Japan Update

So for those of you that are dying to know how our vacation in Japan went, here is a summary of it. We took over 1800 pictures so uploading, rotating, choosing some and then downloading them will take a really long time...


After school on Friday the 24th of July, we headed to Busan to spend the night so we would be close to the airport for our morning flight.


Day 1: We got up at 5:40 to take a taxi to Gimhae International Airport. The plane ride was less than two hours but they fed us a meal anyway! We landed safely at Narita Airport and made our way to our hotel in Tokyo. There was a fireworks festival at a nearby temple complex, so we took the subway a couple stops over and attended it. It was definitely the most impressive fireworks display that Katie and I had ever seen before. The festival is put on every year by the two biggest fireworks companies in Japan. Because of this, staying within a budget, like most government-sponsored 4th of July shows must, was not an issue. They set up along the river and compete with each other, so what you get is the two biggest and best fireworks companies in Japan shooting off their most impressive products for two hours - amazing. I remember thinking that they didn't have to rely on the loud, powerful ones to wow the crowd. Instead, they repeatedly shot up some fireworks to provide a backdrop for others, not to mention all the cool fireworks that we had never seen before.


Day 2: Excited for our first full day in Japan, we woke up early and headed back to the temple to see it in the daytime. While we were there, an elementary school girl with her mom stopped us and asked if she could take a picture with us. She got our address in Korea and promised to send us the picture in the mail. After viewing the temple, we went to the Tokyo National Museum. I bought a book with pictures of the more important exhibits so I could remember and be able to show them to friends and family. Later, we successfully navigated the Tokyo subway system down to the Tokyo Tower stop (the subway is pretty crazy - there are over a dozen lines owned by two different companies, meaning that every time you switch to a line owned by the other company you have to buy a new ticket). The view from the tower was 360 degrees of skyscrapers as far as the eye could see and evidence that population density is definitely an issue in Tokyo.


Day 3: Everyone make sure you read this sentence slowly and carefully, taking note of who was forcing who to do what and at what time. I (Brian) forced Katie to wake up at 6:00 AM in order to get to Tsukiji Fish Market by seven to see the market at the height of its busyness. We thought we knew what to expect having been to fish markets in Tongyeong and Busan, but this was a whole different beast. The main market encompasses several city blocks of nothing but row after row of shops and stalls selling fresh fish. Among other things, we saw a huge fish being cut into slices by a motorized saw and a crab almost as big as my head. After taking tons of pictures and dodging motorized carts for about an hour, we decided it was time to complete the experience by eating "the freshest sushi breakfast ever" (a quote from the guide book. haha).



After breakfast, we jumped back on the subway and headed to Shibuya, one of Tokyo's busiest shopping districts. We weren't interested in shopping, but we were interested in seeing the famous Shibuya crossing. It's a 5-way crosswalk (the fifth one is diagonal) and they all get the walk signal at the same time, leading to a mass of humanity in the intersection. Katie and I had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the intersection so we could keep up with the action. It was funny to see cars trying to make the light and getting stuck in the middle with all the people. After lunch, we had a couple of hours to kill before we went to the kabuki theater, so we checked out the Sony Building for the latest technology. The staircase leading from the subway exit to the first floor of the building was a musical staircase that played notes when you walked up and down it. Katie tried to re-enact the scene in Big where Tom Hanks plays "Heart and Soul" with his feet on that big keyboard. She did a pretty good job actually. The rest of the building was your standard electronics store with lots of cameras, computers, MP3 players, televisions, etc. There was one other cool thing that we saw there: an MP3 player that looked like one of those battery-powered fuzzy animal balls that you see at toy stores that roll around and stuff... ya know? Maybe not, but it plays music and rolls around and dances according to the beat. It was pretty silly.

We made our way to the Kabuki-za to see a traditional Japanese play. We were literally the last people to get in (there was a party of four directly ahead of us that they stopped and told them there wasn't enough room, so we got to go in their place, score!), so we had to stand in the standing section. We really enjoyed what we saw of it, but after an hour and a half of standing, we wimped out and left. After dinner, we decided to head back to the hotel so we could rest up for our train ride to Kyoto in the morning. By the way, the myth that it takes forever to say something in Japanese might be true. We're not sure if they were just hardcore paraphrasing when we were listening to the English translation of the kabuki play, but I remember very distinctly one scene where this guy yells at another for a while and all we heard in English was, "He's a thief!" And then the other guy starts yelling back for a long time and it's translated to: "What's that?"


Day 4: On Tuesday the 28th, we got our first taste of the Japanese rail system and their bullet trains (shinkansens). We paid about $300 for a week of unlimited train rides, which is a great deal for anyone planning on touring Japan, because it's the fastest and easiest way to get around and individual tickets are at least $100. Even if you only used it three times to go to Kyoto, Hiroshima and then back to Tokyo, you would be saving money. We used our passes almost ten times, I believe. The shinkansens are really impressive; we got a video of one of them flying past us.

We spent our first day in Kyoto at Sanjusangendo Hall, Kiyomizu Temple, Heian Shrine and the Kyoto Handicraft Center. Sanjusangendo Hall is a really long wooden hallway (actually, it's the longest wooden building in Japan) that's home to a large statue of Buddha surrounded by four guardians, one or two dozen other lesser deities, and no less than 500 identical statues on either side. Kiyomizu is a cool mountain-side temple that's best reached by walking up Teapot Lane. We spent some time shopping on Teapot Lane before and after the temple, and with a name like that, who wouldn't? I thought the environment around the temple was cooler than the temple itself... but that's after seeing a few dozen temples since coming to Korea in February. After Kiyomizu, we meant to visit Nanzen-ji, but we went in the wrong direction and ended up taking a taxi to the closer destination (thanks to my stellar navigation skills) of Heian Shrine.


Heian Shrine reminded us that no matter how many temples/palaces/shrines we visit, there will most likely be something interesting or unique about each and every one of them. Details, such as pebbles instead of stones or dirt, well-groomed trees and bushes, differences in architecture, and/or the ability to go inside the main building, make each experience different from the others. Heian Shrine was unique in that it was the first place we had been to where you couldn't see the object of worship. There was a wide expanse between the viewing area and the actual shrine; so wide that only those with eagle eyes would be able to make out what they were praying to. And last, but certainly not least, was the Kyoto Handicrafts Center, which was right behind Heian Shrine. We highly recommend this place to anyone travelling to Japan. You can purchase pretty much everything that Japan is famous for at a fraction of the cost. Katie said that prices don't matter when you're on vacation, but I secretly kept track and you would save 25-40% at the handicrafts center.


Day 5: Our second day in Kyoto was spent making sure we made it to all of the places we meant to see before we left (we weren't leaving Kyoto until Day 8, but we had side trips planned for days 6-8). Our first stop was Kinkakuji Temple, also called Golden Temple or even Golden Pavilion. Interestingly enough, there is another temple in Kyoto named Ginkakuji Temple that is nicknamed the Silver Temple... we almost got on a bus to take us there because in Korean they use the same letter for G's and K's, so we thought it was the same place. A long time ago, Kinkakuji started out as a wealthy lord's country estate where he built a magnificent golden building on a pond. It was converted into a temple by the lord's son after he died. The golden pavilion, the pond and the many gardens made Kinkakuji a great place to visit.

Our next stop was Ryoanji Temple, which is famous for a rock garden. That sounds really lame and even though I didn't understand what it represented, it was still pretty cool. The garden is laid out in the shape of a rectangle with the ground covered in pebbles that are raked to perfection. They're raked into straight rows until they get close to the rocks, and then they're raked to match the contour of the rocks. Pretty cool. The temple also has a large pond with an island in the middle that you can get to by bridge.

After Ryoanji, we took a taxi down to Nijo Castle. It wasn't really the kind of castle that I was expecting because when I think of castles I think of impenetrable bastions with moats and drawbridges. But this castle was more like a safe haven for political figures where they could entertain diplomats and leaders. The shogunate, warlords to whom the samurai were loyal, was in control of Japan when Kyoto was the capital and Nijo Castle was home to the shogun, the head of the shogunate. The main building within the walls of Nijo was designed specifically to protect the shogun not from a siege or an all-out war like most castles, but from assassination. There were trap doors that samurais could spring out of in defense of the shogun as well as Nightingale floors throughout the various rooms and hallways that creaked and squeaked when you walked on them.

Since we missed out on Nanzen-ji the day before, we decided to head in that direction, but only after a brief rest outside the Imperial Palace. The temple was closed by the time we got to it, but we were still able to see a lot of it. Only the main hall, the most prominent sub-temple (there were several sub-temples at Nanzen-ji) and a garden were off limits after closing time. I really wish we had gotten to see all of it, because what we did see was really cool. The various sub-temples, the fact that it was a Zen temple (we're not sure how or if that's related to Buddhism) and the unexpected presence of an aqueduct made this temple very different from others we had seen.



Day 6: With Tokyo and Kyoto crossed off our list of places to go and see, we turned our attention to the three day trips we had planned for our last three full days in Japan: Hiroshima, Nara and Himeji. After carefully considering the travelling time, the time necessary for sightseeing and the priority of each trip, we chose to do them in the above order.

Hiroshima was definitely an eye-opening experience for both of us, but probably me especially because I had always viewed the A-bomb as a necessary evil... something that had to be done in order to fast track Japan's surrender and ultimately save lives (the thousands of innocent lives taken had never entered the equation in my thoughts). I am pretty sure that Hiroshima is the most thought-provoking place that I have ever been to and I'm glad that Katie suggested that we go. Our first impression of the city coming out of the train station was that it seemed like any other mid-sized city - honestly, there's nothing special about Hiroshima other than the fact that it was the first city in the world to be the target of an atomic bomb. With the exception of the inconsequential Hiroshima Castle, all of Hiroshima's tourist attractions are located in or around Peace Memorial Park. They include the A-Bomb Dome, Peace Memorial Museum, the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, and the cenotaph that contains the names of all the known victims of the bomb.

By 1945, Hiroshima only had a dozen or so structures that had been built using modern construction techniques and materials; the rest were made of wood or other relatively flimsy materials that had no chance of surviving the blast. One of the few buildings that survived the bomb AND the sentiment that surviving buildings should be destroyed to help the healing process is the A-Bomb Dome. Only a skeleton of the original structure remains, but it has been preserved to look exactly as it did immediately after the explosion. Another building that has survived to the present has an interesting story: everyone in the building perished immediately except for one person who happened to be in the basement.

Peace Memorial Hall is where the reality of what happened there really sets in. We saw pictures of the city after the attack, video re-enactments of the tragedy and first-hand accounts from survivors. The pictures were pretty devastating. Besides the geography, the only thing that looked remotely familiar was the A-Bomb Dome. Everything else was destroyed beyond recognition - just completely blown off the face of the earth. You couldn't see debris or heaps of caved-in houses or any of that. It was like everything except for the dome just disintegrated upon impact. Seeing those pictures and hearing the accounts of the survivors... that's when I really started thinking, "Wow. I can't believe we actually unleashed a bomb of that magnitude on these people."

The Peace Memorial Museum was really interesting and informative. Two things really impressed me about the museum: 1. They rarely blamed the U.S. for what happened in Hiroshima, but when they did, they made sure to blame themselves for having been in the war in the first place, and 2. The museum is meant to inspire and promote peace; it isn't there to make people feel bad or sorry for what happened. Of course it focuses a lot on the past and the history of what happened, but a lot of it is devoted to a peaceful future. It was forward-thinking, not backward, and Katie and I really appreciated that. Another cool thing is that the mayor of Hiroshima writes a letter to the leader of any nation that conducts a nuclear test, urging them to stop their weapons program and embrace Hiroshima's dream of a world without nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the mayor has had to write thousands of letters over the years and many Japanese people view it as an exercise in futility.



Day 7: Nara was the capital of Japan for nigh onto 100 years and during that time Japan was at peace with its neighbors and even welcomed many diplomats and scholars from them, especially from China. It was a period of learning and development in a wide variety of fields ranging from science to religion to art. Nara is home to a large number of attractions of historical significance and, luckily, most of them are located in or around a large park that boasts a deer population of 1200. And these are no ordinary deer, mind you: they're sacred deer, deer that will nudge you with their antlers in hopes of being fed a deer biscuit sold by vendors all over the park. Since it was the capital for less than 100 years and they were years of peace, Nara was able to avoid being the target of wars. Kyoto, however, was not so fortunate and it found itself in ruins several times over the centuries. Thus, Nara has many more sights that are in their original form.



Among the things we saw in Nara were the second tallest pagoda in Japan (outclassed only by a few centimeters to one in Kyoto), the Nara National Museum, the coolest garden that either of us had ever seen before, the largest wooden building in the world, an 800 year old tree and, of course, the sacred deer. The Nara National Museum had a vast collection of images of Buddha. Several of them were depictions of his birth, after which he rose to his feet and proclaimed, "I am unexcelled by anyone ever to appear in this world." Not bad for a newborn. The largest wooden building actually burned down a couple centuries ago and the new one is only 2/3 of the original's size. Inside is a giant statue of Buddha (roughly 15 times taller than the average person). One of the wooden supports has a hole in the middle of it which is exactly the same size as one of Buddha's nostrils, and legend has it that if you can fit through the hole you are guaranteed to achieve enlightenment. It took me two tries, but I finally squeezed through with a little help from Katie and an old Japanese man pulling on my arms!

Day 8: We spent our final full day in Japan at Himeji Castle. As far as we know, the town of Himeji has little to no significance historically or currently beyond the scope of the castle, which is the most well-preserved castle in Japan. Besides the moats being filled in, Himeji stands today just as it has for many centuries because it was never besieged and it escaped the bombings of WWII. We were really excited to see what a real Japanese castle looked like, and we weren't disappointed.

Himeji Castle is often referred to as "White Heron Castle" because of its stark white appearance. It's a shame that it was never besieged because its strategic location and defenses would have made it almost impenetrable. At one time, it had three separate moats with the outer one being about a half mile away from the castle on all sides. The three moats were designed specifically to slow down any attacker and make them transport their siege materials across water three times before they ever made it to the castle walls. The walls of the castle had holes in them through which archers could shoot arrows at the enemy with little chance of being hit themselves. There were also slits for throwing rocks or pouring scalding water or oil down onto the enemy should they choose to try to scale the walls. Should the outer walls be breached, the attacker would be faced with a myriad of directions to choose from, and being unfamiliar with the layout of the castle, the ramifications of the decision could be grave. No matter which way they decided to go they would be greeted by more walls, gates, and fierce defenders shooting arrows, throwing rocks and pouring hot water on them. With all of these defenses in place, it's no wonder that nobody ever bothered to attack the castle.



The tour of the castle takes a couple of hours and the highlights include the maidservants' quarters, the seppuku hall (where the samurais commit suicide by disembowelment) and the five-story tower at the center. The maidservants' quarters are where the princess lived with her female servants. She definitely lived a life of luxury, or at least as much as possible within the walls of a castle, but even princesses aren't exempt from the terrors of war. Escape routes were made possible in every room throughout the quarters by a series of secret doors that allowed the princess and her maidservants to move from room to room and eventually to a hidden passageway without ever setting foot into the main hallway.



You might be wondering what the area between the castle and the outer moat is being used for these days now that the moats have been filled in, for the most part. From what I could tell from the map, it looked like the space between the second and third moats is just another part of the city, while the areas closest to the castle are reserved for gardens, a park and a bunch of schools. Even though we were there on a Saturday, and even though the kids were out for the summer, we were stopped by a group of Japanese girls that needed to interview native English speakers for their English class. The questions they asked all had to do with how much we liked Japan or how much we knew about their popular culture.... and we don't really know anything about Japanese music, television or movies, yikes! But it was cool; the girls were really nice and friendly. They informed Katie that her name doesn't really need the 'e' on the end of it, haha.



After the tour, we headed back to the train station one last time to catch a ride to Tokyo. Once there, we made our way back to Asakusa in order to do some last minute shopping. Unfortunately, most of the stores were closed by the time we got there, but we were still able to snatch up some souvenirs before the whole place shut down for the night.



Day 9: We found a Subway restaurant in the airport!!! It's actually a little pathetic to remember how estatic we were about that! haha. We also found a duty-free store that had some cool stuff, so we did a little more shopping... and then we were off, heading back to Korea.


A note from Katie : Well I guess Brian has basically said all there is to be said but I'll just add that yes, Japan was amazing. I had pretty high expectations going in ( b/c I've been wanting to go there since I was in 2nd grade basically) but it did not disappoint. Some highlights for me : women wearing kimonos for no apparent reason, sacred deer, sushi, buildings made of gold, bullet trains, Tokyo's big city-ness, Kyoto's mountain-ness, and basically everything in-between. I definitely recommend it ;)