Day 74 - March 21 - Kyoto Day 2

Kobe! (and Osaka)

This was the 2nd day of our school trip to Kyoto, and our designated free day.  Li and I had plans for this day for quite some time, and for a very specific purpose.  You see, the visual novel Fate/Stay Night (of which Li and I are rabid fans, evident from my previous posts) used many places in Kobe in reference photos for its background images.  Now, these locations have already been found by other fans before, but finding them yourself and getting your own photos of the places has become somewhat of a pilgrimage, which only a few have been able to complete.  I found a site (in Japanese) where these two Japanese guys completed The Pilgrimage(TM) and posted their pictures and directions, so using those directions and street view on Google Maps I found and marked down all the reference photo locations I could find (which was pretty much all of them).  Unfortunately, only about 2/3 of them were in Kobe, with three of those too far into the outskirts to make it to in time.  This still left us with a good 8 or so locations in the Kobe area.  Thus, with our breakfast eaten we ventured to the nearby Kyoto station and hopped on the express for our one hour ride to Kobe.

The station that marked the physical center of the area containing The Pilgrimage(TM) was Sannomiya Station, the main station of Kobe.  Kobe is an interesting city.  Much like Fuyuki City from F/SN it has a distinct Western area that overlooks the city, which originated from a small Western settlement due to Kobe being in the Osaka Bay area.  It is also not a very tall city (one skyscraper), and even though it is fairly dense like most other Japanese cities, it had a much more 'authentic' feel to it.  Its difficult to describe, but the place just felt very homey.  I have to say, out of all the cities I've been to that weren't Tokyo, I could see myself enjoying living in Kobe the most.

Our first stop, closest to the station, was the Hotel Monterey Kobe for the church courtyard, church basement altar, and Kotomine's room.  Unfortunately, being a very high class hotel, having an absolutely beautiful atmosphere, and it also being spring, there were two weddings taking place here today.  Fortunately, I was able to get my pictures of the courtyard, but the rest of the hotel was unavailable to me at each of my several attempts throughout the day.

Stop number two was one of the ones I was looking forward to the most: Rin's house.  This was an interesting one to find on Google street view, since it actually isn't anyone's house anymore; it is a museum of the old Western houses in that area and two sides of the building are part of a small park.  The walk up to the house (and I mean up, have I mentioned Kobe is very hilly?) was very interesting.  There was a quick, yet almost unnoticeable transition from the Japanese area to the Western area.  This area consists of most of the hillside, which is pretty steep at points, and overlooks a great deal of Kobe and the bay.  It was quite an amazing sight, and right in the middle of it you couldn't tell if you were still in Japan or in some town in Italy.  My favorite part about that was how, even though it was a bit of a tourist attraction, it wasn't a major one and acted as if it wasn't one at all.  We soon reached the small park with Rin's house, and apparently the park had just finished some renovations since there seemed to be a little event going on.  The street performer was amazing, and was flipping around and balancing a small tea kettle with a little stick that he was holding with his mouth.  I took a video of it, which I'll post up on facebook or something (hopefully) soon.  Rin's house itself was very beautiful.  We didn't go inside, but the outside was good enough on its own.

Nearby was our third stop of the day: the road leading up to the Western houses (which is actually right in the middle of it, not leading up to it).  It was very upsetting for me that I missed my perfect shot when there was absolutely no one on the hill (highly unlikely given its length) and only got a picture with my point-and-shoot.  At least I got one though.  I did still wait there for a while taking pictures with both cameras intermittently and got some really good shots, but none without a single person on the hill like when I first got there >_<.

Also not very far away was our fourth stop: the road going up the hill to the church (except there wasn't a church there :P)  This was another shot that was easy to find but difficult to take.  You see, this road has a moderate amount of traffic, and less than 100 yards behind me was a major intersection, meaning during a red light traffic would get backed up far enough that I couldn't get the shot.  Did I mention that in order to get the shot I needed to stand in the middle of the street?  This meant that during a green light I would need to get out of the way as well, thus making it quite difficult to get the picture.  It was pretty hilarious seeing all the people walking past on the sidewalk stare at me like, "wth is that gaijin doing?"  Definitely one of the highlights of my day haha.

With this our stops north of the station were completed, and so we began the long walk (a few miles) down to the bay where we would find our next four stops.  South of the station there lies a pretty big park and one of the most interesting ones I've seen.  I took a lot of pictures of this place, with its multiple statues and inscribed monoliths, but most importantly the fountains.  By far the best fountain-type thing I've ever seen was in this park.  At first it doesn't look very interesting:  a big obsidian block with water flowing out the top and falling off all four sides into a small pool a few feet below it.  Then you notice the walkway going underground a little ways away.  Curiosity grips you and you venture into the depths.  At the end of the path you find yourself directly underneath the fountain, with the entire ceiling made of glass.  The perimeter of the room seemed to be a memorial (as most parks are), but the ceiling was absolutely amazing.  I took a couple photos of this and a video of me walking around inside the room as well.  At the southern end of this very long park there was a huge clearing with a massive fountain.  This fountain wasn't anything super-special - just the usual alternating water jets - but it was still pretty cool.

Finally we reached the bridge that connected the residential part of Fuyuki to the downtown part (which actually just connected to a port island).  Now, as we were walking along the bridge we realized just how extremely windy it was today, and how cold that wind could make you.  At this point I was really regretting not wearing my jacket and the cold was slowing my hands, but "I can still fight!" :P  The bridge itself has two of our shots: one going and one coming, however they are both taken from the same walkway, which of course we were on the opposite side from.  Not a big deal though, since we could just take the other walkway on the way back.  The important part was what lied at the end of the bridge: the park.  When we first got to the park I was a bit worried, since there seemed to be a motorcyclist (not biker-gang) gathering going on.  It wasn't huge, but it was in the park and there were about 20 or so of them.  Fortunately, once I found the exact spots for the two shots in this area I saw that they were just off the edge of the picture.  For one of them I needed to stand on the edge of this moderately large fountain in such a way that I was dangerously close to falling in.  Remember that extreme wind?  That didn't make it any easier.  After quite a long while and many many pictures I felt satisfied with what I had for those two spots and started heading back over the bridge.

Li had left me some time before because the wind and cold were too much for him and was waiting in the Port Terminal building on the other end of the bridge.  The wind was coming from the South East-ish direction and the bridge runs East-West, so on our first crossing (which was on the North side of the bridge) we didn't feel the full effects of the wind.  Well, I had a good half hour of intimate time with that wind on the South side while I fought to get the two shots I needed.  I was lucky in that no one was there to block my shots, since no one in their right mind would cross on the South side when the North side was just as easily accessible.  The wind here was some of the strongest I have ever seen in my life.  I had to frequently actively work to not get knocked down by how strong it was, and on several occasions the gusts would be strong enough to actually lift up the little stones scattered about the walkway high enough to hit me in the face, and hard enough to make it really hurt.  These two shots truly were a battle, but even after getting pummeled with gravel I said, "this is nothing!" :P  (Ok, thats enough of those silly parodies).

By the time I finished with the bridge photos the sun was already starting to get lower in the sky.  I hurried to meet up with Li, who had apparently found a small cosplay convention thing going on in part of the Port Terminal called CosOne.  You had to pay to get in and it looked to be more of a modeling/photo shoot thing, so he just looked longingly through the opening in the curtains.  There weren't many people there, I would say 20 or so.  Their cosplay was quite good though, so after we left we decided to be super-creepy otaku and get some 'clandestine' photos.  By 'clandestine' I mean we were about 150 yards away and noticed a bunch of them out on a walkway in plain sight, so I rested my camera on the railing and zoomed in almost to the max to take some photos.  We were extremely conspicuous, and they definitely noticed us haha.  I still got my pics though, so that's all that matters :P

With this we had one stop left for The Pilgrimage(TM), or rather what we could get done of it in the time we had, and so we hopped on the train at Sannomiya and went two stops away to Mikage station.  The final photo we needed was of the intersection near Shirou's house.  To get this picture was the ultimate challenge, since not even the pair of Japanese guys who found it knew where it was.  Their directions said that they heard it was in this area so they took a bus and got off near here, then they wandered around for a few hours, got lost, and eventually found the place.  Unfortunately, they were so lost that they had no clue where it was, just that it was somewhere near where they got off the bus.  Following what little directions they had I was able to find the place on Google Maps using satellite view and street view, but when I went to save the location from street view I clicked the wrong button and completely lost the location.  I spent quite a while finding it again and managed to save it correctly on my maps.  To my dismay, when we followed my maps and got to the location we found that it was actually not the right place and I hadn't actually found the same place that I lost the first time, just something very similar.  We roamed the area for the next couple hours until the sun set trying to find this place, and even found ourselves at one of the highest points in the city (this area was at the base/side of a very large hill and had a road that branched off and went almost up to the top and then looped back to connect to the other side of the neighborhood).  By the time we reached the top of this hill it went from a walk to more of a climb.  In the beginning a sign said it was around a 20 degree incline, but it must have been at least 40 by the time we got to the top because it got much steeper long after that sign.  The view was amazing from the top, and we noticed that we were just about matched with the roof of the one skyscraper in the area.  Then we wanted to cry as we realized that building was around 40 stories and we started from the same elevation.  We wanted to cry even harder when I looked to our left and noticed that a half-mile away there were small apartment buildings who's bases were higher up the mountain than we were.  Seriously, the people from Kobe must be mountain goats or something.  I would die if I had to hike up that every day.  The walk of shame back to the station was disheartening, but also beautiful since the city started lighting up.  Then, we noticed that from our elevation we could see a place that might be what we were looking for.  As if possessed, my tired and broken body took off running in that direction leaving Li behind and confused.  I spent close to an hour roaming the area once more and at a much faster pace, and I even included a wholly different area south of the train tracks that we did not suspect our destination to be in.  Finally, I accepted my defeat and walked back to the station in shame.  Fortunately, Li had been spending his time in the conbini across the street from the station and had not abandoned me.  Once we had reunited, we said goodbye to the wonderful yet harsh city of Kobe and made our way to Osaka for some normal sight seeing before going back to Kyoto.

Osaka:

Our goal in Osaka was to go see Osaka Castle all lit up at night.  It took us a little while to figure out the Osaka train system, which is not easily deciphered.  We finally got to the station closest to the castle around 9pm I think, and in order to get to the place we needed to go through the park, cross one of two bridges that go over the moat, then walk around to the gateway through the inner walls, until we finally reached the area immediately surrounding the castle.  I can definitely see why this place was such a stronghold; I know I wouldn't want to be the guy trying to assault the place.  Unless I had trebuchets.  Trebuchets make everything better.  So anyways, very shortly after arriving in the park a wild cat ran across our path, so I exclaimed "kitty!" and ran off after it while Li sighed and continued towards the castle.  What, I'm having a huge cat deficiency, don't judge me >_>.  The cat was hiding under a very low tree, so it took me about 15 minutes to slowly make my way up to it until I was within range of petting it.  By this point, it didn't seem overly wary of me, but it was hard to judge its disposition.  I tried petting it and it loved it, which made my day :D.  After petting it for a while I resumed heading towards the castle, when a few minutes later I saw another wild cat sitting on a ledge nearby.  I slowly walked up to this one, who was a little more talkative than the one before, and slowly reached out my hand towards it.  I made the mistake of reaching out the same hand I had used to pet the other cat, so after sniffing my hand for a moment it let out this quick annoyed-sounding meow and ran off.  On the way to the castle I saw several other cats, though these wouldn't let me close to them.  The walls on this place were gigantic.  I wish I could have gotten pictures of them, but it was dark and the lighting was terrible.  I did get several pictures of the castle itself though, which looked really cool since they had spotlights positioned perfectly to light up every inch of it.  The white walls of the castle with the black trim and roofs look really awesome, especially when it is contrasting with the night sky around it. 

Finally, with our time running out, we made our way back to the station to head back to Kyoto.  There must have been something going on, since food stands were everywhere on our side of the station.  At this point Li and I realized we were starving, so we grabbed some soba, wolfed it down, and then continued to the train.  With a little more understanding of how the system worked (and with fewer train choices) we fairly easily made our way back to the main station.  This time, instead of taking the express back to Kyoto (which was packed) we decided on taking the local train back since our bodies were tired and broken from a very long day.  Instead of a very uncomfortable 30 minutes standing on the express, we had a nice time sitting and sleeping on the local line for a little over an hour.

Back in Kyoto, it was about 11:15 and the hotel locked up at 12:30.  The baths also closed at 12:30, and we desperately wanted one, so we hurried back and grabbed some kara'age from one of the many Lawsons around.  When we passed the only arcade we had seen in all of Kyoto, we decided to head in for 15 minutes to play some fighting games before walking the remaining block to the hotel.  This was actually my first time playing BlazBlue, and I must say I quite enjoy it.  We also played a couple rounds of Fate/Unlimited Codes, which I have on my PSP but the buttons on the arcade machine weren't labeled so I had no idea how to do the few combos I could remember.

When we got to the hotel we quickly got ready for the bath and then soaked all of our pain away.  No scotch, snacks, and TV for us tonight; we collapsed into our futons almost immediately upon returning to the room.

Tomorrow:  Yukata & the 1,000 Torii Shrine