I’m burned in two senses; I’m burned out from so much walking and hanging out with people and shtuff, and I think I have a sunburn on my face and shoulders from walking around today.
Yesterday I went to the Manga Museum. The museum did not live up to my expectations, I am sad to say, but it was still pretty cool. Pretty much every wall that they didn’t have a specific purpose for was covered in manga. They had a pretty big selection of English language manga and manga in other languages.
The main room was on the second floor and displayed the evolution of manga, more or less. It was pretty cool to see its evolution, but I don’t remember much of what it said, so I should go back. Perhaps the highlight of the visit was a performance of what is called Kami Shibai.
I kind of love Kami Shibai. Basically, it was something of a performance/story-telling art back in the early twentieth century. The performance was obviously aimed at young kids, and the man who was doing the show was really cool; he joked around a lot and was really nice. The show started out with a visual quiz of sorts. Basically, he had a little square box facing the audience, and he would put cartoon slides in it. For the first part, these slides had drawings and some written hints, and the idea was that you’d have to guess what it was that was being hinted at. If you guessed correctly, you were rewarded with a prize, a little trinket most of the time.
The way in which the show was done was very fun and light-hearted, and you could tell that the guy was having fun doing the performance. After the quiz section, the performance moved on to the story-telling. For this section, the man took a bunch of picture slides and put them into the box to show everyone, and proceeded to tell a story, trying to engage the audience as he did so. It was a very short, simple story, but it was more the manner of presentation and the educational value of the whole performance that I found really cool. I’m not doing a great job of explaining the thing, but look up Kami Shibai, it’s really cool.
After that, there wasn’t much else to do, so we left, but not before admiring some of the many cosplayers at the museum. Yes; cosplayers, at a museum. God I love Japan. I didn’t recognize some of the costumes, but it was just really cool that the museum let people cosplay and hang out there, more or less.
After the manga museum, the people who I was hanging out with and I wandered in attempts of finding food. We discovered Nijo Castle in the process of doing so, but didn’t check it out since we were too hungry. We found a tiny greasy chinese place which was pretty good, then we headed to Shijo.
Once at Shijo, we explored the shopping arcade for a while. Our main goal was a store called Loft, which we eventually found, after running into some other AKP people. Loft is a…department store, I guess I should call it, because it sells a variety of things. The Loft in Shijo has about 5 floors, not huge floors, but it’s still sizeable. We started on the fourth floor, which was mostly household items, and nothing caught our interest. The third floor was stationary, and nothing but. There was a lot of stuff, some of it cool, but I’ve never really been into stationary. That being said, I was on the lookout for a new pencil case, and oh did I ever find a good one, BUT I’m not gonna say what it is, you’ll just have to ask me to show it to you (that is assuming that everyone who reads this knows me personally).
The second store was beauty products. We moved on. The first floor didn’t have much, so we went to the basement, where the cool trinkets were. I looked for a butt pillow that a friend of mine has, but I couldn’t find it, much to my dismay. BUT, I did find the best, handkerchief, ever. I guess I never mentioned this, but a lot of people in Japan carry handkerchiefs around to mop their face, dry their hands (public restrooms never have paper towels or anything like that), and AKP gifted us with some handkerchiefs. The only problem with this was that they gave the girls girly ones, and they gave the five guys in the program really manly handkerchiefs. The problem with this was that instead of robots and guns and whatever else is manly, they were just really, really, boring patterns in really boring colors. No pink handkerchief for me. I rectified this injustice by buying a Totoro handkerchief.
Yes, that’s right, a Totoro handkerchief, and not a boring one, like some of them were, it was the best one: it has a blue and white checker pattern with several patches on it. In the upper left hand corner there’s a golden yellow patch of the little white totoro. In the lower left hand corner is a greenish patch with the outline of a couple acorns lying on the ground. Finally, towards the lower left hand corner is a light brown patch with the black dustmite; that patch just overlaps a blue patch with a cute totoro (I don’t know which one) sitting under and looking up at an overhanging leaf. It’s basically the best thing ever and I love it.
After Loft we searched the shopping arcade for a cafe and discussed our next move. We weren’t up for anything strenuous, so I had the brilliant idea of seeing the new Studio Ghibli film, which is currently in theatres in Japan. The idea was met with enthusiasm, so we contacted our families, letting them know we’d be absent for dinner.
Movie ticket prices in Japan are exorbitant, with an adult movie ticket coming in at 1500 yen, which is almost 20 bucks. This didn’t deter us, and we bought our tickets as a group. Like very fancy movie theatres in America, in Japan you choose which seats you sit in, so we choose prime seats in the middle up towards the back, got our tickets, and went in to the theatre.
There were several ads, and one trailer before the movie started. Guess which movie the trailer was for, I’ll tell you at the end of the post. I was apprehensive because I had no idea how much of the movie I would understand. Surprisingly, there were only a few things that I didn’t understand, and I felt very proud afterward.
As for the movie, it wasn’t directed by Miyazaki, and it wasn’t the best Ghibli movie I’ve seen. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t fantastic. The scope of the movie was very small, in more ways than one (it’s about tiny people, like mice-sized people), and while it was entertaining, it just wasn’t as good as Princess Mononoke, or Porco Rosso (my two favorite Ghibli films).
Oh yeah I forgot. Ok, so after the film we walked through the shopping arcade again to find somewhere to get some food. As we were searching, we walked through this one part of the shopping arcade where, hours earlier, some gaikokujin (foreigner) had been doing that thing where you strike a pose and hold it completely still. The cool thing about this guy, was that he had done something with his clothes that they constantly looked wind-blown: his tie was held in a curve up over his right shoulder, and his suit tails were constantly held at a rough right angle. It was highly amusing, and I managed to get a picture (I swear I’ll link you guys to my photos soon).
For dinner we went to an izakaya, or, a bar. At the izakaya we got some yakitori (grilled meat on skewers), some kind of sizzly beef dish (which was soooooo good), and some sushi, which was mediocre. All in all a good meal, and despite not having imbibed any alcohol, you wouldn’t have been able to tell otherwise from our conduct. Not to say we were doing dumb shit, we were just in that state where everything is funny. You know how sometimes you’ll be hanging out with people and you’ll get more and more silly and eventually you’ll break down in tears of laughter at some really random thing? Yeah, that was us.
After the izakaya we parted and I headed home. Today I met up with people to go to Heian Jingu; a shrine. The first notable thing about Heian Jingu is that up the street from the shrine is a massive torii (gate), like, 3-or-4-stories-tall-massive. The shrine itself is very pretty, as most large shrines are.
We were cleaning our hands before entering, like you do, and a Japanese person came up to us and asked us if we spoke English, in English. We said yes, and she indicated to some other Japanese people and indicated that they were an English speaking club and if we would like to be guided around the shrine by them. We accepted without really thinking about it and started walking with our new guides.
It was kind of awkward at first, and for a while after that, but it was obvious that some of them were really trying, and one of them was pretty good at speaking English. I did my best to try and talk to some of the ones who weren’t as confident in their English, and I managed to talk a bit to some of them. Also, it was nice having some other company around the shrine. the shrine part of the shrine was cool, but the part that was really notable was the garden of the shrine.
The garden was huge, going from the left side of the shrine, around the back of it and over to the right side of the shrine. The garden was very beautiful, with lots of ponds, an awesome bridge at one point, some stepping stones, and for some reason it had an old train car in it…weird.
At the end of the garden path, there was a couple dressed in traditional Japanese wedding clothing being photographed. They looked really beautiful, and at first we weren’t sure if it was ok to take pictures, but a bunch of other people were, so I take one shot and left it at that. After the garden, the tour was over, but the whole thing had taken an hour or so, so we had talked with the guides a bunch. At the end we took a group picture and got the contact info of some of the people, including the main tour guide. The main tour guide was cool because he was apparently into games and anime and we talked a little about that. Apparently he lives in Tokyo, and he messaged us later saying that if we were ever in Tokyo we should let him know so he could show us around.
I must be getting tired if my sentence and paragraph structure is becoming this boring.
The final event for the day was going to the zoo, which was near the shrine. There were animals. Some of them I had never seen. There was a badger lying in a shallow bath that looked like it was in heaven (it was hot today). It was funny. Bork bork bork. Yeah, that’s about it for the laundry list of shit I did in the past two days.
At this point I feel saturated. Every free moment I’ve had has been devoted to going somewhere, seeing something or doing something, and it’s making me feel like I’ve already done so much, that what else can I possibly do? I know that doesn’t make sense because there’s tons for me to do still (karaoke, more shrines, temples, other places in Japan to go to, etc.) but it feels like I’ve already done so much. At this rate I’ll wear myself out, which would be bad. I think from now on, one day of the weekend will be devoted to exploring, or hanging out with people, or getting out in general. The other day will be devoted to homework, and relaxing. That way I don’t burn myself out. It would be a crying shame to only be here for a month then get tired and want to go home.
It’s hard to believe I’ve only been here for, 10 days? Jesus. Part of me is exhausted, wants something familiar, something easy, but another part of me is looking forward to what can happen in the next 7 months. I mean, so much can happen in 7 months, so much to learn, to experience. I’m happy that part of me enjoys the prospect of not knowing what’s coming next. Also, there’s still so much food I haven’t tried yet! Like takoyaki! I really want to try takoyaki; I can’t believe I haven’t had it yet. Oh well.
I also have a younger sister to meet. That’ll be interesting. Don’t know when she gets back from New Zealand.
Last thing: there’s a restaurant in Shijo that sells a “Crazy Big Parfait” that could probably feed 5 people, and I will go there one day, and I will eat a Crazy Big Parfait. Probably not by myself, but it will be quite the experience. I’m out.
-Shimon
