Sunrise Chronicles

Thursday, March 14
In the morning, we headed for the nearby city of Nara, which was an ancient capital of Japan centuries ago. Most of the sakura trees were still bare, but some of the ume trees were blooming, and people clustered under them for selfies. Wherever people in Nara gather, the miniature deer follow, hoping for cookies. The deer in Nara wander everywhere, and they have been trained to bow to people in the hope of receiving food. Deer wafer vendors are scattered throughout the area, and most of the souvenir merchandise items in the city feature the deer.

This major shrine even has a deer statue at the purification basin, instead of the usual dragon. This picture also features one of our more unpleasant experiences of the trip. At this point, we were surrounded by dozens of Chinese tourists. The woman on the left told her husband to take a picture of her while she washed her hands at the fountain, but she was upset because other people were in the shot. She literally shoved my neighbor (the woman in the purple coat and knit hat) out of the way so that she could be in the picture by herself. Needless to say, we had a low opinion of the Chinese tourists after that encounter. At least the deer remained unruffled despite all the antics going on around them.

We arrived at the shrine (Kasuga Taisha) just as a traditional ceremony had begun. After walking around the grounds there, we continued on to the next attraction, Todaiji, home of the world's largest bronze Buddha statue. Interestingly, just as I was trying to log onto Facebook to share this photo, I found I was unable to connect. It turns out this was the middle of the Great Facebook Outage that lasted for several hours. A quick scan on Google turned up a bunch of posts moaning about people not knowing what to do with themselves without their social media fix. We all had a good chuckle at the ruckus and went about our sightseeing.

On our way back to the station, more shops were open (it had been too early when we started out), and we browsed at a few. We stopped at a pet supply store, where the owner had lots of costumes for dogs. I picked up an adorable Hello Kitty yukata that I plan to use for my working dog Brooke's Halloween costume this fall. (I left one of Brooke's business cards. The shop owner was quite tickled, and gave us a free packet of dog treats.) We also came across a small yarn shop, where I got several balls of yarn called Tree House Berries (color #204). What I liked about this shop was that it had organized cards with swatches of all the different yarns and info about approximately how many balls would be needed for various products (vest, sweater, hat, etc.). I wish I could have bought more, but I was still trying to minimize my shopping due to my minimal luggage. (At least yarn is squishable!)

Friday, March 15
Early the next morning, we checked out of our hotel and made our way to Kyoto--a trip that involved the Harry Potter train. We started out visiting Tenryuuji on the far western side of the city. It turns out there was one sakura tree blooming, so of course visitors were swarming around it taking pictures. I was looking forward to showing my neighbor the bamboo grove at the temple exit, because it had always been a lovely and serene place on my past trips. When we got there, however, we found that the entire grove road was packed with tourists taking selfies. We could barely squeeze through. It had completely lost the cathedral-like feeling of peace that it used to have. (Clearly it had made some kind of global list of "must see sights" in Kyoto, because the tourists were speaking all different languages.) It was a huge disappointment.

We started to wander the back roads, which were mostly empty of people after we left the grove behind, but before we had gotten to the area with all the quaint shops, we realized that the hour was getting late. We had arranged to meet up with gnine and xparrot at 2pm for an event on the complete opposite end of the city, and there was no direct route to get there, so we knew it would take a considerable amount of time. We followed the back roads to the train station (thank you again, GPS!) and took the line back to the central shopping area. We spent some time shopping in the Teramachi covered arcade before continuing on to our destination, Kiyomizudera. (As noted before, all the young ladies wearing yukata are Chinese and Korean tourists.)

Thanks to texting, we were able to meet up with our friends shortly before the event began. (We would never have found them in the crowd otherwise.) We had come to see the Seiryuue parade, in which a group of young men carried a dragon around the temple grounds. Seiryuu (the dragon) is the guardian of the east side of the city, based around this temple. After watching the dragon dance for a while, we headed out of the temple on our way to other sights. It had gotten quite sunny and warm, so we stopped for soft-serve ice cream, a popular treat. I picked the one with a mix of brown sugar syrup and kinako (soy powder), though the "Cutie Strawberry" was tempting.

We wandered several blocks to Yasaka Jinja in Gion. As it turns out, they were also having a celebration that day, involving a pair of shrine maidens performing a traditional dance (while in the front row another shrine maiden makes a not-so-traditional video recording on her cell phone). By the time we finished watching, it was getting late, and we were quite tired from all the walking. (Kiyomizudera is on the top of a tall hill, so it takes some effort to get there.) We caught a cramped bus back to Kyoto Station, where we found they had decorated the stairs with LEDs to create an image that can only be seen when viewed from below. We had supper at a restaurant in the station and then checked into our hotel for the night.

More amazing sights to come next time!

I try to take a trip to Japan once every year or two. This year, the plan was for megoryb and I to meet up with gnine, xparrot, and sara_tanaquil for cherry blossom viewing. The first hitch in the plan occurred way back in fall of 2018, when I was trying to reserve the dates for my trip. You see, annual leave is heavily restricted in my department. We have a random lottery in December for claiming what days we want to reserve the following year, and only one person can reserve any given day. So, for example, if one person wants to take Christmas off, nobody else can take leave that day. We do our best to hash things out beforehand, but some portions of the year are highly contested. As it turns out, the week when cherry blossoms would be in full bloom was one of those times, and I was forced to reserve a block of time slightly earlier than would have been ideal.

The second issue came shortly before the trip, when sara_tanaquil had to cancel her plans due to a family emergency. At that point, our hotel reservations had already been made, a number of which had already passed the refund deadline. I ended up asking my neighbor if she would be interested in joining us and just taking the vacant space in the reservations, and amazingly she was able to do so. She even managed to book a return flight on the same plane as me and megoryb. Unfortunately, she would be taking a different flight there, which threw a slight wrench in our plans upon arrival.

megoryb and I were taking a plane departing SFO with a 2-hour layover in Vancouver before arriving in Tokyo. Vancouver is an awesome airport, and I had made the connection through there several times before. There are no issues with customs inspection; we just walk down a very long hallway to the international departures lobby, so I reasoned we would have plenty of time. In addition, megoryb and I were experimenting with packing extra-light. We each only had a wheeled cabin bag and carryon item for our 10-day trip, so we would not be checking any bags.

Ooooor so we thought. As we boarded the plane, we ended up at the back of the line. The people in front of us boarded with no issues, but the flight attendant stopped us (and the remaining two people with wheeled bags behind us) and said we would have to check our bags because they had run out of overhead space. While annoying, ordinarily this would have been no issue, since checked bags transfer through Vancouver automatically anyway. On this particular day, however, there were extremely high winds, which caused serious flight delays. Our flight was delayed by 95 minutes. By the time we took off, I was concerned that there might not be sufficient time upon our arrival for our bags to be transferred to the next plane. We stressed out over this during the entire flight.

Luckily for us, our pilot was able to make up time en route, and we landed with enough time to make our connection as well as purchase some fast food in the waiting area to tide us over. On the other hand, my neighbor was not so fortunate on her flight. She was flying directly to Japan, but she still had to make a connection in Osaka before joining us in Tokyo. Her flight out of SFO was delayed by a full 2 hours, which caused her to miss her connection. She did manage to get booked onto a new flight (fortunately planes fly between Osaka and Tokyo frequently), but she wasn't able to meet us until nearly 11pm.

We were stuck in the airport arrival lobby for hours, sleepy and starving (because our food had worn off long ago). Most of the shops still open at that time of night didn't have anything for vegetarians (except souvenir candy) and the food vending machines didn't take credit cards. I had taken cash out of an ATM, but (unlike in years gone by) Japanese ATMs now only dispense the equivalent of $100 bills, and the vending machines didn't take those either. By pure chance, however, I had brought along the equivalent of a $10 bill that I had leftover from a previous trip, and I was able to use that to get us some sandwiches and drinks out of a vending machine, which kept us going while we waited (and tried to stay awake). When my neighbor arrived, I quickly got us tickets on the next bus to where we were staying in Ikebukuro, and we crashed at our hotel at about midnight.

Monday, March 11
We knew there would be issues with jet lag on our first day, so our plan was to take it easy with local shopping. We met up with gnine and xparrot. As we set out from our hotel, one of the first sights that greeted us was a fangirl mailbox. For background, the neighborhood of Ikebukuro has long been the location of the main headquarters of the Animate merchandise chain. Over the past 20 years, Animate HQ became surrounded by other shops selling anime and manga-related merchandise. Interestingly, while the more famous neighborhood of Akihabara is the gathering place for male geeks, Ikebukuro specialized in catering mainly to female geeks. This mailbox has been painted to represent the fangirls that visit the area. The sign on the front reads "The Holy Land of Manga and Anime." The picture on the back is a fangirl in cross-dressing butler cosplay having her picture taken by an owl (the symbol of Ikebukuro).

Our next stop was the Bic Camera store next to the train station, where I bought SIM cards for me and megoryb to put in our phones to allow us to stay connected. On our previous trip, last year, we rented portable wifi units (as I did not own a smartphone then). This time, though, we consulted someone at the Verizon store about international plans, and he advised us that the cheapest thing to do would be to buy temporary SIM cards for data and then converse using an internet app (e.g. Whatsapp). We had never done this before, but he told us that it should be no problem, the staff at the store would put the SIM cards in for us. Well, it seems it wasn't quite so easy. I was able to purchase the SIM cards with no trouble, but the staff said that we had to make the swaps ourselves. If we wanted them to change the cards, they would have to charge us. They did, however, loan us a little wire tool that would open the SIM card slot (which I had in my cell phone box, at home, but hadn't known that I needed to bring). I struggled with the instructions, made more difficult by the fact that my phone is Android and megoryb's is an iPhone, so I had to follow two completely different procedures. The others waited patiently while we spent an hour on this process, but we FINALLY got it done.

We began our shopping by taking a train to Akihabara, where we visited a couple of board game stores and a branch of Animate. I was trying to keep my purchases to a minimum (as you may recall, I had no suitcase along on this trip), but I did get a small board game expansion and a couple of manga. We stopped in Shibuya to see the Hachikou statue and the busy street crossing. We went from there to Shinjuku, where we shopped at a sewing/craft store. I bought some yarn and several cute buttons there. We also saw an image of Chibi Godzilla painted on a skyscraper as a tourist attraction. (Only in Japan?)

Speaking of Only in Japan...we came across quite a number of food items that are examples of classic Japanese marketing. In particular, we were at the beginning of sakura season, so everything was pink. In fact, they even had a seasonal pink, sakura-flavored Pepsi at the supermarket. Another item we found was mascarpone-flavored milk tea. The label says, "Drink together with Pocky, and it's tiramisu!?"

On our way home, we stopped at the Andersen bakery in the Ikebukuro train station. It had been recently remodeled, and they installed amazing new checkout devices. After customers put their pastry selections on a tray (as usual), the tray is set on a type of scanner built into the counter. The scanner snaps an image of the items on the tray and sends it to the register. The register recognizes the shape of each item and attaches a value to it, then calculates the total. Customers insert money in the front of the register. The only thing the clerk does is wrap and bag the pastries. It's incredibly fast and convenient, and much easier than trying to scan bar codes at a self-checkout at a grocery store.

That concludes our first full day in Japan. The real sightseeing begins next.