Japan Trip Installment III

  “What?  We have to have the exact change?”

     Our trip to Kyoto was off to a not-so-good start.  It began with our hotel accommodations.  We thought we had two nights arranged for, but not the first night. 

     After three visits to the information room at the railroad station and after losing 100 yen to the phone company who took her money without providing any service, the Goodwife managed to raise the hotel on the phone.  No, they had no vacancies for that night.

     A fourth visit got us registered in a very nice hotel across the street from the bus and train station.  We had time enough to do a little rubber necking.  There was a full moon ceremony going on at one of the many shrines.  We could ride the bus.  It wouldn’t pay to buy a bus pass so late in the day, the young lady at the desk explained.  Just pay the bus fare for this trip.

      So we got on the bus.  Then we heard in Japanese and English that the driver had no change.  We must have the correct fare, 230 yen apiece.  We had about 300 yen and some 10,000-yen notes.  Not get change for that?  What to do?

    The Goodwife turned to some girls in the seats behind us.  Did they have change for 10,000 yen.  They both looked, but they didn’t have near enough.  Ask the bus driver, they both said.  So the Good wife worked her way to the front of the bus.

     The driver told her to get change when she got off the bus and put in double on the return trip.  (You pay when you get off.)  We began to discuss where we could find a place to get a bill changed.

     This man came up from behind us with a hand full of bills.  He had change he said.  The Good wife dug in her purse and pulled out the 10,000.  He waved her off.  Wait until he counted.  So he counted out nine 1000-yen notes and a hand full of change.  That done, he took her bill.

     We still didn’t have the correct change.  She did have a 500-yen coin.  That would be 40 more yen than necessary, but that didn’t amount to much, not compared to 10,000.  She put the 500 coin in the slot and we got off, but the driver yelled at us, called us back, insisted we take the 40 yen.  He had that much change, anyway.

      People went out of their way to help us wherever we went.  We teamed up with a couple from France and a girl from Korea when we got off the bus.  With English and Japanese, we were able to communicate and find our way from bus stop to temple.

     It was a beautiful night.  The full moon took its time coming up over a mountain and some trees.  The ceremony was all Greek to me, not understanding the language of the ceremony and the songs.  After a couple hours of ancient string and flute music, we grew weary and had to leave before the dancing, what the Goodwife wanted to see, began.

     The next day, we loaded up on the bus and found our way to our hotel.  When we checked in, we found out we had been scheduled to be there the night before.  Why didn’t they tell us that when we called from the train station?  Oh well.

             Kyoto gave us rain, so we bought umbrellas and a five-hour bus tour that took us to three shrines or temples.  Looking for a place to eat that night produced a highlight of our trip.  We got to know the neighborhood as we wandered around looking for the laundromat the hotel manager sent us to.  We passed a place advertising itself as a pub, with pub food.

       After a long day of touring, I was ready for a beer and something to eat.  How disappointed I was to discover that the pub served only pizza and steak.  We had eaten at a sushi place the night before.  Next to the sushi place was a place called the Colorado Café.  We wandered wearily back to that area.

     All these places were small, seating maybe a dozen customers.  The Colorado Café was closed.  There was another bar next door.  We decided to try it. 

     The menu listed such delicacies as Cod entrails.  We opted for rice balls while we perused the menu further.  One tempting dish was Kim Chee chicken breast.  If it has Kim Chee (fermented cabbage or other vegetables such as radish or cucumbers) in it, it can’t be all that bad.

    It was delicious.  We got the recipe.  Grilled chicken breast with a sauce of Kim Chee, mayonnaise, soy sauce, and grated cheese.  Maybe you had to be there.  Maybe I was really hungry.  We’re going to try the recipe ourselves .       

     From Kyoto we went to Takayama where we were supposed to see a traditional festival with a big parade of shrines on wheels or “floats”.  It’s a bit like the rose parade, folks spending a lot of time getting floats ready for the parade. 

     Unfortunately, the tour director got the dates wrong.  We left on the day the festival began.  We missed the parade.

     We did get to see some of the “floats”.  A museum housed four old ones.  We teamed up with a Japanese couple who provide commodities to school lunchrooms.  They had a day off and came to see the festival.

     Together we found the museum, watched a movie with subtitles about the festival and the wheeled shrines.  A sideshow at the museum featured the puppets and puppeteers who appear on the floats.

     The puppets dance and do acrobatics.  A behind-the-scenes look at puppet and puppeteer was really interesting.  They rolled out a portable stage with the puppet on top of it.  They rolled back the curtain and we could see the puppeteer at work.  The puppet was an artist that started with a blank slate of poster board-like material.

 

      A Frenchman sitting beside us in the front row was awarded the puppet’s work of art.  (I got to drink a cup of tea served by a windup robot doll on wheels.)   Impressive that the gal could do what she did using rods to run the puppet.

 

     Our partners insisted we eat lunch with them.  Tooru wanted beef.  We ate where we grilled thinly-sliced beef and vegetables at our table.  After our lunch together, we went on a wild goose chase.  Tooru had bought an antique chest of some kind.  He couldn’t remember where he bought it.

     We trailed in his wake as he searched for the antique shop.  We finally found it.  There we said our goodbyes, but we were still looking at the antique shop wares when Tooru reappeared and insisted we come have a sort of dessert with them.  It was a rice cake, mochi, toasted in a waffle iron to make it a bit crunchy. 

      It was good, but we were scheduled for a Japanese dinner at our hotel at 6 p.m.  We weren’t terribly hungry at 6 p.m.

     Our supper was served in our room at the low table.  We sat on the floor.  Aching joints took some of the pleasure out of our meal. 

     Outside our window at the traditional ancient hotel was a lean-to roof about a foot below the window.  A cat appeared.  The hotel workers said it was a homeless cat that had adopted the hotel.  The cat was fat.

    Not being terribly hungry, the sashimi, raw fish, didn’t appeal to me.  I didn’t want to insult the chef.  The cat sat patiently on the roof.  He knew what was coming.  He had obviously done this before.  Imagine, a gourmet homeless cat.