Getting lost in Kyoto! (Botanical Garden + Manga Museum) 京都に迷う。。。Pt. 2

Those who know me know that I am pretty much a hermit crab. My shell is my room and I rarely leave it - and usually when I do, it's to go into another room. My favorite form of existence is sitting and the world outside is best seen from inside. Being alone is the best form of entertainment and spending money should be avoided at all costs. Though I am still hard-pressed to find anything wrong with the way I've lived so far, I also acknowledge that now I am in Japan for a once in a lifetime experience and it would be a terrible, horrible waste to just stay inside my dorm. In the one and a half week before school started, I endeavored to see as much of Kyoto as I could on the smallest budget I could manage. Luckily lots of famous shrines and temples are free, and even the places with admission prices aren't too expensive... (or, I just avoid the ones that are)

Spring means many things in Japan and the most important of these things are cherry blossoms! I haven't gone cherry blossom viewing since I started college. It never felt quite like spring without seeing them, so understandably I was Very Excited. So excited that I spent some time color-coordinating my outfit and makeup to match the flowery festive mood...

Look at how cute we are. (Left is me. Right is Emily.)

Getting to the Kyoto Botanical Garden was easy and pretty uneventful. Kyoto Seika has a free shuttle that makes frequent trips from Kokusaikaikan Station every day, so it was just a matter of getting our large group of exchange students through the Japanese transit system - which, once you get used to, is scarily efficient and easy to use. In Kyoto at least, all the signs have English/romaji underneath, so as long as you know where you're going...it's okay even if you get...horribly...horribly...lost....(Fushimi-Inari was quite an adventure. Stay tuned.)

The route goes as follows: Kyoto Seika >>> Kokusaikaikan >>> Kitayama >>> Karasuma-Oike. The garden entrance is almost immediately visible from the exit of Karasuma-Oike Station. In fact, one of the stations' openings was right next to the entrance....but we didn't know about that until getting there. On the short walk to the entrance, I had to shrug off two layers from my outfit already. It was sunny and humid and felt at least to be 75 degrees Fahrenheit or above. The sun was out the whole day, and I even got a mild sunburn on my forearm by the end of the day. It hasn't been that hot or sunny since then. I guess I should be thankful that the one day of good weather was the day I went to see the cherry blossoms. 

No pics of the journey, but plenty of flower pics!

The group decided to split up upon entering the gardens and agreed to meet up by the entrance several hours later to go to the International Manga Museum. Ken (Seika's awesome international advisor to whom we direct all our questions and probably make life difficult for) emailed us about the monthly Cosfest event there in the morning and since it was just another two stops on the subway, we had decided to check it out.

There were so many flowers in the gardens (yes, obvious). Not just cherry blossoms - though, of course, those were the main attraction. Because of the recent rain, the roads off the main paved path were pretty muddy - especially in the popular cherry blossom grove. We managed to avoid most of the puddles and take some pictures with the flowers! Soon everyone wandered off and it was just Emily and I looking for a place to sit down and draw. Right across from the grove was a fenced off hanami space also filled with cherry blossoms with lots of families sitting down and eating delicious food.

Emily and I found a tiny baby cherry blossom tree to sit next to while we took out our sketching supplies. It was hard to concentrate on drawing because of all the cute little children running around. We got several strange looks from parents who noticed we were staring at their children for too long... but seriously, some kids are so well dressed here! It's not strange to see a very young-looking and fashionably dressed mother biking with her equally well dressed toddler. There was also an old man looking grumpy and eating by himself. (That was Emily's favorite)

I'm not going to take pictures of the children. Because that's creepy. And also kind of illegal. 

But Emily gave me permission (that she will soon regret, as I have many many photos of her face).

Elder Japanese ladies agree with me that Emily is めっちゃきれくてすてきです。

We spent a bit longer than intended sketching and sitting and enjoying the sun, so when it was about an hour before we had to meet up again, we got up and hurried to explore more areas of the park. We didn't actually go to find any more flowers. There was a forest-like area nearby and we just dove in. So many trees! So much moss! It was lovely. We saw a heron eating a fish in a pond, found an old bridge, and tried to read the katakana signs.

I'll spare you the animatic, but here is a photo of Emily after a bee flew into her eye.

And here is me being a giant nerd. I don't even watch Power Rangers.
Or Kamen Riders. Or whatever this pose is from.

Tree VS Emily - go!

I think the tree won.

Rock patterns.

After a little while, we decided to get some food before return to the entrance gate. In the early morning, I had bought some onigiri at the local Lawson for lunch because I didn't want to pay for an expensive park meal. (I tend to do this a lot. 50% of my meals here so far have been onigiri...but there are a lot of kinds! And I like all of them! Except for that wasabi one I accidentally got twice.)

There was a little ticket machine at the entrance of the small cafeteria in the park where you could put money in, press the button next to what you wanted, and a small ticket as well as any change would come out. Then there was a line you joined to get the food you paid for! It was all very efficient, which was good because there was still a LONG line. I got some takoyaki and Emily got kitsune udon. Because there were no more seats, we took it outside and sat on the grass while we ate.

The whole time we were there, we had seen these people with super colorful outfits walking around in groups. And in the large grassy area where we sat, there was a crowd gathering before two people saying something into a microphone. We ate for 10 minutes or so but didn't find out what was happening.

After we met up with the other exchange students, they told us there was a sort of dance performance/contest/event that they had seen people rehearsing for. As we sat by the entrance, the number of people in super interesting and colorful outfits increased dramatically and we were so intrigued we decided to go and find where the performance was. At first we thought maybe if we followed a group of them we would find it ....but they ended up splitting apart. Then we heard drums and chanting, so, following it, we wandered back to the grassy field we had sat in before except now there were people in colorful outfits dancing! We immediately got into the sitting area, spread out some plastic to sit on, and gaped.

I would just like to point out this is the same group as the picture right under this.

They had a third outfit I didn't get a picture of. But it was Kind of Intensely Cool.

Look at those hats!!!!

To be honest, I'm still not sure what exactly it was. It seemed like some mixture of modern-traditional-group dance/chant/cheering. Whatever it was, it was super cool and exciting! The outfits were so beautiful (and some of them changed! Three times!!!) and they were all very enthusiastic and happy. There was usually one or two people at the microphone on the side doing extra cheers along with the background music. Sometimes there would be a giant flag waving in the background. All of this on a backdrop of cherry blossoms in the sunshine! (Looking back, I do wish I had an umbrella...or sunscreen)

I don't know if they had the event regularly or if we were just extraordinarily lucky, but either way, I was super happy to have caught it! We watched for a hour or so before tearing ourselves away to get to the manga museum.

A giant sculpture of Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix watching over all of us.

The Manga Museum was pretty much in the heart of downtown Kyoto, which was a part I had never seen before. There was a big cherry blossom tree next to the astro-turf in front of the museum with some cosplayers rolling around on it. Even though we explored the museum a lot,we didn't actually go in to see the cosplay event. A building pretty much covered from floor to ceiling in manga provides for a pretty hefty distraction.

The admission fee was 800 yen, which you paid into a ticket machine before being directed to the reception desk where they check the ticket. This was also the place where I saw the most foreigners since coming to Japan. There was probably a 50/50 mix of Japanese and foreigners in the museum. The Manga Museum is listed as a top attraction in Kyoto, so it was understandable. but it was also pretty apparent that a lot of the foreigners didn't have much actual interest in the manga. While there were a few info-boards and small exhibitions in the museum, most of it is actually more like a manga library/cafe. There wasn't enough time that day to sit down and read, but I want to go back one day and spend some time reading some old/rare manga.

Right after the entrance is a small booth where an artist is drafting a name of a manga. (Name = draft). There was a portfolio lying on the desk that we were allowed to flip through too. It was amazing to see the small perfect delicate linework and well-planned color schemes. All of the art in the portfolio were hand-drawn traditional work with markers and pens, which was doubly amazing. It's always a good reminder in these times that traditional pen work can be just as tight and clean as digital inking - if not better. Next to the booth was a shelf of manga set apart for Kyoto Seika alumni who had gone on to become manga artists.

My school! Yeah!

The manga museum is funded by the city but organized and planned by Kyoto Seika, so there was also a little booth with information and pamphlets about the school. I felt a strange sort of pride that I was technically a Kyoto Seika student for the semester. I'm not studying manga, but it's okay to love something without actually participating in the making of it.

There were signs everywhere banning cameras, probably because of Japan's strict copyright law. However pictures of the building were permitted, so I tried to angle my camera upwards as much as possible.

All the benches were filled with people reading manga. I wanted to join them.

The only place with cameras encouraged! Got to walk in sand with plastic on my shoes.

Poor guy.

In a small hallway Emily and I came upon a small glass-case exhibition of plaster casts of famous manga and comic artists' hands! I really wanted to take a photo, but of course there was a sign banning me from that. There was Keiko Takemiya's plaster cast hand holding a pencil with a drawing by her next to it! (Takemiya-sensei was the Dean of Kyoto Seika's manga department, now the president of the school, and also author of Terra E and other pretty manga) They also had Moebius' hand as well! It was super cool to see the different hands all holding pencils in their own particular ways displayed with their art alongside them. I loved seeing super rugged hands gripping tiny pencils with a super delicate shoujo-style drawing next to them.

You can't see anything! That's compliant with copyright law, right?

So. Much. Manga.

In the final room we came upon, there was a bunch of booths with information about the creation and history of manga and its links with animation and culture. All of it was very interesting and of course, photos were banned. There was a fun character design booth where they had features such as eyse, noses, mouth etc. on transparent paper so you could layer them to make your own character design! I had lot of fun pairing unlikely features together. I was pretty dead by this time though, after a day in the sun lugging around a backpack and not yet fully recovered from my day and half of international boundary crossing.

Emily bein' cute with sakura in her hair as we waited for Rosie (who was waiting for us inside. Woops.)

Photo via Emily.

However tired I was, I didn't want to make the trek back from downtown Kyoto to Iwakura on an empty stomach. (It was already 6:30 and my last meal was 6 hours ago. I definitely need to eat more frequently than that...) Except for Rosie and I, the rest of our group were vegetarians/vegans so we decided to give the Lonely Planet guidebook a try and go and find a close-by vegetarian cafe for dinner. Directions from a book are terrible and what was supposed to be a 10 minute walk turned into 45 minutes of wandering. After walking the wrong direction for 5 minutes, Rosie pointed it out and we turned the opposite direction. When we finally found the right street and kept walking along it, we could not see the sign or the spiral metal staircase the book mentioned.

Finally out of options and with no access to the internet, we stopped two old ladies on the street and pointed to the map/book and asked for directions. They'd never heard of the cafe, so one of them called over a younger store clerk from the store we happened to be standing in front of. This lady knew the cafe and told us we had passed it. It was a little the left of the street we were on, apparently. So after a lot of confusion and bowing, we let them go on their way and reversed our direction again.

We reach the block where we were told to turn and then kept walking...but it got quieter and quieter and by now, I was intimately familiar with the feeling of getting off track. This time I turned around, saw two security guards who were obviously bracing themselves as they suddenly noticed this group of foreigners stopping and staring at them, and approached them with my book in the hand. They pointed right along where we had walked and said the cafe was right there. I thanked them and felt horribly, horribly lost. Because I had definitely not seen anything. (Sometime between these encounters, or perhaps after, we had also consulted a convenience store clerk...just to let you know how horribly lost we actually were).

This time, we walked right back to the corner, looked around in circle and was just about to give up but lo and behold, Biote was right there! Perched on the second floor of the corner building! With a neon sign! (The staircase, however, was tucked inside so I don't blame myself too much). Feeling like the biggest idiot ever, I went in with the rest of the group. The cafe had seating for maybe 10 people so we had to wait outside for 10-15 minutes. (Did I also mention that we were kind of running out of time to catch the return shuttle from Kokusaikaikan to Kyoto Seika? Well. We were. So I was Really Jittery.)

The food was expensive. Not bad though. My order ended being a tiny salad that just made me more hungry. But I figured I would just eat when I got back to the dorm. Whenever that was. I hadn't expected too much from the cafe that I would be willing to pay a hefty price for, so I didn't feel disappointed.

After our quick meal, we set off to the subway to get back to Kokusaikaikan. That part went smoothly (thankfully) because Rosie remembered where the subway station was. I actually do not have the thing that is a sense of direction, so looking back, I really shouldn't have been leading any of our expeditions. But I also love, love planning things. So. I guess as long as we get to our destination and get back to our dorm in one piece, everything is daijyoubu? (Within this month I have biked to Demachiyanagi Station about 7 times and every single time I get lost for a while. I literally do not know how I got there and got back every time. I guess if you bike long enough in one direction, you'll be okay?)

The trouble hit when we got back to Kokusaikaikan Station and ran for the Seika shuttle stop. We had made it just in time for the last bus! .....or not. It was Sunday. Sunday means buses stop a lot earlier. (Or maybe, just that day. Just for us.) So we had...missed...our bus. Other than our ragtag group, there was another guy standing also waiting for the shuttle. Somehow we communicated that the bus wasn't coming anymore, and I guess we looked worried enough that he offered to take us along with him on the normal bus route back to Seika. (This is how we met Gon!....who may or may not be currently reading this blog. Yeah.)

Anyway, it was super nice of him to take us with him on the bus (I still don't remember how that happened) and show us how much to pay and how to pay. You have to pay exact change on buses and subways, so the ticket machine in the front of the vehicle doubles as a change machine. I didn't know that at first and got really confused when my 1000 yen came back as coins. There was another foreign couple on the train talking to a Japanese man. They mentioned manga and Seika, which made me perk up. I mentioned that we were all Seika students, and the man chuckled. He also chuckled at Bethany and Bianca being confused about the ticket machine and asked me if they were exchange students. I nodded and said we all were. I don't think he heard that. Later I realized he probably thought I was a fellow Japanese person. This happens a lot actually. I am on a constant journey of disappointing every stranger I meet.

After we got off the bus, Gon led us to Seika and we said good-bye there. We met him again a couple weeks later at the international student welcome party! It was great to see a familiar face. (He's also actually an international student himself, from Thailand. But like the long-term int'l students at Seika, he took a year off between high school and university to study Japanese so he's much more fluent than any of us.....Makes me wish I had more time/energy to study Japanese as well. Sigh.)

We got back to the dorm, collapsed in the lounge and I will be grateful forever to Emily for letting me mooch off of her dinner because at that time I had no groceries, no cooking supplies, and no utensils. Coming up soon: campus tour+orientation, convenience stores, hard drive failure, and Ginkaku-ji (or, the journey to).

At Ginkaku-ji. Perhaps my greatest photo yet.