Chinasia

From Tokyo, we continued to the west by rail to Kyoto. Much easier to get a feel for than Tokyo, this town still had quite a bit to offer. Hills surround much of the city and at the foot of many of these hills are temples, lots of temples. They are all beautiful and have historical significance, but after a while they start to look alike and the tourists start to get annoying (glad I`m not one of them). Not to mention there are subtle respectful ways to act that are sometimes hard to pick up on, like not washing your feet and dunking your head in the holy spring water. I had no idea of the water`s spiritual standing until after my public bathing session when one unhappy local said something. I felt bad, but the damage was done. Looking back on it, a bit of comedy may have lightened up the situation. Heres how a humorous culturally insensitive dialogue could have gone:

-lady: excuse me, excuse me sir. That is holy water. Not for washing. You cannot step in the water.

-me: holy water? you don`t say? No wonder my feet feel so good. Does anyone else feel like dancing? Because I got my dancin` feet right now. Woah!

So far, the only hint of bad spiritual karma came in the form of little paper fortunes I got at one of the other temples. Here is how it works:
- put 100￥ in the little slot, this is based on the honor system. I would imagine `stealing` a fortune wouldn`t bode so well in a superstitious society
- shake the shiny metal box to your heart`s content, and shake one of the sticks out of the small metal hole.
- match the symbol on the stick with the drawer that contains your fortune.

My first one, labeled "Better Fortune" starts off "The moon is covered by floating clouds. You will have difficulties in making any plans" and just got better from there. Dissatisfied, I make another 100￥ investment. My second fortune, labeled "Good Fortune" is a bit more fitting i think, "Be careful in what you say when you are drinking." A good piece of sound advice, but definitely not a fortune to get excited about. To make it worse, while I`m getting drinking advice, my brother was getting words along the lines of, "its only a matter of time before you take over the world", "everyone wants to be like you", or simply "you`re the man" (not verbatum of course). Guess the holy water incident did me in.

While I may have been a bit insensitive to Kyoto, Kyoto was not excessively welcoming at certain times either. A bit of background info first. When you go out in a major Japanese city, the theme seems to be find the smallest bar possible. There are an infinite number of tiny bars on any given street in the nightlife areas. Which means many of them are tucked away in alleys or upstairs. Half the fun is trying to find the most hidden ones. In my brother and I`s curiousity about bars one night, we found our way through an alley to a hotel of sorts. Just for the hell of it, we decided to walk in and see what the place was like. Up a flight of stairs to the hotel lobby. Only there was no check-in desk, no receptionist. Only a large LCD TV, one smaller, touch-screen monitor, and a credit-card swipe machine. both monitors displayed the rooms that were available. i had nothing to lose in investigating, so I selected one of the available rooms. A list of prices for either 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 2 hours, or the whole night came up on the screen. It was just about then that the metal shudder on a nearby window raised just a crack and a sign in english was being held out by a hand. I guess someone had noticed us on a security camera. I paused my fun room search to go read the sign. It read, "NO SAME SEX COUPLES". Apparently my brother and I were a couple. We laughed our way back down the stairs to go have another beer.

Lesson of the Day: The Japanese are masters of technology

1. Vending machines seem more numerous and sometimes more intelligent than people. Machines selling everything from soda pop to beer and cigarettes are nearly always within eyeshot, most often in large clusters. Need a quick hot snack? Maybe some french fries or soba noodles? Pop a few hundred yen into the slot, wait 40 seconds while it heats up your boxed goodie, and out it comes chop-sticks and all. In some cases, you can even pay with the swipe of your cell phone over a sensor. Extreme convenience, extreme ingenuity, everyday japan.

2. Nothing bugs me more than having to use the bathroom while in my time machine. Thank God the Japanese made the Time-travel toilet. It comes standard with Dual-flush action, directional water-jet cleaning spray, heated seat, noise-masking tunes, 6-CD disc changer*, child-proof door locks*, and cruise control*. You need a PhD just to work one of these contraptions.
(* denotes obvious fiction)

3. When it comes to spatial awareness video games, the Japanese take the cake. Those of you who know what DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) is may also very well know that asian kids make the hardest game setting seem like childs play. The game in the picture above also involves spatial awareness, thus is dominated by Japanese kids in arcades. Needless to say, I had a poor showing.

Although the following link was filmed by someone else a long time ago, it is an extreme version of what I have witnessed in Japanese kids playing the same game as in the picture above. The film wasn`t sped-up according to the source:
http://ebaumsworld.com/2006/07/asianarcade.html

Went even closer than in the pic to touching this thing with my finger. Interesting factoid learned from a Japanese woman when I showed her the picture: some people die from getting stung by this bee.

It seems fitting that last night my brother and I saw Pirates of the Carribean and today we are leaving on a 20 hour voyage aboard a seaworthy vessel to Okinawa. Nothing can make a man feel alive like the smell of the salty sea breeze filling your nostrils and sun smothering your skin in a blazing hot light as it reflects off the water. Then again, maybe not. We`ll see how I feel at about hour 15. Perhaps something that may play a role in the planning of our next couple days:
http://severe.worldweather.org/tc/wnp/