Morning in Koya-san and on to Tokyo
I'm in Tokyo now. My morning in Koya-san was fun. I woke up early (5:30 am) to go to the Buddhist service at 6 am in my temple, and it was an awesome experience. The chanting/humming is really hypnotic, and I could really feel how one could find a lot of peace in the Buddhist monk life. After the ceremony and another Japanese breakfast (this time with everything relatively easy to stomach), I walked around the Okunoin cemetary (this time in daylight) and saw the famous Hall of Lanterns, where ten thousand oil lamps are kept constantly alight. The lamps are actually numbered with little tags on the bottom, and are packed together across the ceiling of two large temples, in the eaves, and in stacked shelves in the centers of the temples. It was pretty neat. (There aren't any pictures of them though, as this was one of many places I have been where pictures were not allowed. In fact, in general, inside the temples, pictures are forbidden.) After the cemetary, I walked across town to the Garan, which the spiritual center of the city. I saw Kongobu-ji, a nice temple just outside the Garan with beautiful screen paintings describing elements of Koya-san's founding, and then saw the Konpon Daito (a giant, orange building housing some giant Buddhas) as well as a number of smaller shrines and temples. I was done around noon, and got back on the funicular to leave Koya-san and head to Tokyo. (This involved a few trains, including another trip on the Shinkansen for the main leg from Osaka to Kyoto, and a trip in the middle on the subway in Osaka.)
I rolled into Tokyo at around 5:30 pm, and wandered around the confusing Tokyo train station looking for the right subway line, while the rush-hour crush of people swarmed around me. (It turns out what made this hard was the entrance to my subway line was closed for construction, and so all the permanent signs pointed to this closed entrance, and the sign to redirect me elsewhere was only in Japanese. ) This would turn out to be only the first of my adventures trying to find my way that evening. When I got off the subway at the stop recommended by my hotel, I discovered that the subway station was a gigantic underground plaza with four or five different exits. Another ten minutes of confusion ensued while I located the proper exit and got my bearings enough to start walking to my hotel. Finally, at about 6:10, I got the entrance to my hotel, made my way to the lobby (which was on the sixth floor!?), and checked in. Fortunately, my bags had indeed arrived on-time before me, so I was all set and ready to go. However, I was in my room no more than five minutes when my friend Emily called. She and he husband Seth were in town, and I had arranged to meet them for dinner at around 8 pm. Emily had called, however, to say that they were really hungry, and wanted to eat earlier. They planned on leaving at 6:30 from their hotel (along with a business colleague of Seth's that I also knew, John), but could wait for me if I wanted to join them. I told them I would change and leave immediately, and it shouldn't take me more than fifteen minutes to make the trip.
As it turns out, my estimate was dead on if I already knew exactly how to get from my hotel to their hotel. As it was, I did not, and what ensued was a very frustrated hour of wandered around my hotel (which is gigantic and very confusing) and the area surrounding my hotel mainly because in Tokyo, maps are oriented relative to the direction one is viewing the posted map, instead of with north up, which got me seriously turned around a couple of times since I was trying to compared the crappy map I had that showed my hotel and their hotel on it, and the various public maps posted around the city. All this started, though, because the concierge at my hotel insisted that it would be no problem to take the subway one stop and walk, instead of taking a taxi. (I should have just taken a taxi since I was in such a rush.) I finally got into the correct subway station, but four lines intersected there, two of which went to the station I needed to go to. I evidently chose the wrong line, because when I got to the next station, I had to walk underground for about 25 minutes to get to the proper exit for the hotel I was trying to reach. Fortunately, my friends were still waiting when I got there (about 45 minutes late!), and they had been planning on getting drink before hand, so my being late didn't cause us to miss our reservation. (And we made up for the missed drink after dinner instead.)
All in all, it was probably an appropriate first Tokyo experience. I was certainly overwhelmed and bewildered. But dinner was very nice (an Italian restaurant which served the best parmesan rissotto I have every had, mixed with the cheese at you table by pouring the rissotto into a gigant hollowed out wheel of parmesant and stirring), and the walk around Roppongi afterwards was a fun taste of a city that is energetic and alive even late on a Tuesday night. It reminded me a lot of the fun parts of New York.
Anyway, I'll post something soon about my last two days in Tokyo, but in the next post, I'll clear out some of my backlog of pictures.
I rolled into Tokyo at around 5:30 pm, and wandered around the confusing Tokyo train station looking for the right subway line, while the rush-hour crush of people swarmed around me. (It turns out what made this hard was the entrance to my subway line was closed for construction, and so all the permanent signs pointed to this closed entrance, and the sign to redirect me elsewhere was only in Japanese. ) This would turn out to be only the first of my adventures trying to find my way that evening. When I got off the subway at the stop recommended by my hotel, I discovered that the subway station was a gigantic underground plaza with four or five different exits. Another ten minutes of confusion ensued while I located the proper exit and got my bearings enough to start walking to my hotel. Finally, at about 6:10, I got the entrance to my hotel, made my way to the lobby (which was on the sixth floor!?), and checked in. Fortunately, my bags had indeed arrived on-time before me, so I was all set and ready to go. However, I was in my room no more than five minutes when my friend Emily called. She and he husband Seth were in town, and I had arranged to meet them for dinner at around 8 pm. Emily had called, however, to say that they were really hungry, and wanted to eat earlier. They planned on leaving at 6:30 from their hotel (along with a business colleague of Seth's that I also knew, John), but could wait for me if I wanted to join them. I told them I would change and leave immediately, and it shouldn't take me more than fifteen minutes to make the trip.
As it turns out, my estimate was dead on if I already knew exactly how to get from my hotel to their hotel. As it was, I did not, and what ensued was a very frustrated hour of wandered around my hotel (which is gigantic and very confusing) and the area surrounding my hotel mainly because in Tokyo, maps are oriented relative to the direction one is viewing the posted map, instead of with north up, which got me seriously turned around a couple of times since I was trying to compared the crappy map I had that showed my hotel and their hotel on it, and the various public maps posted around the city. All this started, though, because the concierge at my hotel insisted that it would be no problem to take the subway one stop and walk, instead of taking a taxi. (I should have just taken a taxi since I was in such a rush.) I finally got into the correct subway station, but four lines intersected there, two of which went to the station I needed to go to. I evidently chose the wrong line, because when I got to the next station, I had to walk underground for about 25 minutes to get to the proper exit for the hotel I was trying to reach. Fortunately, my friends were still waiting when I got there (about 45 minutes late!), and they had been planning on getting drink before hand, so my being late didn't cause us to miss our reservation. (And we made up for the missed drink after dinner instead.)
All in all, it was probably an appropriate first Tokyo experience. I was certainly overwhelmed and bewildered. But dinner was very nice (an Italian restaurant which served the best parmesan rissotto I have every had, mixed with the cheese at you table by pouring the rissotto into a gigant hollowed out wheel of parmesant and stirring), and the walk around Roppongi afterwards was a fun taste of a city that is energetic and alive even late on a Tuesday night. It reminded me a lot of the fun parts of New York.
Anyway, I'll post something soon about my last two days in Tokyo, but in the next post, I'll clear out some of my backlog of pictures.
posted by Conor at 5:47 AM
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