Category: Japan

While in the beginning this appeared to be another powertourismday, we only had one bus stop before we returned to Kyoto train station for taking a last Shinkansen train to Tokyo. In Naga, about 45 driving minutes south of Kyoto and a former capital of Japan, two temples made the trip worth.

The first one, Kasuga-taisha, is a shinto shrine, placed in light forest. I noticed mostly whishes in wooden tiles and stone lanterns with white paper as lampshade also other lanterns. Some of these were lit for babys who never saw the light of the world, partly because – as our tour guide said – boy were considered more valuable than girls. You can do the maths. Interesting is that sika deer is well protected and fed (if you buy special deer crackers for them) without anyone -as far as I’ve seen – cared for their sex or gender.

The second one is the Todaij-ji an immense buddhist temple, around 50 meters in height with a buddha made out of bronze weighing around 500 tons. The dimensions of the temple were overwhelming, but nevertheless from remote it appeared not extremely posh, rather like a normal house, just massively oversized. With surrounding lawn, water and some inscense, it felt still like a sacred place, despite thousands of the tourists constantly passing by.

After ramen for lunch and a bus ride back to the Kyoto train station, we managed to get the Shinkansen express 16:11 for Tokyo. It goes without saying that the train left on time and arrived in Tokyo station on time.

After we exited the train, I noticed that I missed of my two tickets for that ride. For Shinkansen train rides we received from our tour guide one “ticket” and one “seat reservation”. Shortly I should learn that this is also the proof of payment of the express train surcharge. I mentioned this to our tour guide and she said that it might pose some problem because also when exiting the train station, the tickets need to be shown. We tried and when passing the exit, the Japanese native tour guide mentioned that I’ve lost on of the two tickets but it was a group booking and… No luck, we were directed to the man behind the counter, who had to deal with that. Explaining the same to him – again from the native speaker, I would have been lost on my own – resulted in more questions and the man refused to let us out. The rules say that when leaving, the ticket has to be presented. And rules are rules. Unusual for a Japanese, our tour guide complained and argumented again. The man behind the counter mentioned that he would enquire in the train, if the ticket had been found. “What?”, I thought. I could have lost it anywhere, even on the way from the gates to the train in Kyoto. Surprisingly, a minute later he confirmed that my ticket had been found and that we could therefore leave. So this is what they mean by “not losing ones face”. I am pretty sure that noone had found my ticket, but this way the clerk had fulfilled his duty against the customers and did not break any rule (himself). Always follow the rules.

At the hotel we met Levin and the other musicians again. From now on there was no compulsory visitor program but two and a half days that we could spend as we wanted. After Levin reported from the last day with his guest family, he was off again and Andrea and me went for dinner in a cheap underground restaurant that we found nearby, similar to one in Kyoto train station that we enjoyed two days before. Thus time Andrea had Karagee and I found some presumably vegetarian curry. With a fruit shake from the convenience store we returned back to the hotel.

Visiting Kyoto in a day is a challenge for sure, the city has a long tradition and could easily fill a week still having only scratched the surface of its sights, let alone understand the religious and historical setting in which it tempel or area is to be set. But we had single day and it was our tour guide’s task to fill it. After our group grew by some members of the orchestra to 30+ persons, a full size coach had been chartered that brought us to a lot of temples and other sights in direct sequence. That kind of “pressurized fueling” with information without my active participation makes me drop the previous piece of information once the next comes in. I did not store too much of it at the end of the day, but it might come back. Therefore I jsut share the pictures and may fill in more details afterwards:

Buddhist Sanjūsangen-dō temple (Wikipedia)

Kiyomizu-dera temple (Wikipedia)

Arashiyama (Wikipedia)

Ryōan-ji temple ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dan-ji )

Kinkaku-ji temple (Wikipedia)

After that flood of impressions we could have stayed in the bus to get back to the hotel. Some of the group still wanted to see the Gion quarter, a kind of old town with classical houses, so we stepped out of the bus early to later, maybe after dinner there, find our way home by public transport on our own. It was not quite as impressive as expected there, a small group thought about having dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in which we ran by accident. Having had no lunch all of us were decided quick to step in. After that we split up again and 3 persons took the (public) bus back to the train station where we still explored the building with its architecture (incredible 70 meters high for a train station) and a good view to the Kyoto Tower and the surrounding. A perfect ending for a day packed with impressions.

After a first orchestral performance on the day before, for this day a “mini concert” on a stage at the Nagoya airport was announced. Scheduled for 15:00 it was the centre of that day, In the morning there was no program which would have fit in, so we had free time which Andrea and I used for some clothes shopping in a nearby mall. Around one o’clock the group met up again and took a train from the nearby station to the airport, that is located on an artificial island in the sea. The suitcases well deposited, we had some more time to stroll around at the airport. Leisure time but somehow locket to the place that was built for people to get away.

The concert started on time with some clown artists up front that entertained the passers by and the audience that stopped (plus those who came for the orchestras) with some juggling and fun but also trombone and trumpet integrate in their perfomance. The orchestras performed in various combinations, and more and more the stress that the performance meant to the partly rather your artists fell of and the joy prevailed. Despite flight announcements in between and passers by with suitcases and some noise all around, the concert was celebrated with loud clapping by the audience. A lot of group and couple photos with Japanese and German musicians, some with tears in their eyes because partly it was the last common meeting of the orchestras. Or were this tears of joy?

We also said goodbye to our son again who we shortly met. We still were not introduced to his host girl. So this was not to happen. I eft with the visitors with a chartered bus to Kyoto, around 3 hours to drive on the expressway into the sunset.

I more and more felt locked in with the group, which had nothing to do with the persons in the group, rather with the fact that I felt externally controlled since 5 days and I definitely lacked some physical action, which is good also in everyday life to keep emotionally stable.

I asked in the hotel if they had a gym, hoping some exercise would do me well. They had not. Luckily, a small group of others took me along to dinner and did not bother too much about my bad mood, and after a good udon meal and the return to the hotel, first trace of cabin fever seemed to be over. Plus ew managed to get a bag of laundry done, which gave me a better perspective to wear fresh clothes also for the rest of the trip.

The next day we left Hiroshima the way we came, with the Shinkansen, the fast train, on the same route back. Yet we did not go all the way to Tokyo but stopped in Nagoya, where the orchester was rehearsing the last today together with the orchestra from Seirei Junior and Senior High School for to common concert that afternoon. We felt already somehow experienced with the means of transport and mastered it – of course also due to our fabulous German-Japanese travel guide – without problems. We even received the train tickets as souvenir instead of leaving them to the counter. Of course they were punched and stamped to void them despite the time and date was over. Always go by the rules.

A quick baggage drop of and some changing of dresses at the hotel and off we were again to the concert venue, the Mizuho Cultural Theater. We arrived there by shared taxi well in time where we met our son again – in that way it was a return. He took quick notice of us but was too excited to talk long. The excitement of the whole trip and the upcoming concert in particular was clearly noticeable. Once the music started I had quite some shivers because the performance as well as the acoustics were – as far as I can tell – extraordinary. With a break of around 20 minutes over 2 hours of music was performed, first the Leinfelden-Echterdingen orchestra, the Seirei orchestra, after that both of them combined. The range of music was going from Bach to musical soundtrack medleys. During the concert and moreover around the actual stage performance I felt the vibes thta connected musicians all over the world.

While many of the musicians went back home with their guest families that hosted them for the last days, the other musicians and the visitors returned to the hotel where we checked in and due to lack of a proper lunch took off in smaller groups to get some dinner,

I followed the recommendation of the hornist who knew that about two metro stations away a big, futuristic mall with several restaurants should be, so 5 persons entered into what we thought was a metro station and tried to navigate ourselves to the desired place. First we hat to ask (with the help of a speaking translator), the Japanese lady did not only direct us to the right station but went with us all the way through a labyrinth of upper and underground hallways and finally explained us on how to operate, the ticket machine, what the fare was and which line to take and exit to jump off. We used our Suica cards to pay for the tickets, passed the entrance barriers and found the right platform. It’s not as hard as it can be, especially if people are helpful.