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The Salaryman in his Native Habitat
Last day in Japan! Tomorrow we get up at the crack of dawn to catch a shinkansen to Tokyo, then the Narita Express, then fly out at about 4PM.
Today we decided to forgo flowing somen noodles and eating our way through Osaka in favor of finding the Kyoto Handicrafts Center and the Seimei Shrine. After sharing a small bottle of sake last night - bought at the conbini - and watching two episodes of Mushishi, we both crashed and crashed hard.
We forgot to tell you that the night before, Rachel bought a box of sake. Not as in the traditional square-shaped cups you drink out of, but as a juice box of sake. For 105 yen. She reports it tasted like 105 yen sake. But we got a couple of pictures of her imitating Rukia.
Since I hadn't had a chance to look for weaving-related things for my mother, or other sorts of handicraft-related things, we went to the Kyoto Handicrafts center, which had been described as a seven-story mall of crafts. Er, well. The stuff was a decent price, but it was seriously aimed at the tourist market, and despite the presence of the occasional craftsman working at his craft, utterly lacked the hand-produced ambience I was looking for, instead being redolent of mass production. I bought a couple of books - the Kodansha bilingual version of volume 2 of the manga of The Tale of Genji, since I'd bought volume 1 in Tokyo, and a book on Osamu Tezuka - and a small hatpin, and then we left.
We went back to the inn we're staying at and collected things to ship home, made it to the post office to struggle with getting across the concepts of "we want to buy boxes of this size, not that size," and then caught the bus for the Seimei Shrine.
For those of you who haven't seen the movie Onmyouji, or any of a number of anime he appears in, or who don't know about the historical figure, Abe no Seimei is a person who lived about a thousand years ago. He was an onmyouji - magician/shaman/whatever - who lived for an unusually long time and who got a lot of stories collected about him, like the English magician John Dee. He's a well-known figure in Japanese folklore, and is present in lots of media: manga, anime, books, movies, etc. (and is played by an awesome Noh actor, Nomura Mansai, in the recent movies. He's the guy in my icon killing you with his brain.)
There's a shrine to Seimei in Kyoto, a small one, but we went anyway. There's a big bronze peach you can touch to leave your troubles behind, and a big, old camphor tree that's meant to give you luck in love. It was, overall, pretty nifty.
Afterwards we found a small weaving shop nearby and went in, to find the proprieter weaving. He spoke English and said there used to be a big tie factory there that made silk ties. I think he said he used to work there, then stayed on in the area as a handweaver after it closed down. He weaves everything in the shop and his wife sews it up. He made us tea - green tea mixed with regular tea, which he said promotes health (I drank all of mine, as I'm coming down with a cold right now) and talked with us a bit. Then we left.
Rachel's had a naruto-tastic day, as she discovered a new set of Naruto timeskip figurines that have just been released, bought all nine that were available in the conbini, and managed to get all 8 of the figures in the series. And then after the weaving shop, we found a small kid-stuff shop and she found two Naruto coloring books.
We still haven't found Rukia figurines from the Bleach: The Styling series that we've both been collecting. Oh well.
Dinner in the same place we had lunch: a small restaurant near the station that Rachel's eaten at before. For dinner we had shochu with plum, and a bunch of small dishes, the only one of which I particularly remember, due to the shochu, being (ok, those of you who like horsies need to stop reading, now): horse. Served raw, in small well-marbled slices, ice-cold and just out of the freezer, it melts in your mouth. Good stuff. :)
The title of the post refers to everyone else in the place, who were all salarymen drinking large amounts of sake, except for one salarywoman, who was drinking large amounts of beer.
And then to the manga cafe, and to post this.
Something I keep forgetting to blog: in buses, trains, and the subway, the priority seats are indicated by signs with simplified silhouettes of the sorts of people who need the seats: elderly people with canes, pregnant women, people with small children, people with casts on their legs and crutches. Except in Nagoya, where there's one more silhouette added: that of a person with a heart shape in his/her chest area. We think it's very sweet that Nagoya allows priority seating for people in love.
The next time I blog - or even read email, I think - I'll probably be back in the States. Eeee!
Today we decided to forgo flowing somen noodles and eating our way through Osaka in favor of finding the Kyoto Handicrafts Center and the Seimei Shrine. After sharing a small bottle of sake last night - bought at the conbini - and watching two episodes of Mushishi, we both crashed and crashed hard.
We forgot to tell you that the night before, Rachel bought a box of sake. Not as in the traditional square-shaped cups you drink out of, but as a juice box of sake. For 105 yen. She reports it tasted like 105 yen sake. But we got a couple of pictures of her imitating Rukia.
Since I hadn't had a chance to look for weaving-related things for my mother, or other sorts of handicraft-related things, we went to the Kyoto Handicrafts center, which had been described as a seven-story mall of crafts. Er, well. The stuff was a decent price, but it was seriously aimed at the tourist market, and despite the presence of the occasional craftsman working at his craft, utterly lacked the hand-produced ambience I was looking for, instead being redolent of mass production. I bought a couple of books - the Kodansha bilingual version of volume 2 of the manga of The Tale of Genji, since I'd bought volume 1 in Tokyo, and a book on Osamu Tezuka - and a small hatpin, and then we left.
We went back to the inn we're staying at and collected things to ship home, made it to the post office to struggle with getting across the concepts of "we want to buy boxes of this size, not that size," and then caught the bus for the Seimei Shrine.
For those of you who haven't seen the movie Onmyouji, or any of a number of anime he appears in, or who don't know about the historical figure, Abe no Seimei is a person who lived about a thousand years ago. He was an onmyouji - magician/shaman/whatever - who lived for an unusually long time and who got a lot of stories collected about him, like the English magician John Dee. He's a well-known figure in Japanese folklore, and is present in lots of media: manga, anime, books, movies, etc. (and is played by an awesome Noh actor, Nomura Mansai, in the recent movies. He's the guy in my icon killing you with his brain.)
There's a shrine to Seimei in Kyoto, a small one, but we went anyway. There's a big bronze peach you can touch to leave your troubles behind, and a big, old camphor tree that's meant to give you luck in love. It was, overall, pretty nifty.
Afterwards we found a small weaving shop nearby and went in, to find the proprieter weaving. He spoke English and said there used to be a big tie factory there that made silk ties. I think he said he used to work there, then stayed on in the area as a handweaver after it closed down. He weaves everything in the shop and his wife sews it up. He made us tea - green tea mixed with regular tea, which he said promotes health (I drank all of mine, as I'm coming down with a cold right now) and talked with us a bit. Then we left.
Rachel's had a naruto-tastic day, as she discovered a new set of Naruto timeskip figurines that have just been released, bought all nine that were available in the conbini, and managed to get all 8 of the figures in the series. And then after the weaving shop, we found a small kid-stuff shop and she found two Naruto coloring books.
We still haven't found Rukia figurines from the Bleach: The Styling series that we've both been collecting. Oh well.
Dinner in the same place we had lunch: a small restaurant near the station that Rachel's eaten at before. For dinner we had shochu with plum, and a bunch of small dishes, the only one of which I particularly remember, due to the shochu, being (ok, those of you who like horsies need to stop reading, now): horse. Served raw, in small well-marbled slices, ice-cold and just out of the freezer, it melts in your mouth. Good stuff. :)
The title of the post refers to everyone else in the place, who were all salarymen drinking large amounts of sake, except for one salarywoman, who was drinking large amounts of beer.
And then to the manga cafe, and to post this.
Something I keep forgetting to blog: in buses, trains, and the subway, the priority seats are indicated by signs with simplified silhouettes of the sorts of people who need the seats: elderly people with canes, pregnant women, people with small children, people with casts on their legs and crutches. Except in Nagoya, where there's one more silhouette added: that of a person with a heart shape in his/her chest area. We think it's very sweet that Nagoya allows priority seating for people in love.
The next time I blog - or even read email, I think - I'll probably be back in the States. Eeee!
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bwah-ha-ha がいぎん central! We hit there on Saturday, and yeah, it was pretty funny. Most of the other people on the tour - the ones we referred to as the Thundering Horde - enjoyed it, tho'. Personally, I enjoyed the internet cafe on the top floor and chatting with the woman who made custom はんご (same floor), and ended up having her make one for me.
Getting back is kind of, um, yeah, Eeee! is pretty much the right word.
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Great icon!
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Have a safe trip back! Though I have been horribly jealous, I'm utterly delighted you have a good time.