For many people, Kyoto is the best place to go in Japan, a wonderful land of shrines, traditional architecture and geisha. There is no denying that everyone who comes to Japan, especially those living here, should see Kyoto. However, once you go beyond tourism, life perhaps isn’t so great.
With some days off and little else to do, Keiko and I made our way down to Kyoto, a second time for both of us. I had spent a month in Kyoto back in the summer of 2006, and Keiko had been sightseeing there sometime before that. We’d thus seen most of what we need to see, and only had to stay for a short time. After only two days there, I came to appreciate the differences between Kanto (the region around Tokyo) and Kansai (around Osaka), and my opinion of Kyoto has become far more complex.
Last week, I felt that Kyoto was a quaint place, rather convenient but ultimately lacked urban planning and effective conservation efforts. I believed that Kyoto’s highly developed bus system was an excellent means of getting about, and that it was nice to be in a city where you could walk home within two hours at worst. The hyper-locality of its shops and stores, and its wealth of independent businesses, worked in the city’s favour. Also, it was close to other major cities: Osaka (less than an hour away), Nagoya and Kobe (both about two hours away). Much of this still holds true in my mind, but whereas I once believed that I could easily live in a place like Kyoto (after all, is it so much different to much of the UK’s towns and cities?), now I can barely imagine it.
Take the buses, for instance. You might need to walk 5 minutes to your nearest bus stop. Then you may have to ride the bus for an hour just to get to the station or some other destination. Particularly on the tourist routes to places like Gion or Kinkakuji, the bus can be as crowded as any Tokyo train, and much less comfortable. In Kyoto, you enter the bus from the centre and exit from the front. This means that people in the back have to push their way through a 4 metre-long crowded aisle in other to get out of a packed bus. Kyoto buses, at least around the central wards, are flat-rate, ¥220 for an adult. You pay this at the front of the bus as you exit, in contrast to my local Kawasaki buses, which are also flat-rate (and ¥20 cheaper) where you pay on entry at the front and exit through the central door. This gives the driver more control over how many people squeeze into the bus, as well as making it easier for people to exit.
At one point, on the way to Kinkakuji on an unbelievably packed bus, a man somewhere behind me told me to ‘sit down’. The reason being that there was a priority seat right in front of me, and if I sat down it would give people some more space. I knew for a fact however, that there were some older people around me, and thus I was reluctant to do so, instead hoping that such a person would take it. Indeed, unable to turn around and offer it to anyone, a middle-aged woman beside me tugged on the shoulder of an old lady and invited her to take the seat. I couldn’t help but think that if that guy wanted to sit down, he should have done so himself instead of ordering me around. Keiko told me that that is just the way people from Kansai are (although Kanto vs Kansai is a rather big rivalry, people from Hokkaido are supposedly very intolerant of Kansai manners). I am inclined to agree, I cannot think of a time I have been on a cramped train when I heard people calling out for others to move forwards (even though they couldn’t move at all): on the whole, people in Kanto are far more impersonal and business-like with strangers. They may be rude, but they aren’t overtly angry for the most part.
These incidents with the buses, and the amount of time I spent standing up on them, made me realise just how inconvenient a place it is. From my house in Kawasaki, I can walk to the station in 10 minutes and reach Shibuya in 20 minutes, Yokohama in 35, and Tachikawa in 40. I can catch a bus to the next station down from me and be there in 10 minutes, I can walk to the next station up from me in about 30 minutes. The buses don’t stop until after 11, and even then, there are special late buses until 1 am. If you were to work in Tokyo and finish at 9pm, you could get back home by about 10:30 no matter where you lived in this area. By contrast, if someone worked in Osaka and went home to Kyoto, they’d be stuck with either an expensive taxi ride, long bike ride, or a longer walk if they lived in the north or south of the city. This is one of the key benefits of living in one of Kanagawa’s station towns, a suburban area full of commuters which exists simply because there is a station nearby, but it is one that holds true for much of Kanagawa, Tokyo, Chiba and Saitama.
In terms of trains, Kyoto has a pretty large number. In its both hideously empty but amazingly modern-looking station, Kyoto plays host to several JR lines, and a small subway system. From the basement of the Hankyu department store in Kawaramachi Shijo, a good 15 minute bus ride from the main station, you can catch the Hankyu Kyoto Line to Osaka, about an hour away. Finally, around Shijo, you can take the Randen tram service up into Arashiyama. There seems to be lots of variety, but in fact given how dispersed they are and how you’ll have to jump from operator to operator, getting around in Kyoto without a scooter or bike quickly adds up. One such example of poor integration can be found in the payment system. In Kansai they use ICOCA, an electronic payment system similar to Oyster, instead of JR East’s Suica, or PASMO (used by non-JR companies in Kanto). However, while tourists can use their PASMO or SUICA on Kyoto’s JR lines, I was surprised to have it rejected when trying to get on the subway.
If you like the arty and independent culture that Kyoto offers, with its trendy and expensive areas, then you’d be okay to live there. It’s a place for students and small-businesses, not for the big business culture you see in the Tokyo region. Kyoto is more isolated and dependent on personal transport than a place like this, and that might be fine if you work in the city’s booming tourist industry or at one of its distinguished universities, but as a man accustomed to travelling around to different schools on different days, much further than any Kyoto bus journey, I can’t help but feel that the decentralised business in which I work would be unable to sustain itself in so small and so isolated a city. If it could, then I really wouldn’t want to be working there, where if the bus is full, you can’t get on. Rush hour would be hellish, and the tourist season worse.
Going back to Kyoto has simply highlighted what it is that I like about where I live. Yes, Kyoto has history and green spaces, but the Kamogawa (along which I used to love walking) is full of midges and is nothing compared to the great Tamagawa a stone’s throw from my house. Whether there is a major difference between the people here or there, or not, at least this feels like home. Kyoto, on the other hand, will only ever feel like a maddening tourist destination with little new to offer me.
I remember one night in 2002, my mother knocked on my door and woke me up: “Did you feel that earthquake?” I rolled over and peered over to my door and groaned, “It was just a truck going by, go back to bed!” That was my first earthquake, a magnitude 4.8, and I dismissed it as a articulated lorry.
