Okayama's Highly Trained Terrier Squad

The picture says it all, really.

An interesting thing about Japan is how all warning signs are decorated with cute little cartoons.

This one, I think, really says that you shouldn't litter and if the dog you're walking feels nature's call, then please clean up after Fido.

But, to me, the cartoon says that the city of Okayama retains a squad of highly-trained Yorkshire Terriers equipped with plastic bags and little shovels to clean up any litter which visitors may leave behind.

Certainly beats the Wombles...

Ukai

With a blazing bonfire hanging from its stern, the long and narrow fishing boat glides past us with five lines cast over the side nearest to our boat.

They’re fishing lines – after a fashion – that are neither baited nor hooked. At the end of each line, flapping and diving into the Uji River, is a live cormorant.
For it is summer in Japan’s Kansai region: the season of the Ukai Matsuri, or the Festival of Cormorant Fishing.

The Japanese used birds for fishing for around 1000 years. Called “Ukai”, it is done with cormorants on leads attached to a necklet that constricts the bird’s gullet and keeps it from swallowing the larger fish it catches.

These larger fish are removed from the bird’s throat by the fisher, who then throws the bird overboard to catch its next fish.

Ukai isn’t a commercial fishing practice today. Instead, it is done to entertain the tourists and sightseers during the summer months and the Ukai Matsuri.
This festival takes place in many parts of Kansai, and, as I’m travelling between Kyoto and Nara, I decide to stop half-way, in the city of Uji.

For in Uji, they cast their cormorants upon the waters every night for almost all of summer, from mid June through to late September, just upstream from a bridge that has its very own goddess and in a river that has an important place in Japan’s literature.

But more about that later...

The One After 9-0-9...

... is 8-0-3.



My baby said she's travellin' on the One After 9-0-9
I said "move over honey, I'm travellin' on that line."

For my first two nights in Kyoto, I stayed in Room 909 -- a number reminiscent of an old Beatles' song.

Single room. View over the air conditioning units. 7,000JPY per night (about 90 Australian dollars). When in bed, my feet touched one wall and my head touched the opposite wall.

On the third day, I planned to stay in the town of Uji and see the Ukai (cormorant fishing) that starts at 6pm every night.

But my trip to Okayama and back took too long, so I had to hopefully ask at the Kyoto Tower Hotel if they had a room available for me for a third night.

They did.

Room 8-0-3.

Still with a panoramic view of the air conditioning units, but the bed this time was aligned along the room's longer axis, so at least I didn't get that Edgar Allan Poe feeling of a shrinking bedroom.

Not that I spent much time in the room. Kyoto, you see, has got all these magic little neighbourhood bars where you can sit drinking and talking until sunrise with the most extraordinary of people...

Kyoto's magic bars

No car parking facilities. Six stools. One bar. No bottle shop. Just a friendly little neighborhood bar in Kyoto.

It was 11pm when I found Taro's Cafe in a quiet back street of Kyoto.

Looking through the door, I saw that there was only the barmaid and one customer there.

"Umm.. are you open?" I asked in my shattered Japanese.

"Of course we're open," the barmaid sarcastically replied, "this is a bar."

So I stayed. Talking and drinking and drinking and talking until the owner came in.

And then I stayed some more. Talking and drinking and drinking and talking until the 1am closing time.

And then I stayed some more. Talking and drinking and drinking and talking with Taro, who owned the bar, and Natsuke, the graduate student who worked behind the bar, until 1.30am.

I could have stayed longer, but instead had a pleasant walk through the balmy Kyoto night to my bed beneath George Jetson's house.

It was supposed to be my last night in Kyoto...

It wasn't.

24 hours later, I would be back in Taro's cafe, talking and drinking and drinking and talking through the night that Michael Jackson died.

I would finally leave Taro's at 4.30am, as my drinking companion (who happened to be related to George W. Bush), had a conference in Tokyo later that morning.

Time to catch up

Too many good nights in Kyoto, and then hassles connecting to the Internet (no 'net cafes in Uji, crashed computers in Nara and a crashed LAN in Tokyo) mean that I'm now back in Brisbane with this update.

Yamanote Line

To find an uncrowded train on the Yamanote line is about as likely as finding a replacement mobile phone recharger in Tokyo for a non-Japanese mobile phone.

According to Wikipedia, there are 3.5 million passengers per day on the Yamanote Line riding between its 29 stations. In comparison, the entire New York Subway system carries just over five million passengers per day over a network of 26 lines and 468 stations.

Even on a quiet Sunday night, I found, a Yamanote Line train out of Shibuya made the "crowded" peak-hour trains people are wont to complain about back home in Brisbane appear to be utterly deserted.

And it was on such a crowded and cramped carriage that I saw what must have been the world's least convincing anime cosplayer.

We'll start from the ground and go up.

High-heel shoes.

Fishnet stockings.

Very, very, very short mini skirt.

Camisole top that was rather revealing.

Handbag.

Hairband with "Bugs Bunny"-type ears attached.

And, on his chin, a five-day growth of beard.

Oh, and he had the build of a front-row-forward.

But the really funny thing was everyone's reaction to discovering this extremely bizarre cross-dresser in their midst.

In short, there was no reaction.

None at all.

It was as if it was expected that every Yamanote Line train leaving Shibuya on a Sunday night must carry at least one burly, bearded, bunny-eared, hairy-chested cross-dresser.

Lost in Tokyo, Found in Kyoto

The futile search for a telephone power cord turned out to be unnecessary: the bloody thing was in my port all the time.