I have the package

Shortly before I temporarily left Japan, I shipped a big box of stuff to Canada. The postman came right to the dorm for his regular deliveries, helped me fill out the form, and departed with my stuff crooked under his arm. Five years ago, at the conclusion of my high school exchange, I sent a couple of packages as well...but it was a very emotional time, and I couldn't bring myself to open them at first, because I felt like in some way it would officially signal the end to a time I'd treasured. And then days turned into months and then it was just kind of a thing.

Today I opened all three. I barely remembered what I put in the one I shipped two months ago, never mind five years.

 Ok then, U-Pack. What have you got for me?

 Pokemon, the jinbei from English Club, some books, more Pokemon. All right, sure.

 Ah! FF for Jugs, Tales for Goku. Picked these up at Kyouto Animate. They were well-received.

 Here I have tried to arrange my Pokemon charms into the shape of Japan, their positioning corresponding to the region they represent. As you can see, I failed.

Enough of that. Time to jump into nostalgia in the worst way.

 It looks like I stuffed as many papers as possible anywhere they would fit. Right on top are the slightly crumpled lyrics to a song my class did for a contest. In Japanese high schools, you stick with your homeroom class, and the teachers come to you. Obviously this means that a Japanese high school student has nowhere near the course choice or autonomy of a Western one, but the main advantage is that the class becomes a family, and I really mean that. My class was the best part of my previous stay. It was full of wonderful, energetic, kind people who were not only quick to welcome me into the fold, but continually proved their willingness to help me survive in the school and not only endure but actively help cultivate my tottering and unsure Japanese.

Homeroom classes do a lot of activities together, one of which was a...I don't know what you'd call it. A singing contest, is what it was anyway. The more proactive students selected a few songs, we narrowed it down to two, thought up a little skit, and then competed with the other classes in our year. I gather it was a nationwide competition so the winners must have advanced to the intramurals and so on. We didn't win, but practising with everybody is one of my fondest memories from that time. This video from 1rittoru no Namida should give you an idea what it was like. As you can see we performed a half-English, half-Japanese rendition of “A Whole New World” from Disney's Aladdin. I can still recite parts of the Japanese lyrics from memory. My class also did “Oh Happy Day” but I wasn't part of that group. Remember that one pretty well too, though.

 On the first day we were required to do a test. Looking back I have no idea what the point of that was, since everybody there had already written an entrance examination, but I guess it was just to assess our abilities. Of course I was hopelessly lost, and though my teacher said I should ask if I wasn't sure what to do, I didn't want to take up time that would be better spent on my classmates, who, unlike me, were actually expected to perform somewhat acceptably.

Of course I was able to do the English section with no problems, even without being able to read the instructions, but the rest was impossible. I barely attempted the Kokugo. I was later placed in a Math class since that's pretty much the same in every language, but not only is Canadian Mathematical pedagogy woefully inadequate, I was pretty damn horrible at even that.

Hey, somebody check this and tell me if my math's correct. It probably isn't. On another page I adorably wrote “FOIL” in the margin, as if it was too abstract and complex an idea to hold in my head without having it in front of me.

 A, uh, pamphlet that's been scrawled all over with marker and shot to hell with a hole-punch. I can no longer recall its origin but it clearly must have meant a great deal to me at the time. Jesus but I'm a sentimental bastard, aren't I?

 I didn't spend every class with my class, as it happens. Some of them, like Kokugo, would have been too far beyond me, and the school's administrators thought (as did I) that it would be beneficial to experience a wide range of topics and classroom settings. So, for four blocks a week, I would trek over to some other class and sit down with them. One was Sekaishi, with a class that I always felt I would have loved to have been a part of every bit as much as I did my own, if it had shaken out that way. Hero of another story and all that. This paper was clearly from my Nihonshi class, where I first learned the word “bakufu.” There were a couple of girls in that class who sat near me that I always enjoyed talking to. They were hot.

 Whoooooakay then. No, I wasn't foisting my nationalist pride on everyone around me. These were supposed to be gifts. Obviously I didn't end up distributing them all, but they're good to have.

 Hey, I remember buying this! Seems I had halfway decent taste in high school. Still in ok condition, too. Never did know who DJ Honda was, though.

 ...yeah ok.

 Oh, right. I used to be kind of a nerd.

 Ah, Hagaren! Book-Off has always been good to me.

 They don't quite jive with the rest of the collection, though.

 An...empty plastic bag. Seriously, what the fuck was wrong with me?

 Aha! Cardcaptor Sakura was what I was using for reading practise back in the day, and it was every bit as difficult for me then as 1Q84 is now. However, I never quite completed my collection. Each volume, you see, was originally packaged with a bookmark in the form of a Clow Card. My ambition was to obtain a complete set of Clow Cards, so I always vowed to gather the rest whenever I returned to Japan. Unfortunately, since I refused to open up the box and check I had no idea which ones I was still missing, so I couldn't do it this time. Guess that just means I have to get back as quickly as possible.

 Actually, as you can see I was tantalizingly close to getting them all. Damn!

 A T-shirt, which I bought in 2008, that celebrates the Rolling Stones tour of 1981-82, which I was unable to attend because I was too busy not having been born yet.

Aaaaand here's all the Gundams I acquired over the course of a semester (along with two other still unbuilt ones that I bought in Canada). I seem to have packed them first and then jammed everything else in around them. In total, it looks like I bought twelve. I'd often arrange and rearrange them on my bed or a table, simply admiring them, glowing with pride every time another machine or two joined their ranks. Yes that's both a regular and Char Custom Zaku, and yes that's two versions of Freedom. Shut up.

I find it really rather unbelievable that I ever thought that this was a good use of money, or that I'd be able to find space in my room for them, or, most of all, that I'd ever, ever have the time to build all these fucking things. Amazing how priorities change.

There is one thing I didn't find amongst this clusterfuck. Over those five months, I kept an incredibly dense journal, filled with reams of completely unnecessary detail, that I'd hoped might turn up. The fact that it did not means that I felt it was precious enough to carry it with me in my backpack, and that it is most likely now lodged deep in some other box, in the bowels of my parents' basement, possibly on another plane of reality. If I ever come across it again, or just get the itch to reminisce, I'll share some of the stories from that period – and there are some good ones. For now, I hope you've enjoyed the snippets. Looking through this stuff has given me some perspective on my most recent ryuugaku, as in a lot of ways, they were really very similar: Joyous, painful, thrilling, and ultimately transformative. That is, everything a ryuugaku should be.

Fushimi Inari

Increasingly as of late, every time I see a picture of some famous Kyouto sight I find myself thinking "Oh hey, I've been there." Across four visits in twelve years, one way or another I've ended up going to pretty much every single major tourist destination in the city. In fact, Fushimi Inari was basically the last one I had left. With my time here rapidly running out - for the moment - this was to be a sort of swan song for my solo Japan travels, one last box to check off the big list.

I was almost immediately waylaid by a blonde English girl, who was looking for a different station. I helped her find her destination and in the fifteen minutes or so that we spent together, I learned that she was teaching English in Viet Nam, and had come here for a visa run. She was quite interesting; I'd have liked to talk with her more. I'm always fascinated to talk to expats from different countries, especially other Asian countries.

Anyway!

 Hey, does this remind you of anything?

Ordinarily I would have shot this whole area much more extensively, but on this day, the camera angle, subject, and composition was often determined by factors such as where the shade happened to lie, and whether or not I had been standing in direct sunlight for more than zero seconds.

 Foxes! Foxes everywhere! They're messengers, apparently. This one has a key in her mouth.

 Ok, so now we're heading to the main event...

 A ton of gates! Seriously. For some reason I'd been thinking there'd be just one line of them, somewhere. No way. We're talking tens of thousands. There's a mirror on the grounds and blah blah blah, but this is the main event here at this shrine. It also appears at the end of Memoirs of a Geisha, which, though I hate to admit it, is kind of what made me want to come here in the first place.

 What.

 See, I told you they were everywhere.

 A branch in the path! Whatever. I didn't know the meaning of either character (both of which recur, together, throughout the complex) off the top of my head, so I just chose one at random. I went with the right one. Judging by the video above, the left is the one where Memoirs was filmed. Damn!

 So if you look down the path, the gates appear to form one solid wall, but if you view them at an angle, you can see the gaps. Now if you're like me, you've wondered just how far apart they actually are. Here's a picture, with my hand for scale. Answer is: It's completely inconsistent. Some are jammed up right against each other, some I could almost squeeze my body between. I hope that was informative for you.

 Couples! Couples everywhere.

 Like I say...it turned out to be a much larger place than I'd anticipated. Come here expecting to invest some time, bring good walking footwear, and prepare for a lot of uphill walking. And don't be afraid to head back down once you've had your fill, because you're never going to explore all the various paths unless you work here.

 Just behind the main shrine area. Wow. Ok. We get it, Fushimi Inari. You like gates.

 After following behind this agriculture fan and his gf for a bit, I decided to explore a side path. After twenty minutes of walking, I was rewarded with fascinating sights such as this:

 Well, ok, also this:

 But, again, also this:

 Also, this. This is either a Shintou god I'm not familiar with or the most ostentatious Buddha I've ever seen. I actually stood there and wished I'd had Stupid Ugly Foreigner with me.

 Couple!

 This is where things got truly arduous. I stopped even bothering to try to take photos. There was nothing but stairs. And gates, which at least provided ample shade, but mostly, stairs. Stairs and stairs and stairs and stairs and stairs. At one point I had to rest because I felt the onset of delirium. But I didn't gave up. And my tenacity was rewarded with...!

 This thing. Yay?

Ok, also this.

Nijoujou

One day I'm going to do a full post detailing the Shinsengumi. In fact, I already have one mostly written, sitting deep in the bowels of my "blog" folder. But today, although we're going to be visiting the group's iconic headquarters, we're going to glaze over a bit of the history and the details. If you're unfamiliar, it's enough to know, for the time being, that they were a small group of elite samurai who acted as a sort of special police for the Tokugawa bakufu, and like modern police, they sometimes clashed with other divisions, such as the rival Mimawarigumi. They were subject to a strict and somewhat arbitrary code of conduct, the penalty for violating which was being commanded to commit suicide. They wore intimdatingly colourful haori into battle, per the above photo (though they probably actually wore yellow, not blue), and were organized into eleven squads, each led by a talented soldier with all manner of stories surrounding him. They were basically the late-Edo Gotei 13tai, and wow do I hate myself for even typing that.

 And they operated out of this place.

 Easy access! Only one gate is open to the public at the moment. I know, because I started by taking a stroll around the whole complex. It took a solid 20 minutes.

 The moat isn't particularly deep and certainly not impassably wide, but you can imagine how stressful it would be to try to lurch across and then scale the walls while the defenders constantly fired rifles and bows at you.

 K, so here we are inside. Nijoujou is full of flat, open spaces.

 My plan was to arrive as early in the morning as possible, in order to avoid the crowds and thus get better shots. As you can see, my plan was a rousing success.

 You can only go into some of the buildings, and only at some times of year, and only if you pay extra money. I didn't really try to understand it. The site was used for different things at different times, including the Tokugawa residence, a young noble's household, and the Imperial Cabinet, and of course parts of it have been destroyed and rebuilt over the centuries, so functionally speaking it's a bit of a patchwork.

 Should that be "so" keep off? A bit demanding if that's the case, but I can't think what else it could be. Hmph.

 Bells, but I couldn't read the explanation. I'm sorry.

 The first area opens into a beautiful garden...

 ...which, naturally, you are not allowed to walk through. Still though.

 A second moat protects the inner, more important section, the actual "castle" part of the castle.

 You've gotta be kidding me, there's a whole garden type thing up here too?! Wow. Nijoujou is just overflowing with green.

 I don't even really like nature, and even I'm beginning to think that I'd enjoy living here. I mean, not by myself, obviously. Maybe me and some of my close friends, and a few tenants, a retinue of bodyguards, and staff. Yeah, that could be really nice.

 Let's head up these stairs...

 ...but not before whirling and taking a shot of this couple. ^0^

 I thought I'd be able to look out and see some of the Kyouto cityscape, but I was wrong. Instead, the trees block our view, lending a feeling of insulation. I also thought a refreshing breeze would blow off the moat and cool me off, but I was wrong. Instead, it was still hot as balls.

 So cool.

 Glancing back.

 As we make our way back to the entrance we're directed to another, smaller garden. This one has what appears to be the warden's residence. In reality there's probably like a ride 'em mower or something in there.

 Conspicuously regular trees.

 Ostentatious!

 Some of the buildings are suspiciously modern.

 I was curious about this, but not enough to both pay an additional 100 yen and take my shoes off. One or the other, ok; the two in combination, can't be bothered. Probably wasn't anything too too spectacular anyway. What, now you're curious too? Oh, fine.

Source.

Probably a bunch of stuff like this, if I had to guess. Ok, that is kind of cool.

 Classy.

There are better castles, and 600 yen entrance is a little steep, but Nijoujou is a nice visit. Also, while researching this post I found a video that you might enjoy, so let's finish out with that: