Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Age of Empires
Much has happened since I last wrote anything...
I have now arrived in the hotel Roku Roku in Kyoto, in reality I have just finished my second day in Kyoto, but the first two nights were in the Youth Hostel, which was rubbish; it was a 6 person dorm with 5 people in it, it cost 19GBP per night, the bed was shorter than I am, and the Japanese people all wanted to get up at 0615 and go and have breakfast, since I didnt have any choice I got up then as well had breakfast, went back to sleep and then got woken up again at 0930 to be told that I was not allowed to be in the hostel between 0900 and 1530... which was pretty rubbish because I was really tired from having gone to the fish market (below)... as such I went in search of another place to stay... and found the hotel Roku Roku, which is slightly odd because check in is in a building 500m down the road from the hotel but such is life... after some discussion I have arranged an ensuite private room (in fact with two beds) and TV and air conditioning for....... 11.50 GBP per night and the hotel has been open for only one year so everything is almost brand new. The main reason for getting the room so cheap (it should be 40 GBP per night) is that the owner doesnt seem to have got the hang of marketing so it is almost impossible to find that this place exists and even if you do, to physically locate it is pretty hard so there are only a couple of other people here!
(above: my room)
Anyway, in my few days here I have been going to see some of the temples and shrines here, which are quite absolutly amazing... there are over 1000 in just this city, so I thought that most of them would be rubbish, but in fact all the ones I have even walked close to have been pretty amazing, and the less famous ones are really the best because they dont have bus loads of tourists rushing around them. So below are some of the photos of places I have been:
This is the longest wooden buildin in Japan, and contains 1001 statues of the Kannon (god(dess?) of mercy) that are each about 1.5m tall it is really awesome. Below.
Yesturday I went to several cool temples by following the Philosphers Walk, which was the daily route of Japans most influential philosopher whose name escapes me currently...
This is the Silver Pavillion at Sunset
Before that I was at the Temple of Nanzenji which has some famous raked gardens, you can just about see the swirls in the bottom of the photo below (while this sounds very boring it is layed out so well that you feel compelled to be relaxed (I can almost here people planning one at the boathouse ;-) ), and I sat here for almost 45 mins just looking at the gardens and the 4 or so trees planted in it):
... now for those of you who played the computer game Age of Empires (as I have done) may be thinking that these building look like somthing they have seen before! Kyoto is just a few miles from the ancient capital Nara which was the capital of the Yamato Empire (which is depicted in the game)
The other two visits of the day were Chio-In Temple where is was possible at no charge to enter the temple and sit while a buddhish ceremony was taking place and much chanting had hitting of bell/ cymball/ stones goes on, which was very cool.
The only remaining visit was to one of the most renoun temples (the effect of which was that I was not very positive because it was so overrun with tourists) but it did have a huge veranda which was supported on a forrest of columns almost 30m into the air. This is a photo of just one of the gateways going up to it:
My journet to Kyoto was a veritable demonstration of force by the Japanese public transport system, it kicked off with a trip to Tokyo central station on a normal train, the two adjacent platforms both advertised trains arriving for Tokyo at exactly the same time, on different line, ho ho I thought which one will arrive first... well both trains came to rest within 8 seconds of one another!!
Then I went to take the bullet train (Shinkansen) which takes just 2hr 20min to get from Tokyo to Kyoto (I dont know how far it is but the direct bus takes 8 hours) and it feels really smooth but when you look out the window you realise you are going damn fast. Anyway I was waiting on the platform for the train to arrive, and first a bloke in an offical uniform arrived with a flag to stand at the end of the platform, then an army of ladies dressed in bright pink and another army of men in luminous blue arrived on the platform how strange I thought they dont look like they are going to get the train, about 2 minutes later the train arrived everyone got off and within 5 minutes all the pink ladies had rushed onto the train turned around every seat on the train to face in the new direction of travel (ie the other way round) and hoovered the floor, while the blue men, had got all the rubbish of the train then the guard walked down the inside of the train and inspected it and then we were all allowed on! Below you can see the pink ladies waiting as the train flies into the station:
Before this trip I had got up at 0630 in order to get to the Tsukiji Fish market... this is the largest fish market in the world and happens 6 days per week at Tokyo dockside. Around 10million GBP of fish is sold there everyday!!
It is impossible to capture the sheer size of franticness of the whole operation in one (or even many photos) but I have tried with this one, it shows half of one of about 20 rows of traders and the tracks in between where people on small motorised cart rush up and down delivering fish to the thousands of vans parked in the car park outside (Japan alone accounts for 15% of the worlds fish catch) There are huge tuna and tiny tiny things all available here:
Below are a few photos of my walk around Tokyo:
(Rainbow Bridge at sunset below. Ginzo by night (its basically Oxford Street) above.
and finally I went to the museum of Emerging Science and Technology (since if youre going to go to one it might as well be here... and they had among other things, a working model of a magnetic levitation train (maglev) which went round a train track, and you could acctually see the empty space underneath it and push it sideways and it hovers straight back onto the track... very cool and finally but perhaps most impressively 100m pounds worth of Honda technology, in this little bloke the worlds most advanced humanoid robot infuriatingly I missed the demo of him walking around and up stairs and things by 10 minutes, but he was still standing in his case, and his neck muscles (as it were) were still enabled and when you stood near the glass he looked at you, and when you took a step sideways his head turned to watch just like a person.
I have one and a half days here, before heading to Kathmandu to meet Dan, tomrrow off to the Imperial Palace and the Golden Pavillion..
See you!
Barny
I have now arrived in the hotel Roku Roku in Kyoto, in reality I have just finished my second day in Kyoto, but the first two nights were in the Youth Hostel, which was rubbish; it was a 6 person dorm with 5 people in it, it cost 19GBP per night, the bed was shorter than I am, and the Japanese people all wanted to get up at 0615 and go and have breakfast, since I didnt have any choice I got up then as well had breakfast, went back to sleep and then got woken up again at 0930 to be told that I was not allowed to be in the hostel between 0900 and 1530... which was pretty rubbish because I was really tired from having gone to the fish market (below)... as such I went in search of another place to stay... and found the hotel Roku Roku, which is slightly odd because check in is in a building 500m down the road from the hotel but such is life... after some discussion I have arranged an ensuite private room (in fact with two beds) and TV and air conditioning for....... 11.50 GBP per night and the hotel has been open for only one year so everything is almost brand new. The main reason for getting the room so cheap (it should be 40 GBP per night) is that the owner doesnt seem to have got the hang of marketing so it is almost impossible to find that this place exists and even if you do, to physically locate it is pretty hard so there are only a couple of other people here!
(above: my room)
Anyway, in my few days here I have been going to see some of the temples and shrines here, which are quite absolutly amazing... there are over 1000 in just this city, so I thought that most of them would be rubbish, but in fact all the ones I have even walked close to have been pretty amazing, and the less famous ones are really the best because they dont have bus loads of tourists rushing around them. So below are some of the photos of places I have been:
This is the longest wooden buildin in Japan, and contains 1001 statues of the Kannon (god(dess?) of mercy) that are each about 1.5m tall it is really awesome. Below.
Yesturday I went to several cool temples by following the Philosphers Walk, which was the daily route of Japans most influential philosopher whose name escapes me currently...
This is the Silver Pavillion at Sunset
Before that I was at the Temple of Nanzenji which has some famous raked gardens, you can just about see the swirls in the bottom of the photo below (while this sounds very boring it is layed out so well that you feel compelled to be relaxed (I can almost here people planning one at the boathouse ;-) ), and I sat here for almost 45 mins just looking at the gardens and the 4 or so trees planted in it):
... now for those of you who played the computer game Age of Empires (as I have done) may be thinking that these building look like somthing they have seen before! Kyoto is just a few miles from the ancient capital Nara which was the capital of the Yamato Empire (which is depicted in the game)The other two visits of the day were Chio-In Temple where is was possible at no charge to enter the temple and sit while a buddhish ceremony was taking place and much chanting had hitting of bell/ cymball/ stones goes on, which was very cool.
The only remaining visit was to one of the most renoun temples (the effect of which was that I was not very positive because it was so overrun with tourists) but it did have a huge veranda which was supported on a forrest of columns almost 30m into the air. This is a photo of just one of the gateways going up to it:
My journet to Kyoto was a veritable demonstration of force by the Japanese public transport system, it kicked off with a trip to Tokyo central station on a normal train, the two adjacent platforms both advertised trains arriving for Tokyo at exactly the same time, on different line, ho ho I thought which one will arrive first... well both trains came to rest within 8 seconds of one another!!
Then I went to take the bullet train (Shinkansen) which takes just 2hr 20min to get from Tokyo to Kyoto (I dont know how far it is but the direct bus takes 8 hours) and it feels really smooth but when you look out the window you realise you are going damn fast. Anyway I was waiting on the platform for the train to arrive, and first a bloke in an offical uniform arrived with a flag to stand at the end of the platform, then an army of ladies dressed in bright pink and another army of men in luminous blue arrived on the platform how strange I thought they dont look like they are going to get the train, about 2 minutes later the train arrived everyone got off and within 5 minutes all the pink ladies had rushed onto the train turned around every seat on the train to face in the new direction of travel (ie the other way round) and hoovered the floor, while the blue men, had got all the rubbish of the train then the guard walked down the inside of the train and inspected it and then we were all allowed on! Below you can see the pink ladies waiting as the train flies into the station:
Before this trip I had got up at 0630 in order to get to the Tsukiji Fish market... this is the largest fish market in the world and happens 6 days per week at Tokyo dockside. Around 10million GBP of fish is sold there everyday!!It is impossible to capture the sheer size of franticness of the whole operation in one (or even many photos) but I have tried with this one, it shows half of one of about 20 rows of traders and the tracks in between where people on small motorised cart rush up and down delivering fish to the thousands of vans parked in the car park outside (Japan alone accounts for 15% of the worlds fish catch) There are huge tuna and tiny tiny things all available here:
Below are a few photos of my walk around Tokyo:
(Rainbow Bridge at sunset below. Ginzo by night (its basically Oxford Street) above.
and finally I went to the museum of Emerging Science and Technology (since if youre going to go to one it might as well be here... and they had among other things, a working model of a magnetic levitation train (maglev) which went round a train track, and you could acctually see the empty space underneath it and push it sideways and it hovers straight back onto the track... very cool and finally but perhaps most impressively 100m pounds worth of Honda technology, in this little bloke the worlds most advanced humanoid robot infuriatingly I missed the demo of him walking around and up stairs and things by 10 minutes, but he was still standing in his case, and his neck muscles (as it were) were still enabled and when you stood near the glass he looked at you, and when you took a step sideways his head turned to watch just like a person.
I have one and a half days here, before heading to Kathmandu to meet Dan, tomrrow off to the Imperial Palace and the Golden Pavillion..See you!
Barny
# posted by Barny @ 9:56 AM 
