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.

The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter Four - Hasedera and Omiwa

My sincere apologies to the 60c60d faithful out there for neglecting updates for the last ten days. Just to let you know, I am still alive and so is 60c60d. while i am still lodging in nara, i still get out to see the surrounding areas and make more havoc.

Amadeus is still chilling around town, so we reckon it might be a good idea to go out and tour one of the working temples around the area.

But as it turns out, it isnt even close at all. It takes us about an hour by train to get there. We were excited though, cause it was decent to get out of nara for a while and check out some more sites.

The road to hasedera was long and hot and sweaty. Its built into the side of a mountain range, so you gotta walk all the way there from the station, it was a long and grueling 20 minutes trip, and by the end of it, we were thanking our lucky stars that we had packed our shamwow to catch all the sweat from our perspirating brows.

The temple was cool, there were monks wandering around, driving in cars and smoking cigarettes, the kind of stuff i hadnt pictured monks doing. The times they are a changin though.


I got some decent pictures by this long stairway. It turns out japanese folks dont like the number 4, so as opposed to building the stairs with 400 steps, they only made 399. good news for us. we made it to the top of the stairs to the temple area, which had lots of these cool cloth things hanging on the outer area of the temple. the inside was full of all these gold statues. me and amadeus lit some candles and said a couple little prayers there, cause seriously, i know gods already got my back, but nothing wrong with getting on buddhas side too.

we took some adventurous and contemplative shots off the side of this veranda like place in front of the temple.

we wanted to go inside and get a closer look at some of the stuff, but they were charging like 1000yen to get into the inner areas of the temple, plus the monk got mad at me for wearing shoes on his little wooden area where i reckon you were supposed to change your shoes. psh, seriously gimme a break. i thought you were supposed to stand on the wood while you changed, but i guess i was wrong, and i was yelled at by a monk.

me and amadeus walked away, feeling like we had been wronged and then talked crap about the monk behind his back for about five minutes until we felt better about the whole situation.

we went on down a path that was covered in all these old graveyards for former priests and monks. for some reason, sometimes people put things like sake or coke cans on top of the markers, i guess to make an offering to the dead or something. anyway, amadeus ended up stealing a can of something before he knew it was meant to be there for a reason, and now he is haunted eternally by the spirit of a dead priest.

also, during the day, i picked up a bamboo stick, and became a spiritual leader called bura-dashi. some of my teachings include avoiding the wearing of surfer clothing, the everyday eating of hamburgers and hotdogs, and abstinence from listening to music classified under the genre "indie"


bura-dashi believes in an existence of mostly eating, sleeping, and drinking lots of coke zero. its appropriate for male followers of bura-dashi to be afraid of females, but only the ones they like.

your devotion to bura-dashi will lead to a lifetime of happiness and harmony with those around you.

on the way back to nara, amadeus and the newly dicovered priest within brandon, bura-dashi, stopped by another temple in omiwa. they enjoyed their time there greatly and bura-dashi was greatly impressed with the beauty of the "shrine maids" there.

but seriously, they had the coolest outfits i had ever seen.

The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter Three - Deer Meat

All these dear running around acting like they own the place made me wonder if they would eat anything, even meat.

So me and amadeus, an irish guy currently residing at the nara tree, went out on an adventure to see if the deer had the guts to eat more than just crackers and other folks maps.

our first stop was at the huge buddha hall, where we were downright bombarded by groups of school kids wanting their picture taken with two guys from foreign countries. at one point, i started asking all of the kids what country they thought i was from, just by looking at my face, and every time i asked, they said france.

so what is it that french folks and i have in common? the world may never know, other than i like french fries. what do they call french fries in france? here in japan, french fries are called fried potatoes.

but whats even wackier...corn dogs...are called...

american dogs

did anybody know that the most popular treat in japan named after the country of america is the corn dog? corn dogs can be bought at many convenience stores, and since they are one of my favorite treats, i always find myself asking one of the workers there to pull me an american dog hot off the grill.

and boy they sure are tasty.

me and amadeus stopped my mcdonalds on the way to meet some of the deer, and i bought two burgers to try out on them. first was a regular hamburger, made with two buns, a pickle, some small shreds of onion, mustard, tomato, and something that looks and tastes like it might be cow meat. second was something called the mcpork, big in japan, made with lettuce, two buns, some weird pseudo-barbeque sauce, and something that looks and tastes like it might be pig meat. the mcpork is one food that i would never pay to eat, and thats saying a lot, because i eat AND like almost anything.


so we tried to give the deer this hamburger, and it worked. out of a small posse of about eight deer, one came up and started chowing down on it. the rest were not at all interested in the burger. it was a happy time for me and amadeus when that deer ate our hamburger.


later we tried the mcpork, and just like i hate it, the deer hate it too. one of the deer took one bite and walked away angrily, forcing me to throw the rest of it into a nearby lake the next day after it was too rotten for even a deer to eat. the turtles enjoyed it.


makes me wonder if the meat might be made of deer and the one that totally woofed down the burger might be a cannibal. im gonna go out and check outside to see if any deer are hanging from nearby trees with the words "traitor" written above them on a cardboard sign.

more havoc to come

The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter Two - The Tambo

I was riding on a train with yuki, who I had just met five minutes before on our way to a city that I am still not sure of the name of. yuki was the funniest Japanese person I have met. he carried around with him a doll of a snowman, telling people it was his friend, and pointing to everyone that, near the crotch of the snowman, there was a stain where the snowman had peed his pants.

we got along great

bob and mayumi told me that there were a group of people that meet together occasionally for the purposes of planting rice the old fashioned way. I had never done this type of thing myself, but had heard about people doing it before and seen it plenty of times during my stay here.

so why not go out and try it.

bottom line is that planting rice the old fashioned way sucks

there are fields covered in mud, knee deep, that you wade it laying out huge rolls of this construction paper, which you pole holes in and lay down these small rice shoots into. hundreds and hundreds of times. there were bugs everywhere, it was hot, and many of the people I was working with were crazy.

this guy here was one of the wild fellows. there was a wild snake just slithering around doing his own thing, and this kid walks over and picks it up and starts playing with it. he sat there working with the snake for about five minutes before he found a lizard and started playing with that instead.

the night before was fun though. me and yuki rode the train to the city and were picked up by the guy in charge of the whole deal. he drove us to the rice field where me met some of the workers there and introduced ourselves. they had already finished for the day and were preparing to go up into a lodge in the mountains and hang out until work the next day.

before we went though, the whole group of us when out to fields where we watched fireflies for about an hour. it was a great experience to be there with them enjoying fireflies over rice fields under a full moon. it reminded me of the movie i had seen just a couple nights before, the grave of the fireflies, which may be one of the best movies i have ever seen.

then we were on to the lodge.

I was glad I had my guitar, cause it made the party much more fun. it was a big giant sleepover with plenty of cool guys and cute girls. I taught them my favorite game, big booty, which I often used at the girls home where I worked before I came to japan, and the Japanese folks seemed to like the game. we sat around eating rice and all types of goodies before we all went to bed sometime around 3am. I was the only foreigner there.

the next day these freakin crazy Asians have me waking up at 7am ready to go out and work in the rice fields. I wasn’t ready after only sleeping for our hours, but because I wasn’t ready to fight, I gave in peacefully and we all went to the field where we worked for about eight hours.

trying to plant rice seeds in two feet of solid mud was one of the dirtiest and most painful jobs I have ever done, but at least I can tell people now that I have actually planted rice in japan.

during the day, I thought about something that my first mission companion told me when I lived with him in a city called yamato.

I was complaining to him about how much I hated the rain while we were doing a study session together, and then he looked at me and said

“but elder riggs, I love the rain, it is what makes the rice grow”

and that has always stuck with me. these muddy rice fields that become flooded during the rainy season are what feeds a nation, and the people of this country are so grateful for the blessings that nature provides for them.

after working for those hours, I was hungry, and incredibly burned by the sun.

all the folks went to a bath house from that point, I didn’t mention this yet, but I went to the same one before we went up into the cabin in the mountains. so, it was my second time going to this bath house.

and let me just reiterate to everyone out there, I love Japanese bath houses. there is one half of the place for women and one for men, and you all get in there, totally naked, and have a party like youre in a big giant naked waterpark, with only dudes of course, unless youre a lady, then you go with all your girl friends to the other side of the bath house, which has girl things like cosmopolitan magazine and mascara I guess. I have never been to the girls side myself, and could never imagine a woman not fully clothed, so I will only assume that those types of things happen there.

my friend yuki was hanging out with me in the bath and he told me that I needed to jump into the tub next to us, so without thinking, I did. after that I freaked out. the tub I was in was sending out pulses of electricity, which I guess some people like, but I was not up for it, so I jumped out of the electric bath screaming like a naked chubby American mad man.

the next shock was even greater. the attendant that works at the bath house has a clear view of both sides of the locker rooms, and because there are only two genders of homo-sapiens, that means that at any given time, a dude can see all the naked chicks or a chick can see all the naked guys…if they want to.

I had just figured based on the night before that only a male worked at this one, but when I walked into the locker room in my birthday suit, there was an old woman staring at me. yeah, so I freaked out a little, but I guess after you see hundreds of naked people every day for years and years, its no big deal. and even though she was old, I know she still thought I was a stud.

so another bath house adventure, complete with rice. it was a great time and even though it was hard, im glad I did it. it was worse that the paint business with bossman ira but better than the pool business with bug eiland. which is funny because the guy that worked as the boss reminded me of a Japanese bug eiland. his personality was the exact same in my opinion, he just wasn’t as generous as bug. when we were in the locker room of the bath house, he stood in the corner for five minutes blow-drying his hair while standing totally naked next to a picture of a woman modeling by mount fuji.


if bug eiland had been born a Japanese man with no reservations of going to a bath house, I could see him doing something like that.

he was my hero.

The Chronicles of Nara: Chapter One - Civil War

the people of nara are at civil war.

there are those who feel that sento-kun is the one that should be the town mascot and others feel that the title belongs to manto-kun.

but seriously, for the most part people want manto-kun to represent them.

in order to celebrate the 1300th anniversary of this city, they hired a man out of Tokyo to create a mascot for the celebration, spending big money in the process, something to the tune of 50000 american dollars.

after spending all that time and money developing a good mascot, they came up with this.

he is an ugly demonic like creature made to look like a baby Buddha with deer antlers. this seems appropriate as nara is associated with that old time Japanese religion and the city is famous for at least 1000 deer that live here and roam around uncontrollably.

but many people, including myself, think this thing is hideous and would like nothing to do with it.

so they created a rival. spending a significantly less amount of time and money, a designer out of saitama, the city above Tokyo, created this.

this is manto-kun. he is like a brown marshmallow with a temple roof and antlers for a hat. much more cute and much less blasphemous to Buddhism, he seems to be the perfect choice to represent the city.

manto-kun is the kind of guy that, just by looking at him, you would feel proud of having marry your sister. he is the kind of guy that looks like you could eat and would taste something like peanut butter. his white cape makes him look like he would fight crime using his horns and his deer hoof hands and feet. he has the smile and demeanor to break a lot of hearts.

because I love manto-kun so much, I was able to attend his birthday party. there was music, poetry reading, and some guys talking about a jail. I didn’t know what all that was about, but the poetry reading was just as boring, so the best part about going was being able to listen to an old woman sing enka music.

I got bored with the poetry reading and was heading out when I got the surprise of my life.

there he was…

it was the creator of manto-kun. he had come all the way from saitama to celebrate in the first birthday of his beautiful creation.

I told him how much I loved manto-kun and how sento-kun sucks and I hate him. then just got kicks, I made a birthday card for manto-kun.

then me and the father of manto-kun held up our own individual creations together. he said my art skills were very good, but I think he was just saying that. even though I know my art skills are great, he seems much better.


I never got the chance to talk to manto-kun in person, but being able to meet the creator himself was the next best thing.

the civil war continues here in nara, and with definite bloodshed in the future, I can only urge the disciples of sento-kun to lay down their guns and raise their flag of surrender, allowing manto-kun to take his rightful place as nara city mascot