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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Friday, June 10, 2005 np: serious excitement. first off, big news. teenage fanclub is coming to the cat's cradle on july 18th! wow. i'm way too excited for words. now for the japan stuff. Hokke Club Hotel, Kyoto - 7:00p.m. (Japan Time) 10th June i don't know if it's more jet lag or the sunlight coming in my room at 4:30 a.m., but i slept only off and on last night until giving up to the day around 7:30 a.m. the hotel restaurant offers a traditional japanese breakfast, so we had rice with seaweed, cooked egg yolk, horseradish, bamboo, miso soup, cooked fish, fermented soy beans and the true touch, yellow watermelon. one old japanese practice they have largely suspended is putting a raw egg over the rice. the steam from the rice (somewhat) cooked the egg. alas they can't vouch for the safety of the eggs any longer. after breakfast we had a bit of free time. a group of us wandered around the area of kyoto in the vacinity of our hotel for an hour or so. at 11:30 a.m. we grabbed a bus across kyoto to the day's destination. the ryoanji temple houses one of the most well-known and exemplary pieces of zen art: the rock garden. made of 15 stones spread out in a bed of white gravel, it is incredible simple yet inspires such complex thoughts. as you enter the temple area there is a wash basin with dippers. you use these to ritually purify yourself before entering the temple; first pouring water over each hand and then cupping water into your mouth. my assumption is that this cleanses not only the hands posed in meditation/prayer, but also the mouth from which the prayers are uttered. i wish there had been fewer visitors so that a larger sense of the peace of the garden could have been experienced, but i still took quite a bit away with me. next we visited the r- (name to be filled in later) university peace museum which houses an amazing examination of the japanese end of world war II, including the war attrocities and homefront participation. it also includes a look at a lot of the major aggressive wars of the past 50 years and discusses the role of peace protests in all of them. a stark contrast from the zen garden, this museum dedicated to such destruction and how to stop it. it was truly a diverse day for those reasons. tonight, adam, cynthia and i went out to dinner at a local restaurant where we are pretty sure we were snubbed. why, you ask? simple: we were not presented with hot, wet towels to wipe our hands with before the meal. every other patron in the restaurant was given hot towels. at the pub we ate at last night, we were given towels. what's up with the diss? they were certainly happy enough to serve us and take our money. alas. my tuna bowl (sushi) was quite excellent though. mmm, mercury. the sweetest of the transition metals. finally we mounted the kyoto train station. this place is an eleven story behemoth whose rooftop view rivals that of even the taller and nearby kyoto hotel tower. it was amazing to look out on this city of 2.5 million and see the lights, the noises, the vibrancy. finally, i have to give thanks to rachel whose foresight of my tendency to sometimes do stupid things paid off. she packed neosporin and bandaids for me, just in case, and sure enough, after some mild egging on and encouragement by adam, i attempted to go up a rather long downward escalator in the kyoto station. i was nearly to the top when, in an attempt to catch up with adam and cynthia, i began taking the stairs two at the time. not wise. i tripped, fell, put a hole in the left leg of my jeans and wound up with some bloody scars to boot. nothing serious. i regained myself and mounted the rest of the way, mildly disgusting a security guard nearby. i'm not sure if it was even a word that he uttered at me, more like an "bleccchgghghchchhh." now when my children and grandchildren ask me if i ever made a fool of myself in a foreign land, i can proudly reply: "yes, my children, and let me tell you how..." posted by J. Neas | 6/10/2005 10:22:00 AM
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