Day 4: Shopping Malls, Arcades, and Food
I’ve been walking while I’ve been here. Like, a lot. Even with the trains and buses, I’ve walked anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 steps minimum every day. After 3 hard hitting days, I decide to take an easy day and try to get a break from the heat. I look for ideas on large supermarkets I can visit, and find out that the recently built AEON Kyoto has a supermarket, dozens of stores, and a wide selection of restaurants. Interested to see how large it is and how the food holds up, I head over. Unfortunately, I get lost while walking from the station to AEON, and end up at a different shopping complex by Nijo Castle. This one is primarily restaurants, along with a bookstore, post office, and an arcade.
The arcade fascinates me, as arcades have done since I was little. The flashing lights, the intense music, and excitement and seriousness of the players. More interestingly, the arcade is directly connected with a gambling floor filled with slots, pachinko, and more. The only way I can tell the difference is by a sign that indicates that no one below the age of 18 is allowed to be in the gambling portion. I browse the games and see if there is anything that I like. A few things stick out, such as a Gundam Fighter game, a Dragonball Z fighting game, and a Final Fantasy Dissendia, a fighting game with characters across the FF franchise. I find another game that uses a pen plus a joystick in order to play. The control mechanics are fun, and the gameplay is almost exactly like League of Legends. Not wanting to spend all day in an arcade, I leave after playing a few of these games. I move on and look at the movie theatre. There are a few show times for a few decent English language movies, but tickets are the equivalent of almost $18. I’m not that committed to seeing a movie. To be fair, the movie theatre looked way more upscale than most of the ones I see in the U.S.A.
I decide to try to find the original AEON that I was looking for, and end up taking the subway to the closest place and walking a fair way over. I finally find it around noon, and realize that it is 5 stories tall. The grocery store and a few small restaurants take up the first floor. I browse, marveling the various food, sweets, and beauty supplies that are on the floor. There are even separate vendors that sell skewers of meat, veggies, chilled cucumbers, and baked goods. I come across a Starbucks as well.
I move up and start on the top floor, where all of the restaurants are. I find the food court and see some very appetizing options. I find okonomiyaki, and immediately order one. I soon realize that there is too much, and I am only able to finish 3/4 of it.
Well fed, I continue walking around the malls, going into the various shops and seeing what they have to offer. One store, with their eclectic miss-matched inventory of American and Japanese items, reminds me of a Spencer’s. I also walk into a hat shop, but the prices are way over what I’m willing to pay. I head back to the grocery section and grab a few onigiri and a few flavored waters to take back to my hostel. I take a bus to the train station and hop on the train back to cool off and drop off my items. Not ready to settle in for the evening, I decide to walk to Nishiki Market, only a 5 minute walk from my location.
Nishiki Market and Book Covers
To sum up Nishiki market is easy; it’s the exact opposite of the giant supermarket AEON that I had just left. It is a bunch of individual vendors who sell specialized items in an old fashioned marketplace. The setup had a similar feel as the shopping in the Muslim Quarter in China, though thankfully there wasn’t any haggling. I browse the shops, and eventually end up in a shopping are adjacent to the market that has more commercial stores. I find one store that has a large selection of yukata, obi, kimono, geta sandals, and more, and am half-tempted to make a purchase. However, I tell myself that I don’t need it because I would never be able to wear it anyway, and leave the store empty-handed.
I explore more and more, bouncing around shopping districts, until nightfall. Around 8, I start to get hungry, and so I double back to Karasuma-dori to find something to eat. I get ramen, the first bowl I’ve had here, and it is hits the spot. I continue walking and find a large bookstore of which I was unaware previously. I walk in and ask if they have an English section, and am led to two small shelves. I browse the shelves intensely, looking for something that I wouldn’t find easily in the U.S. I find a collection of excerpts by Yoshida Kenko, a monk during the Kamakura Era. It is a small work, only 50 pages, but I buy it along with 3 different sized book covers.
Okay, I need to rant about these book covers really fast. Remember the really awful, crappy book covers that you had on your elementary school textbooks growing up? They were usually made of elastic or brown paper or some other awful material. Japanese novels, manga, and other bound books come in much more consistent sizes, so a market has been created for awesome book covers. These are little sleeves of varying size into which you can slip your books. They come in all different colors and styles, from solid black, blue, or marron to flowery designs. Some just have symbols or the word ‘Books’ written on them over and over. I think these are amazing things, and I wish they would catch on in the US. Not only do they help accessorize your book, they are a fairly thick canvas and provide good protection against rain and such. As soon as I saw these everywhere on the train, I immediately decided I needed one. So I got 3, a small, medium, and large. One is protecting Yoshida Kenko, and the other is wrapped around my Lonely Planet guide book.
After the book covers, I realize I probably shouldn't buy anything else tonight, so I head back to the hostel, shower, and pass out.
