What up. So last night I did go out, briefly, to Gion, which is Kyoto's red light district. It was disappointingly creepy rather than busy, probably because I got there at like 9:30 and left at 10. Christmas Eve is supposed to be their big night out, like New Year's Eve for us, too -- I guess I missed it. Also, the guy working at my hostel said it was news that all over Japan Christmas Eve was pretty quiet -- probably because of the recession. So maybe New York will be a little calmer than usual in a week. We'll see.
Today I forewent (foregoed?) all these fancy temples in favor of the Arashiyama Monkey House. What a great decision. When I was approaching the ticket counter and saw that I would be entering with an entire class of Japanese schoolchildren (little ones), I knew I had to do this. I can honestly say that it was the best 550 yen I have ever spent.
So at first, I'm walking up this steep hill with these kids, and all of a sudden I look down to my left and -- holy crap, it's a monkey! Not in cage or anything, just on this hill, doing its monkey thing. It couldn't have been more than 6 feet away, and then it just leisurely strolled up the hill on all fours. I was dumbstruck. Walking up a little further, I saw -- holy crap, 2 monkeys in a tree! And then -- oh my god, another tree full of monkeys! Then, climbing higher -- jesus christ, 5 monkeys sitting in a row on 5 adjacent posts! This was nothing compared to the clearing at the top of the hill: it was filled with literally dozens of monkeys. No cages, no fences. Just hanging out. It was awesome.
Like the deer of Nara, these things are fed by people, so they hang around people and are otherwise pretty lazy about their lives. While the deer were annoying though, monkeys are so great that it didn't really get to that point for me. There was a baby monkey kind of practicing walking on 2 legs who kept falling into a puddle. There were monkeys that kept fighting and screeching. There were -- these were my favorite -- exhibitionist monkeys. Here's how those guys worked: first, the lady monkey runs aggressively up to a group of 4 terrified Japanese girl-teenagers, then stops abruptly. Is she attacking them? Then a guy monkey (though you can't tell them apart at first) runs up and kind of gets on top of her. Is he trying to make himself look bigger by standing on top of her? No, he is humping her, while both monkeys make eye contact with the 4 terrified Japanese girl-teenagers, 6 feet away. 3 thrusts and done, every time. The girls kept moving around, and the monkeys kept repeating this routine. It was hilarious.
Hanging out with those Japanese girls on Monkey Summit for a while left me with an extraordinary revelation. So when I got to the top, camera in tow, the girls saw me, the white guy with the camera, and teasingly said "Photo, photo," like they knew I was going to ask them for a photograph. Eventually, I did ask them to photograph me with the monkeys, after which they said, "Wan mo, wan mo" -- "One more," as they've no doubt heard dozens of white tourists say. So here's the revelation: IN JAPAN, WE ARE THE SILLY CAMERA-TOTING GAWKERS. I wanted so badly to share this revelation with them, than in my country things are the other way around, but alas, the language barrier got right in the way. Meh.
The highlight was this: a guy who works there at one point looked at me and said purposefully, "mon-key feeding time." He then stepped outside, and classical music started playing from loudspeakers as he starts throwing food to the monkeys. I have a video clip of me recording this while laughing uncontrollably. When I get back, this will the first and only video I ever post on Facebook. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen, and whoever thought of classical music for that deserves every prize there is in the world.
A few other things to note:
Once you are separated from your group of children and the giggling teenagers and are alone with the monkeys, they suddenly become very scary to be around.
These monkeys clearly have very active social lives -- especially right after feeding time, they were constantly chasing each other, "talking," and humping each other (the best monkey-couple did a thing where the guy would spend 15 seconds grooming the girl, then 5 seconds humping her, then right back to the grooming, in a cycle like that, for as long as I was watching them). They looked like they were having a good time.
What else happened today?
I saw a bamboo grove that the guide book says is supposed to look like the one from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, though I honestly don't know how else a bamboo grove could look. It was so thick the sun barely got through though, which was cool.
I saw my first black person in Japan. A co-worker of mine said when he was in Japan on business a few years ago he would get followed around by fascinated Japanese kids, for whom he was the first black person they had ever seen in person. He convinced a bunch of kids on a subway that he was Michael Jordan. So at least he had fun with that. The black dude I saw did not have Japanese followers at that moment.
All that stuff was in Arashiyama, which I now recommend as a cool place.
On advice from my hostel guy, I decided to give Kobe a quick visit in the evening. Good call. That city is beautiful. They had a boardwalk with a ferris wheel and games etcetera that was just packed with more couples than I've ever seen in one place. It was a great whirlwind of young Japanese-ness. I'd estimate about half of all the girls have orange hair, and about 10% of the guys. It's not ostentatious, and actually looks quite good and classy, I was just surprised with how many of them do it.
Kobe also had a beautiful park a couple of blocks from the station, where the air smelled to me like it has only at my dad's kibbutz. I think it's a mix of trees, breeze, and clean concrete, which doesn't come up that often. Also, it appears lots of people stop to pray briefly at random shrines dotting the city just on their way home from work. I have to figure out more about what that's all about.
Finally, I decided to go to McDonald's by the train station at Kobe. Whatever. The other places I went in smelled weird and I was hungry for cheap food. Now, McDonald's is probably one of the most efficiently run enterprises in the U.S. -- you get fully prepared meals in under a minute. And Japan is probably one of the most efficient countries in the world. What happens when you combine the two? I got my McPork and Juicy Chicken sandwiches in literally under 10 seconds. Amazing. For the record, McPork was gross, but the Juicy Chicken had all these Asian-y spices and was terrific.
That's all for now -- maybe I will finally go out tonight after my shower (I smell not so good), but I probably will just read, go to sleep, and save that for Tokyo. Also, I want to have all my mental faculties at the ready for what could be an interesting day coming up. We'll see.
Hiroshima tomorrow.
