On the Monday of my spring break, my mom, Mike and I packed up and headed to the airport early in the morning to get to Japan. We arrived in Tokyo after the 6.5-hour flight in the late afternoon. Altogether, we had about 3 days in Kyoto and a day and a half (kind of) in Tokyo. While in Japan, we learned a ton about the history and culture of this magnificent - and very organized - country, through seeing numerous temples many hundreds of years old, guided tours, self-guided tours (read: getting lost and realizing I am not skilled at map reading), geisha shows (no they are not prostitutes), and lots of interesting cuisine. It is one of my most favorite places ever, but a place where I definitely felt like an outsider. I found that all of Japan has a very strong national identity (to which is tied its long history) and lots of interesting and deeply ingrained customs that function as unwritten rules of conduct for all people (some of which I was lucky enough to actually read about in travel guide books. I guess they aren't unwritten after all). Fortunately for us, we didn't make too many blunders, but as a bunch of westerners who speak no Japanese (well now after last week I can speak a little!), I think we stuck out like ignorant sore thumbs the whole week.
Among the things I learned, my biggest take-away is that there are rules to guide every action a person takes and every stone that is placed in the garden of a temple. These rules help people show respect to each other, to their gods, and to nature; and they have been practiced and upheld as tradition for hundreds of years. As an outsider with no prior experience of these rules, I am sure I pointed my chopsticks at something once, and I definitely forgot and poured my own drink at times (rude!), but all the Japanese people we met were exceedingly warm, gracious, and forgiving of my ignorance and terrible butchery of their language.
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Ladies walked around the streets of Kyoto in kimono. It was interesting to see, although most of the younger women and girls that were wearing them, we were told, were wearing rentals for a fun day to connect to their roots rather than in seriousness. Ladies of a more mature generation could be seen wearing them on their way to formal events such as tea ceremonies.
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There are 10,000 of these orange torii gates weaving up a mountain at the Fushimi Inari shrine. At first, the Shinto god for which the shrine was made inhabited the monument at the very top of the mountain, but after a number of generations, out of consideration for the people, came down the mountain to be more accessible for more people to pray to him.
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A geisha in full costume and makeup at the end of a (very) quick tea ceremony before the geisha dance show we saw one night in Kyoto. The geisha dance was really more of a storytelling dance, in which they acted out scenes from Japan's imperial history (like 1000 years ago kind of history) in full getups. It was fascinating, although at times we (ignorant of Japanese history for the most part) weren't entirely sure what story we were watching.
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Eating in Japan, especially in Kyoto, was definitely an adventure. In the first place, nary a sign was written in English or even with English letters; so if we wanted to find a place recommended by our tour books we just had to try to follow our maps (again, something that proved exceedingly difficult for me) and walk into the restaurant that seemed to be in the right place. We relied heavily on pictures in menus, and this one time, we were definitely misled by a photo. Mike thought he was ordering a fish soup that had a nice middle-of-the-fish filet in it. Upon its arrival at our table, however, he realized it was just two heads and two tails. His first comment was, "hmm, well, I see some eyes looking at me." We had a good long laugh at our cultural awkwardness over that fish head soup. After all was said and done, he did manage to pick it apart and find some pretty good fish meat inside those fish heads. For the record, he did not eat the eyeballs.
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At Shinto (the native religion of Japan) shrines, there was a place where people could purchase wooden "horse images" (because in the past they used to sacrifice a horse in hopes that their prayers would come true, but that was very expensive for people, so the tradition became a horse image instead) and write their wishes on them. Most people wished for success in business, the health of their family, cures from illnesses, and the like. The white papers tied to the bottom of the dedication are bad fortunes that people received and left there so they would not come true.
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On our last day together in Japan, we took a breezy (read: very chilly) walking tour of Tokyo with an awesome and very knowledgeable guide. Among the places she took us was this: the entrance to the Imperial palace where the emperor and his wife still live. Visitors are not allowed inside the gates, but it was still pretty cool to see the entrance. It was an unforgettable trip, Mom and Mike! Thanks for everything!