Oh, Japan. That's So Raven.

So I think I mentioned something about going to Osaka as well.  Well, anyway, I went to Osaka in addition to Kyoto.  In fact, Osaka was the bread and Kyoto was the meat AND cheese in this Japan sandwich.  Nara was the mayonnaise because I stopped in the train station there and saw parts of buildings from the platform I was on. 

As one bartender delicately put it when we talked about how we'd only seen Osaka at night up to that point, "What else is there?  During the day it's just a bunch of buildings."  Thus, I present to you...A BUNCH OF BUILDINGS!

Oh, and here's more buildings at night.  With a river between them. 

Here's the Yoshinoya where we had our first meal. 

This area featured in all the night shots is Shinsaibashi.  If you go here, you will never see so many prostitutes in your life again, I'm sure of it.  Not scantily clad, smoking, broken, drug addled prostitutes, no.  Many of them look like they just got home from class.  Then again, many of them look like they just got home from an anime convention or from their nursing job.  The other strange thing was that they didn't target foreigners.  They ignored me and my friends for the lone Japanese businessmen walking by.  A welcome slip into anonymity, but still very different from the rest of the Asia I've seen.  Certainly made for good people watching in that kind of environment. 

As you can tell by the above photographs, we did eventually see Osaka during the day and, although it seemed a  bit like a giant conglomerate of bland buildings, we found the top tourist attraction in Osaka: Osaka Castle. 

Osaka Castle was originally built in 1585, but after being burnt by lightning, burnt by protests, and destroyed by World War II bomb raids, it wasn't really (re)built until 1995.  Nonetheless, it is an important historical site and one of the most famous castles in Japan.  Certainly more splendid and important than Nijo in Kyoto. 

Unfortunately, instead of opting for a realistic restoration, they opted for a modernization approach.  They installed air conditioning ducts (pictured) and gutted the whole building.  Inside is completely modern and is devoted to hologram shows and period piece displays.  Still, it was neat to be there and the top floor is an observation deck that allowed the views seen in the above pictures. 

As a majority of our time was spent in Kyoto, Osaka was left mostly undiscovered with only enough time for one day adventure.  I would like to come back to this area at some time, to explore more of Osaka, see more of the neighboring cities, and to revisit Kyoto and see the myriad of temples and shrines and pagodas that we didn't have time to see on this trip.  Japan is enchanting, for sure, and an entirely different entity than Korea.

Look What I Did Last Weekend!

I'm gonna break this up not into chronological order, but by location.  I'll start with what comprised the bulk of the trip: Kyoto (what?  Did I mention that I went to Japan on here?  No?  Well...sorry, broski.  I went to Japan this past weekend as part of a five day holiday).

We spent our first night and last night in Osaka, which I will cover in a subsequent post.  Let's get to the meat and potatoes.

Meat:

I want you to take a look at the main course of the greatest meal I've ever eaten. 

Boom.  This is beef that knocked me off my feet.  It had the consistency of beef flavored butter.  No resistance when biting down on it.  Here's the man who cooked it:

He's in his 80s and probably fought against my country.  He told us, "I don't speak English, I speak fucking American."  Also, when we mentioned Kobe beef, he said, "Fuck Kobe.  Mine's better."  What I learned prior to this meal is that "Kobe beef" is beef from Kobe.  The beef that everyone covets so much is wagyu, which is Japanese breed of cattle predisposed for high marbling and unsaturated fat.  Also, "Sailor Joe" as he is henceforth named, dropped the F-bomb a lot.  When he cut it (pictured above) he was deliberate and slow, but the beef resisted none.  Other things that made the meal memorable:

• His stories, told to us while we ate
• The seven other courses (including salad, steak fries, and a bunch of Japanese stuff that was all tasty)
• The unlimited free sake (or Zaky, as the bottle mentions) which added to the mood
• The kicker: being served oranges and iced tea from a Japanese television star.  Yeah, apparently this guy just strolls into this restaurant every Sunday, sits around peeling oranges, talking to people who show up for the $90 meals.  Also, he owns a coffee shop nearby.

Also, look at this sushi on a conveyer belt:

And ramen:

 Everything was delicious on this trip!


Potatoes:

*Disclaimer: You may recognize some of the following tourist sites from your wildest dreams*

So, our first stop was the Imperial Palace, which is basically a false advertisement.  There's a palace, but it's not open to viewing unless you jump through hoops we didn't know we had to jump through, and so basically you walk around this massive park surrounding it in the blistering sun.  Therefore, I didn't post any lackluster pictures for you to view.

Our first real stop was at Nijo Castle...which is kind of redundant because -jo means castle, so it's really Ni Castle Castle.  Anyway, it also was a huge false advertisement, but not insomuch that you couldn't view it.  It was really a palace surrounded by a moat and walls, which still makes it a palace to me, but then again I'm not on the UNESCO Board of Assholes.  It looks like this:

And it here's what apparently makes it a castle:

Since we had rented bikes for the day, we cruised around town to a couple of non-noteworthy stops and finally went to the place I wanted to visit: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

Kinkaku-ji is world famous...or that's what the world tells me I should think.  It dates from the late 1300s, and is, as the name implies, all golden.  I hear it looks pretty stunning in the winter, when all the snow has fallen and the pond iced over and the children are half skating on it and half falling through to their watery deaths.

You know what sucks though?  Pachenko.

That is seriously some bull right there.  It's all in Japanese, so I don't know how to play it, but of course I did anyway.  Thirteen bucks gone.  Just gone.  I have no idea where it went or who it went to, but it's gone forever.  Oh, "Sailor Joe" told us that 80% of Pachenko places are owned by Koreans.  Those wily Koreans looooooove to gamble.  That's why it's illegal for them to gamble in Korea.  Anyway, I guess that $13 is going back to the peninsula.

The next day, we hit up the tallest pagoda in Japan:

As well as that crazy shrine with all the torii leading up a mountain:

Let's talk about Kyoto.  With a population of roughly 1.5 million, Kyoto is by no means an "ancient" city like Angkor Wat or Pompeii.  It is still living and thriving with a subway, railway, and thousands of cars on the roads every day.  I guess that should be easily apparent, but whenever I hear a description of Kyoto, it's always "the ancient capital" as though it's decaying in a jungle.  I imagined Kyoto to be more like Gyeongju in Korea, a smaller town of maybe 30,000 people whose economy is propped up by tourism.  Well, this ain't Korea.

The streets are laid out in a grid, making it easy to tell which direction you're going.  As it is bisected by a river walk, Kyoto has two distinct areas.  The larger, normal Kyoto, and then the smaller traditional district on the East side.  This is where the Geishas reside and the more traditional food and architecture are (also where "Sailor Joe" pimps his steak out).

Although it is bustling and alive, Kyoto is a pleasant city to walk or bike, as there are hidden gems all littered all over, as though a giant, temple pooping cat used Kyoto as his litter box for a thousand years and nobody changed it for him.  This is starkly different from Osaka, who would probably think a giant temple pooping cat was Godzilla and kill it before it could poop any temples.  More to come...