The Japan Trip - Day 10

I woke up early this morning to go for a walk. I had not really gone anywhere my myself up till now, and I just felt like walking around by myself, like JX presumably does. As I might have mentioned earlier, our hostel was located near one of the major shopping streets, but we've always been walking down the right, so I decided to walk down towards the left. Munching my morning breakfast of a bun I cannot remember, I soon came to regret my decision. Nothing much was open so early in the morning, and that half of the street was mostly banks and offices, so nothing much to do or see. I kept munching.

Offices to the left of me; shops to the right; here I am, stuck in the hostel with you...

Our feet first brought us to the Kyoto Manga Museum. When we entered we found out that there was a special exhibition going on that day, so we bought the ticket. The first floor was a large manga library, full of not just manga but other comics from around the world, a few translated to English but most translated to Japanese. I didn't recognise most of the English translations because most of them were the mainstream famous ones, and when I did spot the superhero comics they were all Japanese translations.

I thought it'd have a huge manga drawing on its facade. Oh well.

Though I did encounter something else which was very intriguing: it was a program designed to make manga easily. And it's not just some Comic Book Creator thing - you can choose to make characters and there's a 3D template and you can customise them and you can rotate them and they have different poses and you can basically make a whole strip without having a pencil touch the paper at all. It is quite scary to what extent technology can emulate art, which imitates life, which imitates each other.

The main exhibit was a historical timeline of manga in Japan, all the way from its roots as political cartoons to the storytelling devices they are today. Scattered among the hallowed shelves were large posterboards educating the uninformed about the painful life of mangaka, or manga artists, and other information about the history of manga. I was particularly amused by the large volumes locked high above the shelves out of reach, the really rare copies which could only be accessed by researchers.

The special exhibit was more of an art exhibition, with over a hundred masterpieces done by eshi, which are the artists who don't really draw for a manga but also things like games or light novels. The theme was "Japan", and most of the artists drew a bishojo, or beautiful girl, as their focus. Not that I'm complaining. Most of the art was exquisite, masterpieces of style, technique and beauty. I can't stop wishing that I could draw like that. They were so good I wanted to bring them back with me, and I did, by buying the artbook compilation.

As we wandered around the other exhibits, we noticed a room dedicated to the original tenants of the building: an elementary school - which explained the wide staircases and classroom-like layout. That was pretty interesting. There were also other exhibits, like the plaster cast replicas of famous mangaka who had visited the museum, an area dedicated to women's fashion inspired by manga, and also one dedicated to art produced in response to the Fukushima tsunami and earthquake of yesteryear.

We had lunch at a Sukiya across the street. It was pretty decent - good, not excellent, but for its price was very worth it. For those not in the know, Sukiya's like Yoshinoya (which is also there), like a fast-food place but without the American influence, so there's a lot of rice bowls and similar easy-to-eat foods.

We also saw this adorable couple.

We walked back to the main shopping street opposite the temple to try and find Bryan's Green T shop, which supposedly sold novelty T-shirts. There was much wandering around the small shopping buildings with its twisty corridors and unintelligilbe signs. We eventually found out that we had passed it on our way in, and we had done so without noticing because it was closed for the day.

It was another unevenful train ride to Kanazawa. Xi Min had told us that Kanazawa was a small country town, so we were expecting something like Tottori, and as the train passed through nothing but farms and wide open fields, we expected something even smaller than Tottori, maybe not so much a town as it was a village, or hamlet.

...the middle of nowhere, with her husband, Eustace Badd!

When we got to Kanazawa it was actually quite a town-sized town, not as big as Kyoto, but certainly not as small as Tottori. There were a few tall buildings around the train station, but the streets were not crowded like what you would expect during rush hour (which is when we arrived). The effect was a very quiet community, not bustling like Kyoto had been (and not a fraction of what Tokyo would be), but not small enough that people will call your name in the street. It was also drizzling slightly, so it was quite cold.

It's practically bustling.

Our Kanazawa hostel was a small guest house called Pongyi, about ten minutes walk from Kanazawa station. And when I say small, I mean small. It looked like it was tacked on to the side of the row of houses along that street, and shaped so that it could fit into the curve of the road. The path to the entrance bridged a canal, which looks so much prettier than its Singaporean counterpart for the simple fact that the walls are nicely patterened with stonework, instead of the boring cement and concrete that we have. The inside narrow and, with our huge backpacks, cramped, and also fragile, because of all the paper walls.

But it's a very nice place.

That said, the staff were extremely friendly, and the one who greeted us at the door was called Maru-san, a small lady who put me in mind of a mouse. She introduced us to the hostel protocols and showed us around. She also showed us how to set up the futon, which is the traditional bedding of the Japanese people, after the tatami mat. We were also introduced to the owner of the little hostel, Masaki-san, whose name I couldn't remember and resorted to calling him owner-san. Owner-san directed us to a good curry place for dinner, and it was absolutely delicious. I cannot stop espousing the ideal of Japanese curry, and this one had cheese in it. Simply fabulous. It also had free soup, which was seaweed and tofu and mostly pepper.

My mouth was in heaven.

When we got back to the hostel we were introduced to the other staff, Yuu-san, who looked like a younger lady but about mid-thirties. We also stuck around in the tiny common area to chat with some of the other guests: two British girls from London, Natalie and Alex; the happy-go-lucky Swiss traveller Philip, the German couple Stefan and Diana (I think); the French couple with the accents Bryan loved; and the crazy Australian guy whose name I didn't catch.

We chatted with Philip and the British girls mostly, since the others weren't seated down and were mostly going about their daily chores like bathing and nighttime snacks and stuff. Philip was insane - he was only there that day because he had drunk too much the previous night and was so hungover he missed his bus out of town, and so had to stay another day to catch a night bus. But he was very friendly and curious about our county.

A note about foreigners and Singapore. Most of the people we met on our travels were very interested in our little island nation, and most were also not very familiar with it, even though it's apparently one of the top Japanese travel destinations since it's so close to home. I think one of the first assumptions they make is that we're all Chinese here; I often explain how we're a multiracial society and because of that, English is a common language and official "working" language, even though our "national" language is Malay (which they also get very confused about). I think it's very nice to introduce other people to our country, acting as sort of informal ambassadors, and you get to learn so much about their country. The international-ness of the whole thing is so refreshing.

*All photos in this post are courtesy of Bryan.