New Year's Adventure.

Well, I promised, but as usual, it has taken me a short ice-age to actually get on with it. December 31st saw me skipping the opportunity to be the morning's lector and oversleep; missing the Shinkansen I wanted to catch and end up arriving in Kyoto at about 11.30. That wasn't bad but when I leapt off the train, I discovered that I couldn't find my wallet, I thought it was probably in my bag somewhere but I couldn't be sure and feeling a bit panicky, I wondered if I should perhaps get back on the train and see if it was there rather than go sightseeing and realise that I had , in fact, lost it. I jumped back on the train to find it still on the seat, thank goodness but then found myself trapped on the train and on the way to Shin-Osaka. How annoying. Now because I had bought my ticket to Osaka since the Shinkansen departs from there and not Kyoto, and I was too late to get a seat reservation, and didn't want to be stuck standing on a train for 3 hours on the way back, I thought it might be a bit difficult to explain why I was on the train to Kyoto with a ticket to Osaka if I just got back on it, so I went to ask the station staff what I should do. I couldn't be bothered to try and explain it all in Japanese so I said that I had planned to go sightseeing in Kyoto before coming on to Osaka but that I had fallen asleep. They were quite understanding and stamped my tickets with a secret code before sticking me back on the train to Kyoto. Finally arrived at something past 12 and went to find out from Tourist Information what exciting things I could do while I waited for Kuniko to finish doing whatever it was she was doing during the day. Obviously, being the New Year Holiday period, the one temple I actually wanted to see was closed... So, I ended up getting the train to Arashiyama to see this temple with 8,000 stone Buddha carvings in the garden. Well, I was sat on a bench minding my own business and eating a rather limp salad when this voice interrupted my reverie and asked me if I had any idea where the bamboo forest was. Well, I don't know how it happened, but instead of saying "No, I don't, bugger off and leave me in peace." I found myself offering to ask the station staff for her and then found myself offering to take her there on my way to Nembutsuji. Obviously it wasn't on my way in the slightest.... The bamboo was nice though, as was the conversation with the NOVA teacher from Hiroshima by way of Toronto who had been an unlicensed truck driver before coming here!

After consulting a taxi driver who was on a fag break, (and gentlemanly enough to hide his cigarette behind his back!) I found where I was on my rather rubbish map and which way I had to go to Nembutsuji. Of course, on the map, it looked like it was about 10 minutes away - obviously in real life it was about an hour and 45 minutes walk away. I did pass some lovely shop displays, like the one on the right but since the temple was closing at 3.30 and I was really pushing my luck, I didn't stop to browse, the entire trek was uphill, too, so by the time I got there, I was quite tired and somewhat peeved to discover that in reality, you find yourself looking at a huge field of stones. I realise that the whole point of going, was to see the stone carvings of Buddhas, but I thought they would actually be recognisable as Buddhas. they aren't. They just look like stones. I should have known.

After that, I thought it would be nice to go to Ryoanji and see the Zen Rock Garden. It seemed as though I ought to be able to walk there quite easily and so I set off with yesterday's cold pizza as my lunch, enjoying the Winter sun, and hoping I didn't get lost. By the time I realised I was going in completely the wrong direction, it was far too late to make it there before closing. Same old Hurrah. After a bizarre and frantic text message exchange with Kuniko to try an ascertain where I was and how to get back to Kyoto station I finally made it to a subway station, only to realise when I got onto the platform that I had gone through the ticket gate for the wrong LINE. Anyway, eventually, via Uniqlo (had forgotten my jimjams) I finally arrived at Kuniko's house. We sat around watching the annual Song Contest which if it were better organised with much less Enka, could probably rival the Eurovision Song Contest for cheesy entertainment value. However, as it was, I had to sit through 2 and a half hours of Enka in order to listen to my favourite singer at the moment, Mika Nakashima belting out her single from the film Nana 2, which was stupendous. Having stuffed my face with Spring Rolls and stuff, I was dismayed about 2 hours later when Kuniko and her parents announced that we would be eating Soba now as it's traditional to eat it on New Year's Eve as it ensures longevity and good health, or something. However, since this interrupted the performance of Kumi Koda, who I CAN'T STAND, and whose current album is at Number One when Mika Nakashima's is at number Two, I managed to tear myself away from the Song Contest and force some down. All this was followed, at 1AM, by a trip to the local temple. Finally got some sleep only to be woken up at what I considered to be the crack of dawn, as it's tradition for the whole family to eat together on New Year's Morning. Osechi is not very nice. We had to drink sake to bring in the New Year, I was a mite surprised since it was only 10.30 in the morning and I didn't really want to drink for breakfast, but Mrs. Okamoto said just a sip, so I complied. I was then astounded when Mr. Okamoto continued to knock it back for another hour and THEN he started on beer!! According to my students, this is fairly standard behaviour by Japanese men at New Year. After watching some fairly crap telly and suffering through the "this is our pet foreigner" introductions to some cousins, Mrs. Okamoto, Kuniko and I went off to the temple again. Then we went to another temple before it was back to the house to be stuffed with more food! I have to say that Kuniko's house is actually colder than it is outside so I was very glad of the marvellous kotatsu.

The next day we went to Toudai Ji, to see the giant Buddha, it's not as good as the one at Kamakura because it is inside and the lighting is really weird so you can't get any decent photos of it! It is still fairly impressive though.
Toudai Ji is in Nara Park which is well-known for its population of evil, ravenous deer. Not wild, not tame and always hungry. I thought it would be nice to feed the cute baby deer, at which Kuniko kept yelling Bambi in a sickeningly high-pitched voice which in the end caused me to hit her, and bought some deer crackers. Unfortunately its bigger, uglier brother decided he was hungry and started to headbutt me. I took out one cracker from the pile to give to him before feeding the little one, but the deer ignored the cracker completely and lunged straight for my other hand with the packet of crackers in it. Letting out a genteel yelp, I handed over the crackers and legged it. About 20 metres up the path we heard this screaming like someone was being attacked, and she was. By a MASSIVE deer, intent on nicking her sandwich. Now clearly this woman was either insane or stupid, because she was not going to let the deer have her sandwich, oh no. She was going to take on the deer and win.... That's what resulted in the screaming because the deer was having none of it and started doing a little jumping thing to get the sandwich as our hapless heroine held it above her head. I was hard pushed not to snigger really and Kuniko made it worse by chastising me for laughing really loudly... pretty soon I was staggering down towards the temple, doubled over because I was laughing so hard. My amusement was cut short fairly sharpish though, when I was forced to use the revolting, dank, malodorous public facilities on offer. Still, it was almost worth it, even if said facilities did score a whopping -10 on my "Rough Guide to Public Conveniences around the World" a feat only bested by the "conveniences" I had to use at a rest stop in Vietnam a couple of years ago.

After that we walked up to Kasuga Taisha, the shrine where Mrs. Okamoto insists, Kuniko will get married (if she ever gets round to it). It was absolutely packed, apparently, it is THE shrine in Nara, so again, I wasn't able to get any decent photos at all and ended up with this total rubbish one, which I like to call "an ambient shot"!

And that was that, back to the house, which was still freezing to find Mr Okamoto passed out in front of the telly, I had a private smirk about that and sat down to "enjoy" university rugby.

Next day, via Osaka, I was leaving so we went to bed after a very interesting program about the new railway across China to Tibet, and a less interesting one with some actress who is in her 40s and dating a chap in his 20s, interviewing her friend who is some sort of jazz funk fusion singer about his life/album - I couldn't understand most of that one and the actress making eyes at the bloke in the name of a good interview, got right on my nerves. Mrs Okamoto woke me up at the crack of dawn and told me that they would send my luggage by courier so that I wouldn't have to carry it around Osaka with me, I thought this was a very kind gesture but it turned out to be an excuse to make sure I took some fruit with me! And then onto Osaka Aquarium, called the Kaiyuukan in Japanese, apparently it means something like "building where the sea plays" that's what Kuniko and Yuko came up with anyway. It was my second trip to the Kaiyuukan, I insisted on going again because I thought it was so cool the first time, unfortunately, it is rather difficult to take pictures of fish when they are swimming but here are some of my efforts for your delight and delectation.

This is the resident Iguana. He's really cute in a funny sort of way although most of my female students are revolted by him! He was having a bit of a nap when we saw him, but he woke up briefly to indulge in some slushy looking lunch.

You can't really get the effect here, but those lines on this amazing Jellyfish are actually hundreds of tiny flashing lights.

These Jellyfish on the right were absolutely amazing, they were so relaxing to watch, I'm not surprised the Jellyfish tanks are the only place in the Kaiyuukan not to have any benches, everyone would fall asleep...

Again, you can't really get the full effect because my photos are so rubbish, but these Jellyfish were like gossamer, so delicate and astonishingly beautiful to watch dancing about their tank.

Moon Jellies, the bane of the Ocean, since they seem to trying to take it over in a Kraken-like coup, but they glow all different colours!

The Whale Shark, star of the Kaiyuukan, the one everyone comes to see. And he is REALLY cool, bigger than a car I should say, although it is quite difficult to tell through a ton of glass.
And here he is, next to the cleaning man, so you can see how big he really is. It's rather difficult to see him, but the cleaning man is on the left. The cleaning guys caused us quite a lot of amusement because for the life of us, we could not decide whatever they were doing on the bottom of the tanks, with this little cup and a big hose. We figured it out eventually when we found this one in the turtle tank!