Touring Kyoto

This spring, I decided to lean out of my comfort zone and to take people on tours in Kyoto. So far, I have led about 10 groups of people, all German speakers, and the experience was certainly interesting.

First and foremost: all my clients were delightful people. They were curious and interested, some even prepared for their tour. They also wanted to know about life in Japan in general, and I hope I could dispel a myth or two… Overall, I enjoyed myself, which came as a surprise to me.

Ever since I came to Japan, friends of mine had suggested tour guiding to me, but I was always very reluctant. The main reason: I’m an introvert and I feel I’m not good with strangers; and on a tour you have to “function” immediately. But it turns out that this is not an issue at all. I only had small groups of four people max, and the fact that I finally get to talk about Kyoto and its history for hours to an appreciative audience is quite exhilarating.

The other thing I was worried about was my hip problem: One tour means six hours of walking, a good part of it uphill… However, since I lost so much weight last year, it was less of an issue than I had feared – provided I can take breaks or at least lean against something especially towards the end of the tour. And there are always painkillers, of course.

However, there is one unexpected negative as well: The day after a six hour tour, I’m wiped out. I feel more mentally drained than physically tired, and this might be because of my introversion – having to interact a whole day with people I don’t know seems to deplete my batteries pretty fast. Therefore, I try not to schedule mentally challenging tasks – or, heavens forbid: appointments – the day after a tour.

For that reason, the whole tour guiding thing will probably remain a side job for the high seasons in spring and autumn. While it’s always good to test one’s boundaries, it’s just as good to know where they lie.

The Reason I Jump

Naoki Higashida

Let’s get it out of the way: This is a book about autism. And its author, Naoki Higashida is autistic himself. Therefore, he is in a unique position to explain what this means. The book takes the form of a Q&A, where he answers 58 questions by “normal” people. Some of the questions are, for example: “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly”, “Is it true that you hate being touched”, or “Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?” Some of the questions are more about his personal quirks, and to others he doesn’t have an answer, like “Why are your sleep patterns all messed up?”

I’m not really sure what to make of this book. Yes, it’s a fascinating first-hand account of somebody living on the spectrum who tries to explain what that actually means. He does so with deep insight into his own condition (which is to be expected), and with a surprising eloquence at times.

And it’s exactly this eloquence that makes me pause. Not because of his autism – I’m no MD, so I can’t evaluate how or if this would affect his intelligence – but because, allegedly, he wrote this book when he was only 13 years old. Granted, I don’t have experience with 13-year-olds and the chapters are very short, sometimes just a page or so. Yet, I somehow have the impression that there has been a lot of editing for the original publication and potentially again for the translation. The final short story that is included in the book is more in line what I see as the writing capabilities of a boy in his early teens.

Naoki Higashida was born in 1992 and diagnosed with autism as a child. Unable to speak at the time, he wrote this book (first published in 2007) using an alphabet grid. Since then, he has published both fiction and non-fiction and works on raising awareness of autism throughout Japan.

Despite my reservations, this book provides an interesting – and much needed – glimpse behind the emotional walls of an autistic child. Get it from amazon.

Simply…

Following up on my post about Kyoto’s IC cards, I decided to buy a prepaid ICOCA and take advantage of the new point system for commuters. Mostly, I’m still riding my bicycle, but there are some occasions where I need day tickets, which are not available on the bus anymore. Instead of purchasing some at a subway station, with an ICOCA, you can “buy” them online in advance. You still have to pay the full amount for all your trips on that day, but whatever is beyond the price of the day ticket is reimbursed in points (which can be used to reload the card) the next month. Anyway, I digress.

Buying the physical ICOCA was the easy part. The next step, registering the card under my name could be done online without much trouble, thanks to online translators.

One final step was necessary to be able to earn the commuter points, and the website said: “Simply insert your card into a ticket machine at a subway station to finalize your registration.” That’s what I did (or so I thought, when charging the card) all the way back in April. Points are awarded in the following month on the 15th, so I waited patiently.

And nothing happened for three months, even though I could login to the website and check how many of those one-day passes I had purchased so far. Still: No points arriving. The young assistant at my nearest subway station couldn’t help me beyond offering me a phone number (which is useless to somebody who still heavily relies on visual cues and handwaving when speaking). So, as I was in the area on Monday, I went to the bus & subway info center at Kyoto station to sort things out in person.

There, a lengthy back-and-forth eventually resulted in them making the call to the main office on my behalf. And I was informed that the final confirmation step at a ticket machine was still missing. I was a little surprised, but begging for help, somebody finally took pity and went with me to the nearest subway entrance to see what was going on.

There, it turned out that “simply insert your card into a ticket machine…” involves the following steps, all of which only in Japanese, of course:

  1. Choose a ticket machine that has the “points” option available in the first place (50% chance)
  2. Push the correct button (25% chance if you’re not fit with the kanji)
  3. Enter your (online) password and confirm
  4. Check the info displayed and, if correct, confirm again

Well. Everything’s simple in hindsight. And with help at hand….

Music Appreciation

As I mentioned, I sat down with BATI-HOLIC bandleader Nakajima-san for an interview the other week. Although we talked mostly about the band, I also took the opportunity to ask a few personal questions. About his cats. About his favourite bands. And about that one thing that keeps bothering me about their concerts:

People don’t sing.

You see, I love singing along with my favourite songs, even though I know I can’t sing (recording myself one rainy afternoon in my high school days drove that one home quite forcefully.) Still, I sing loudly and proudly and with lots of enthusiasm.

But at the concerts I go to, the audience stays mostly quiet. Yes, there is the dancing and the waving of tenugui, and they may join in with the refrain or shouts at certain songs. But otherwise: silence.

Nakajima thinks that many Japanese people believe that they can’t sing (how come karaoke is that popular then?) and they don’t want to bother the others around them. Also, most people just want to simply enjoy their favourite band performing live. However, he does admit that this is less of an issue in the small venues that BATI-HOLIC play in, since the music is so loud that it safely drowns out every other sound.

I can see his point, but still, singing along with the music at a concert is one of the main reasons I go there in the first place. It’s great to dive in deeply and I also feel that it creates a special bond and community with the other people there. Not to mention fantastic live versions of songs. It’s something I wouldn’t want to miss.

As a side note, Nakajima also mentioned clapping along with the beat – and how it really annoys him when people get it wrong. Interestingly, it doesn’t bother him when he’s on stage himself – I guess he’s too immersed in creating his music at the time.

But when he’s in the audience himself, he says he finds it disturbing when “someone is obviously grooving in a different way from the beat that the song has! Honestly, I sometimes wish they wouldn’t clap at all.” I understand what he means. And now, of course, I’m super conscious of my own clapping… Thanks, Nakajima!

Monkey Business

This afternoon, Pumpkin and I were startled out of our Sunday contemplation by noise from “upstairs”. At first I thought something had loosened and fallen. Pumpkin however made his way into the kitchen immediately and looked into the garden, growling. When I couldn’t find anything amiss, I went back to what I was doing.

A few minutes later, more noise, and when Pumpkin kept staring and growling and I took a closer look, I finally noticed them too:

Going into my third year living here, this is the first time I see monkeys – Japanese macaques to be precise – in this neighborhood, even though I’ve noticed warning signs nearby. So I thought, they were safely on the other end of town (aka: in Arashiyama’s monkey park.)

But no, two males had been visiting and were romping on the roofs and in the trees for a while before making off again. Now I wonder if some of the noises coming from the roof in some nights were also monkeys on the prowl. Then again, this was the first time Pumpkin got upset and growled throughout their visit. He now sleeps at the back of my chair again, keeping close watch over me, I guess.

It surprised me that they were pretty big but at the same time only have a very short tail. I wonder if they’ll be back and if I should be worried sleeping with open windows…
Sorry, I was a bit too slow taking pictures, these are the best ones.

Summer is Coming!

Today was the first day this year with more than 30 degrees! In other words: summer has officially started in Kyoto. My windows can stay open now, the duvet from my bed is on standby while I’m using the covers only (pyjamas will become optional in a few more weeks), and I’m looking into buying special summer items that dissipate heat.

Interestingly, I really didn’t need to check the thermometer to deduce that it’s summer now. I found out by a simple fact: Pumpkin is sleeping on my desk now.

Yesterday evening, he still squeezed behind me on my office chair (Side note: how come cats always use up 50% of your space, no matter what size it is?) but today, he prefers the cool wood of the desk in the coolest room of the house.

To be perfectly honest, it does annoy me a little. He has absolutely no business being so cute, and when he’s sleeping right next to me, I feel like canoodling him every 30 seconds or so. Goodness, I have stuff to do!

Hachidai Jinja

At the end of May, I decided to explore my neighborhood and visit Hachidai Jinja, a famous shrine that dates back to the 13th century, when the whole area was very much outside of Kyoto still. In fact, the Ichijoji village (named after a temple that ceased to exist in 1335) was only incorporated into Kyoto City in 1931. But I digress.

The main deity of the shrine is Susanoo-no-mikoto, the brother of the sun goddess. While Yasaka Jinja (the shrine celebrating Gion Matsuri) is the head shrine for Susanoo, Hachidai Jinja is often called the “northern Yasaka”. Interestingly, Saginomori Jinja, which is even further north, also enshrines Susanoo-no-mikoto, but perhaps he was added to the local pantheon there a bit later.

Hachidai Jinja once had much larger precincts, but today it is fairly small. Passing through a torii, a steep slope leads to the main part, and the main hall (built 1926) lies on top of a few more steps. People come here to pray to exorcise evil spirits, for academic success and matchmaking, among other things.

The shrine is also responsible to provide protection from “directional evil”. It protects the city in particular from evil that comes from the north-east, and was once one of 12 shrines that protected the city.

Nowadays Hachidai Jinja is famous for its connection to a single event: The fight between Miyamoto Musashi and the Yoshioka clan at Sagarimatsu Pine, in 1604. At the time, the pine stood still on the shrine grounds, and it is said that young Musashi went to pray before the fight. However, he changed his mind when he realized that he should only rely upon his own strength and went into battle without prayers. The gods must have favored him regardless, since he was able to wipe out the entire clan during that night.

At the spot of the fight, the fifth descendant of the famous pine still stands to this day; at the shrine itself, the stump of the original tree has been enshrined in a glass case. Next to it, erected only in 2002, stands a statue of Musashi, imagined at only 21 years old (as he was during the fight) and holding his two swords.

It was nice to explore the history of the neighborhood, even though I wouldn’t call the shrine itself spectacular. Unfortunately, even though it is pretty high up in the Higashiyama mountains, there is no view from the precincts; for that you should visit Shisen-do temple just below the shrine. I have done that, of course, and will report about this visit in due course.

Fangirling…

I spent almost the entire day fangirling over people.

In the morning: Bati-Holic or rather: their leader Nakajima-san. I swear, it was for work though – we’ve had an interview because I want to write about them in my next WUIK newsletter (subscribe!) in honor of their 20th Anniversary concert next month.

Learning about the indie music scene in Japan and how things changed for the group was very interesting. Nakajima also shared a few personal things like what he did right out of uni and we went into details about our cats. These bits will probably not make it into the newsletter. However, since we were talking for 2 hours, there’s plenty of material.

In the afternoon, I went to see a friend and her woodblock prints in a joint exhibition of her woodblock print class. This is an annual event and we always meet there. By now I am already expecting some types of print (there is always somebody who makes Buddhas, another one always makes a scene from noh etc.) and it’s fun to recognize some of the artists, so to speak. Yes, my friend’s pieces are very memorable too!

Anyway, so much fangirling is tiring… and Pumpkin didn’t appreciate being left alone all day. So, I’m off to bed now!

The Kyote

A few weeks back, I have discovered a newsletter from a fellow Kyoto denizen who calls himself (or possibly just his newsletter): The Kyote.

It’s a newsletter about what’s going on in Japan at the moment, with a focus on what’s trending on (Japanese) twitter. In the second half, there is a deep(er) dive into a historic crime that shocked Japan at the time (a bit like my Sada Abe case). He publishes every Sunday at 19:00.

This week’s edition is titled “Vibrator* Racing”. Yes, it’s exactly what it means, and yes, it’s a totally serious project. The writer appears to have a certain nerdy humor though… Here’s a little gif:

The link to this particular newsletter with a more detailed explanation is here:
https://thekyote.substack.com/p/14-vibrator-racing
Enjoy…

(Re-) Visit

Last weekend, mostly to get new photos for the “deep dive” feature of my WUIK newsletter, I visited the Garden of Fine Arts again. And: it grows on me.

Part of this is certainly the fact that this time around, I went in the early morning when the sun illuminated the place much better (remember that it’s 2 floors underground) and gave it a more bright and uplifting atmosphere.

The other part is that now I know that the Last Supper and Last Judgement from the Sistine Chapel in Rome were reproduced almost on the original scale. The Last Judgement in particular takes up all three floors of the museum space, and somehow, I can appreciate both paintings much more because of this.

Afterwards, I went to the nearby Kyoto Institute Library and Archives, which I recently (re-) discovered. The entire second floor of the building is just the library with plenty of nooks and crannies to lose yourself in – and books too, of course.

On the first floor, there is a small museum, and this is where I discovered Yasuo Hayashi. He’s now 96, a ceramic artist from Kyoto, and somehow, his works look like MC Escher has discovered the third dimension:

I really enjoyed this exhibition (it’s on until June 9 if you’re in town) and will try to find out more about this artist. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take photographs, but I got a list of books showing his works that I can get from the library above.