Today I spent the entire day in Kyoto with the PTA of my school. A long time ago the principal invited me to come along, and at the time I had plans to go to Hiroshima. As it turned out, there were so many things going on this weekend that I postponed the Hiroshima trip, so today I got aboard a bus at 7 a.m. and we shipped off to Kyoto.
I met the PTA members here and there on the three hour bus ride. The PTA is all women, except for the president, who is a man. The teacher I talked to spoke about that like it was a natural thing – there might be a rule about that. There was nobody on this trip that spoke any English, so it was up to me to speak Japanese. It actually worked out pretty well – I was able to communicate for the most part. More complex things had to be skipped over, but I could handle the basics, and every once in a while, someone would come up with a word in English to bail me out.
The trip was organized by a tour operator, so they sent a bus and a guide, and the experience with the guide was kind of strange. Everything was organized down to the minute, and the guide spoke almost constantly on the intercom on the long drive to Kyoto, so I obviously didn’t get a lot out of that.
We made a bathroom stop on the way to Kyoto, and then we traveled up into the mountains north of Kyoto until we reached a major river. There was a boating station, and the tour had organized a boat trip into Kyoto itself. The boats carried around 25 people, and there were three employees handling the steering, rowing, etc. That turned out to be a good thing, because the rapids were actually pretty good. I got a little wet, but not too bad, and all the PTA members were shrieking each time we went through some rapids, which was very amusing.
I took lots of pictures on the way, and the two hour boat ride went very quickly. Towards the end a boat pulled up along side of us, attached itself, and sold us snacks, beer, sodas, everything. It was like 7-11 on a boat. I couldn’t help thinking of a scene from The Fifth Element, when Korben Dallas gets noodles from his apartment window.
Once we arrived in Kyoto, we walked to one of the major temples in the area, and ate in a restaurant on the property. Once again it was traditional Japanese style, so I was on my knees for most of the meal. My legs are pretty strong from hiking, but staying on your knees for that long is pretty painful. The people I was with looked like they could have kept it up until Christmas, but I had to sit indian-style in the end. I wasn’t sure if that was OK, but later on I saw someone at another table doing the same thing, so I felt better.
After a big lunch with lots of beer, tea, and unidentified (but delicious) food, we split up into small groups and wandered around that area of Kyoto. I saw a bunch of temples that I hadn’t seen before, and had a great time taking pictures and seeing the sights.
One thing I couldn’t figure out was an extra three hours in our schedule that was pretty much free. So far the tour company had been totally exact on time, so it seemed weird that they would have three hours of slop time in there. It turned out that the time was dedicated to a fascinating phenomenon called omiyage.
Omiyage means “souveneir” in Japanese – it is buying things to take home to your friends, co-workers, and family to show them where you were. As for me, if I’m out somewhere and I see something especially interesting, I’ll pick it up, but I’m not the kind of guy to go to Disneyland and buy personalized snow globes for everyone I know.
Here in Japan, the concept of omiyage is so strong that they… well, they dedicate three hours of your day to picking it up. I smelled a rat when the bus took us to a specific shop to pick up omiyage – but nobody else said anything – maybe kickbacks are normal around here. I went into the store, and I’ll be damned if I could identify one product that they sold. All the items were food items, but other than that, I was clueless. I didn’t buy anything there – one, it was way too expensive, and two, I didn’t know what the heck it was.
After that store we went to another area that had more stores, and shopped there for a while. People from my group spent almost a hundred dollars on various omiyage. I couldn’t believe it.
Anyway, we finally hit the road, with the very energetic tour guide speaking frantically, telling jokes and generally amusing the people in the front of the bus. On the way home they put in a movie to watch – The Perfect Storm, which was dubbed in Japanese, so that was very interesting. I guess we’ve dubbed enough of their movies that they certainly have the right to dub some of ours. We were approaching our destination, and they had to cut off the movie about fifteen minutes before it finished. The tour guide apologized, and then proceeded to tell everyone what they missed and gave a blow-by-blow account of the ending. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that – would you want to know the ending? Would you want to rent it? I already have seen the movie, so I knew already, but still – kind of weird.
Last night at the yakitori place I had told the master that I might drop by and look in on the Hanshin Tigers – they are playing the first game of the Japanese World Series. As I sat down, the part time girl came by and brought me a beer, and I did a double take – she was wearing makeup! I looked at the master and he just shrugged, so I don’t know what it’s about, but I’m hoping it’s not me. The game was tied when I left about an hour later, and so I finally dragged my tired body into the apartment, and I’m gearing up for another big day tomorrow. I’m helping Mr. Hayashi do a standardized English test – I’m not sure what it entails, but it sounds like I’ll be working for at least a half day tomorrow starting at eight in the morning. I’m off to bed early tonight!
