Getting Out of Town
Stephen Horowitz
April 11, 2001
The planning for the trip was a bit "last minute." My boss had told me that I had a speech to give this past Friday (despite it being a holiday) and so I couldn't go to Kyoto. However, a few days before, he informed me that I probably wouldn't have to give a speech, sending me scrambling like mad to find a way to get myself there. Everyone in my office was super-understanding about my desire to visit Kyoto, and I don't think that there was any antagonism about the fact that I clearly wanted to leave the town (admittedly only for a weekend, but still). In fact, when I found out that I could probably get to Kyoto this past weekend, the whole office began looking through train/plane/boat schedules to find the best way for me to get there as early as possible. In the end, I traveled all night by train (including the Nozumi bullet train, which is the fastest in Japan: pretty cool!) and arrived in Kyoto on Friday morning at about 9am (I left from the station nearest my town at about 12:30am Friday morning). The first train that I rode was direct, so I slept on it without fear of missing my stop (I had an interesting experience once in which I fell asleep on a train and missed my stop, but that's a whole other story) and without having to pull an all-nighter (again, something Ive done before but would prefer to avoid).
I had a blast in Kyoto. I saw my friend and my host family from two years ago and I met my host family's student for this year. He seems like a cool guy, and his Japanese is about the same as mine was when I went on AKP (Associated Kyoto Program, a study abroad program for college students); in other words, not very good. It will get better, though, since he seems motivated. I can't wait to go back at the end of November and hang with my friend Adam from AKP. We'll revisit our old stomping grounds and have a grand old time.
In other travelling-outside-my-town news from this past weekend, I went to an amusement park with some of my co-workers and had a blast. It wasn't really in the same league as Six Flags, but it was pretty good. They had this one roller coaster that you stood up in - no chair, just straps holding you against an upright. Pretty cool stuff. It didn't go upside-down, but I guess that they figured somebody would fall out if it did. They also had this one really cool (but way too short) ride which tilted you 90 degrees back so that you felt like you were in a rocket about to take off, climbed up vertically, rounded the top, and then dropped you vertically down. It was like a free fall, except that on the way up and down, you were facing the direction you were moving. Dropping 90 degrees while facing the ground is a lot more scary (and cooler) than dropping while facing outwards. In any event, after the drop, they took you through a few spins, stopped the cart, and then took you though a few more spins going backwards. It sounds long when I describe it on (electronic) paper, but the whole ride lasted maybe a total of 1 or 1.5 minutes, including the climb: without the climb it was probably only 30 seconds. Not nearly long enough, but quite fun nonetheless. The best part about amusement parks in Japan is that if you go on the first or third Sat. of the month, all of the kids have school, so there are almost no lines. I think the longest I waited for a ride was 2 minutes. In that sense, it beat Six Flags hands down.
Completing my travel experiences for the time being was a trip up to Oita city (an hour north of me by car) with some of the people in my Taiko group to go see a concert by the most famous Taiko group in Japan: Kodo. You can even buy their CDs in America in the World Music section of Tower Records and other fine establishments. The Kodo concert was one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. The amount of rhythm and coordination necessary to do some of the stuff that they did blows my mind. I can't even imagine ever being able to do that. All in all, I give it a 9 out of 10. The only thing preventing it from a perfect score was this one piece in the middle that I guess is the Taiko equivalent of modern music. It was interesting, but I would have preferred a more traditional piece in its place. Apparently, Kodo has played at Tanglewood a few times, including in a joint piece with the Boston Pops. I would have liked to see that. Of course, the joint piece was the companion piece to the modern music one that I didn't like, but even still, maybe it would have gotten better with an orchestra. I'm hooked on Taiko now, though, that's for sure.
One interesting thing about the concert, though, was that they had members of the group standing at the exit with large plastic jars for people to put money in. The strangest part was that people were actually doing it. Never mind that the tickets were either $40 (ok seats) or $55 (good seats) a pop or that they were selling CDs for $30, videos for $60, and T-shirts for $28 (I bought one). Needless to say, I didn't put any money in the jar. Sometimes I think the Japanese are just weird.
I also found out last night that my Taiko debut with the town group is not going to be at start of November, like I thought, but rather this Sunday. I don't think I'm really ready yet, but we'll see. More on that next time
