5/24/04
stuff from day 2 of touring kyoto:
set lunches
before heading out to go check out temples, we stopped in a small restaurant to get some food. the waitress didnt speak english. the menu didnt have pictures. uh-oh. we noticed that they had set lunches. so we ordered lunch A, lunch B, and lunch C not having any clue what we would be getting. even after we got our food, we still werent exactly sure what we had all gotten. there were some huge udon noodles w/ a raw egg on top. there were cold noodles in a cold broth. there was rice with an unknow pink crumbly substance on top. and there was also rice w/ a strange white gravy-like sauce. the food was all reasonably good though. poor daniel though, i think he’s getting more and more scared as the days go on.
buses and orderliness
this is the only country ever where everyone lines up for the buses perfectly in a single file line. in most places people just kind of gather around and wait for buses with some people sitting, others standing, and everyone crowds around when the bus arrives. not here. here, even if the bus is still like 10 minutes away, everyone will stand in a line and wait one after the other. it’s almost eerie how orderly people are here. for instance, no one jaywalks. nobody!! everyone only crosses the street at crosswalks and waits patiently for the light to change to green each time. people here definitely are not big on breaking *any* rules. also, one other funny thing about the crosswalks: a lot of them play music when the light turns green. unlike the regular beeping that we have back home, here they actually will play a tune.
glow in the dark squid
our first day in japan we saw this tv show about squid that glow in the dark. the show had fisherman pulling in huge nets full of these things and they all had little blue glowy things. tonight, in the hopes of finding some food daniel wouldnt be too afraid of, we went to italian for dinner. unluckily for daniel, all the italian food had a japanese edge to it. doh! it was really good though!! anyways, one of the pasta dishes we got had the little “firefly squid” in it. of course they dont glow once they are cooked, but it was still cool that we tried glowing squid!
pachinko
there’s this game here called pachinko and it’s crazy popular. we see it advertised all over the place and it’s played in huge buildings lit up with neon signs and bright lights all over. we’ve been wondering about this stuff for a while, so today we wandered into a pachinko place. it’s kind of casino-like and as you walk in it’s this crazy barrage of flashing lights, blasting music, ringing machines, and other insanity. even w/ only like 3 customers, this place felt like it was all about nonstop action. we tried to ask the people working there how to play, but they didnt speak english, so we sat down at a machine and tried to figure it out. apparently, you put in 10 dollars (ouch!) and then it gives you a ton of these tiny little metal balls. you rotate this knob and the little balls get shot through the machine, pinball style and then bounce all over. your aim is to try to get as many into this little slot… at least i think that’s the aim. it’s really hard, or maybe i was doing it totally wrong, but only a couple minutes later, i was out of balls. damn. i looked around me and other people had literally stacks and stacks of large buckets of these balls. how did they get so good!!! at one point, while walking through the place, i accidentally stepped on someones bucket.. and by some insane miracle, i didn’t send all 1,000 little balls in it flying through the room. phew!!
temples and castles
we saw this really cool castle in the middle of kyoto. one of the interesting things about it was that it had “nightingale floors”. the floors were intentially made so every step you took on them made a creaking sound. this is so if enemies tried to sneak into the castle, everyone would hear them. we also went to go check out the golden pavilion. this was a really beautiful temple next to a pond. the way the temple reflected in the pond was really cool, and the gardens surrounding it were nice too.
Nijo-jo castle
Golden Pavillion
Golden Pavillion
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