Excusemimasen, have you seen my wabi-sabi?: Because Shopping is Cheaper Than a Psychiatrist

買物は生死に学者より安いだよ。

"Shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist."

Wise words printed on my shopping bag which I bought from the dollar store before I cam here. The plastic's slowly eroding off it, but this was the first bit of humor I successfully translated into Japanese. Situational humor aside, it can be a little difficult to make jokes in Japanese when it's not your native language. Sarcasm's out of the question, because, well, it doesn't really exist in Japanese. It's not that the Japanese always say what they mean; in fact, they have a tendency to circumvent. It's commonly described as "talking around" the subject. Takagi-sensei always drew spirals on the board to demonstrate this. But sarcasm, saying the exact opposite thing, is usually lost on Japanese. Best just to stay away from it--otherwise you may end up unintentionally insulting something or someone.

I had a battle plan for this day too...or at least a road map. My targets were mostly acquired from the Lonely Planet guidebook for Kyoto: stores selling traditional Kyoto (and Japanese in general) crafts. From Shijo-Karasuma station, the first stop were the Takaya stores. The first I stopped at specialized in traditional fabric crafts: noren, pillows--lots of pillows--tenugui,
and the like.

Found a couple of cute kitteny characters down an alley

Kitties!

After the first Tanakaya, I took my first pass through Nishiki Market, which eventually ends at the Teramachi and Shinkyougoku shopping arcades (which I have been through several times by now.) Nishiki Market is likewise a covered arcade, only the vendors specialize in food, rather than clothing, craft, and souvenir shops. Although while weaving through the market, I did find a couple of interesting shops selling traditional shoes, hand-painted paper fans, and little cat handbags. At this tiny hole-in-the-wall, I found the most beautiful fan with a graceful ink brush painting of koi. I really need to get back into practicing my brush painting.

The second Tanakaya store is on the opposite side of Nishiki Market, a few blocks southeast of the first shop, and specializes in all kinds of traditional Japanese dolls. After some admiring and gawking at the prices, I finished walking through the rest of Nishiki, and continued east through Teramachi. A couple of blocks further, near Kawaramachi-dori, I found Nijuusanya, a store which sells modern Japanese hair accessories and traditional carved wooden (and tortoiseshell, I believe) combs and hairpieces. Most of the items were a little on the expensive side, so I took a particular interest in the their less-expensive hair sticks. There were three different, gracefully carved designs, matsu needle, ginkgo leaf, and tsuru head, which came in the plain polished wood, or smooth painted black. I had a bit of a time choosing between the ginkgo and tsuru, but eventually went with the shop-lady's suggestion of the black crane. I also made a stop at Tsujikura to admire their small gallery of beautiful, high-quality paper wagasa and lanterns, before traveling north up Kawaramachi-dori to browse through the foreign (aka English) section of the Junkudou bookstore.

Strange things were afoot at the Circle K...The sign on the far left in the photo tells passersby that this was the site of Ryoma Sakamoto and Shintaro Nakaoka's assassinations in 1867. Sakamoto and his friend Nakaoka, who were very influential in the Meiji Restoration, were meeting at the Omiya soy sauce shop when they were murdered by
a group calling themselves "Totsugawa warrior." These days, a Circle K stands on the spot, and most people pass by without taking any notice of the sign. These two I caught in the picture happened to give it a glance, although that may have been because I was actually stopped in front of it, and standing in the middle of the sidewalk amidst fairly heavy pedestrian traffic in attempts to get a good shot of the site.

I made a pit-stop at Wonder Tower to play a couple rounds of much-needed DDR...

but I miss Kylie Minogue, and Breakdown!...

Lastly, I walked back down to Shijo-dori, and finally walked north through Ponto-cho.

In olden days, Ponto-cho was Kyoto's red-light district...

Today, the street is lined with restaurants, teahouses, and bars.

I had a giggle when I passed a jazz bar called Hello Dolly.

Ponto-cho is supposed to be one of the particular places where geiko and maiko-sightings are fairly common--but this is usually during weekend evenings.