My Weekend in Kobe and Kyoto

The Wedding I spent my last weekend without family in Kobe and Kyoto for the wedding of the daughter of the family I lived with as a home-stay student 16 years ago. This was my first trip to Japan. Who knew then it would turn out like this? Anyway, I turned the wedding into a long weekend in some of my favorite areas of Japan.

The wedding was a traditional Shinto wedding, a first for me. There is a part in the wedding where the bride and groom will drink what looked like ritual water poured by the priestesses. Then each member of the wedding party, as a symbol of I guess unity, partakes of the ritual beverage. Now, if you know me, you know that I don't drink alcohol. Let me tell you, that was NOT water I drank. Can I just marvel at how such a small thimble full of sake can generate so much heat in the mouth and throat? Wow.

Geisha / Maiko Oddly enough I had many opportunities to interact with geisha and maiko (who are apprentice geisha). The father of the bride is a patron of a geisha house and has access, which is extremely uncommon. So throughout the weekend we had geisha and maiko attend and perform at the wedding, dinner the next night and at an after-party at a local cabaret. Not to mention I did my fair share of stalking them with my camera on the streets in the districts of town where one can find the geisha houses. I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of tourists, like me, and other fan-boys whose main hobby it is to hang out in these districts to take these girls' picture. Seeing that was almost equally as interesting as the girls themselves.

Here is my take on the whole geisha thing. It's incredibly interesting. These are young teenage girls who choose to move away from home to learn a very traditional way of life. Their access to friends and family is limited. They learn traditional forms of dance, music and singing. They learn a high form of etiquette. To me, I find these girls beautiful in the way I find a statue beautiful. Everything about their appearance is a work of art. It takes them about an hour to get dressed, 30 minutes just to put on the facial make up and their hair takes so long that they only have it done once or twice a week. The clothes they wear costs thousands of dollars. Even their mannerisms and attitude are trained to be mature, docile and agreeable. It's not necessarily who these girls are, it's who they're being made up to be. And they're being made into a work of art. It's a really interesting world. A funny example of this training came at a dinner the night after the wedding. I was sitting next to one maiko at dinner, translating for the group, and she would not eat any of the food until she was invited to do so. I didn't know this and she just sat there until the father of the bride told me to let her eat.

So it was one of those really cool and rare experiences to get so much time interacting with these girls. This isn't a normal thing, even for Japanese...many of whom have never seen one in person let alone talked to one.

Akashi Kaikyo Bridge Ask my wife, and she'll tell you that I'm a sucker for heights and panoramic views. So, I decided that I would take a tour of the world's largest and tallest suspension bridge. It may not sound interesting, but the climax of the tour was an elevator ride up to the top of the main gate, 300m above the 4km long bridge. You emerge from the elevator and you're outside with nothing but a chest high wall keeping you safe. You have unobstructed views of the world around and below. For my metrically challenged friends of the U.S. (I used to be one of them!), 300 meters is about To give you perspective on the height of 300 meters, for my metrically challenged friends that's just under 1000 feet, or about 90 - 100 story building.

Kyoto Other highlights of the weekend included the trip to my favorite shrine in all of Japan, Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is a mountain shrine that has many kilometers of steep pathways up and down the mountains that are enclosed by giant red torii gates packed in one after the other. These are gates that are purchased by companies and donated to the shrine as an offering for prosperity for that particular company. There our thousands of these gates of all sizes lined up one after the other.

Bamboo forests, river cruises, zen rock gardens. It was a very traditional Japanese tourist weekend and I loved it. I was only sad that I couldn't have shared it with the family.

So, definitely check out the pictures by clicking on any of the photos in this post. I took hundreds of pictures, but I picked the best ones and put them into one gallery. There are some really cool shots of the maiko as well as some panoramic shots from on top of the bridge. Definitely check out the video below.

Rockabilly dancing in Harajuku

Nothing says manly like a bunch of dudes dancing in the street in a circle, playing air guitar and flaring the collar on their leather jackets. This is the image created by the rockabilly scene here in Harajuku. While it's just another sign for what makes Tokyo so unique, I do have to give these guys credit for the really brash display of public alcohol consumption and greased up hair-do's. It's been a revival of sorts. Word is these guys and gals dressed up in Grease-style 50's era leather jackets and poodle skirts and danced through the better part of the 80's and 90's before the goth-enthused Harajuku girls stole the limelight. Now it looks like the Rockabilly is making a comeback.

There are multiple rockabilly clubs that meet in Harajuku on Sundays and they all have their own audio equipment that they blast for public consumption. And it wouldn't be Japan without there being some sort of hierarchical structure in place for the club - not everyone can be as outgoing and with their dancing moves. Some people are relegated to play air bass and others are more "back up dancers."

There seems to be enough room for the greaser-rockabilly man and the goth-Harajuku girl, though. That's good to see. You'd hate there to be acrimony between Fonzi and Little Bo Peep. Speaking of the Harajuku girls, there was one who looked like a kind of Strawberry Shortcake doll, who seemed to like posing for people.

Click on the picture to go to a small gallery of shots. Or watch the youtube video I shot below.

Fresh Fish

I went to dinner with some coworkers last night. We ordered a plate of sashimi and on the plate was a fish that had seconds before been alive and well, but who now sat on our plate skinned and carved up into sashimi. We were told not to put our finger in the fish's mouth, because it was still "alive". Low and behold the fish kept opening and closing his mouth, and would even constrict its head and tail if we touched it. Talk about fresh fish!

There's something awkward about looking at a fish who seems alive, and who's being used as a platter on which is served carefully slices of his own meat. I think to myself that I'm sure glad that's not me. But he was delicious.