Big in Japan

i can’t help myself. i don’t know if it is about my longtime sex abstinence, but some products in the supermarket look really weird to me.

look at this sirup. it is made to spread it over some ice…. shape of its bottle is amazing.

and this weird drink (made of i don’t know – looks like…. ) in 1.5 liter bottles. for those who never tried it…. it needs some braveness for the first time, but tastes not so bad. ;-)

i dont really know what to write about kyoto. i can just say it is a great city. it has many different facades. urbanism. japanese craziness. hang out areas. geishas. contemporary art. and very old japanese temples shrines and gardens. all in all an amazing city. but because of that also crowded. i am also a bit tired of writing because right now i am in the shinkansen to ogaki writing all the stories from last week in a row. now i realize how much time all this blogging takes. today i already spent like 4 hours on it without publishing. i am writing textfiles because no internet in shinkansen – actually unbelievable that they do not offer in shinkansen. how do they survive without… well they have their mobile phones.

so back to kyoto. the only way to enter the imperial palace is with a tour. we didnt know that its a 150 people tour. well this is no fun if you have guards that are telling you to keep close to the group if you want to see something in detail.

the gardeners are really poor guys. they have to climb up the trees and cut the new leaves. its not leave but i dont have a dictionary with me right now, anyway you should know what i mean. it’s the thing that grows in a tree. that makes it bigger and bigger every year. well and the gardeners have to cut them – so that the shape is not changing. because actually all the trees there have the abstract shape of a man with opened up hands to get some holy spirit.

the palace is nice, but i am not sure if i would do it again. probably not. there are lots of other very beautiful things to see in kyoto. afterwards we went to the silver palace which is being renovated right now so you cant see much. actually we wanted to go to the golden palace. but the difference between golden and silver is just G and K – so very easy to mix up on the map. and we found out there that the silver facade was just an idea and has never been realized. so it is not silver it is just called like that. is that japanese humour? anyway it has a very nice garden which is also worth a visit.

then we were hungry and went to the gion district. lonely planet writes here is the most beautiful street of asia. well i dont know. i think they got a really good service from the many geishas located in this area. we saw one as well but we were more interested in food…

After Tokyio we went to hoshi onsen, which is a hot spring. kind of spa. It was located in mountains – snow in may – in the north of tokyo close to nikko. Hoshi Onsen is said to be very famous but nobody from IAMAS knows :-) anyway it was amazing – the house is over 100 years old and we slept in the old building.

of course you have to get rid of your shoes first. and you get them back when you leave…

and when you arrive there it is very soon very much clear that you also do not need any clothes. jukata is provided. food, soap and toothbrush as well. and as you are in an onsen you actually never get dirty and no need for dressing up. always stay in the jukata, also for sleeping. next day you get a fresh one anyway… also toothbrush tststssss weirdos. trashsociety.
so basically you can go there without anything. just go. well but wht we didnt know people do not usually stay there more than one night. we stayed for 3. haha. so in the time from 10 (checkout) and 15 (checkin) we were always alone, what was really cool. so relaxing. awwwwesome. that loneliness also gave us the chance to take pictures inside the onsen, that looked great.

and the crazy massage chair

at some hours it is mixed – men and women. at some its only men – well there is a timeshcedule for that…. but that was not my problem there. the real thing was the food. sashimi for dinner sashimi for breakfast and the onsen was the only building in the mountains. nothing else to buy somewhere. my stomach got really bad, because it is not used to such amounts of raw fish. durchfall bis heute :-( but japanese toilets are really great with all their different ways of washing your ass with water. you can adjust everything. direction, diispersion, strength and even the heat of the water. amazing. well so everyday i refused more and more things not to eat. last breakfast was rice only….. :-(