Thoughts from Kyoto - January 25

I’m not sure if today’s some special sort of festival or something, but Mom, Haruna, and I went to a nearby Honda retail/repair/checkup/something center that we’d been to before, and they were holding a omochitsuki (making mochi) event, and it was really sweet. I’m not sure if this holds true for all Japanese car companies or something, but it seems like gratuitous customer service since as far as I know, we didn’t have to pay anything to go, and ate delicious mochi. They made it fresh, with rice and hot water, pounding away at it with large hammers… it was really cool, with a bunch of families that were probably from around the area with their kids. I think if I have to ever name one favorite dessert of mine, it would be mocha, particularly those with anko (red-bean) filling. Afterwards, Haruna and I went to the Kyoto International Manga Museum.

Hondaaaaaaaaaaaaaa is awesome.

I don't know why the hell my camera chose to focus on the background. At any rate, anko (red bean) mochi are delicious. The brown stuff is called "kinako", and it's also good stuff.

Family values!

Omochitsuki (making mochi)

That rod is significantly heavier than it looks.

The sign in the window says, "Hybrid, 20,000 USD". I guess they're more affordable in Japan, I don't know. Seems like a good deal.

I want to segway into something regarding the Kyoto train system. The way the pricing works is that you buy a ticket, and all that matters is where your starting and ending location is – you can switch trains on the way, to a faster one if you want, and it doesn’t matter. If you’ve got an unlimited use monthly pass, then you can use any train within the two stops that you bought it for, which is really nice too. I remember back in Taiwan, because trains were so few, they could figure out if you had switched to a more expensive train based on which passenger flow you were part of, so you’d have to add up more money for going to the same place on a faster train. Definitely not the case in Kyoto.

Anyway, the manga museum… had a crapload of manga, as to be expected. What I was pleasantly surprised at was the resources it had about foreign manga as well – there was an exhibit on the evolution of Japanese manga starting from the Meiji era, a special one of French manga (which is quite interesting), and shelves with manga from various other countries, such as China, Taiwan, Korea, Germany, the USA… for some it was just Japanese manga translated into other languages but for others it was local stuff (as opposed to localized) like Batman and what not.

But the coolest thing was seeing all the cosplayers – there were probably at least a hundred of them, and for the most part their costumes were amazing – it’s fascinating how “normal” manga culture is – perhaps not necessarily cosplaying, but the whole acceptance of this imaginary world where basically anything goes. We got caricatures done for us by graduates of a manga University in Kyoto, and that was really sweet too, albeit a bit expensive. It was worth it, though. I’ve had caricatures done of me in the past, but they were either with pencil, or strictly with pen – the caricaturists used watercolors too, and they had photo albums of the hundreds of people they’d done pieces before, and that was interesting, especially the number of foreigners I saw in them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any other photos of the manga museum, because there were “no photos, cell phones” signs displayed prominently all over the place.

Went to a McDonald’s afterwards for the first time, and got a Teriyaki burger, since it would be boring to get a Big Mac. What I actually wanted to do was get a happy meal, because one of the happy meal toy options was Naruto. Dang, when are we getting that in the States?

Then we went to a temple on Rokkaku-dori – I still don’t really know the difference between an otera (temple) and a shrine (jinja) yet. It was nice and all that, with a slight smell of incense and various visitors, but the coolest part was the fact that there were FREAKING SWANS in a small pond. To put it in context, one minute we were on a busy street, then another we were in a secluded, quiet temple with FREAKING SWANS where you don’t feel like you’re in the same world.

Cute.

Rokkaku Temple.

... what? Swans?

Freaking swans! Now that's something that Japanese religions have over Christianity. Freaking swans in their temples.