Last breakfast in Asia

Sounds like the title of a lost Graham Greene novel. I'm sitting at the computer on a tatami mat amid a chaos of half-packed bags, Kerry is making French toast, and we are awaiting a ride to the subway (and hence the train to Osaka, the plane to Tokyo, and the night flight home) in two hours.

As the trip (and blog) concludes, I am conscious of having written about far, far less of our experiences than I meant to. I have kept a sporadic diary too, but on more days than not we have been just too busy to record what we were doing, even in the most telegraphic list-like form, much less reflecting at length on it.

Just one example: as we biked the river yesterday I was thinking about the differences between the courtly, precise, always-careful-not-to-offend manners of Thailand and (in a different way) Japan, as compared to the brusqueness (to put it politely) of Vietnam or China. To us, the Chinese and Vietnamese can seem extraordinarily pushy, rude and uncouth... and that, I suspect, is just how we seem to the Thais and Japanese. Just one thing I wanted to write about in more detail and have not.

Anyway, I have loved that aspect of Japan - along with its related obsession with aesthetics, the gorgeous gardens etc etc - and wish I could have done a crash course in the language and history and then spent a month or two here. Next time, perhaps... extended travel does make you greedy!

And yet... in another way I'm truly looking forward to coming home.

Time for breakfast.

Last day in Kyoto

We've been having a wonderful time in Kyoto. There are far more sights to see than can possibly be seen in 4 days, so we've tried to hit a few of the highlights, while balancing them with spending time exploring the city. Today we had a lovely bike ride up the tow path on the Yama River, all the way to the shrine where my brother Keith and his wife Noriko were married. The shrine was bustling with activity, since there is a huge festival being held in two days there.

From there, we biked back down the river, turned East, and went back to Ginkakaju, a temple we'd missed the other day. When we realized it was closed for renovation, we treated ourselves to brown rice profiteroles (yummy), then biked the philosopher's walk. We'd walked it the other day, but I decided that I much preferred it by bike.

Next we went to the Kalaedoscope museum. Yup, there is such a thing, and it's well worth taking a look. I had never realized how many different kinds of kalaedoscopes there are, nor how seriously artists take the form. The best thing about the museum is that they have about 50 on display at any given time, and you can pick them up and look through them all. My absolute favorite was one that you looked through to view ribbons that you rolled and unrolled.

A bit more biking, a bit more souvenir shopping, and now we're cleaning up before going to dinner. Last night's dinner featured the world's biggest bowls of ramen, so tonight we're going for soba. Then we have to pack and face a very long travel day.

English (or lack thereof) in Japan

We've been very busy here, trundling around to various temples, wandering through neighborhoods, and generally trying to see as much as we can in our last few days. We've walked a lot, we've ridden public buses, we've taken railways and subways, and we've even rented bikes. And in all this, we've been struck by how little English is here. There are few street signs in English, the subway and buses have almost no English, and we've been in several dining places with no English menus or spoken English (thank goodness for the plastic food in the window; point and you shall receive).

Now, you may ask why we would expect English in Japan. After all, we're the foreigners. And it's not like Seattle exactly rolls out the welcome mat in Japanese. But. We have been amazed at how much English we encountered throughout SE Asia, especially street signs and public maps. I don't think I'd realized just how much, until we got here and navigating became noticeably harder.

This isn't a complaint, just an observation. We're getting the hang of things, and folks here have been very warm and helpful with our butchered attempts at Japanese and our "point and look stupid" method of getting around. We really like Kyoto, and wish that we could spend more time here.

One last post about toilets

Having said that most of the toilets in SE Asia surprised me with their cleanliness, I have to say that Chinese toilets were pretty bad. Mostly they were squat toilets, and mostly they were not very clean, but what made them stand out was the plumbing. Not only can you not flush the paper, the sewers don't seem to deal well with anything, and the smell (even in a clean toilet) was pretty potent.

One thing China did do well, though, was have easily available public toilets. Since many areas historically lack plumbing in individual dwellings, there are lots of public loos. We have a picture of one brand new one of these, complete with a row of 5 or 6 new, Toto squats, with automatic flushes. Of course, they don't bother with separate stalls, so you squat right next to the next person. (Note, that when there are stalls, older Chinese women don't usually bother with shutting the doors anyways, and usually do up their trousers in the hallway.) The automatic flush on a squat toilet is a bit interesting too, since if you're not careful, it can flush unexpectedly and they occasionally spray with enthusiasm.

Oh, and China was the first place that I saw the dirty footprints on the seat of the one Western toilet in the bathroom.

Here in Japan, the toilets are clean, you can flush the paper, and there is an SOS button in nearly all the stalls in public places. In spite of all this, we have yet to find any soap in any public washroom.

The toilet in our house is so high tech we can't figure out how to work it, but I will say the heated seat is pretty nifty. We can't figure out what all the other buttons are for. And it has a gray water system--there is a small sink over the tank. After you flush, the tank refills through a faucet over the sink, and you can wash your hands in that water. It is then stored for the next flush.

Hello from Kyoto

After a longish day, we arrived in Kyoto last night. We are renting a very small house (though it's bigger than our apartment in Paris) in the north east part of the city. We have just made our very own scrambled eggs (no browned bits!) and toast, and are headed out to see what we can see. There's so much here, 4 days can't possibly be enough.

It feels like such a luxury to be able to drink tap water.