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Kyoto - part one -
May. 4th, 2003 01:50 amIn Kyoto we found a wonderful family-run ryokan (Japanese inn), which quickly came to feel like home.
At the door you take off your shoes and leave them in the boxes. All the floors past the entry way (except of course the bathroom) were covered with tatami.
Our room, like most of the interior rooms had a sliding door. In the corner was a tokenoma, an alcove with a scroll and sometimes we would add flowers.
The room was furnished with a table. Round and low. No chairs needed. No chairs present.
The beds were individual floor pads which were only present at night. Every morning Mrs Yuhara would roll them up and put them away in a storage room.
The bathroom was down the hall. There was a urinal on the wall and a Japanese toilet. (how to use Japanese toilet)
On bath nights, Mrs. Yuhara filled the tub and came to get people when it was their turn. First you each wash yourselves with a hose like thing in the bathroom, then your family sits together in the very deep hot tub and soaks awhile. Atsui (at-sue-ee) is hot in Japanese, but we were soon saying Hotsui ! It hurts is itai desu (ee-ta-ee des), JB liked to say it very dramatically so it sounded more like "me dying des".
Sometimes we would go out to eat. If we went to breakfast we would go to this coffeeshop a few blocks away that had a lot of interesting looking sundaes in the window food collection, but what we always got there was a set combination of a glass of steamed milk, a soft boiled egg, and toast. You had to get the top off the egg cup quickly or it would vacuum seal itself. There was always western music playing over the speakers. I especially remember them playing Beatles songs like "I've just seen a face" and what turned out to be an instrumental version of "Love is Blue" which quickly became my favorite tune.
When we went to dinner we usually went to another more Japanese style restaurant nearby. Sashimi (raw tuna) was my absolute favorite. My mother did okay using hashi (chopsticks), but JB and I would sometimes have to resort to stabbing our food to pick it up. Luckily the Japanese style ones are pointed, not blunt like Chinese ones. The food in the windows all looked very real to me, but my mother insisted that she could see that it was fake.
Sometimes we would get food at one of the tiny shops in the neighborhood and take it back to our room. The stores had bottles of milk and what we thought looked like chocolate milk. There was some confusion the first time we tried asking for some, because it turned out to be COFFEE milk (cohi gyuinyeu) , not chocolate. I loved it, I was born a coffee lover. The regular milk however was nasty. It was so nasty that JB wouldn't drink plain milk for years. After we went to the store together a few times, my mother let me go by myself. That made me feel very grown up.
We bought kimonos with obi (sashes) and tabi ( socks with the big toe separate) and geta ( the wooden shoes with a flat top and two boards sticking down) ,
Geta are good for predicting the weather if you are somewhere it might snow. You predict the weather by swinging your foot while saying "Ashita tenki ne naru" and as you finish saying that you kick your shoe off and let it fly. If it lands right side up it will be sunny. if it is upside down it will rain, and if it stays on its side, then it will snow. ( disclaimer: well that's the lore, ymmv as to accuracy of results).
Mrs. Yuhara showed my mother the proper way to hem up our kimonos and JB and I loved to wear them as much as we could. I wore the geta even when I was wearing a western style dress.
There was a playground directly across the street so we went there often. I remember walking around it in my kimono and people calling out "Nihongo?" to me. I knew Nihon was Japan, and I even knew that go in this case meant language, but my mind played tricks and I wondered if they were asking if I was Japanese! I learned how to write numbers in Japanese and practiced writing them in the sand with a stick.
There was a group of big girls, probably about 13 yrs old who would stop and talk to us on their way home from school. They were learning English and thought it fun to practice with people younger than them who knew it better. They liked to call each other "monkey" in English. They thought that was completely hysterical. It was pretty funny. They were in love with a male singer named Yuri, so I teased JB about having a boy's name.
A little farther away, but still near by was the "Park of 1000 Views" which we also went to many times. There were little stone lanterns and streams and bridges and other interesting things all over the place.
At the door you take off your shoes and leave them in the boxes. All the floors past the entry way (except of course the bathroom) were covered with tatami.
Our room, like most of the interior rooms had a sliding door. In the corner was a tokenoma, an alcove with a scroll and sometimes we would add flowers.
The room was furnished with a table. Round and low. No chairs needed. No chairs present.
The beds were individual floor pads which were only present at night. Every morning Mrs Yuhara would roll them up and put them away in a storage room.
The bathroom was down the hall. There was a urinal on the wall and a Japanese toilet. (how to use Japanese toilet)
On bath nights, Mrs. Yuhara filled the tub and came to get people when it was their turn. First you each wash yourselves with a hose like thing in the bathroom, then your family sits together in the very deep hot tub and soaks awhile. Atsui (at-sue-ee) is hot in Japanese, but we were soon saying Hotsui ! It hurts is itai desu (ee-ta-ee des), JB liked to say it very dramatically so it sounded more like "me dying des".
Sometimes we would go out to eat. If we went to breakfast we would go to this coffeeshop a few blocks away that had a lot of interesting looking sundaes in the window food collection, but what we always got there was a set combination of a glass of steamed milk, a soft boiled egg, and toast. You had to get the top off the egg cup quickly or it would vacuum seal itself. There was always western music playing over the speakers. I especially remember them playing Beatles songs like "I've just seen a face" and what turned out to be an instrumental version of "Love is Blue" which quickly became my favorite tune.
When we went to dinner we usually went to another more Japanese style restaurant nearby. Sashimi (raw tuna) was my absolute favorite. My mother did okay using hashi (chopsticks), but JB and I would sometimes have to resort to stabbing our food to pick it up. Luckily the Japanese style ones are pointed, not blunt like Chinese ones. The food in the windows all looked very real to me, but my mother insisted that she could see that it was fake.
Sometimes we would get food at one of the tiny shops in the neighborhood and take it back to our room. The stores had bottles of milk and what we thought looked like chocolate milk. There was some confusion the first time we tried asking for some, because it turned out to be COFFEE milk (cohi gyuinyeu) , not chocolate. I loved it, I was born a coffee lover. The regular milk however was nasty. It was so nasty that JB wouldn't drink plain milk for years. After we went to the store together a few times, my mother let me go by myself. That made me feel very grown up.
We bought kimonos with obi (sashes) and tabi ( socks with the big toe separate) and geta ( the wooden shoes with a flat top and two boards sticking down) ,
Geta are good for predicting the weather if you are somewhere it might snow. You predict the weather by swinging your foot while saying "Ashita tenki ne naru" and as you finish saying that you kick your shoe off and let it fly. If it lands right side up it will be sunny. if it is upside down it will rain, and if it stays on its side, then it will snow. ( disclaimer: well that's the lore, ymmv as to accuracy of results).
Mrs. Yuhara showed my mother the proper way to hem up our kimonos and JB and I loved to wear them as much as we could. I wore the geta even when I was wearing a western style dress.
There was a playground directly across the street so we went there often. I remember walking around it in my kimono and people calling out "Nihongo?" to me. I knew Nihon was Japan, and I even knew that go in this case meant language, but my mind played tricks and I wondered if they were asking if I was Japanese! I learned how to write numbers in Japanese and practiced writing them in the sand with a stick.
There was a group of big girls, probably about 13 yrs old who would stop and talk to us on their way home from school. They were learning English and thought it fun to practice with people younger than them who knew it better. They liked to call each other "monkey" in English. They thought that was completely hysterical. It was pretty funny. They were in love with a male singer named Yuri, so I teased JB about having a boy's name.
A little farther away, but still near by was the "Park of 1000 Views" which we also went to many times. There were little stone lanterns and streams and bridges and other interesting things all over the place.
