Kyoto (Kobe) Japan

May 2nd/3rd
Kyoto (Kobe) Japan

Today was my second and final over night in Kobe and I had set out to make it a good one. After some quick planning in the morning, I left the ship with Terry and Mario for a night in Kyoto, one of the top tourist destinations in Japan, and what we were hoping would be a night to remember.
We left the ship, took the train into the downtown station in Kobe, Sannomiya stations, and from there hopped on our train that would get us to Kyoto in about 75 minutes. The public transportation is really nice in Japan, though somewhat expensive, the system really puts the Chicago land systems to shame. Aside from nice chairs and a clean, safe environment, whenever the conductor walked from car to car, he would stop before entering or exiting each car, face the passengers, and bow. I must have seen this guy bow 20 times as he walked in and out of my car, it was really interesting, not to mention humorous when he would look up and see my camera pointing right at him…I’m sure there have been plenty of “stupid American” remarks said behind my back.
When we arrived at Kyoto and exited the station, the first place we wanted to stop was at a bike rental a few km up the road. After getting our bearings, we set off down the road, only to soon come to the conclusion that at 6 PM, a bike rental might not be the best idea, especially one that seemed to be an hour walk away. So we abandoned that idea and began walking to the geisha area Mario had expressed interest in. While walking, we came across a jazz club that looked more than promising, and after figuring out the show started at 7:30, we decided to make a quick trip for dinner and then try to make it back for the show.
Dinner was conveyor belt sushi. Now, Terry and I have been looking for sushi since we got to Japan and for whatever reason have found tremendous difficulty locating the quintessential Japanese food. That ended tonight. We asked a local where the best sushi place was, which conveniently, was a conveyor belt sushi joint across the street. By conveyor belt, I mean there is literally a conveyor belt that loops around the tables and bar where by the customers grab any sushi dish that catches their eye at that time. Each dish was about $1.30, and for the bill, they just count the dishes stacked on you table. We sat down at a booth on the second level of the restaurant and began grabbing at sushi dishes, all of which were extremely simple and unbelievably good. I ended up with 7 dishes, just under $10 worth, and a great feeling of fullness that only raw fish and rice seems able to produce.
We then left just in time to get back to the jazz club before the band started. We went up to the 5th story of the building where the club was located, walked in the door, and were informed of the $50 cover charge. Yeah, that’s right, $50 to hear jazz at a Japanese club. I’ve been to rock concerts for less than that. Well, we were sure the guy at the door must have been mistaken because for whatever reason, Mario had previously understood the cover to be $5, certainly more reasonable, but after a couple minutes of arguing with the guy about the price, it was apparent he knew exactly what he was charging and there was no room three budget conscious Americans. It was too bad that it didn’t work out though because the club looked really hip (not to mention packed), but even as the flyers mentioned as we left the building, the cover was quite clearly going to be $50.
So we left determined to find a different club with a similar scene for a reasonable price. Impossible in Kyoto, never! We started wandering the streets, and to our surprise, came across countless jazz clubs. These aren’t your usual jazz clubs though, these are rooms that might hold 20 people max with a piano in the corner, maybe with bass and drums as well. Each club we entered gave us their times and a description of the music that would be going on that evening, none of which quite compared to our $50 find. We must have visited 10 different clubs to find the same thing. One of which, however, we found when we heard a trombone player as we walked the streets. We followed our ears up to a club, again tiny, but completely empty with some small Japanese guy standing in the corner practicing his horn. That club, as he quickly pointed out, was membership only, and quickly turned us away. I did, however, manage to get some info out of him as to where we cold find another club, which he marked on our map and told us was called The Blue Note. We set off to find it.
After walking in circles for a bit, we were actually able to locate the club with the help of a few locals and a slight modification to our pronunciation – “Brue” note. We walked into this small, hole in the wall sort of place with a combo stuffed into the far side of the bar. There were maybe 10 people in the entire place, but considering it’s size, it still felt crowded. We slid past the bar and each found a seat (which were all drum thrones) feet from where the group was playing. Right across from me was a man originally from the UK who informed us that tonight was nothing more than an open jam, but after our introductions and letting him know each of us are musicians, it seemed as if we came to the right place at the right time. Soon after, the band finished its set and took a break, giving us some more time to figure out what the situation was, get our new friend’s name (Benny), and find encouragement to join the jam. Now, like usual, I don’t just walk through random Japanese cities carrying my sax, so I didn’t have my main horn to go and sit in with. There was, however, a lady in the bar who had a tenor sax with her, though I didn’t yet get to hear her play. Well, obviously I wanted to play in a Japanese club so I asked Benny to talk to the lady for me (he was fluent in Japanese, unlike myself who might know three words and still fail to pronounce them correctly). I told Benny before hand that if the roles were reversed and she wanted to borrow my horn, there’d be absolutely no way in the world, so it’s no big deal if she declines. But Japanese hospitality and friendliness prevailed and she handed her Series II Selmer tenor over without a second thought. I did a quick warm up to see if I could get a note to speak, which seemed to impress her, and was invited up to play the first tune of the next set.
I also went up (more like stood up and turned around) with my friend Mario who sat at the piano. Mario isn’t a musician on the ship, but has been studying piano and jumps at any chance to play. So we got ready to play, the drummer introduced each of us as “Mike son” or “Mario son”, and began with Blue Bossa. We played the tune down, everyone took solos, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. I felt like I was received very well and following the tune, was invited to keep calling tunes and playing solos.
It’s kind of weird using someone else’s horn. I’m not too concerned about germs, but horns and mouthpieces and reeds very greatly from person to person. The horn I borrowed was a great, well respected horn, but the metal mouthpiece (link) wouldn’t have been my choice. The horn played decently though, I was at least producing a sound, and that was about all I was worried about.
The night progressed on and I kept playing, and Terry even came up and joined in with My Funny Valentine. I liked it, he, on the other hand, wasn’t too impressed with his slightly inebriated vocalizations. But what I got the biggest kick out of was our encounter with one of the audience members. Let me preface this next comment by saying that Japan, by far, has had the highest numbers of gorgeous girls walking around the city. Without question, Japan has been a joy to every male I know for just that reason. Now our friend at the bar, who seemed to like my saxophone playing, fell on the complete opposite side of that spectrum. Aside from being completely drunk, she spoke no English, was not in the least bit pleasant to look at, and was unusually touchy-feely. I found it funny simply because while I was playing, our “friend” would be getting really close to Terry and rubbing against him, something he certainly didn’t appreciate. Even after I’d finish and sit down, she’d be sitting by him while he looks at me with a disgusted and uncomfortable look and insists that I take care of this “thing”. But anyways, she made it really awkward till we left, something we must have done around midnight.
As we were wished farewell by our new Japanese friends, we departed with Benny who offered to show us to a small little bar that was more rock and roll themed, something he thought we’d appreciate. Yeah, not so much, we left the second he stepped out the door to meet up with his friends again. From there we decided it might be about time to start looking for a hotel seeing as the trains stop running at midnight, so here’s where the real fun begins…
Turns out Japan totally closes down at midnight, meaning all hotels stop receiving guests at that time or sooner. Literally every hotel we walked into there on out was closed, which we soon figured out might pose a problem. Now, my friends were sort of upset that we didn’t check in somewhere sooner seeing as we were vaguely familiar with the shutting down thing, but I was more than happy to walk the streets a little more. I get excited by not quite knowing where we were going to end up and the process of finding something. It’s kind of scary not really having any options, but at the same time, when you’re with people that you trust, just the trill that makes for better blog stories.
We asked a couple of people for advice, and they’d give ideas I’d never considered in my life, such as renting a karaoke room till 7 am. Anyways, here’s the sequence of events. The first place we tried that looked like an option was a hostile. The door was open, but the office closed at 10:00 and wouldn’t open again for another 12 hours. We went inside and briefly looked around. There was a really nice back room with couches, a TV, and a computer. We sat down for a bit and I tried to convince my friends of just laying down there for the night and then leaving early in the morning before we were found out. The idea was trashed on account of fears that we’d get arrested for trespassing, something they didn’t want to risk (I was all for it). So we left that nice room for the streets and continued walking. We came across a restaurant where we met an Israeli guy and asked for ideas. He recommended the Karaoke, among other things, and listed them on our map. So we set out to find his suggestions.
The Karaoke place we stopped at was certainly interesting. In Japan, there are Karaoke places everywhere. If you want to have a good time with your friends, you go to this place, actually rent your own private room with a TV, order some food and drinks, and sing your heart out. We weren’t so focused on the singing as we were on the sleeping possibility. After Mario tried his hand with negotiating the price of the room, we each paid $17 and were to be set till 6 or 7 AM. Or at least we thought so till we saw the room. When Mario opened the door to this 6x6 box with two couched, it was clear the room wouldn’t hold three guys that wanted to sleep. We tried to get a larger room, but as we discovered they were all reserved, we ended up getting our money back and moving on to the next opportunity.
We continued trying to locate places circled on our map, most of which yielded no results. Mario suggested the idea of staying in a bar till they closed at 5 AM, yet another idea completely new to me. So as we walked down the street following our map, we looked for places that advertised such late operating hours, and for each one that did, Mario and I ran up to check them out. The first three or so just weren’t going to work, they weren’t set up for sleeping, and as the night dragged on and we confronted failure upon failure, we were getting more and more desperate. Then, one of the bars we checked turned out to be just what we were looking for. This small, 15 person max establishment, had no more than a bar with a half dozen stools and 4 large couches – bingo. Further more, it was empty, perfect for the little time we had to sleep. At this point it was 2 AM, and although that’s not even really all that late, it’s a totally different story after you’ve walked around Japan for the past 8 hours. We all went up, ended up ordering a pizza made in some glorified easy bake oven (still tasted good), and tried to sleep on our red couches with unusually furry pillows. The music blaring in the background wasn’t much of a help, especially considering it was some weird Hip hop/R&B/Smooth jazz blend with English words, but at least we had a place. At about 3:30 a couple came in and further disturbed our less than peaceful sleeping environment, but again, what can you expect from a bar. I’m just glad the bar tender was nice enough to let us be after we finished our pizza. We were eventually told to leave at the 5:00 closing time, but just those couple hours did a great deal of good. I didn’t really sleep that much cause I was to hyped up on the excitement of Japan, but Mario and Terry seemed to get some rest in.
Following our exit from the bar, my now marginally reenergized group set off to walk to the train station, a different one from our trip to the city. This train we believed would be faster, which it was by 15 minutes, but at $4 price increase. But once again, the train was nice and clean, it made for an enjoyable ride back to Kobe. Upon returning back to the actual port city, Mario soon took the next train back to the ship terminal while Terry and I opted for just a little more time out on the town. We were looking for a coffee shop where we could sit down and enjoy the morning. The only problem was that the coffee shops don’t open till 8:00 or 8:30, so we had about a half hour to kill before we sit down and actually ingest something. We ended up at a place called Excelsior Café, a chain I’ve been noticing more and more recently, and just hung out for a while. We eventually made our way back to the station, caught the next train to the terminal, and returned to the ship after a long night out.
The remainder of the day involved a good deal of sleeping, and even a trip to the gym, but that pretty much concludes my last overnight in Japan. I want to say there was something else worth mention about that night, but I can’t think of it now and this post is already long enough, for for those who made it, congrats and thanks. And if you’re going to Japan, please book your hotels in advance. Have a great one!