Konnichiwa Kyoto

Konichiwa - Hannah here.

Snow business

As my presence in written form has been absent for many days I am afraid I will not be able to live up to Brendan’s wit and charm! Haha! I will try my best. : )

We have experienced many things in the past few days, but to greet you, I will tell you how the Japanese do it!

In most places we have stayed so far there have been very low doorways forcing you to bow as you walk into the room. Brendan has bumped his head three for four times already! Of course when we look into things a little, there is always a reason. In this case it is a custom. It ensures you will always walk into a room bowing as a sign of respect. In Takayama, a beautiful mountain village, we saw this custom amalgamated into every part of life. The old man on the street nods his head in greeting; the tiny (comparatively)elderly lady at the public bath house (“sento”) who asked me to scrub her back nods her head in thanks; and many more bow/respectful head nod experiences!

We caught the express train yesterday from Takayama to Nagoya (2.5 hours), then bus from Nagoya to Kyoto (2.5 hours). A good friend Yuka who I knew from her 5 month stay in New Zealand, met us at the station in Kyoto. This station may I mention was huge, gargantuan and futuristic to our country bumpkin eyes! We were treated to more ramen (a delicious Japanese noodle drenched in soup and different flavours and meat) and then taken to her friends place in Kyoto suburbia to stay for a couple of days.

We were treated again to tea, snacks, and dinner not soon after. I wish I could remember the
Japanese word for ‘full stomach’ to add in here! Yuka’s friends are a family; Sinji-san, Sayaka-san, and their little son Ryoma-kun. Ryoma is a little ball of ginseng! He is energetic and we communicate in broken Japanese, ‘Obasan’, ‘Onesan’, ‘Sagoy’! General no-sensical conversation that makes complete sense when you’re in it! He is named after a famous Japanese revolutionary who helped open Japan up to the western world. There is a lot of expectation for him..haha!

Sayaka-san is a professional tour guide and showed us around Kyoto yesterday. Despite out rail pass incident, if you look for it there are always things to be thankful for. For us however this blessing was right in front of our face! Not only did Sayaka guide us round the old capital of Japan with all its temples, shrines, traditional geisha and tea ceremony, but also translated every conversation we had with other Japanese speakers and answered all our questions!

Today we were shown around Kyoto University, the second best university in Japan. In Japan
students work their fingers to the bone in order to get into the best universities, but once they are in it is apparently easy to graduate. A very different system to us! We were introduced to some students, including a student with expertise in Haiku poetry. We were also introduced to a Pastor here, Nobu-san who painted us an original calligraphy design. It is a beautiful design in orange and black Chinese characters (Kanji) that mean “Absolute” or “all knowing”, and “faith, and the responsibility that comes along with it”. Japan has only less than one 1% Christianity so much faith is required when you are a minority.

So, that’s all for now. Bren and I are hibernating in our hostel for a bit before hopefully checking out some karaoke later on. We have to see how it is done here in the Karaoke capital of the world!
 

Kombanwa.