Day 10 – Impromptu Nikko
After I went back to Tokyo early, I had planned to just explore the city and take it pretty easy, so when I woke up Monday I packed my Tokyo maps and all and headed out to see more of the city. However, when I got to Ueno, the big train station and I saw the bullet trains, I realized that would be a complete waste. I still had my rail pass and I decided I’d better use it or I’d regret it.
In a great example of just how much freedom you have in Japan with a rail pass, I got off the train at Ueno and headed to the help desk to ask how to get to Nikko. First the lady started giving me a list of stations to hop around to, but I said, “No no, I have a rail pass,” and she said oh and gave me the platform number for the bullet train that went almost straight there. It was actually leaving in 4 minutes so I hurried over there and hopped on the train.
In a couple of hours I was in Nikko, which is actually a fairly small town and very pretty. The mountains are gorgeous and it was a pretty nice day, not too hot for once. I asked for some maps at the train station but they said they didn’t have any but I should check another station nearby. I went there and got a few maps and I saw one other white guy get some behind me. When I was looking at my maps deciding where to go we started talking. He told me he had heard me asking about maps and just followed me. He was a really cool guy and we talked for a bit and then decided to explore Nikko together.
It was great to finally be able to talk to someone who was American but understood Japanese things. John had been there for six weeks already doing a business school program at Tokyo University and he was traveling around before heading home. He didn’t know as much Japanese as me but he was starting to learn and since he’d been there for a few months already he was more comfortable with the culture.
On the way up to the mountain we stopped by the Nikko hostel for John to drop off his stuff. The hostel was amazing and I can’t believe we found it. You have to follow this little path between some houses and around the edge of a hill and come to the backside of some houses. I think it’s really just a little old lady’s house and it’s more like a ryokan than a hostel. Sometime when I’m traveling in Japan again, maybe with a friend who needs to see Nikko, I want to go back there and stay in that hostel.
After that we headed up the mountain to see all the standard sites of Nikko. It’s a fairly common tourist attraction for Japanese and for foreigners. There’s a beautiful bridge at the base of the mountain, and then you head up a steep road bounded by moss covered rock walls. The entire atmosphere is classic Japan and it’s definitely a place everyone should see when they’re visiting.
Nikko is actually a lot older than other places I had visited. It was the capital of Japan before Kyoto or even Nara I think. The architecture of the temples is more Chinese in style and much more flashy than any other temples I saw. It definitely has a distinct flavor. There were giant dragon and other animal carvings all over the buildings. Some of the animals were pretty interesting because the artists had obviously never actually seen them. They ended up with things like furry elephants and tigers with tusks. We also almost missed it but John noticed the hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil monkeys. They were actually the origin of that… thing. I’m not exactly sure what that “thing” is outside of something American college girls do for pictures.
After visiting all of the temples there wasn’t time to see the waterfalls or anything, so we headed back into town. On the way we actually saw a family of monkeys just run across the road. I got a picture of the last one but it was kinda far away so it’s not that good. We were both starving so we found a nice little ramen shop where you could use the internet if you ate dinner. The food was great and I learned a few new things from what John ordered. This was the first time I had gyoza, which is the best appetizer/snack ever. After dinner I had to check my email to see about meeting a friend in Yokohama the next day and John headed back to his hostel. I haven’t really talked to him since but we’re Facebook friends now so hopefully we can get together sometime when we’re both in Japan again.
It was getting pretty late so I headed back into Tokyo which took about and hour and a half I think. The trains out by Nikko were a little lonely, and one thing that always seemed weird to me was the little kids traveling alone at night in their school uniforms. You’d be amazed how young the kids are in Japan that travel alone. It was pretty much just one or two elementary school kids and me on the Nikko train, but after that I got back on the bullet train.
In the hotel the previous night, before I went to sleep, I met a few other travels and saw the guy from Miyajima again (the one that told me about that hotel). I saw that guy and another guy in the train station as I was heading back to the hotel and they said they were going to go explore Shinjuku and Roppongi. They asked if I wanted to come with them and, like I said, I can’t say no in Japan, so I stupidly agreed to go.
The reason this was a stupid idea was that these guys were both absolutely inept at Japan and on top of that, the second guy was a completely loser. I need names for these guys so this story will be easier to follow, but I don’t remember their names so lets call guy number one “Canadian” (’cause he is) and let’s call guy number two “Loser” (’cause he is). So to begin with I don’t know how these guys got around Japan because they had no idea how to use the train system. They also tried to ask for help a lot but they either did it in English or in the worst attempt at phrase-book Japanese I’ve ever heard. They couldn’t even get the letters write. If you can’t pronounce sumimasen, that’s one thing, but if you switch even the English letters and then badly pronounce that (soomiLaysen), I guarantee you’re not gonna get anywhere.
Anyway, so these guys just kept running around trying to ask directions and I was watching them from a long way away pretending I didn’t know them. Finally we got to Roppongi, the sleazy (but sometimes classy) foreigner entertainment district. Roppongi is covered in big African men who try to make friends with and/or intimidate people in the street to make them come to their bar/strip club. We got harassed by a bunch of them who kept giving upping their deals for us to come to their clubs but luckily Canadian kept a leash on Loser’s dreams of touching Japanese women (for the time being). After that they decided to go to Shinjuku to see what was there.
When we got to Shinjuku, somehow Loser decided he absolutely had to find the “red light district.” Now, love hotels are pretty common in Japanese cities (people need to find privacy from the cramped apartments living with their families) and the sex industry is very much in the open. So there’s not really one “red light district,” but there is a fairly seedy section of Shinjuku which is known for its love hotels and such. However, Loser, who was a dorky hippy programmer from Seattle, had dreams of turning into Charisma Man during his one week in Japan. He was actually already planning out how whenever his friends back home would point out a hot girl he would tell them she was nothing compared to the girls all over in Tokyo. Anyway, he kept saying “No no, it’s right around this corner!” I guarantee it is not. Anyway, when it was getting too late and I knew these idiots were going to miss the last train and have to take a taxi all the way back to Minami-Senju I just flat out told them I was leaving and if they needed a translator that’d be too bad. Canadian realized being alone with Loser and without me to take care of them was a bad idea so he came with me. Loser gave some speech about what kind of man gives up on the cusp of his discovery of the love hotels in Shinjuku, which made me hurt for humanity. But then he gave up and followed us to the station.
Loser bitched all the way home and I think I was shooting down some asinine idea of his and we passed out stop. Actually, I think this might have been when we were having this conversation:
Loser: Y’know “gaijin” actually means monster in Japanese.
Alan: It means “outside person”.
Loser: No no! It means monster! I read it on the internet!
Alan: Dude, I speak Japanese. The characters in the word are “outside” and “person”
Anyway, so we went one stop too far which is usually fine except we were on the last train. So we got off and started walking. We asked some man outside the station which direction to go and he told us but later I realized that guy was homeless and probably very drunk. Anyway, it was a little neat to see the edges of Tokyo. We had to cross a river by walking beside an elevated highway. Eventually things didn’t seem to fit with my map, but we saw a police box so I went in to ask for directions. They asked if I meant on foot and when I said yes they laughed at me. Apparently the old drunk guy had sent us the wrote direction and we were actually crossing another river.
So we turned around and went back crossing two rivers and crossing a bunch of highways. The whole time Loser and Canadian were arguing about the Iraq War. Loser was one of those guys that will protest anything even if he doesn’t know what it means and he thought Seattle was the coolest place in the world full of hippies that scared away Wal-mart or something. I forgot what his excuse was when Canadian reminded him they spawned Starbucks. Not to mention he was basically an expendable programmer for some Initech. Anyway, those guys argued for hours and I just pretended they weren’t there. At some point when we were tantalizingly close to the hotel they decided we had to stop at a convenience store and get some beers and snacks. Anyway, I finally made it back to the hotel around 4am I think, and learned even if I’m in Japan, don’t go out with losers.
