I checked the news and the Well after breakfast, and people on the Well seemed to be having a mass therapy session. Someone had asked me why I’d said I might bail early on this trip, and I replied that, among other things, I was feeling pretty isolated (after all, besides Nick, Eric hadn’t shown up, and I was counting on at least one of them to provide some company and, in Nick’s case, expertise), I was finding it impossible to read Japanese characters, and I was generally uncomfortable. A symptom of this, I said, was that I hadn’t bought anything or been tempted to, which, I later realized, was a symptom of perhaps not wanting to remember this place, although I noted as I packed that I’d saved all the booklets I’d been given at the various attractions.
At any rate, I had to get out, so I packed and checked out and realized that one night at the Kyoto would cost what three nights at the Palace View had including breakfast! Wow. But, like I said, I’d been a good boy so far, things had been much cheaper than I’d expected (I hadn’t realized that Noda had negotiated the room-rate at the Garden Palace in Nagoya from ¥8000 to ¥6000!), and maybe a bit of pampering was in order to salve the damaged psyche and produce a more positive attitude towards the rest of the trip.
The cab dropped me at the Kyoto, and imagine my surprise when they had no record of the reservation I’d made over the internet the night before. They weren’t very friendly, but they did have a room, so they reluctantly stored my luggage and told me to come back in an hour when checkout started. My shoulder-bag was heavy, and it was, again, very hot outside, but I started walking and soon found myself at the Terimachi Market. At first, it was like the place in Kanazawa, covered, with an odd mix of total garbage and treasure. There were, for instance, several shops carrying religious goods, prayer beads, Buddha statues, and the like. An entire shop devoted to fans, very refined. I was doing better at keeping my orientation together, though, and so I realized that the market had several branches. One of them I turned down -- a very long one -- turned out to be the food market, Nishiki. It was hopping. The usual fish, including one place that was shaving bonito with a machine, loads of places with fine bentos on display, lots of pickle shops, which always had kasu pickles, one place I couldn’t figure out, which had a paste made from miso, sesame, and chili peppers that I sampled and flipped over, a store with knives to die for, places with exquisite tea sweets, and people shopping everywhere.
It was here that the comparison I’d heard between Kyoto and Paris made sense. Not that elsewhere in Japan I’ve noticed an indifference to food as is the case in Berlin, but these people really had that Parisian “prove this is worth the price” attitude as they carefully inspected the goods. If I’m in the neighborhood, I know where I’ll be eating lunch. And I’m in the neighborhood. On the way out, I even bought something: a cigarette lighter meticulously shaped like a video camera, whose “lens” is a flashlight.
And, as I write this, I’m in the Kyoto Hotel. When I came back at about 12:30, they were all smiles, and I even found out I had a 10% discount, for no apparent reason, which at least negates the consumption tax. Nick, however, isn’t here, and I suspect he’s bypassed Japan entirely and headed back to Bangkok -- if he could even get out of the States. The answer is very likely sitting -- along with 2000 other messages -- in my in-box back home. Eric, I now realized, even if he hadn’t bailed a month or so before I left, would also never have been able to get out; he was due here on the 13th.
Going back to Nishiki for lunch was such a seductive idea that, naturally, I was no match for it. I marched back into Nishiki (which, wouldn’t you know it, has its own website) and suddenly realized that the oshi-zushi place I wanted to go didn’t have a place to sit, and I didn’t want to march back to the hotel again to eat a bento, so I went a little further on and discovered a place which only seemed to have two or three specialties, all of which looked gorgeous. I pointed at a bento in the window, and then pointed to the counter inside, and the guy took the menu, showed me that it was going to run ¥2000, and I said okay, so I was in. What I got, thanks to the guy’s daughter’s fine English, was Anago Thirashi, a bowl of cold rice mixed with something vaguely sweet, topped with shredded omelet, nori, chopped shiso, and finished off with cubes of grilled sea-eel, anago. (“Unagi is river eel,” she informed me.) It was just enough, and it was truly exquisite, because each of its ingredients was in balance. I didn’t even want the miso soup which came with it, but I drank it anyway, to be polite. Profuse thanks, and back into the maelstrom.
Two more stops I wanted to make: a liquor store, where I’d noticed some “Autumn Ale” on sale from a local brewer, and the knife shop across the way from where I’d eaten, Aritsugu. They were fairly surly at the liquor store, but Aritsugu produced a smart young saleswoman who explained the knives to me. I’d had my eyes on some lovely ones in a showcase, but she informed me that they were sushi knives, with one flat side, which, of course, makes sense given the task they’re made for. There were only about 80 different types. I got a fairly Western-looking one, a small chef’s knife which will do a good job of filling in between the two I already have, and that’ll be it in the knife department for me. I declined having my name engraved on it, which was appealing in a way, but maybe a bit much. I should at least have inquired if they’d do it in kana, dammit. After I’d made the selection, I was seated at a counter and a cup of cold tea came out immediately. So did the master, who set about doing the final sharpening and cleaning. I was also given very specific instructions for its use. This for about $65.
Going out at the top of Nishiki into the main market, I noticed that the main market street seemed to have a parallel street. Having seen the rest of the market, however superficially, I decided to explore this one, too. It was far weirder than the rest of the market, mostly because, I think, it was aimed at young people. Oh, it had its pachinko parlors and the occasional classy shop, but it seemed to specialize in what I began to think of as “schoolgirl” shops. These are all laid out the same: on the left you find tons of trinkets, in particular the sorts of doo-dads one hangs from one’s cell-phone. Further back, there’s a selection of pop-group memorabilia and fan stuff. Then, moving to the right and back out again, there’s a selection of what appear to be teen tea sweets. In the center, out front, there’ll be all sorts of stuff, probably the latest things everybody’s gotta have. Every store has somewhat different stuff, all are laid out like this, and there were twenty of them on this street (which, admittedly, was long) if there was one. For the boys, there are clothing shops with expensive Japanese hip-hop and skater wear, sneaker shops, and action-figure shops for the hopeless dweebs who’ll become computer wizards. There was also, of course, a Mister Donut (“San Francisco Chinatown,” they all say -- true?) and a variety of other fast-food places. I shot a gigantic bean omelet hovering over a plastic food display in front of one of them.
A bean omelet looms
Another thing this street had was tons of temples and altars. I came upon one which seemed to have as its main deity a water buffalo, whose bronze statue had been made glossy on the nose and horns by people touching it and which also featured a machine where, if you put in a coin, a puppet dressed as a person in a water-buffalo costume with a mask would do a number of different dances. (I assume they were different dances because there were four buttons you could press.) A young family with a 3-year-old was entertaining him with it, and then they moved him over to the altar, where he rang the bell and they showed him how to make a prayer. Another temple down the road was owned by a sect which encouraged women to become involved with Buddhism, and which also had had as a priest the man they credited with inventing the Japanese comic strip, to which he had made pioneering contributions. Too bad he couldn’t have patented it: the temple would never have had to ask for another donation ever again. And what appeared to be a Shinto place seemed to venerate an octopus.
I finally staggered back to the hotel at 3:45 and realized that I’d gotten my down-time day. The only temples I’d gone to had been minor and probably fairly new, and I’d gone to them completely by accident. I’d done some shopping (I also scored a beautiful yakuta, thanks to a very helpful saleswoman who was shocked that I wasn’t as big as she’d assumed, and a large Japanese size did very nicely, thanks), and seemed to be back in the groove. Tomorrow I’d try to find the 1001 Kannon temple and do some other stuff, but it was too late to “do” anything except go back to the castle, so I decided to kick back, and download the photos in the camera before I forgot what they were -- which I almost did: I’m going to have to go back and look at them again to see if some of the “Kanazawa” photos aren’t maybe Nagoya ones. These castles and so on are beginning to merge into each other.
Dinner was a disaster, though. I headed towards a recommended yakitori place, found it easily enough, but it seemed to be out of business. The only other place with a bilingual menu I’d bothered to note was a place called Fable Table, which I’d passed on the way to the other place. It seemed mostly to feature a black guy singing “soul and jazz,” which didn’t bode well. It was supposed to be a beer cellar with a lot of different varieties and an “international and Japanese” menu. It was horrid. The guy was your typical professional black guy overseas, but he (or someone) knew how to program the electronic keyboard he had, and when I came in, to complete the stereotype, he was murdering “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” Of course. I was seated in a place where I had a tile wall for a neighbor and a commanding view of the walk-in refrigerator. The waiters all looked like junior yakuza, and the food was beyond awful. I started with a Korean cold noodle dish, which wasn’t too bad, given that it had a kimchi base, and then I ordered grilled beef and vegetables, since everything on the menu seemed to cost the same: ¥500. (This included mixed nuts, incidentally, as well as ice cream and chocolate). The beef and vegetables were two hunks of gristly meat, two small eggplants, and a slice of red pepper stuck on a metal arrow, sitting in a red sauce of indeterminate tomatoeyness. With two beers, this cost me ¥2300, a total burn. Back to the hotel in a bad mood, drank the Autumn ale too quickly (nice and hoppy, but not much else), went to bed at 11:30, slept fitfully.
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