Eric's Wacky Tales

Arashiyama

Today, i moved back to my original guest house, jhoppers which is located 10 min south of the station. Hopefully,ill get a little more sleep...

Arashiyama is an area in west Kyoto that is a little north of the Katsura Imperial Villa. You have to make prior reservations for the villa, so i had to make mine at 3 today cuz everything else was full. So i took the time to explore Arashiyama a little, checking out the Tenryuji temple which is known for its nice zen garden. Ran into a whole lotta Taiwanese tourists there (cuz i could partly understand what they were saying). The garden was fairly nice, although i didnt quite understand the zen aspect of it (i always thing of sand gardens for somereason), but it was a nice and big garden. 1 pictures worth.

Slightly more interesting (and free) was the area surrounding the temple. There were trails winding throughout the area through bamboo forests, past traditional buildings, and then finally along the Hozu river. They actually have a train line that runs along the river called the "romatic train sagano line". So i hiked along the river for some time and then realized a little late that the villa was a train ride +20 min walk away! So i booked it to the train station, and arrove at the station, 10 min before the tour started (ie still needing the 20 min walk...) So i took a cab for 640 yen who got me there in time. Taking a cab was sorta interesting; it being my first time. They control the passenger side door by remote control so you neither need to open nor close the door (i still tried to out of habit). The cab driver also spoke and read no english, so even when i pointed to the destination on my map given to me by the imperial villa people, he still had no clue where i wanted to go! Luckily, the taxi stand operator dude knew what i was saying.

Katsura Villa was contructed by the son of the emperor of the time and unlike the imperial palace which had burned down 8 times(!), the villa is nearly in its original form.
The villa consists of a garden (naturally), many tea pavillions, and the main residence. Overall pretty nice, especially considering the admission price: free!

On my way back via bus, i met a Danish lady in her 60s who was also trying to get back. Amazingly (cuz shes danish!) she was sort of lost and almost waited at the wrong bus stop (the one coming from the station....). So, from her i learned that she is a Danish teacher to foreign immigrants into Denmark, mostly from Pakistan. Apparently Denmark has had quite a few immigration problems with refugees and is now tightening the borders a bit.

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So last night i got the brunt of the "hey, you got a new governor" blab. There were 2 newly arrived Germans, a Scotsman and a new Canadian that arrived the night before. So this was my first experience with the whole America bashing by the Canadians. The guy was relatively young at 21 yrs old but surprisingly, he was from Vancouver. Anywho, he was actually quite level headed and did concede that the canadians were basically totally reliant on the US...then he want onto bashing the Quebec province (French elitests apparently). Overall, pretty entertaining. I learned that ontop of the US being the target of so many jokes/critisicms (cuz theyre such a huge target in general, not cuz of Bush or now, Gropinator), Californians are thought of as being rather 'special'. I helped clarify, at least, the difference between Los Angeles and the rest of Calfiornia...
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Data point in the log:

So the 2 germans, the scotsman, the canadian and i were drinking beer. I had 1.5L (500ml cans), the Canadian had about the same, the Germans had 2.5-3L and the Scotsman had 3L....though the Scotsman started a lot later (he bought 2.5 to start!).

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I still cant get over how soo many people in the Uno house are either 1) going to work in Japan or 2) transiting to other countries for severl months more of travel.

I found out the American girl from Boston U, whose traveling by herself btw, is only 19. And people were worried about me...

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Nother tidbit about Denmark. They give graduating high school student cheap travel loans (just like student loans) which is why you find so many young danes traveling around...
In the end, i think they maybe travel TOO much...either that or they get high TOO much. Christiana (sp?) is the name of an island in the middle of Copenhagen where its implicitly allowed to buy and smoke. Reclaimed from the Navy, apparently the older folk want to make it into a golf course, but the younger folk are holding out.

Posted by eric at October 9, 2003 02:00 AM