Trip to Ise and Kyoto! =D

This past week I was lucky enough to have completely off from school thanks to the entrence exams at Nanzan for all the poor new university students. Crappy week for them = awesome week for me. Life just ain't fair! For the month leading up to the week off, a bunch of my friends and I knew we wanted to go somewhere, but just couldn't come to a consensus on where to go. Some people wanted to head back to Tokyo, some wanted to fly to Okinawa and a few even wanted to head off to Korea. After a bunch of meetings and much planning we decided a nice, easy trip to Kyoto would be a great way to spend a few days, and also wouldn't break the bank. We also thought it'd be nice to pass through Ise on the way and take a wander through the most sacred Shinto shrine in Japan and visit the famous Meoto Iwa (The Wedded Rocks).

After all the planning and reservations were in place, and we could do is sit back in anticipation until Wednesday morning rolled around. The train we had planned to take would be leaving Nagoya Station at shortly after 10:30, so we arranged for everyone to meet at around 10. I left my house early that morning with 2 of my new roommates, Ben (from the Netherlands) and James. On a side note, my roommates this semester are 1000 times better than last semester!

Left to right : Jenny, Whitney, Yukiko, Me, Kelsey, Keely and Alanna 

We met up with Yukiko (a Japanese student who came to Carleton last semester), a friend from last semester(Whitney), my friend from Carleton, Alanna, and her two new roommates Katri (from Finland)  and Kelsey and two new friends from Nanzan, Keely and Jenny. The train to Ise took about an hour and half, so we arrived around noon. It was interesting getting off the train in something other than a huge city. This was really my first time seeing Japan's countryside.

Our first stop in Ise was to head to the Wedded Rocks. As we moved away from the station and got closer to the ocean it got much colder and extremely windy. For both Alanna and myself, this was our first chance to see the ocean up close, and we decided we wanted to touch it. As for myself I timed it so the waves had gone out when I walked down and swept my hand through the low waves. Alanna on the other hand failed to realize the size of the waves and as she bent over, she was soaked by a huge wave. Being the good friend I am, I was able to get a great photo of her.

We then moved down the beach towards the Okitama Shrine and the Wedded Rocks. After spending a while there taking a bunch of pictures we headed to a nearby resturaunt for a quick bite to eat. Following lunch, it was back to the station, a quick train ride into Ise-shi (Town of Ise) and a short walk to the Inner Shine (Naiku), which enshrines Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. Naiku is located near the foot of densely wooded hills and has many smaller shrines spread throughout the forest.

Seeing as it was getting a bit late, and we still had a lot of travelling to do, we decided to leave the shrine early and slowly make our way to Kyoto. After a 2.5 hour train ride, with a few transfers, we arrived at Kyoto station. It was now time to try and find our way to our hostel. As Ben, James and James' friend Wei Wa were staying at a different hostel, we split up at the station and went our own ways to find our hostels. After wandering around for almost an hour, we finally got the proper directions to our hostel; checked in and dropped our stuff off. That night we explored Kyoto station a bit, but returned early as we were all very tired and had a busy day planned for Thursday.


Nekutei bendeingu mashinnu (Necktie Vending Machine) I found near the station.



Off to an early start Thursday morning, we headed to our first destination of the day, the Sanjusangen-do temple. This temple is known for the thousand and one armed Kannon statues that line the interior along with thirty statues which stand in front of the Kannon-Bosatsu. These are statues of spirits called "Ninju-hachibushi" that attend to Kannon-Bosatsu through such qualities as beauty, wisdom, prosperity, wind, thunder, etc. are deified.

This temple is also very famous for the Toh-shiya (Archery Contest) which still takes place today around January 15th. This ceremony apparently dates back to the middle of the 12th Century. It is said that master archers were able to hit their targets across the 120-meter space between northern and southern ends of Sanjusangen-do Temple. In the Edo Period, a contest began based on the number of arrows hitting the target during the 24-hour period from 6 o'clock in the evening to 6 o'clock the next day. The greatest record so far achieved was by Wasa Daihachiro in 1688 when he successfully shot 8,132 arrows, achieving a hit ratio of an astounding 62% at an arrow being shot every 9 seconds...FOR 24 HOURS!!!

Our next stop was Kiyomizudera (Pure Water Temple), founded in 780 on the site of the Otowa Waterfall in the wooded hills east of Kyoto. Kiyomizudera is best known for its wooden stage that juts out from its main hall, 13 meters above the hillside below. Behind the main hall we went to see the Jishu Shrine, a shrine dedicated to the deity of love. This Shrine has two stones about 18 meters apart. It was quite funny watching high school girls attempt to walk from one stone to the other to see if they would find love. Apparently successfully finding your way from one to the other with your eyes closed is said to bring luck in finding love.

Along with the amazing sightseeing, there were many shops from the top of the hill winding all the way down the old road to the bottom. This reminded many of us of Diagon alley from Harry Potter. For dinner we headed towards the Gion district, which is famous for seeing Geisha and Maiko (apprentice Geisha). We saw a few Maiko, but were unable to get our pictures taken with them. We ate a quick meal and headed back towards our hostel with plans of going to sing some karaoke. We sang some songs, had some drinks and headed back to our hostel.

Funny statue in Gion

 For Friday we had plans of going to a few places but one of our friends had a bit of an 'exciting' night and we didn't get going until around 2. On an extremely crowded bus ride to Kinkaku-ji (Golden temple), I guess our friend wasn't quite feeling as well as he thought and fainted and fell on the ground of the bus. This was not a fun experience for him or the rest of us as we tried to get the bus to stop, get the Japanese people to move and help him off the bus. As we were getting off the bus, he fainted once more and fell. Skipping the more graphic details, 2 hours later we were back on the bus for the temple minus a few people who went with him to help. After a long, packed and hot bus that took some 50 minutes we finally arrived at Kinkaku-ji.

Once there, it was an amazing sight to see. Probably one of my favourite temples i've seen thus far. We had wanted to get a group picture in front of Kinkaku-ji, so we found a nice couple and asked them to take the picture. They happily agreed and we lined up. What we didn't expect was that a bunch of other people started taking pictures of us with their own cameras. Just goes to show that even in front of a famous temple, foreigners are still picture worthy. Kinda disturbing though to think photos of us are on some random Japanese person's camera... After such a crazy day, no one was really in the mood to go out, so we headed back to our hostel and just hung out in our rooms for the rest of the night.

The following day we had plans of going to  Koga to see a Ninja village, but I, along with a few others didn't really feel up to it, and choose to just make our way slowly back to Nagoya. It turns out this was a lucky choice. Our friends who did go found that the Ninja village was a fair bit away from the station and ended up getting driven there by a creepy old man. Apparently the village itself was also creepy, with few tourists and a really scary atmosphere. To make matters worse, on their way home, Koga was encompassed in a fierce blizzard and all trains to the station were cancelled for some 4 hours. During this time they had the pleasure of being hit on by a bunch of Japanese Salary men. Not a good way to end a trip.

Even with the little speed bumps along the way, i'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we had an amazing time in Kyoto with many memories we'll certainly never forgot, whether good or bad.