Kyoto:temples, temples, party, temples, temples, temples 1/2

This posting is going to be pretty similar to the last one. A lot of pictures and some impressions about Japan. This time however, it are impressions of Kyoto, instead of Tokyo. First of all the list of all the pictures on Picasa, and once again I will post a selection of those also here.
Day 0: Shinkansen Tokyo - Kyoto
Day 1: Kyoto - Gijon area
Day 2: Kyoto - Kiyomizu and Nijo
Day 3: Kyoto - Arashiyama and Golden Pavillion

I left of in Tokyo in the last post, so that's also where I'll start here. My last day in Tokyo consisted of getting my bags packed again, and then walking to the train station to get a Shinkansen ticket to Kyoto. For those that don't know: The Shinkansen is a bullet train, connecting a lot of the major cities in Japan. It has been there since 1975, is working great, and is cheaper and faster than flying for most destination. I don't understand why getting the Fyra in the Netherlands proved to be so difficult! The trip was a joy: the Shinkansen is fast, rides very smooth, there is a power socket near each seat, free wifi, vending machines and railcatering: perfectly organized!

Shinkansen reflection 

(I didn't walk the complete length on the station due to heavy backpacks and tight schedule :-))

Mt Fuji from the train

High priority when in arriving in Kyoto: drop off my luggage at the Hostel. This was a 15min walk from the station, but that was quite a challenge: I took a small break to avoid getting completely soaked and to give my knees a rest. The hostel staff were very friendly and spoke near-perfect English, so dropping the luggage was not a problem at all. Afterwards I headed for the city center, to have a look around, get a map and some coffee. With the map in hand I explored the modern station building a little: it's high and open and combined with a shopping center. Afterwards I decided to check out the pagoda south of the station, as the rest were all nearer to my hostel. 

Trying to find the way back to the hostel the abundance of temples in Kyoto became apparent immediately. Almost every street has a temple, some large, some just small shrines, but they're everywhere. There was one problem however: about 60% of the temples are being restored: I saw lots of halls and scaffolding covering structures that were supposed to be beautiful temples!
Kyoto's street plan is based on squares, so a lot of time you can view large distances through the city: very nice! Together with the stonework this reminded me of Pompeii. From later discussions with the hostel staff, that comparison can also be made with the Roman religion: in Kyoto there are gods and shrines for everything.

The second day in Kyoto started with sleeping for quite some time, and doing the travel chores (updating finances and looking for accommodation). As it was a rainy day I asked Hiro (one of the guys working at the hostel) where I could best go. He pointed to a roofed shopping area, which proved to be a good tip: browsing around, having a look at the stores, resting regularly for food and coffee (my legs were still sore) and ofcourse for people-watching: a favorite pastime in Japan.

Nearby to the market is the Gijon area: a neigbourhood with old-style Japanese buildings, a lot of temples (surprise! surprise!), and also many Maiko-san's: apprentice Geisha's. Well, it's the guidebooks that say it's apprentice Geisha's, but I later learned that Japanese teenage girls can pay 4000 yen to rent the costume for the day, so you see lots of teenage groups of girls walking around dressed up (and taking selfies each 10m's). 

Fake or not: is does look nice and makes for some nice interactions as well. Japanese people are so shy that they are even afraid to ask you to take your picture. So it happens quite a lot that you can see them discussing with their friends if they should ask, and who should then ask, etc. This normally goes on for some 3minutes or so, and then in about 90% of the time no-one is brave enough and they will just walk by. So now I will just offer it immediately and it'll be smiles all around.

The area itself was quite nice, and I was there near sunset, so I got some great shots of temples, gardens and street life.

A garden next to a cemetary, an incredibly peaceful and beautiful place

A pagoda in downtown Gijon

Geisha's, blossom and a nice stair: could be a movie set.

I came home early to look for a place for dinner, but I was lucky to find a lot of people having a small party in the hostel. Hiro invited me over and we ate 'vispoffertjes'. Little doughballs filled with shrimp, octopus and eaten with special sauce and mayonaise. It was a nice dinner and a very pleasant evening as well. Also the two foreigners (an Italian and a Finnish girl) spoke Japanese, and the Japanese people not much English, so sometimes it was a little difficult, but it worked out fine. We had such great fun that we ended up going to sleep at around 03:00am.

The next day I went into the city with one of the people of the hostel party: Lizzy, a 20 year old Chinese girl. She had her last day in Kyoto and a list of things she wanted to see, so we were on a busy schedule. Especially since we both slept for a long time due to the party the night before. The schedule:  Nr 1: The Kiyomizu temple, Nr 22 Nijo castle, and Nr 3 Gijon (which I had already seen). On arrival at Kiyomizu we asked a couple of highschool kids to take our picture near the entrance and we immediately took this opportunity to do some of their homework (a short interview in English). It only took a minute, made a nice picture and it was fun to see the guys and girls struggle with their shyness.

We had a lot of fun exploring the temple grounds together. Lizzy is quite a superstitious Chinese girl, so she bought a lot of fortune telling stuff, made offerings etc. The weather was kind of against us though: we had some snow and it was really cold. However, this made for some beautiful pictures, and we made sure to stop and refuel once we got too cold.

Next on the list was the Nijo castle, a castle of emperor Tokugawa in 1625. It has beautiful gardens, great walls and gives a great impression of the life in the time of the Samurai. By the time we had seen it the weather was also clearing up again so we ended up with some sun in between the snow. The sundown was rapidly approaching so we got some Japanese fastfood (Ramen) and split up: Lizzy went to Gijon and I went back to the hostel to arrange some more travel chores for my trip to the USA.

Day four in Kyoto consisted of looking at more of the Unesco world heritage: temples near Arashiyama and the Golden Pavillion. This time I rented a bike, due to the large distances involved, and due to the good weather forecast (Japanese weather forecasts are not so good).

Selfie while riding the bike, however I forgot that it was not the GoPro, so you can see only me

Rock garden near temple

Foreboding weather near Arashiyama

Bamboo grove in Arashiyama

In between these pictures I was in snow and cold, and on the way to the golden pavilion it became even worse. I underestimated the time and distances involved in this trip. The bike had to be back at 18:30 (however, I thought it was 16:30), so I made quite a hurry from Arashiyama to the golden pavillion. It started raining quite hard during this trip, so I had to change into a poncho, it was quite a good feeling, bicycling through Kyoto in the cold and rain, looking like a complete idiot. When I arrived at the golden pavillion the sun broke through (and it was nearly sunset) so the views were incredibly rewarding.

After taking some shots of the pavilion and garden I rushed back to Kyoto (it was already 16:20), driving on the sidewalk, on the street, against or with traffic (the Japanese are quite flexible with the place where bicycles should go). A nice and rewarding ride, totally about 35km in total :-).

I will end this post here, as the night after this trip was quite a long one, and also today has been another eventful day in Kyoto. To be continued.

Tokyo impressions

Wow. Sitting down to piece three days together for a blog post really drives home how much we have seen the last couple of days. I say we, because as I said in the last post, Sander and Guido, colleagues from my time at SoLayTec were in Japan. Instead of what they expected they had the weekend off, so came over to Tokyo to explore it together.

I'll try to piece a little story together, but because we have done and seen so much it will probably get a little tedious and boring, so I'll focus mainly on posting (loads of) pictures. I will put a selection of thumbnails here on the blog, the full sets are on picasa for your viewing pleasure:
Tokyo day 2
Tokyo day 3
Tokyo day 4

After some previous whatsapp communication it became clear that Guido and Sanders got their weekend off, so on saturday morning I'd let them know that I was gonna hit a museum because it was a rainy day and would check on wifi later on if and where they were (I only knew that they intended to visit, but they were sleeping long due to their long working week). So the day started out with a visit to the museum:

There were a number of interesting items on display, but the way they were displayed was kind of strange. Mostly based on geographical location, and for a few exhibits by time. The English explanations were very brief, so in the end I just saw a lot of objects, but learned very little. Probably if you are a buddhist or can read Kanji you'll get a lot more out of it. The museum is split across 5 buildings, of which some are a lot more beautiful architecturally than the objects inside (the building on the picture is actually empty).

After I had finished my round through the museum I sent Guido and Sander an SMS asking where they were. By then they were having lunch in Shibuya. We agreed to meet up at exit 4 of Shibuya station, and lo and behold:

Such a crazy thing to be able to meet up with people from home, while on the other side of the planet. Global village indeed. We immediately crossed off one of the items on the todo list of every person visiting Tokyo: Shibuya crossing. This is apparently the busiest crossing in the world.

Afterwards we walked around the area and explored various shops. I'll end this post with a gathering of various weird things we came across. After Shibuya we went to Roppongi, which is supposedly an area to go out, and where the Mori tower is: a high-rise building which has a viewing deck on the 52nd floor. It was quite cloudy and already evening, but we decided to pay for the trip up to the top anyway. The view proved to be quite nice, but not so spectacular as the views we saw next day, so I won't post any here. What was more fun than expected though, is that besides a viewing deck, the observation area is also an art museum. The exhibits were a little like 'Glow' in Eindhoven, some a lot more impressive, some a lot less.

The one above is from Andy Warhol (you were probably thinking they had let loose some primary school crowd with fingerpaint ;-)). We finished our evening with a search for the Roppongi nightlife, but only discovered touts (these are apparently all black in this area (?)). In the end we gave in to one, as we were getting fed up and had time to just drink one beer because Guido and Sander had to get on the Shinkansen (bullet-train that does work, since 1975) back to Takisaki. The joint turned out to be empty, but we had our beer. We had a cheery chat discussing the day and our plans for sunday.

We decided to meet up at 10:30 at Harajuku station, to have a look at the cosplay kids and Yoyogi park and its Meiji shrine. However, Murphy acted up: it was raining heavily and no cosplay kids were to be seen when I arrived. at 10:40 I received an SMS by Guido and Sander that they were at Yoyogi station (they didn't want to travel to the train station Harajuku, so travelled to the nearest metro station). We agreed to meet halfway at the Meiji temple. I was there at 11:05, but at 11:45 I had still heard nothing from them so I was getting kinda worried. In the end they finally found the temple at 12:05. By that time I was kind of cold (it was raining and 9C, and I forgot my hat at the hotel), but I did get to see a newlywed couple get their blessing from the Shinto priests.

All this was soon forgotten when Guido and Sander saw the tree full of prayers, they decided to buy a board too, to pray for better their work at the customer to be succesful.

You can see Guido and Sander posting their prayer board and capturing it for eternity above. The next activity on the todo list was to explore the electronic gadget area Akhabara and the electronics shops around it. A picture of one of the biggest stores is below, another one will go in the 'weird stuff' section. The store was kind of like the MediaMarkt, but then on steroids: 8 stories high, double the size, and advertising and people e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. I needed to get a new hair trimmer after my last one broke, and after received an out-of-stock apology from the employee three times for three different models I finally got one that they did have: by Philips.

We were on a tight schedule, and with quite a todo list, but we managed to tick the next one off as well: the largest drum shrine in Japan. Rik (another colleague) had been there, so ofcourse we should also go. Our Japanese service engineer Akashi-san had shown it to Rik, so then it had to be something special. It proved to be quite impressive, a snapshot of the tower below, the rest are on Picasa.

The final destination for today was the Tokyo SkyTree. A huge tower with two observation platforms (one at 350m, and one at 450m). We could see it (see below) from the drum tower, so we judged that it'd be better to walk than take the Metro (which, due to me misreading a map we also missed).

You can see umbrellas in this picture, and only the bottom 100m of the skyTree due to (rain)cloud cover. The picture looks kind of foreboding... and well that is quite right. Guido and Sander purchased umbrella's for 100yen at the market near the drum shrine. I was thinking we would travel by metro so that I would not need a umbrella. By the time I was getting wetter and wetter the umbrella price had risen to 500yen and I was too stubborn to buy one. Long story short: it was a long way to the tower yet, and by the time we were finally there I was very wet and cold and annoyed with myself :-). However, the mall surrounding the tower was nice and warm, I kept out of the price debate that Guido and Sander had, and in the end we took the gamble to go up the tower and see if it was worth the 2000yen even though there were bad visibility signs everywhere.

It very damn well was worth the cold and wet, and the money as well. We ended up paying 1000yen more to also go to the 450m deck, but this didn't really add anything to the experience (except for the cool elevator with transparent ceiling). We ended our weekend in Japan together with a nice dinner and an icecream, but not after taking a final picture of a store we came across:

Monday was a working day for Guido and Sander, and for me it started out as a holiday-working-day, meaning that I had to update my finances, search for couchsurfing hosts in Kyoto, and find out how and when to get there. However, during the weekend I had also sent a message to another friend from Europe: Cal. He and his friends stayed in the same hostel in Madrid during the first week of my internship there. We went out together and had some good fun. On facebook I had seen that he was teaching English in Tokyo, so I had sent him a message asking if he'd be up for a drink or meal. He was kinda short on time (working until 21:00 and doing private lessons afterwards) and as I am leaving for Kyoto tomorrow we met up for lunch. So again, the strange sensation of meeting up with someone from the other side of the planet right in the middle of Tokyo at some metro-exit: weird! 

We had a little chat over lunch and shared our amazement at some Japanese customs and our experiences in Tokyo. He also pointed out another few things I had to see, so after lunch I went for a little more exploring in Tokyo. It turned out that the cosplay kids I was looking for at Harajuku previously were not actually on the bridge, but mainly in the neighbourhood's stores... I went looking for them again, but just saw one far away, so alas, no pictures. I did continue on through on of the busy shopping districts, and afterwards exploring the area around the imperial palace and across the harbor. Views below:

Another fulfilling night, walking around in such an immense place. I will end this post with a few of the 'crazy stuff' we discovered in Japan:

picture says it all...

There is an even a form for prayer! (apologies for the tilt)

Weird (pornographic?) anime dolls

Anime dog clothing...

- 200+ people queuing outside a popcorn shop?

- Servant girls bars, where you pay to let young girls dressed up in servants dress call you master while bringing you your drinks

- and a lot of other things that I probably have already stopped finding weird.

Changes

This post is long overdue, but the last few days have been quite hectic. I have taken a small peek at Kuala Lumpur, found my way in Tokyo, and am now settling down slightly in a hotel there. A lot of changes have taken place in the past few days, so let me highlight a few. There is a high risk that this will be quite a long post.
First of all I had to say goodbye to the rest of the family, they are now back in the Netherlands, while I have become a solo traveller. Secondly I lost my name (ow no!), no not really, instead of using my calling name 'Coen' which is very easy for Dutch people to pronounce, but much more difficult for foreigners (Co-en, coin, goon, you get the idea) I am now using the first name that is also in my passport: Robert. This, so far, hasn't given any problems (except for me remembering that if people are asking Robert something, they are asking me ;-) ).
Further changes are ofcourse in the way of travelling. In New Zealand all accommodation was already booked, we had our plans and our 4WD's. Now, I basically have only flights, the rest I make up as I go. For Kuala lumpur this meant going couchsurfing instead of to a hotel or apartment. Teresa and her boyfriend hosted me in their apartment (shared with three other people) in a residential area of KL. Getting there was interesting, especially with the load of backpacks I was carrying, and the sweltering 30+ degrees Celsius. The final leg was haggling over a taxi fair from the end of the metro line to the apartment block. In the end I only paid 5 Ringit too much, but the taxi driver also dropped me off one block early (luckily that was only a 200m walk). I was received warmly by Teresa, her boyfriend Johan (who on introduction proved to be Dutch as well) and we had drinks and a chat on their balcony. Teresa and Johan both dive, and had a friend over who dives as well, so we shared our diving adventures and plans.
The next day I spent as a tourist in Kuala Lumpur (see pictures), and met up with Teresa, Johan and some of their other friends again to explore the night market. Finding the night market at all proved difficult (we spent half an hour walking, and a lot of time stuck in taxi's in a traffic jam). In the end, however, we managed to find it, eat some crazy food (not the stinky tofu) and a good meal. We had a good time and it was a nice adventure all together.

Petronas Towers (they're BIG)

Statue guarding the entrance to the Batu caves, a hindu holy place

Statues inside Batu caves, depicting ???

The dirty mess inside Batu caves 

(lower 2m painted with anti-graffiti paint, full of graffiti, boxes and trash thrown in haphazardly everywhere..) 

The view from the entrance of the caves back to smoggy KL suburbs

Being a Hindu holy place, there were lots of monkeys and pigeons around.

My last day in KL was spent together with Johan, he is a 20-year old Dutch guy spending his time travelling at this moment. He's been around Asia for a while, met Teresa and will go learn to be a Divemaster in a couple of weeks. He's also studying the local language part-time and is managing it all quite well. He had the day off, so we took it easy. Had breakfast at a local cafe, relaxed at the pool (this was part of the huge apartment block they were in), and went shopping for some more shirts for me in a local mall. We discovered a dive shop there as well, so I got some extra gear for a good price. After the shopping it was time to get my backpack back in order and head for the airport through rush hour (and in the heat). I was quite stinky when I finally arrived, but luckily could change to a new set of clothing in the airport. My apologies to the Kuala Lumpuri's (?) that had to sit next to me in the train.

Breakfast

If you're queuing for the metro and you start wondering why there's only girls around you... this might be the explanation. Rosa Parks would turn over in her grave to see what's happening in Asia (Japan has similar rail coaches).

Snapshot of messy KL near the old railway station

One of the changes that should've also taken place is that I would be no longer speaking Dutch, but I didn't manage this one yet: Johan and I spoke mainly Dutch, and being in Japan I just discovered that my colleagues are also here, so we're gonna meet up in Tokyo (and speak Dutch). One change that was also really apparent, especially while I am now in Tokyo, is how messy (edgy/gritty) KL is, compared to organized countries such as New Zealand and Tokyo. I enjoyed this in China, but probably because I was only in KL for a few days, Tokyo feels a lot more 'comfortable' to be in. I will end this post with just a few snapshots from Tokyo, as this post is getting quite long already.

Not very simple sign telling you to leave your luggage cart

Not very simple metro network

Instructions on using the 'not very simple' toilet (with heated seat..mmm)

The road near my hotel

(yes I managed to get through all the 'not-very-simple' instructions)

Blossoming trees (and snow in the left) in Ueno Park

Temple near Ueno park

My Japanese style hotel room

Check out the magnificent view ;-).

A complete bathroom (with bath) in 1m2!