(Not so) alone in Kyoto

I arrived in Kyoto on the shinkansen from Okayama. I had rearranged my tickets and arrived in town earlier than I had planned. At the ryokan there was no one to meet me. While I waited I called my friend from a payphone, dropping 100 yen coins in by the handful. She said she was free that night and we made arrangements to meet. She said she'd find me at the hotel.

I spent the afternoon walking around the area near my ryokan. I had booked a place near the Kawaramachi street and the river. The main shopping area was a few minutes walk north, and the Gion was just to the west. I wandered the old quarter of Gion and made my way to the Yasaka shrine, passing the Minamaza kabuki theater and various shops along the way. I remembered the last time I had come, almost exactly a year to the day.

As the hour of my appointment drew near, I went back to the ryokan to bathe. The guidebook had remarked upon its wooden bath and I was eager to try it out. Unfortunately, I was too early for a bath and had to settle for a shower.

My friend walked with me by the canal in search of a restaurant. When we finally found it, we discovered it was under renovation. Later, she would tell me that the inside of the restaurant looked like the bath house in Spirited Away and I lamented the fact that it was closed. We walked along the street and chose a pan-Asian restaurant overlooking the river. The waiter sat us and we ordered a set meal.

I joked that the restaurant was apropos since we were pan-Asian ourselves. She was Japanese, living in Japan, and I was Chinese-American living in New York having just arrived from Taiwan. The food was tasty, each dish originating from a different Asian country, but with a Japanese spin. We chatted and caught each other up on our lives. I mentioned that I had visited Kurashiki and she told me her husband was from near there. Okayama to be specific. She told me that the Okayama accent was harsher than the Kyoto one and joked that she felt he was always yelling at her. I had met her sister in New York and asked how she was. She told me that I'd have the chance to ask her myself at dinner a few days later.

After dinner we went to an Irish bar near the Pontocho-dori. The bar was sparsely populated and we drank our beers in quiet surroundings. Soon, my friend had to leave to attend to her kids. We made tentative plans for dinner on the day after and I promised to call to confirm.

The next day broke clearly and I decided on a whim to tour some temples in the northeastern part of the city. I bought a bus pass and took off for Kinkaku-ji. Almost the entire temple is covered in gold leaf, the temple gleams as it rests above a small pond. The temple was inundated with school groups and I enjoyed watching the schoolchildren take photos of each other almost as much as I enjoyed the temple itself. I had remembered Hello Kitty charms being sold at one of the stands, and was happy to find they were still being sold there. I bought a few and continued on to the zen temple of Ryoan-ji to visit the rock garden.

By the time I left Ryoan-ji it was getting on towards noon. I went to visit my friend and her sister at work to make plans for dinner the next night. We decided to meet at the Yakasa shrine and then I went to buy tickets to that evening's kabuki performance.

At the theater, I was surprised to find that the show started at 4.20pm. I asked if there were any later show and was told that the 4.20 show ended at 10.20. I shrugged and bought a ticket near the last row. I went home to bathe and then returned to the theater for the performance.

The audience was more subdued in the beginning than I had expected, but as the night wore on they became more and more vocal, calling out their favorite actors' names. At the intermission, I found I was one of the few people who had forgot to bring a bento box. Almost everyone brought a plastic bag out from under their seat and dug into their dinner. I walked around the theatre looking for food. By the time I made it to most counters, the selection was limited.

Back in the theater, I quickly ate my sushi. I had wasted most of the intermissions debating over bento boxes, and halfway throgh my meal the lights dimmed. I sat with my dinner half-finished, entranced by the final play of the evening.
Posted by eku at December 10, 2007 6:35 PM