The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter Five - Toji and Kinkakuji

It was another trip to Kyoto.

Amadeus was there trying to get his travel on, and I was looking to get out of nara so i decided i would hit one of the places i had missed during my first time through the country.

it is a golden temple that is located by a small lake. i had seen it years and years ago in a book in my high school japanese class, and i have wanted to see it since then. when i ended up in nara after a bulk of my nomadic traveling was over, i was like...wtf mate? why did i not see that cool golden building?

turns out it was in kyoto, and it was not recommended to me as a "must see" place by the tourist office i visited when i first got there. just goes to show you that when youre trying to have a real foreign adventure, not like one of the stupid fake ones where you spend all your time in western style hotels and eating at restaurants with american style food, you never trust the tourist office.

i guess tourist offices are decent to a certain extent, but the problem is that theyre full of tourists. cities like kyoto, tokyo, hiroshima and osaka are chock full of them. for the most part, about 25% of the travelers are decent, well-rounded travelers looking for a unique cultural experience, a chance to dip their feet into a pool of learning and developing symbiotic and positive relations with people all over the world, but the rest, oh friends, the rest are different. the rest of them are crazy european lesbians with fanny packs looking for a two week escape from reality in their dark, cold and oppressive eastern european countries, or college party boys looking to score with lots of japanese chicks all over the country. i know, ive seen it.

since i havent come anywhere close to japanese chick hook ups, and im not a lesbian and dont own a fanny pack, hopefully i dont fall into either of those categories.

so me and amadeus start at a flea market located at what was described to us as being the tallest pagoda on the entire country.

you have to remember that kyoto is a city full of amazing ancient wonders. when america was firebombing the crap out of this country, they decided to spare most of the kansai area, including nara. the bombs took out a good part of osaka though, which isnt too far away. stuff like this pagoda still remain here, untouched by the war.

we looked around the flea market area, which reminded me of good old ladonia in alabama, the best flea market ive seen in the columbus georgia area. it had food vendors, plenty of old junk, some crazy people, and a few rare and marvelous finds. one time at the ladonia flea market, i bought a pair of ray-ban sunglasses for a dollar. can you believe that? a freaking dollar.

i ate some of my favorite japanese foods, taiyaki and kakigoori, and then me and amadeus walked out of the temple area and saw a guy playing a shamisen on a street corner like a madman. he was so incredible, ive never seen a street performer like it.

btw in this picture, the thing hanging from my mouth is NOT a cigarette, it is a kakigoori straw and the cup i am holding, even though it is a goblet, does NOT contain alcohol, although it did once help the precious iciness of kakigoori.

and then we were on to kinkakuji, the golden temple. we took a good long bus ride there and made our way towards the temple. it was very beautiful.

i couldnt tell of the kids there speaking spanish and japanese were calling the temple "gorudo", which is the word for gold in the japanese version of english, or if they were calling me "gordo", the spanish word for fat. i was happy with either one of the uses of the word. i just know one of the chicks kept looking at me and smiling and laughing. i didnt like her though. she was wearing too much make up and looked like a latina miss piggy. bless her heart.


so we checked that area out for a while, ran into some annoying american high school kids, and then me and amadeus had some ice cream goodness. we made our way back to kyoto station and lamented the loss of amadeus' two lost australian loves and my future with them staying at the nara tree guest house the next day.

more havoc to come.