I’m not sure why I chose to bring this particular family to Kyoto, which surpasses San Francisco in the subtlety of its expectations for travelers. Parading U.S. junior high school students before 400 year old temples and trying to turn them on to Tokugawa era art while they discuss the latest “Smosh” videos on YouTube is truly an exercise in futility.
We stayed at the Grand Prince Hotel about eight kilometers north of central Kyoto. It was built in the mid-80s but had the look and feel of an American luxury hotel from the 1950s or 1960s; an over-the-top assertion of economic hegemony, however brief and illusory. It was donut shaped with three hundred rooms and half a dozen restaurants. This was a “Western-style” hotel, meaning that you could wear your shoes in your room and stand up in the shower. There was a Christian wedding in the lower lobby Sunday morning with three Japanese beauties singing hymns like nightingales. I could not discern if we were expected to walk on the left or the right in the lobby. We got a good price from hotels.com and then got bumped up to what seemed to be a business suite. For 28000 yen a night we got two bedrooms, each with two queen-sized beds, as well as two huge common rooms: one with sofas, the other with a meeting/dining table that seated twelve. The place seemed to measure about 1500 square feet. There was a kitchenette, three TVs, and three bathrooms, two of which had bathtubs, showers, and bidets. This was not the first time I’d been bumped up to a suite; it happened when I first arrived at the airport in Osaka. My sense is that hotels here are so desperate to fill rooms at the moment that they are practically giving away suites to families. It is a weird benefit of traveling in depressed times. Rooms that used to be filled with visiting Western businessmen paying fealty to the Asian Tiger are now filled with schleps like us. Everyone looks at you with chips on their shoulders that they have to beg for your tourism.
We got a fine night’s sleep in our suite Saturday night and started off Sunday at the Nijo castle, where Tokugawa kept his Kyoto digs to meet with regional warlords. I tried to read Charles and Daniel the guidebook patter about the significance of the painted screens and ceilings but they were far more fascinated by the “No Scribbling” signs. These were meant to admonish visitors against sketching the interiors (presumably as it would hold up foot traffic), but at first we took them as warnings against graffiti, thus leading to an endless series of jokes (“Does that mean you’re allowed to write neatly?” “Write ‘OK’ after it,” etc.). We proceeded to Kiyomizu-dera despite signs of bad weather, and when the rain came down torrentially the children insisted on gallivanting around without umbrellas. It was wonderful to watch them flail about in the rain while Amy and I huddled with the other tourists under the temple’s hanging roofs. But Charlie got a rash afterward from the chafing of his wet denim shorts and was soon miserable, so we had to head back to the hotel.
The hotel restaurants were way too pricey for us so we made our way to the humble business district down the street, with a list of local eateries kindly provided to us by the concierge. My Michigan friend Dave Finzel claims that everyone has one superpower and that mine is choosing restaurants, so I want it on record that I chose the restaurant at which we dined Sunday night on the name alone—“Indofasia”—and it was heavenly (the name, and the food). In retrospect it was probably only short for “India of Asia” (it was an Asian fusion place that leaned toward Indian) but for me it conjured “Fantasia” (an edible fantasy of color), “aphasia” (food so good it leaves you speechless), and maybe even “euthanasia” (once you eat here you can die in peace). There was some resistance, but having made dietary concessions ever since these other people’s arrival (we ate at the Japanese fast food chain Mosburger our first night in Kyoto) I stuck to my guns on this one. Charlie decided to bow out, went back to the hotel and had his own dream dinner: he dined in Ritz crackers and Toppo chocolate pretzels and played Toon Town on the computer. Meanwhile back at Indofasia, Amy and I had our usual debate about whether we were ordering too much food or too little. I admitted that my tendency to order too much food was attributable not only to family history but to mortality fears. (“This is not your last meal.” “Yes, but it is my last meal at this restaurant.”) Eventually we ordered a Thai kabob for Daniel while Amy and I shared the banana chicken, chana masala, curry of the day, some Nan bread, and a kiwi lassi (they forgot my Nepalese soup, which Amy reminded me of later after we left and which, miraculously, did not keep me up all night).
Having my loved ones here to open up to after such a long stretch of having practically no one to talk to in English has driven me to a bit of delirium. My children only recently pointed out to me the habit I developed before their arrival of saying ridiculous things to waiters, taxi drivers, etc., when I know very well that I am speaking to myself. As my colleague at Shikoku, Mark Fennelly, says, you do a lot of living inside your own head here, which can be unhealthy. For awhile I considered carrying around a volleyball with a face drawn on it, though Amy suggested I might just converse with my own hand. It’s when my hand itself starts speaking to me in Japanese and I begin choking it at the wrist as it screams “Dame! Dame!” that I will know I’m in trouble.
Anyway, at some point during our meal at Indofasia I launched into a lengthy analysis of catchphrases from 1970s TV entertainment and commercials. I was aided by the food’s anesthetic effects and by the fact that Charlie was not on hand to bang his head on the table as he usually does when I start into one of these things. I turned it into a guessing game: regarding my favorite commercial catchphrase Amy guessed “Where’s the beef?” which was a decade off. The correct answer was a tie between “Try it, you’ll like it” and “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” both of course from Alka-Seltzer ads. As for TV entertainment, Amy guessed my favorite catchphrase was Vinnie Barbarino’s “up your nose with a rubber hose,” again wrong. The correct answer was, “Woooo-wee!” as exclaimed by Junior on “That’s My Mama.” After building up a great deal of suspense I finally revealed this by rather loudly demonstrating Junior’s, “Woooo-wee! I got news, I got news!” while doing the obligatory pimp roll across the floor of Indofasia. I described Junior as having been “played by the same guy who played Isaac on ‘The Love Boat,’” whose name I couldn’t recall at the moment. For the record it was Ted Lange, and this is all entirely germane because Lange also played a prominent role in the early 1970s R&B concert film Wattstax, which is pretty popular in Japan: translated editions of NYC magazines like waxpoetics and 212 Mag have helped turn Japan on to current and past black street culture.
As we left the restaurant, the kind Indian manager said, “See you again,” and I did not disabuse him of that notion.
We stayed at the Grand Prince Hotel about eight kilometers north of central Kyoto. It was built in the mid-80s but had the look and feel of an American luxury hotel from the 1950s or 1960s; an over-the-top assertion of economic hegemony, however brief and illusory. It was donut shaped with three hundred rooms and half a dozen restaurants. This was a “Western-style” hotel, meaning that you could wear your shoes in your room and stand up in the shower. There was a Christian wedding in the lower lobby Sunday morning with three Japanese beauties singing hymns like nightingales. I could not discern if we were expected to walk on the left or the right in the lobby. We got a good price from hotels.com and then got bumped up to what seemed to be a business suite. For 28000 yen a night we got two bedrooms, each with two queen-sized beds, as well as two huge common rooms: one with sofas, the other with a meeting/dining table that seated twelve. The place seemed to measure about 1500 square feet. There was a kitchenette, three TVs, and three bathrooms, two of which had bathtubs, showers, and bidets. This was not the first time I’d been bumped up to a suite; it happened when I first arrived at the airport in Osaka. My sense is that hotels here are so desperate to fill rooms at the moment that they are practically giving away suites to families. It is a weird benefit of traveling in depressed times. Rooms that used to be filled with visiting Western businessmen paying fealty to the Asian Tiger are now filled with schleps like us. Everyone looks at you with chips on their shoulders that they have to beg for your tourism.
We got a fine night’s sleep in our suite Saturday night and started off Sunday at the Nijo castle, where Tokugawa kept his Kyoto digs to meet with regional warlords. I tried to read Charles and Daniel the guidebook patter about the significance of the painted screens and ceilings but they were far more fascinated by the “No Scribbling” signs. These were meant to admonish visitors against sketching the interiors (presumably as it would hold up foot traffic), but at first we took them as warnings against graffiti, thus leading to an endless series of jokes (“Does that mean you’re allowed to write neatly?” “Write ‘OK’ after it,” etc.). We proceeded to Kiyomizu-dera despite signs of bad weather, and when the rain came down torrentially the children insisted on gallivanting around without umbrellas. It was wonderful to watch them flail about in the rain while Amy and I huddled with the other tourists under the temple’s hanging roofs. But Charlie got a rash afterward from the chafing of his wet denim shorts and was soon miserable, so we had to head back to the hotel.
The hotel restaurants were way too pricey for us so we made our way to the humble business district down the street, with a list of local eateries kindly provided to us by the concierge. My Michigan friend Dave Finzel claims that everyone has one superpower and that mine is choosing restaurants, so I want it on record that I chose the restaurant at which we dined Sunday night on the name alone—“Indofasia”—and it was heavenly (the name, and the food). In retrospect it was probably only short for “India of Asia” (it was an Asian fusion place that leaned toward Indian) but for me it conjured “Fantasia” (an edible fantasy of color), “aphasia” (food so good it leaves you speechless), and maybe even “euthanasia” (once you eat here you can die in peace). There was some resistance, but having made dietary concessions ever since these other people’s arrival (we ate at the Japanese fast food chain Mosburger our first night in Kyoto) I stuck to my guns on this one. Charlie decided to bow out, went back to the hotel and had his own dream dinner: he dined in Ritz crackers and Toppo chocolate pretzels and played Toon Town on the computer. Meanwhile back at Indofasia, Amy and I had our usual debate about whether we were ordering too much food or too little. I admitted that my tendency to order too much food was attributable not only to family history but to mortality fears. (“This is not your last meal.” “Yes, but it is my last meal at this restaurant.”) Eventually we ordered a Thai kabob for Daniel while Amy and I shared the banana chicken, chana masala, curry of the day, some Nan bread, and a kiwi lassi (they forgot my Nepalese soup, which Amy reminded me of later after we left and which, miraculously, did not keep me up all night).
Having my loved ones here to open up to after such a long stretch of having practically no one to talk to in English has driven me to a bit of delirium. My children only recently pointed out to me the habit I developed before their arrival of saying ridiculous things to waiters, taxi drivers, etc., when I know very well that I am speaking to myself. As my colleague at Shikoku, Mark Fennelly, says, you do a lot of living inside your own head here, which can be unhealthy. For awhile I considered carrying around a volleyball with a face drawn on it, though Amy suggested I might just converse with my own hand. It’s when my hand itself starts speaking to me in Japanese and I begin choking it at the wrist as it screams “Dame! Dame!” that I will know I’m in trouble.
Anyway, at some point during our meal at Indofasia I launched into a lengthy analysis of catchphrases from 1970s TV entertainment and commercials. I was aided by the food’s anesthetic effects and by the fact that Charlie was not on hand to bang his head on the table as he usually does when I start into one of these things. I turned it into a guessing game: regarding my favorite commercial catchphrase Amy guessed “Where’s the beef?” which was a decade off. The correct answer was a tie between “Try it, you’ll like it” and “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” both of course from Alka-Seltzer ads. As for TV entertainment, Amy guessed my favorite catchphrase was Vinnie Barbarino’s “up your nose with a rubber hose,” again wrong. The correct answer was, “Woooo-wee!” as exclaimed by Junior on “That’s My Mama.” After building up a great deal of suspense I finally revealed this by rather loudly demonstrating Junior’s, “Woooo-wee! I got news, I got news!” while doing the obligatory pimp roll across the floor of Indofasia. I described Junior as having been “played by the same guy who played Isaac on ‘The Love Boat,’” whose name I couldn’t recall at the moment. For the record it was Ted Lange, and this is all entirely germane because Lange also played a prominent role in the early 1970s R&B concert film Wattstax, which is pretty popular in Japan: translated editions of NYC magazines like waxpoetics and 212 Mag have helped turn Japan on to current and past black street culture.
As we left the restaurant, the kind Indian manager said, “See you again,” and I did not disabuse him of that notion.
