Japan, part 3: Kyoto (Part 1 — about Tokyo — can be found here. Part 2 — about Kurashiki, the concert, and sushi dinner — can be found here.)

On Monday morning, we took the train from Kurashiki to Kyoto, where we’d be spending two nights. Upon our arrival at the hotel, we, of course, ate. We went to the hotel restaurant where we had — as we had in the cafeteria in Kurashiki — Japanese-style curry with rice. (The curry rice was 300 yen — about $2.50 — in Kurashiki. At the hotel in Kyoto, this was about $20. Tasty, though. Very, very tasty.)

Our lunch included tea, which included a slice of lemon. The lemon slice had been peeled. Good thing, or I’d totally have caused a scene.

The restaurant had a huge dessert case. (We were stuffed, so we just looked.)

An aside… the exit signs in Japan are great. Run! Run through this door! RUN!!!

The lobby of our hotel (Hotel Okura). It was huge.

Then we headed out to start out sightseeing. First stop: Nishi-Honganji temple, one of the dozens of temples in Kyoto. We arrived just in time for this ceremony.

Here’s a shot that my camera couldn’t quite understand. Apparently it had never tried to shoot this much gold in a single frame.

From there, we walked to another temple. We took what looked on the map like a shortcut, and ended up on this incredibly narrow residential road. Kyoto is amazing because there are all of these ancient temples on the same block as tiny houses.

Next stop: Higashi-Honganji temple. These temples were originally built in 1272, and rebuilt in 1895. (Can you spot AEJ in this photo?) The structure to the right is not a new building, but actually a temporary encasing, built to protect a temple that is undergoing restoration.

That night, we took the train to Kobe for Kobe beef, which I’ve already written about extensively. Here’s the Kyoto train station — a stunning piece of modern architecture, and even more amazing to see in a city with so many ancient buildings.

Breakfast the next morning was at the hotel. This time, pastries…

… and fresh (delicious, refreshing) yogurt.

There seemed to be a girls’ school graduation party happening in our hotel lobby that morning.

After breakfast, we headed out for more sightseeing. Next up: Kinkakuji, an incredible golden temple.

And just because it’s so damn pretty, here’s another shot.

The entire grounds were beautiful. Here was a place where you could make a wish. I wished for a super hot fiancee, and voila. These women were wishing for an annoying American guy to take their picture, and… voila.

I realize there’s no shortage of pretty nature shots in Kyoto, but do you see the amazing color of this moss?!

Here’s a vending machine outside of the temple. Wataru tells me that the text above the aliens’ head says, “Earth was yummy.” Yes it was, my alien friend. Yes it was.

Our next stop was a zen rock garden. I love the welcoming poster. In addition to pointing out that it’s on the list of world cultural heritage sites, there’s a green line around the entire perimeter of the grounds. What does the green line signify? If you could zoom in, you’d see: “Special Place of Scenic Beauty.” The entire park.

An orange gate welcomes us. These gates seem to have been the inspiration behind Christo’s Gates in Central Park a few years ago. Oh, except these are actually an attractive color. Nice safety orange, Christo. (Those gates bugged me. They were an amazing idea, I thought, but the color was awful.)

Speaking of color, here’s a totally non-doctored shot from this garden. Man, I love the color a Canon camera produces. (I just purchased a new camera this week — another Canon, but with a lot more manual control than the SD800 offered. More on that soon, I promise you.)

Some buds from a plum tree.

The same garden — and another nice picture.

From there, we took a taxi to Nishiki Market. This was where our dinner that night would come from. Being a fan of pictures of food, this was going to be fun…

I think there’s a song about this guy. One amazing thing about this market was the smell — in a good way. I’d expected an open-air market, selling primarily fresh fish, to smell, well, like dead fish. But there was no smell at all.

This would be a fine… dessert?

This… well, it’s certainly a pretty silver color! Iridescent fish are cool.

Fish on a stick? Anyone?

Snacks and sweets. If I could read Japanese characters, this would probably look like chaos, but since I can’t, it just looks to me like pretty colors with abstract characters.

Again with the pretty colors.

This flower shop had the most beautiful orchids I’ve ever seen.

But the market also had this. I’m sure this is delicious, but it looks a little horror-movie-esque. Somehow, I suspect that Newman would love it.

And look! Another cute funny
Japanese kitty!

Any why not wash it all down with a glass of bruce pee from the Ill Store?

Here are dozens upon dozens of bicycles parked at the market. Not a single one was locked.

Mmm! Those hats look delicious, don’t they, you funny little plastic girl?

So, that’s the Kyoto market and a few temples. From there, we went to check into Tawaraya Ryokan, the famous historic Japanese inn where we’d be staying that night. If you thought there were some crazy food pictures in this entry, just you wait.

Here’s part 2 about the trip to Japan. (You can read Part 1, detailing our arrival in Tokyo, here.)

Starving from our train ride, we were treated to lunch in the college cafeteria. We had one of our favorites — Japanese-style curry with rice. Even from a cafeteria, we thought it was pretty tasty.

Here’s a shot of the Kurashiki Sakuyo College, the campus that hosted the JWECC (Japan Wind Ensemble Conductors Convention) conference.

From lunch, it was off to rehearsal. My piece, “Kingfishers Catch Fire,” was commissioned by a half-dozen-plus high schools and colleges in Japan, and the ensemble premiering the work at this convention was an honor band comprised of members of each of the commissioning ensembles. As such, everybody in the band had been rehearsing the piece at their own school in their own band for several months, and what seemed to be the “best of the best” of each band was invited to perform the premiere. The conductor was Ichiro Saito, a frequent conductor of Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, a professional wind ensemble in Japan. The band, to put it mildly, sounded incredible.

As this was the first time I’d heard the piece — and the first time that Mr. Saito had conducted it! — I expected to have a lot of notes. I kept scribbling things on my Post-It notes and sticking them to the score — “more articulation,” “louder trombones,” “clarinets quieter here” — but every time Saito would stop, he’d say something in Japanese, then run a section again — and he’d have implemented my note without me having to say a word. His instincts were completely in sync with my ideas about the piece. It was great — and a bit of a relief, considering the language barrier between me, the conductor, and the ensemble.

Every time we had a break, I was approached with autograph requests. It was surreal. As soon as I exited the hall, people came literally running with cameras, pens, and sheet music. Sometimes I was asked to autograph other people’s sheet music. No Whitacre this time, but there was some piece called “Dream City” that both I — and AEJ! — autographed. (As an extra-fun twist, if I was busy with an autograph, they’d ask for AEJ’s autograph. It was pretty funny.)

The best, though — and this tops every other autograph I’ve ever signed — was when I was asked to sign this guy’s trombone. At first, I refused. He insisted, though, so…

Here are some of our new friends — Omata, Hayashi, Passan, Kanda, Emi, and Chi-taso — huddling and planning something. What were they planning?

Once they broke their huddle, they sang to me. They sang their parts from “Redline Tango.” It was incredible. It was as if somebody had arranged the last page of the piece for vocal sextet. I’d never heard such a thing. (It works slightly better as a band piece, but damn — this was cool.) Here’s some of the gang — with our new best friend Omata on the far left. (Her English was great, and she was hilarious.)

They told us that they had an idea for a movie. It was going to include a monster, a princess, a hero, a ninja, a samurai, a viking, an and an angel. The movie would be called “Monster Hero Peace Movie.” I smell an Oscar. Then, they decided to co-write a story with AEJ. The students wrote the first half (in pencil)… (“One day, a monster lived in a forest. He became grate because he ate a lot of bananas. He wanted to use his special power and wanted to help poor people. After…”)

(AEJ continued… “… the monster invited all the poor people to come to the forest with him to share his bananas. Soon everyone was living in the forest and eating bananas together. The people said to the monster, “Thank you! You are our hero!”)

I smell a Pulitzer.

The premiere of “Kingfishers Catch Fire” was the best premiere I can remember of any of my pieces. The piece, 11 minutes long with two movements, is bright and sparkly and ends with huge antiphonal brass flourishes. I couldn’t believe how well they played it. When you consider that the majority of the players were in high school, it becomes almost incomprehensible. I have a kind of mind-blowing recording of the premiere, and I’ll post it in December. (Nobody in the US is allowed to perform it before December, so I’m just going to sit on this one for a while.)

After the concert, there was a party at Tivoli Park, an amusement park in Kurashiki with a Danish theme. (The original Tivoli Gardens are in Copenhagen.)

The place was awesome. Imagine a model of a Danish town — but in Japan, with Japanese (and occasionally English) signs. Bonus points if you can spot AEJ. Hint: she’s the only blonde in the entire town.

And here I am with Mr. Saito, at the post-concert reception. Bravo, Mr. Saito!

Our hotel was just a block from a cool area that used to be warehouses, and is now a shopping district. It had this awesome store that sold almost nothing but manekinekos (those lucky waving cats)…

… and this awesome building — and we’re not sure what it was for…

Wait. What was happening in that picture? Were those alpenhorn players?!

Yes, yes they were. We didn’t understand, but we thought it was fun.

There was this lovely canal running through the village.

On Sunday (the day after the concert), I participated in a little “Meet the Composer” session. Here I am with my interpreter, Tetsuya Nakayama, a conductor who studied with Eugene Corporon at U. North Texas.

And here I am with my friend Itshi and her awesome shirt.

She clearly knew that her shirt was funny, but we did see a lot of instances of not-quite-perfect English. For example, on these handbags.

Did I mention the awesome kitty store?!

This kitty, though, would benefit from some modesty.

And here I am with all of my new conductor friends.

Thank you, everybody, for a wonderful weekend, including not just the performances (among them a kick-ass performance of “Redline Tango”), but a sincere thanks for the night when they all treated us to an incredible sushi dinner.

I’d had sushi in America, but to me, “sushi” is tor
o, salmon, tuna, yellowtail — the standards. This was a bit fancier. Here, for example, is (I think) octopus (tako).

And here is one incredible sushi spread, just for me and AEJ. They were far too generous. We loved it — although raw squid was a little difficult for my American palette (and chewing ability).

This is soba — basically like buckwheat. Normally you make noodles out of it, but here it is served in its kernel state.

And here’s dessert. It was a spectacular meal.

The next night, though — without their guidance — we ended up eating at an Italian restaurant. And I gotta say — it was shockingly good. Who knew?!

The next morning, we left Kurashiki for Kyoto. And that’s where the pictures truly start to get spectacular…

Here, finally, is part 1 of the blog entry about our recent trip to Japan — complete with dozens upon dozens of photos. Pour yourself some green tea and get comfy, ’cause this is going to take some time…

The flight from LA was direct, and it took about 12 hours. It departed around noon LA-time on Wednesday, and landed around 4pm Japan-time on Thursday (which felt, to us, like midnight). By the time I took this photo, we were pretty ready to get the hell off the plane.

Japan, of course, welcomed us.

Step one : check into the hotel — the Mitsui Garden Hotel in the Ginza district of Tokyo.

The lobby of the Mitsui Garden. Swanky. I thought it was one of the nicest hotels we stayed in in Japan, and for some reason, it was also one of the least-expensive.

Here’s our room. Tiny, as we expected, but very cool. There was a window in the shower wall so you could look through to the living room and see outside while showering. If you wanted privacy, though, you could flick a switch and the window would instantly frost over. This room was awesome.

We were on a fairly high floor, and the view was spectacular.

And no bible in this dresser! No sir, it’s Buddha all the way!

It was probably 7pm by this time, but we wanted to say up until 9 or so to get adjusted to the new time zone, so we counted our per diem (which converts, as far as I could estimate, to about eleventy-gabillion dollars)…

… and went outside to see the neighborhood. This dude was one of the first to greet us.

He invited AEJ to clean her glasses with some kind of magical fluid-slash-vibration technology. Her glasses had never been cleaner.

Our friend Wataru had recommended that we have an authentic Japanese dinner of ramen…

… and gyoza. Wataru gives good advice. It was delicious. (AEJ did a great job ordering in Japanese.)

If we hadn’t felt like going authentic on our first night, I suppose we could have eaten at the local T.G.I. Friday’s. Seriously. I’m not sure that Japan is where you should go for your Cheddar Cheese Nachos (although they’re a bargain at 380 yen – which I think is roughly $800. Or so.).

We walked on one of the main drags in Ginza. It looks similar to New York — there’s even an Apple Store! — but it was almost silent. Absolutely no honking car horns. The sidewalks were crowded, but everybody was speaking in hushed tones. And weirdest (and most pleasing) of all — we never, during our entire trip, heard a cell phone ring. Everybody in Japan keeps their phones on silent, because ringing cell phones “could annoy your neighbors” (according to the recorded message on one of the buses we rode). It was also spotless.

We went into the Apple Store, which felt identical to the Apple Stores elsewhere in the US — expect the prices were in Yen (and boy howdy, when you see a price tag of 319,000 yen, it’s kind of striking), and the keyboards had Japanese characters on them.

I dug the colors of the lights of this department store.

The next morning, I went out for a Starbucks. (You can order a “cinnamon dolce latte” in that language anywhere, apparently.) Fully caffeinated, I was ready for our ride on the bullet train to Kurashiki, a small town near Okayama, where the band convention would be held.

The shinkansen (the bullet train) is nice. Because we were from a foreign land, we were able to buy a one-week rail pass at a greatly-reduced price, allowing us unlimited rides in the reserved “Green” first class car. Roomy.

We arrived in Kurashiki that afternoon in time for rehearsal of my brand new piece, “Kingfishers Catch Fire.” And that’s where part 2 will begin…