hiro, one of the people working for the hostel. In the end we decided to go for a bite and a beer together. Hiro has studied in Kenya for a year and will go to France at the end of this year. He is a quite an entrepreneurial Japanese guy and we had a lot of good discussions on the differences between Japanese and Western culture.
We continued our discussions on the local variant of the 'Irish pub', which was another nice illustration of cultural differences :-). I'll add a section with pictures of strange impressions to the end of this blog post again showing a few. Hiro's shift at the hostel started at 22:00pm so we left early so that he could get to work. Because it was friday night I discussed the plans for the rest of the evening with the other people in the Hostel, and in the end only me and Anas, a Moroccan guy were brave enough to go to the club (the Japanese guys convinced each other that this would be 'dangerous' as there were 'bad men' at the club). We asked the Hostel personnel where we should go and their answer was quite unanimous: kawaramachi street.
We took the metro that way and started asking people on the street where we should go. The answers were not that unanimous but 'Butterfly' was the answer we heard most, so that's where we went. 500 Yen entry fee and a free drink, nice beats and a nice crowd: good choice. First cultural difference: almost all the music was from the time I was 18, we heard for instance: two unlimited, daft punk (around the world), Danzel - put your hands up in the air, etc.
For us Europeans the crowd did not consist of 'dangerous men': just your usual party crowd. We stayed in the place until closing time, met up with some crazy people on the street afterwards and joined up with a Japanese couple to the next bar. We talked over a shisha, had some fun with the locals and met some more travellers who took us to the next club. This was a shady kind of place which we left after a little while. We walked back to the hostel and even at 05:00 am you couldn't cross a red light without checking whether any taxi's would hit you if you did this. Note on safety in Japan: we saw at least four girls walking back home unaccompanied at 05:00am in the morning: great to be in a place that does not have a lot of crime.
You will probably expect this, but the following day did not have a morning for me :-). I took it easy and had a 'balancing day' for most of the day: updating finances, finally making a picture selection and starting this blog post. Somewhere in the afternoon 'the German guys' Flo and Fabian who I had talked to before came back to the hostel, with the plan to leave for Fushimi Inari shrine in 45 minutes. This place was also on my list, so I decided to join them.
Fushimi Inari is famous due to the 'Memoires of a Geisha' movie, in which the red arches play a role. I have still to see the movie, but it was a cool place to visit anyway. We went there at dawn, due to the nice view you can then have of the city, higher up the mountain (hill really). The place being completely dark except for the path under the arches also gave the place a nice kinda spooky atmosphere on the way down again.
The day ended with a nice dinner in a restaurant (about 100m from the hostel), where ordering your food was done via a tablet. This had pictures, but all text and pop-ups were in Japanese which was sometimes challenging, but with a little help from the very friendly serving girl we did manage to get some food. The english translation of the menu was not really that helpful as you can see later on.
A larger selection of the pictures of my last day in Kyoto can be found here:
Day 4: Kyoto - Fushimi Inari
Besides all these touristy activities I will once again give an overview of Japanese stuff that comes across as strange to me.
We continued our discussions on the local variant of the 'Irish pub', which was another nice illustration of cultural differences :-). I'll add a section with pictures of strange impressions to the end of this blog post again showing a few. Hiro's shift at the hostel started at 22:00pm so we left early so that he could get to work. Because it was friday night I discussed the plans for the rest of the evening with the other people in the Hostel, and in the end only me and Anas, a Moroccan guy were brave enough to go to the club (the Japanese guys convinced each other that this would be 'dangerous' as there were 'bad men' at the club). We asked the Hostel personnel where we should go and their answer was quite unanimous: kawaramachi street.
We took the metro that way and started asking people on the street where we should go. The answers were not that unanimous but 'Butterfly' was the answer we heard most, so that's where we went. 500 Yen entry fee and a free drink, nice beats and a nice crowd: good choice. First cultural difference: almost all the music was from the time I was 18, we heard for instance: two unlimited, daft punk (around the world), Danzel - put your hands up in the air, etc.
For us Europeans the crowd did not consist of 'dangerous men': just your usual party crowd. We stayed in the place until closing time, met up with some crazy people on the street afterwards and joined up with a Japanese couple to the next bar. We talked over a shisha, had some fun with the locals and met some more travellers who took us to the next club. This was a shady kind of place which we left after a little while. We walked back to the hostel and even at 05:00 am you couldn't cross a red light without checking whether any taxi's would hit you if you did this. Note on safety in Japan: we saw at least four girls walking back home unaccompanied at 05:00am in the morning: great to be in a place that does not have a lot of crime.
You will probably expect this, but the following day did not have a morning for me :-). I took it easy and had a 'balancing day' for most of the day: updating finances, finally making a picture selection and starting this blog post. Somewhere in the afternoon 'the German guys' Flo and Fabian who I had talked to before came back to the hostel, with the plan to leave for Fushimi Inari shrine in 45 minutes. This place was also on my list, so I decided to join them.
Fushimi Inari is famous due to the 'Memoires of a Geisha' movie, in which the red arches play a role. I have still to see the movie, but it was a cool place to visit anyway. We went there at dawn, due to the nice view you can then have of the city, higher up the mountain (hill really). The place being completely dark except for the path under the arches also gave the place a nice kinda spooky atmosphere on the way down again.
The day ended with a nice dinner in a restaurant (about 100m from the hostel), where ordering your food was done via a tablet. This had pictures, but all text and pop-ups were in Japanese which was sometimes challenging, but with a little help from the very friendly serving girl we did manage to get some food. The english translation of the menu was not really that helpful as you can see later on.
A larger selection of the pictures of my last day in Kyoto can be found here:
Day 4: Kyoto - Fushimi Inari
Besides all these touristy activities I will once again give an overview of Japanese stuff that comes across as strange to me.
The title alone would be enough to ensure very little box-office success in the Netherlands.
Every roadblock or small piece of construction has a guard in front of it, apologizing to the general public about this incursion into their public space. Even though it is totally unnessary they will point you the way around the obstacle. Sometimes there's even 3 people to help you navigate around a 50cm obstacle in a 3m sidewalk.
More games, but this time not only in the arcade hall, but on front of it, out in the street.
Someone with a better knowledge of Japan should really write a post about the term 'Kawai', I am not sure if these pajamas are Kawai, or just crazy. They're basically one piece pluche pajamas (in adult sizes) in the shape of bears, bunnies, etc.. strange!
Kawai by the way means cute, and is something that is really important for Japanese girls to act. Cute as in adorable, shy and a little giggly, but as I already mentioned, I don't know enough about the subtleties to really comment correctly on it.
To me this comes across as a culture clash: a shrine in the middle of a mall. Not so in Japan.
Prayer boards/offerings you can buy at a temple. They've got cheap paper ones, or expensive objects, each object with its own function (this goes for the shrines as well). The topic of religion really also deserves its own blog post.
A sign on a TV in an Irish pub. It basically says that the staff are very sorry, but in case a disaster strikes, they won't be able to display any matches on TV... and they actually seriously mean this: hilarious!
Saturday morning, waiting for the metro... and ofcourse Kermit and Tigger are also there...
English translated menu: write the english name of the vegetable or meat on top of the picture that already shows it: very useful! ;-)
Door jou blog schiet ik al van de ene verbazing in de andere, dus wat zal het een bijzondere ervaring zijn om er daadwerkelijk te zijn! Have fun!
ReplyDeleteHaha, het begon eigenlijk net een beetje te wennen, maar inmiddels heb ik het land helaas al weer verlaten. Nu valt op hoe verbazingwekkend dik Amerikanen zijn ;-).
ReplyDelete