I have a seikatsu ("for living") tutor named Mina. She is a fourth-year student at Handai, and she's basically paid by the university to help me out if I have trouble living in Japan. Since we were both busy, unfortunately, I hadn't met with her much throughout the semester. I ask her questions about Japanese language and grammar sometimes. She is very helpful and nice! A really dependable person.

Yesterday, Mina invited me to visit Kyoto with two of her friends! Kyoto is less than an hour from Osaka. The last time I was in Kyoto was probably when I was 15. I remember seeing Nijo Castle, Heian Shrine, and other traditional sites. When I was 15, I also saw a porcelain doll in Kyoto that looked almost exactly like I did when I was four or five years old! I remember that looking into the face of the handmade doll eerily felt like I was looking at myself...I regret that I didn't buy it but it was so expensive at the time. That was my memory of Kyoto. It was a while back.

Since we don't live in the same area of Osaka (I live in Minoh City and Mina lives in Suita City), I met up with Mina on the Hankyu train headed for Kyoto. We used our keitai (cell phones) and text messaged each other until she found where I was sitting. When we got to the station, I saw big roads and tall buildings. More city-like than my last impression of Kyoto, but I think it was because it was a different area. We were at Kawaramachi Station, so there was Takashimaya and Hankyu Department Stores, OPA, and all that. Of course it wasn’t anything like Shinsaibashi or Umeda in Osaka but it was not very quiet. We met up with Mina’s friends and walked around.

We walked at an incredibly slow pace, though. I am never that slow, except when I am walking with my grandmother on the streets of Hong Kong. The reason is that there were a lot of pretty crafts and things in Kyoto stores. We saw all sorts of pretty fans, pouches, dolls, Kyoto snacks, cosmetic products, and chirimen (a type of cloth) decorations. I also really liked the hand-painted T-shirts and trucker hats and sneakers that we saw because they had floral Japanese designs that I love. I wish I had one of those black T-shirts with sakura falling over the shoulder or a stalk of bamboo on the side or a goldfish swimming across it. They were so simple and elegant! But they were like almost US $80. So I was mostly window-shopping…I still have to pay rent! (^_^) and heating has been really expensive lately. My gas bill is really high…

As we walked along, eventually things got quieter and quieter and more Kyoto-like. We stopped for a lunch and I ordered a tamago-donburi (egg rice).

We visited temples together and walked around in the parks around the temples. It was very peaceful and the sky was very blue. It was a nice day and not too cold. In front of the temple, we saw an old lady selling cell phone straps for 300 yen. OMG she was such a good sales person. Really smart. She kept on saying things like, “Come on! You girls want to get married, right?” because the phone strap was a red string and supposedly was lucky and would help us meet people.

Recently a lot of people have been telling me that I should start thinking about marriage (what the?) and so Mina jokingly said that I should get one. Well I didn’t get one. And part of it was me being stubborn and fighting against all this talk of marriage. (LOL I’m not especially looking right now and I’ll be fine even if I don’t get married!) But the obaasan was such a good salesperson that Mina’s friend Yumi bought one after a few minutes. The granny was really funny too. Like “Thank you! Now Granny can have a hot meal today” and things like that…LOL. And she looked at the rest of us and was like, “That’s all?! What about the rest of you, huh?”in a hostile tone (joking) and then quickly smiled and said “Ookini”(thank you). She was talking in Kyoto-ben (Kyoto language).

My friends said they weren’t sure about the proper way of praying at a temple, but we figured it out from watching other people. People bowed once, threw money into the thing, bowed again, rang the bell, and clapped two times (to make the god aware of their prayer). I said I wouldn’t do it at first, since I’m not a Shinto believer. But then I thought, well I am in Japan and this would be an interesting experience, so I did it. I hope somebody up there is watching out for me. (^_^) We threw in 5 yen, because it sounds like “go-en”…In Japanese, “goen ga arimasu you ni”means “Such that I will be destined to meet with good things/ fortune” (Sorry this my really rough translation of it…somebody please correct me if there is a better way to say it.)　It’s bad to throw in 10 yen because that would be “Juu-en,” which sounds like the word for being far away from “en” (chance). That’s something I learned yesterday. I didn’t know before that the coin you threw in mattered!

We saw a store for maiko taiken, where people get to dress up like geisha and have their pictures taken. I would like to do this some day! It costs almost $70. You get 10-minutes in the makeup and the kimono. They take one picture for you, and then you can take as many pictures as you want with your own camera, but you have to take off the kimono in 10 minutes. (Very Cinderella-like!!) When I was leaving, a tourist came in looking very confused. She asked the store employee, “Does anybody speak English here?” All the employees shook their heads. I felt so sorry for the tourist! So I said, “Hi. I speak English. I don’t work here, but is there something you would like to ask me?” She said, “Yes!” So I explained to her how the store was charging for the maiko experience, and how a phone reservation in advance was required, etc.

When I was translating, the store employee said, “Yes. So please explain that to your friend.” When I said that I wasn’t the tourist’s friend and that I was just translating, the shop owner was very surprised and said “Wow! Thank you for going out of your way to translate for us!” My friends were laughing, too. The tourist said she appreciated my help. She was from Singapore but couldn’t do the maiko experience after all because she was flying home the following day. She asked me where I was from and I said America. (^_^)v

It was easy to interpret a bit. I remember visiting Kyoto when I was 15. My Japanese was horrible then! It’s hard to get around in Japan if your Japanese is bad, because most people don’t speak English. So even though I was about to leave the store I just couldn’t leave that poor Singapore person alone like that…

When I was 15 and in Japan on my family vacation, a lot of regular Japanese people on the street helped me out!! I will never forget their kindness!

My friends and I walked along the streets of Kyoto and I felt like I was on a movie set of old Japan. The streets were really narrow. People in rickshaws passed by. We saw some girls who were doing the maiko experience. They looked really pretty in their kimonos! We stood around and watched them for a while and took pictures. I thought it was interesting how they looked really classy and like they had stepped out of an old Japanese painting…and yet they were using their cell phones and digital cameras and talking like regular schoolgirls.

I passed by a theater and saw a poster for a collaboration between Chinese Kunqu opera and Japanese kabuki actors. How interesting! I think I am not going to see it though. I will see Chinese opera the next time I visit China. I look forward to seeing more Japanese stage performances though.

At night, the street smelled like meat. Actually it smelled a lot like the streets of the Tenderloin district in SF where I used to hang out as a 6th-grader. I feel at home in Japan. :)

I took a few pictures of nighttime Kyoto before leaving. I love seeing the streets all lit-up!

That was my day in Kyoto! I look forward to visiting again. Maybe I’ll do the maiko experience with my sister when she comes to visit.