Guest House Illias

OK, Last day I left off with my first breakfast in Kyoto. When we were done with that we had a mission to find the apartment or "Guest House" that we reserved in advance. Most of the guest houses we found online were very expensive but one stuck out as being a significantly lower price than all the rest. Honestly, we didn't care if we were in a roach infested motel for the two weeks. The price was right and I'll explain why it was necessary. The deal was great. It cost the both of us 29000 Yen (¥) which is about $340 Canadian. We needed a base of operations from which we could do everything we needed to do. Perhaps, two weeks was too short to do everything but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Before I say what we found. Let me explain what the dilemma was.

In order to get a job many steps need to be done before hand. First of all, all foreigners (Gaigin) must apply for an Alien Registration Card (The application for such a card was entirely in Japanese and no one at the office spoke English..Fun). In order to get the Alien Registration Card you needed an address that they can send it to. In order to get a place to stay you needed a bank account, which of course you needed an Alien Registration Card to get. If you want me to make it even more complicated, to get a place to stay is nearly impossible without a cell phone and you need a bank account to get that. And please keep in mind once again that the cell phone reps, bank tellers and most people who will rent out appartments DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH. Once again, Neither I nor Helene speak Japanese, at least not enough to get anything we needed done properly.

So what to do in this screwed up world of contradictions, we rented an apartment (Guest House Illias) and immediately went to get our Alien Registration Card using our temporary address. Unfortunately, we arrived on Silver Week, which is a national holiday week (sort of, only 3 days.). It turns out that this week two holidays fell on the Japanese calender fell one day apart from each other and the government decided to give the people the day in between off as well. This only happens once every 8 years, I think. They called it Silver Week because every year they do have a national week off, which is called Golden Week. The name definitely keeps up with the Asian stereotypes.

Thus, we couldn't get anything done in any manner until the following Thursday September 24th. This was of course good and bad. Good since we could do some exploring and bad because we couldn't do anything without those damn cards.

Alright, I think I've digressed enough. What did the apartment look like? We got a ride from a really nice Japanese man from our hostel to the guest house. It was located in the Gion neighborhood. Now we didn't actually realise what kind of neighborhood Gion was until about 3 days later. It turns out Gion is the center of Kyoto for Bars, Clubs, Restaurants and Adult Entertainment. You wouldn't be able to tell by looking at it, at least not at first. Not to say it was loud or anything like that. Surprisingly it was very quiet. Everything was very well contained indoors. The point is, we were in the center of Kyoto, well within walking distance of most things cool.

The apartment was nestled on the 5th floor of a very small building. It was one of two apartments on this floor. We didn't have a shower. That was located on the 7th floor and honestly I'm not sure how hygienic it was. I don't have a picture of it, so I'll leave that to the imagination. The first thing that we noticed about our apartment was the smell. It came from the toilet area. Yeah, just by looking at the picture on the right you can see the problem. I have no idea what kind of balancing act I was suppose to use with the traditional toilet, but for me it was fine because a western style toilet was available on the 7th floor. Helene on the other hand could not run upstairs every time she had to pee. Plus entering this thing was just an awful experience not only because of the smell but the sound of the fan was so loud that it would wake up anyone in the next room. You would think that the fan worked well because of how loud it was. It didn't.

The layout of the place was funny. Couches on the side. A bed and a couch that turned into a bed. Both were too short for me, my legs stuck out. In addition it had, a small sink and a gas element with no gas. We eventually called them (once we figured out how the phones worked) and complained that the gas didn't work on the stove but that ended up going nowhere. The gas also heated the hot water, so we didn't have that either (eventually we called and complained that the shower had no hot water either and they fixed that). The nice man that drove us to the apartment offered us some instant coffee. How we were suppose to make it was a question that I asked everyday. I suppose we were suppose to use the microwave to heat the water but that never made good coffee (still not sure how healthy that was). We also had a bar fridge.

I before I get to the punchline of this story I wanted to say one more thing about this apartment. We didn't have a key to it. To both the apartment and the shower we had a combination lock. There was a lock on the door with a combination of 4 letters in order to get into the apartment. I've seen that on bikes but doors?

I've mentioned that we were in the bar district. There were more bars per square inch then I've ever seen before. If you look at the pictures above you'll see that there are a lot of signs everywhere. How can you fit so many bars into such a small area. Well I'm not sure of the liqueur laws in this country but it seems that anyone could open a their own bar and sell booze to anyone willing to buy it. The areas are small and cozy. Smoking is allowed indoors. I suppose a place where you can show up with your buddies and take over for the night. Most bars in this area turned out to only hold about 20 people. Some of these bars are also hostess bars. Which I will write about once I get more info about it. I think you pay girls to flirt with you while you drink. But I'm not sure.

Finally the end of the story where all the clues that I've laid out earlier all culminate into one final joke. If you look at this picture what you will see is a place called BABES on the 5th floor. I'm pretty sure that the apartment across from us was not a bar because I saw a single mom coming out of there a few times and heard a kid in the corridor. So, I pritty sure that our place was BABES. Once we figured this out we were a little more cautious about locking the doors. Who knows what kind of business occurred there and what kind of clientele it had. If you look at this picture below it is the exact mirror image of what the apartment looked like.
The bed was uncomfortable. It smelt really bad. We couldn't cook anything and the fridge could barley hold breakfast for the following day. No we didn't have wireless. We survived off Cup of Noodle soup and easily microwaveable stuff. Eventually we found hard boiled eggs in the store. This avoided having fried food at the start of the day. My stomach is still complaining from that experience. It was fun because we had to work with what we had. Plus, the microwave wouldn't beep when it was done it would sing a little song. I would also like to add that there was a sign in the shower room that warned users not to shower while doing laundry because "fear of the burn". Yes we had a laundry machine but we had nowhere to dry our clothes nor could we realise how to use the damn things since all the buttons were in Japanese.

One last thing which is up for conversation is this last picture which I took outside our window. I would love to hear what you think it means.
We ended up extending our lovely stay in this apartment for an extra 4 days.

Daichi for Beatbox Battle Wildcard

A friend of mine showed me this. When he starts scratching with his voice that gets me every time.

First Arrival and the following days

Finally got the Internet up and running, so, now I can fill in all the details that I've missed up to now. I realise now that I haven`t said much about my actual experience here.

Today is day 22 and what I've experienced the last three weeks has been exciting and horrible in many ways.

Honestly, I don't remember the last time that I was this emotionally and physically exhausted. What began as a challenge to find a job, a place to stay, a cell phone and a bank account ended up merging together to form a impact on my senses. Did I mention that no one here speaks English.

But as usual I'm getting ahead of myself. So, we arrived. the night before was filled with passing in and out of consciousness. The next day we got up at 6:00 to search for breakfast but only really finding a 7-11. Little did we know, 7-11 type establishments are part of the norm here. Honestly, its worse than Tim Horten's. Sometimes, there right next door to each other. Circle K, Lawson's, 7-11, AM/PM there all the same. We bought some random things. I'll try anything once, twice if I like it. These chip things in the picture tasted kind of like bacon bits. I sure hope it wasn't dog food. In addition I purchased what I thought was a vegetable cocktail type drink. Upon further inspection I realised that it was missing a key ingredient, TOMATO'S. It was a combination of Fruits and Vegetables which I learned today has a huge variety. Think about it. Why limit vegetable cocktail to vegetables and fruit drinks to fruit. When you can have orange juice mixed with carrot, broccoli celery, apples and grapes. Confused yet. Later I bought a Tomato, pear, plum and apple drink. It was OK. Today I bought a few other weird mixes. We'll see how those go.

Bananas Cure Cancer

Here is something that I came across. I won't post something like this often but I thought it was a good idea.

"The fully ripe banana produces a substance called TNF which has the ability to combat abnormal cells.In an animal experiment carried out by a professor in Tokyo University comparing the various health benefits of different fruits,using banana, grape, apple, water melon, pineapple, pear and persimmon, it was found that bananas gave the best results. It increased the number of white blood cells, enhanced the immunity of the body and produced anti-cancer substance TNF. The degree of anti-cancer effect corresponds to the degree of ripeness of the fruit, i.e. the riper the banana, the better the anti-cancer quality. Thus, the Japanese love bananas for a good reason. According to the Japanese professor, yellow skin bananas with dark spots on it are 8 times more effective in enhancing the property of white blood cells than the green skin version. The recommendation is to eat 1 to 2 banana a day to increase your body immunity to diseases like cold, flu and others."

Why Kyoto

I feel like I'm playing catch-up. I've been here for 15 days and I'm so behind on this blog. Well the main reason is that I don't have regular access to Internet right now. The only place I use the Internet is at the Kyoto International House. It's not that far away from where I'm staying but we've been so busy in the last two weeks, which I won't go into until things are finalised, that I haven't been at the International House long enough to say anything. But don't worry, soon enough things will even out into a common normality and I'll have fun coming back and commenting on all the things I missed. As soon as I have regular access to the Internet, I will be posting more often, I think....

So I arrived in Kyoto (Direct Translation - Capital City). Why did we choose Kyoto, you ask. Where is Kyoto? That's what wikipedia is for. The point is, for all you lazy people out there who don't want to check, I'm not anywhere near Tokyo. Right now I don't want to touch Tokyo with a 10 foot stick. To give you an idea of what Kyoto is like, it's about 1.5 million people surrounded by mountains from all sides. Now I don't know my geography and I'm not sure what kind of weather I'm getting myself into but it's been hot here everyday since I arrived. 30°C everyday. The last few days have been rainy but whatever. Anyway, this was the capital city until 1868 at the time of the Imperial Restoration (which I also will not get into) when the capital was moved to Tokyo (Direct Translation-Eastern Capital). Kyoto was the capital city for about 700 years. In the center of the city, the Imperial Palace is a huge and amazing structure which I'll get into more when I visit it. Kyoto is about an 8 hour drive from Tokyo and about 45min from Osaka.

We chose to live in Kyoto for a few reasons. Firstly, Japan is known for volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, typhoons and hurricanes. Kyoto is protected on all sides from all of these wonderful things. I have no idea why Tokyo is as big as it is because it's the center for most of these problems in Japan. This safety idea was probably why Kyoto was chosen as the location of the capital. Being surrounded by mountains probably helped with defence too. So this kind of leads to my second reason. Since this was the center of the Empire for so long, we figured that many aristocrats and other wealthy people would have wanted to be near the Imperial Palace. The city of Kyoto grew around this type of society. Thus, today even though it's not the capital, Kyoto is considered the most cultural city for most things Japanese. Whether it be clothing, music and traditions, Kyoto appears to be covered in non-western culture. This is the richest place to get it in Japan. At least this is what I've been told. Thus, we chose this place because we figured that it would be the best place to learn about Japan and Japanese culture. I've recently visited Osaka and from what I can tell it is far more Westernised. You can see it from the way people dress and the kind of restaurants available.

Our choice of Kyoto may not have been the best because it may lack a certain variety that most cosmopolitan places seem to have. Right now, it doesn't seem like a problem but I wonder how much of the food I can eat before I start to miss other things or how much overall culture I can take before I yearn for something familiar. I guess living 45 min from Osaka will give me all the variety I need if I want it.

Now, I wonder what kind of image the reader has in his mind of what Kyoto must look like or be like. All I've seem to say is that it's very traditional. Well, it's not as old fashioned as I make it out to be; its simply the most cultural. Were definitely not talking about Upper Canada Village. There are cars, taxis, subways, banks and McDonalds just like any large city. But, it's not uncommon to see a woman walking around in a kimono. There are more temples here then I can currently count. I'm sure I'll say more about them after I've visited some. What I love most about Kyoto is the constant mixture of old and new, of tradition and modernism.

The Flight to Japan

This is it, my official first update since my disclaimer. Rather then getting into great detail of how I came to be in the position that I am, that will be left up to future posts. I already feel that I'm too far ahead in the story but I thought it best to not put this off any longer and just start and move forward from here.

I'm now in Japan.

I'll wait for that to settle for a minute.

I think I plan to be here for a year but that may change. At least that's the plan right now. Why did I come? I'll leave that for another posting. Now, this time I did not attempt all this craziness by myself. Had circumstances been different, I may have attempted this adventure in time. But I am currently here in Kyoto, Japan, with my girlfriend Helene. You can visit her blog at http://heleneinjapan.blogspot.com . So for the most part when I say I, it may have been a we.

Its been 10 days since I've gotten here and already I have more to write and tell you about than I can possibly list here. In 10 days I've had to recover from an incredible jet-lag that I believe myself to still be suffering from. Currently it is a 13 hour difference between here and Ottawa, Canada. So if you Canadians are trying to figure out the conversion just add 13 to whatever time you may have.

The experience traveling here was 28 hours long from doorstep to doorstep; in and out of consciousness the whole way. I left my house at 4:00am on Wednesday September 16th and arrived at 10:00pm on Thursday September 17th at my final destination. If you're wondering how that doesn't add up to 28 hours it's because you didn't consider the time difference. The main flight from Chicago to Tokyo was 13 hours with Japan Airlines. The service was with a smile, and I mean a authentic smile, not those "I'm smiling so I don't get fired" kind of smiles. I believe that the Japanese pride themselves on whatever job they do. It's entrusted to them so they do it to the best of their abilities. I think this reflects many aspects of their society which I won't get into right now. They authentically seemed happy to serve. I don't know if that's possible but it seems to be here, even though the service was excellent the food was awful. A direct contrast to flying with French airlines. I'm not sure which I prefer more.

The guidebook that I purchased mentioned that I would have to be processed when I arrived at my final destination in Japan. Since I was sick when I left, I was very concerned that I would be held in the contamination ward. I have no idea how paranoid they are. There was a clear sign as I entered that people's temperature was being read somehow. I guess through an infrared or something? Apparently, blowing your nose in front of Japanese people is very much frowned upon. Wiping is alright but not blowing. If you need to, you move discreetly to a corner or something like that. Anyway, after the temperature section came the processing. Picture and figure prints are taken; not with ink but digitally. So I walked up, place your hand here and look here. That's it. I was helped with my bag and was approached with please and thank yous all though the metal detectors and the rest of it. It was fast and efficient and all done in a air-conditioned environment. Think of that next time you're at the Philadelphia airport with 3000 people's BO smelling up the place and the guard yelling at you to move and take off all your clothes while they prepare you for the full body cavity search. I was yelled at a few times in the Chicago processing because I didn't move fast enough. Nonetheless, the flights went smoothly and to reach our hostel I took a taxi. I simply could not prepare myself to decipher how to get where I needed to get in the mental condition I was in by this point in time.

Our final destination was a hostel named Jhoppers in Kyoto.

Disclaimer for new Blog

Wow, I don't know where to begin. I know I've been putting this off for a long time and simple procrastination will lower the detail of everything that I will write here but I will try my best to write as many interesting things as I can on this blog. My enthusiasm to write this thing comes from my realisation that my memory is really starting to fade. I don't mean that in the sense that I'm becoming senile but it's getting hard to remember things that happened a few years ago. I don't know if that's caused by toxins in my body, old age or simply bad habits. It sort of feels that a lot of people coach through life just reacting to what happened yesterday without trying to see the greater pattern to their habits, interests or mistakes. And because of that, they never see their problems or their potential. Perhaps if I were to reflect on this blog years down the line I could learn from it or laugh at the stupid thoughts that I had when I wrote it. But this is not a disclaimer that my thoughts may be stupid or wrong. They are correct when I write them and if I am shown that I was in error then that update will be added. Thus, the purpose of this blog is primarily for my own memories to have a permanent place.

The other reason for this blog is for you the reader. I welcome all my friends and family and any other passerby to read my adventures. Feedback is always appreciated, even if it's simply a "cool" tag on a photo. Feedback may encourage me to write more .... you never know.