It's a little past 1 am in Kyoto, the old capital of Japan, Zac and I just finished watching the movie Dark City, and a bottle of sake where I have come to one conclusion: The Matrix is a blatant ripoff. I always knew the Wachowski Siblings (that's the PC name to call the pair now, right?) were hacks. Anyways... TO ZEE BLOG!
Our first day in Nagoya was essentially a day to recover of going 36 hours with 20 minutes of sleep. To our surprise, our AirBnb accommodation was incredibly clean, cheap, and inhabited by a French gentlemen who went by Alexy. He was nice and majored in English, so communication was easy, and he soon informed Zac and I that he was going over to the "fireworks" down by the bay. We also had the chance to talk to a couple of the owners of the apartment. They laughed at Zac when he informed them he was only 22 years old. Apparently beards make you look old or something...
The pair of us didn't really have any plans that day so we thought watching the fireworks could be fun. Alexy told us we should go a little bit early, because it gets kind of busy...
OK, so do you know how you hear the stories of Japan's decline in population and how they're all wiping themselves off the face of the Earth? WELL YOU WOULD HAVE HAD FOOLED ME.
It's always easy for Zac and I to find each other in dense crowds.
Zac and I arrived out of the suffocating subway, filled from wall to wall, by people dressed in kimonos, to what we thought might have been a minor firework celebration. Turns out it was one of the busiest nights of the year in Nagoya. We were told it was a festival celebrating the sea/nature/fireworks(?) Anyways, there were apparently over 500 individual food carts lining the street where a parade was occurring.
I would like some meat on a stick, please.
You could barely move anywhere the place was so crowded. Imagine Portland's Last Thursday amount of people and multiple that by twenty. I've never experienced any place so dense with people, yet the event felt very much in control. No Last Thursday shootings here...
After grabbing some food and a couple beers, Zac and I slowly made our way to the front of pier, at sunset, to wait for the fireworks to start.
As soon as the sun went down, the fireworks began.
I tried my best to get photos of the full display of the fireworks, but there's only so much a $100 50mm lens can capture (and a dude with a bodybuilder.com shirt blocking you the whole time).
The journey home was surprising convenient. The cops set up crowd control barriers that made the whole process amazingly efficient. It's as if they were there to... protect and serve us? Weird.
The next day was a day Zac and I have been anticipating for a while: the national sumo tournament! It sold out quickly and lasted over 10 hours with numerous bouts. I only wish I had a telephoto lens to capture the action better. Because of that... I didn't take too many photos. Sowwy :(
When we first got to the stadium. Initial bouts were filled with local sumo fighters. They are big dudes.
Many of the seating in the stadium were purple pads that you could simply lay on. Our seats were... not.
Hand painted names of all the famous sumo wrestlers lined the walls around the stadium.
I grabbed my camera quickly to snap this photograph. This was taken at the end of the last bout with whom Zac and I called "The People's Champ" contended and won in a few seconds. After he won everyone roared and starting throwing their purple cushions towards the center of the arena. So many traditions and rituals Zac and I still fail to understand...
Making our way out of the stadium. Nagoya castle is right next to the stadium and a watch tower over looks over a moat, containing two men playing the drums as everyone exited the premises.
Nagoya was fun and our days were filled. At noon the next day we took the bullet train to Kyoto, which was luckily only 30 minutes away this time! We were use to nine hour train rides at this point so getting to Kyoto so quickly was a sigh of relief, which gave us some time to explore around the apartment we were staying at. Our AirBnB host, an older old man who use to be a real estate agent, named Tetsuo, picked the two of us up at the station. He quit his job of working in realty and is lives a quieter life as a baker. #lifegoals
Anyways, Zac and I went to a nearby graveyard for a little bit. They're extremely clean and totally not creepy at all.
The graveyard was nestled in between a ton of homes and apartment buildings.
A Walk Among the Tombstones... starring Zac Rego. If you got this reference, then kudos to you. I try to keep my references closely tied to mediocre Liam Neeson movies.
There's a manufacturing shop right outside our door. They were working well into the night. The Japanese work a lot...
Well that's it for this time. Nothing too crazy and probably nothing as wild as some of the last blogs. Zac and I are going to ride bikes through the hillside and visit multiple shrines and temples tomorrow. In two days we're going to a Buddhist temple an hour outside Osaka to meditate with monks high in the mountains.