If you scroll down this page you will find links daily entries about our trip. These are more or less lengthy (amounting to almost 20,000 words in total) and I've tried to make them worth your time to read. However, I realize that many of you will not have the desire to read 20,000 words so between here and the daily entries is kind of a summary, a "How was your trip to Japan?" answer at what I hope is a slightly deeper level. After that, you will find photo links of various sorts, just in case you like pictures in addition to, or instead of words.
Excellent! It was my first trip, Monika's second. I rate it 9+!
Highlights?
The time with Monika's friends Anja and Masayuki in Murakami
The night in Turrell's House of Light in Tokamachi
The day in Izakawa Prefecture Library in Kanazawa
The afternoon in Cooking Sun class in Kyoto
The thirty minutes in massage chairs
The search for the Tokyo Toilets from Perfect Days
The nothingness of the D.T. Suzuki museum
The friendliness and kindness and care everywhere
The food, most of the time
The Vitavox Klipschorns at Yamatoya
We are not yet to Japan. Got up at 4:45 a.m. to catch a Lyft to catch the Santa Barbara Airbus to catch a plane from LAX to Japan. 220 hours later we are still on the plane and I have a bad case of dead butt. Flight info says a large number of hours remain, but I am being positive and very much looking forward to the dinner or breakfast pizza course they will be serving in the next few hours. The lunch or dinner course (just after noon Pacific time) was enormous: green salad, fruit salad, soup (or noodle broth, I couldn't tell), cold noodles with green onions, pork sausage (I think), a very interestingly textured steamed pork dumpling, a large potato (I think) croquette, canned peas and carrots, a piece of something that was sweetish and had the texture of tofu - was it? or was it a piece of egg? - a lot of rice, vanilla ice cream, and a bottle of water. I also ordered some red wine, but I could not possibly drink it with this dinner.
When we land we will be in the future, and maybe the past too. Japan is +8? 10? 12? Hours to west coast. Also, out the airplane window it has been near-constant twilight for hours. I believe we may actually be stuck. Or flying at the speed of light. Or of the earth spinning. Science buddies, help me out here! Why is it twilight for innumerable hours? It's like a bad junior high math puzzle. More later from the actual country of Japan. I hope.
Addendum #1: We have reached the 3 hours to go mark. I was about to venture a new theory for the twilight stasis. The airplane has special window coatings that allow for electronic darkening and lightening of the window. Despite the button next to my seat mate, I was beginning to suspect these buttons were a sham. It was apparent that the controls were in the cockpit and that the notion of "outside" was merely a projection. Clearly we are in some kind of simulator! Or so I thought. But now! It has become daylight, rather full daylight outside. Apparently we have caught up with the sun! Or outside the earth! Or? Three hours and counting! Also, the pizza course is yet to come. Addendum #2, standing by.
Addendum # 2: Less to report than I thought, though, interestingly, perhaps, it's getting dark again. So this day is like arctic winter so far. A couple of hours of decent light, and a lot of twilight. Maybe that's arctic spring. Doesn't matter. The sun has increased its speed, or the earth has, or we've slowed again, but most importantly we are landing in an hour and a half. The pizza/foccoccia (spelling is obviously wrong) for breakfast/dinner was not so good. I've been told by a quite usually reliable source that the Japanese make a mean Neapolitan style pizza these days. This one was not that. Airplane food. Cheers and more from Japan!
Top of PageOkay, for simplicity's sake we will call this Day One. This morning I learned that the time difference between Japan and California is -17 hours. So, resolved, this IS the future. Also, with that kind of clock math I should be able to go back to sleep easier. What I mean is this. There's a good sleep inducing technique that involves counting backwards from one thousand by threes. The tedium, and the losing of one's place and having to begin again are what defeats awake-mind. I will replace this method with trying to figure out what time it is in California.
Last night we tried to have pizza and ended up at a sushi place after considerable switching on and off of the cellular data network. Was it intimidating to look inside, see a few people sitting at the sushi bar, duck under the banners, open the not-quiet door to the tiny place and announce our American-tourist-we-know-no-Japanese-selves to the entire operation? Yes it was! But of course we were seated graciously with the hostess scrambling to bring out the Englishy menus from somewhere in the back. We split a 10-piece special plate - an interesting experience if you've never tried to split a piece of sushi before and you're worried about looking like an idiot (spoiler: you will) - with a surprising twist: baby sardines! They look like small eels, do have eyes, and taste pretty good. That one was especially interesting to split. Hotel breakfast was delicious: kale-egg-(good but just the other side of raw)-bacon toast with a flat white coffee. Make that two flat white coffees. Met and had a nice chat with Stephanie, a friendly, ambitious traveller from Belgium. She has a movie that should be out soon, to which I will link if she reads this and sends me its address. Off for our day... Nihonbashi bridge, Map Camera, Tokyo toilets are the planned destinations.
Top of PageFirst off, a correction is warranted. Regarding the baby sardines of yesterday's entry, I erroneously noted that they were "especially interesting to spit." Though that also probably would have been true, in fact they were "especially interesting to SPLIT." So, Freudian error or not, the correction has been made.
Another fine hotel breakfast and a new and interesting fellow-traveller, a very friendly German woman (did not get her name) staying a couple of unanticipated extra days because of a flight cancellation. Took a photo of Stephanie, Monika and Y (can't use X any more) that came out pretty nice.
Yesterday was our first, well my first, walking around Tokyo. Everything was fresh and new until about Step 17,000. The first few of those steps took us to a quaint little street where we discovered a shop with a man with a cleaver making toothpicks from the wood of a "Black Character" plant. He sat on a stool at one side of the shop and above him hung a verbal/pictorial history of the ancient craft of making toothpicks. Minty in smell, pliant in flex, relatively small in price -- we made our first Tourist Purchase. Little known to us, this turned out to be a pretty famous shop. Good discovery!
Nihonbashi Bridge. I probably don't have this right but this bridge first existed in 1603 as a wooden structure. In 1911 it was converted to stone. Now I'm not sure what it is but it takes a bit of imagination to place this as the one-time central market and business hub of Old Tokyo. I think that may be a requirement for much of the sightseeing of antique Japan: imaginative re-creation. That works. We got a special stamp from the Tourist info center there, proceeding to the Mitsukoshi department store, the oldest in Japan (I think).
This was the first of two or three department stores we entered yesterday. We would not necessarily have chosen to enter more than one but developers have done a remarkable job of integrating access to trains directly through giant department stores. But this one was not part of a train station. Instead, it was delightful in that "What century are we in?" kind of way. Answer: early 20th (1914). And full of women. I mean FULL. One floor had a "pop-up store" with a kind of maker's market and craft workshop and seniorwear and ... and was absolutely jammed. Not a man, except in the mirror, to be seen. In seven enormous floors we finally found the ten men - all in lounge chairs on a mezzanine overlooking a giant atrium with a four-story wooden statue of the Celestial Maiden carved from the "good wood" of a 500 year old cypress tree. Some incredible red linoleum-covered stairs leading to the ground floor probably dating from 1914 or thereabouts. An incredible set of escalators, dating same I think. The first in Japan. The handrails of the escalators were spotless! And on the seventh floor, a beautiful roof garden.
Next stop, Tokyo Station. Outside, an old plum tree was in bloom, surrounded by people posing and picturing with an old plum tree. Inside? Thank you Sue and Tom for the heads-up on Tokyo Station. More people in that station than on all the streets combined. Some serious walking, but the signage was great and because it was not rush hour, the crowds manageable. We found our destination - "Ramen Street" - and made our first vending machine meal ticket purchase for, in my case, a teriyaki pork tonkatsu ramen. THAT was an excellent purchase!
Train to Shinjuku section of the city. Tokyo is large, apparently. I qualify that because much of the time I couldn't actually see the city. I know we were on a train for about a half hour in much the same way I was in a plane for ever and when we arrived we were in a different place. Destination? Map Camera, accomplished. And then Yodabashi Camera. And then MiniMini Camera. And then, ultimately, punctuationaly, Camera Box. In all, I tried one lens (discounted because of a microscopic ding and the fact that the previous owner "was a smoker"), and actually purchased an SD card ($50) and four rolls of film ($90). Monika bought a power bank for the phone from a grumpy guy for some amount of money. Not cheap. If Japan is, as everyone claims, "cheap" right now I'd hate to come when it's expensive.
Your Japanese Cultural Lesson for Today? Otaku.
At this point we were out of gas, and had not yet seen ANY of the Tokyo Toilets! The sun was setting, and so was Monika's enthusiasm for cameras. So off to the toilets! Two toilets: Toilet #5 : Nishisando by Suo Fujimoto; Toilet #9: Urasando by Marc Newson, one of the designers of the Apple Watch. We had already made our step goal of 140,000 steps but these two toilets added another dimension. But then, they were cool! At #5 we watched a taxi driver pull up and run in while his client waited outside the cab. Perfectly like Perfect Days!
Finally we hit Shinjuku City where we had Big Hunger and Massive Decision-and-Foot Fatigue. We (or I) knew of Sarabeth's, a New York based (?) cafe, and saw one listed somewhere "nearby" (all directions are btw VERY approximate on both Google Maps and Apple Maps) and saw a salad option on the menu. Sold. Sarabeth's Tokyo department store version is not Sarabeth's Brooklyn. Something has been Lost in Translation but it was definitely good enough for that moment. Train back and collapse.
"It takes time for dissatisfaction to become a reality." - Google translation de jour from a maintenance report on Tokyo Toilet #7 and #8, today's oestensible destination.
Top of PagePrevious day addendum. Monika wanted me to mention that her black garlic ramen was also excellent, and arguably better than mine. What I did appreciate was her broth which met with "Delicious! Like drinking gravy!" from me.
Shibuya! Home of the famous Scramble and - at least as importantly it would appear - of the bronze statue of Hachikō. But first, our plan for the day: 1) See the Tokyo Toilets in the area, 2) Shibuya sightseeing, 3) Modern Architecture. For most of the day it's fair to say that our plan appeared to be in some jeopardy.
We've heard that Tokyo can be a very crowded city. Up to this point that had not really been obvious. That changed. Beginning with the subway ride to Shibuya, up the station stairs, onto the thronged streets, pretty much everywhere, day and night, were THE PEOPLE. On the subway we encountered a girl dressed in traditional attire (kimono and wooden shoes), and a group of tall loud Dutch people. We formed a mild dislike of those noisy "business people" (our guess for the Dutch) who did not understand local customs of quiet. When they disembarked at our station and joined a much larger group of similarly heighted individuals gathering around a Japanese woman with a tour guide stick holding aloft a strangle-dangling Hello Kitty, we decided they were here for the Tokyo Marathon this weekend. The group fitness level was a decent clue. So off they went for their tour, and according to no part of our Daily Plan, so did we.
Tour-crashing was fun, beginning with a stop to overlook the Scramble and to wonder at the line of people waiting for pictures with Haichō, the faithful Akita dog who waited ten years for his dead master to return (the people would wait not quite that long for their photo-op at the statue), and then, unfortunately, the tour group broke for lunch. We sadly ended our very brief tour, but decided to follow our fellow subway travelers to their favored lunch destination. Fortunately, they were very tall and therefore easy to follow from a considerable distance. Unfortunately, they had NO IDEA where they were going. At one point, inside yet another department store, they asked for directions. The person helping them looked at their phone and pointed to a location. "Ah, now we will find a great lunch spot!" is what I was thinking. But no! They had every bit as much trouble as we did in following digital direction.
We abandoned the tall, lost ones, opting for a very locals lunch: IKEA meatballs. Yes, they taste exactly the same everywhere. We finished lunch with a VERY strong and stomach-stimulating IKEA coffee then we wandered the Scramble again and through a few streets of Shibuya marveling at the very untraditional wear of fashion-forward Japanese youth. Then off in an increasingly urgent search for Tokyo Toilet Village #12, Walk in the Woods by Napashima Shoto Park by Kengo Kuma. A most excellent and timely find!
Back to the enormous Shibuya Station and down to the Omotesando district for some fine and fancy contemporary architecture and contemporary consumer goods. A walk through the Omotesando Hills revealed many Japanese youth of apparently wealthy parents and several driveways with G-Class residents ensconced above. The Omotesando Hills shopping mall designed by Tadao Ando was unusual. I took pictures before I saw the "No Photography" sign, so my intentions were pure.
Dinner at our first conveyor-belt sushi. A bit of misunderstanding on my part. Here's how it apparently works. All the expensive sushi is sent around on the conveyor belt for tourists to pick up or not. If not, they go-go round-round in an endless hum-hum for hours or at least however long we were there. Some felt like old friends by the time we left. The cheaper sushi requires filling out a piece of paper and giving it to the waitress. Presto, non-conveyor-belt-but-cheaper sushi! We paid about $18 for our dinner - wildly cheaper, and better, than our restaurant sushi the first night. California Roll was delicious but very different. Dessert was a "Mont Blanc" from a fancy pink place and we took it to go. Chestnut spaghetti-like cream over what I thought would be ice cream. To go. The man asked if we wanted dry ice packet for the journey. Sure! Put the dessert in the backpack (with my camera), entered the hot 40 minute subway ride back to the hotel and worried about melting ice cream on my camera the whole time! Needless. A Mont Blanc is meringue topped with a big ball of whipped cream, coated with chestnut cream. It, and its 10,000 calories, arrived back in fine shape.
Top of PageTo start, yesterday's entry was a bit hurried to post. I made a few corrections to typos, a few edits, and maybe it's better now. You can be the judge. And though I'm making no reference to world events so far, they are not going unnoticed by us. Just uncommented. Except to say I feel incredible sadness and anger. The return to Great America will be happening with the deepest of mixed feelings. America has never been the Shining City on the Hill, but never has it wallowed in this level of avarice and ineptitude but - I definitely digress.
Last day in Tokyo at this point in the trip. Our plan is to return again at the end of the trip for two days, which I suspect will be interesting by comparison. Today, the Plan was for Imperial Palace, Yoyogi National Gymnasium, the Mei-Ji Shine, and of course, Toilets. I wouldn't say we strictly adhered to the Plan, but we didn't do badly.
We started with another unsuccessful attempt to find ink cartridges for Monika's pen. What we did find was a paper store in business since 1653. Sparkling, modern, holding workshops in paper making and supplies for calligraphy and all else paper-related, we reluctantly departed our first distraction. Next distraction-stop was the Robot Cafe where, perhaps unsurprisingly, robots perform all interactions with customers. What was surprising, however, is that these robots were all controlled by people unable to leave their homes because of their disabilities. What a concept!
Exiting the subway at Tokyo Station, the hunt continued for a stationery store named "Hands." Approximately 20 minutes of compass-spinning-fruitlessness led to forgetting about the search for "Hands." Now we were off to search for a way to the other side of Tokyo Station without going back through the gates. This would involve yet another 20 plus minutes of walking in circles, squares, the occasional trapezoid and finally the discovery of the "North Passage." Roald Amundsen first made this passage entirely by ship in 1906, but - wait, wrong passage. We felt Amundsenian though.
Through the Passage lay an entirely different world - the Emperor's. This side of the Tokyo station was all in brick and looked from another century at least. The views of the old castle grounds were either slightly marred or enhanced depending on your perspective, by preparations for the Tokyo Marathon. Many brightly colored shoes and good levels of fitness on display along with large numbers of aid stations tents. The race would be in two days. All we saw of the Emperor was the park outside the residence, given the length of the line for the two hour tour of the grounds inside. Making a video I almost got hit by a bus. The pine trees were magnificent. Like Joshua trees with all their personality.
Next stop, Yoyogi Gymnasium, built for the 1964 Olympics based on the design of Kenzo Tange. I can't say why exactly but I found the experience of being in the presence of that building very emotional. Maybe because my father was in Japan in July 1964 and may have seen it or maybe "just" the motion and mass and brilliance of that building. I tried time-traveling to 1964 but was a bit hampered by the groups of college or high school street dance teams rehearsing for what I assume is tomorrow's performance. That was fun to see too and I'm glad the facility is still in use!
Walking through Yoyogi Park in search of the Mei-ji Shrine, we found a grove of trees in bloom. Where there are trees in bloom it's safe to say that you will find bloom-posers and cameras. Some great people-watching. We reached the end of park and asked directions to the Shrine. Given that the explanation involved walking back to the end of the park at which we entered a half hour previous, and turning back time so that the Shrine was still open, we opted to skip.
After consulting her phone, Monika announced, "The good news is that there are three toilets within an eleven minute walk! So Toilets 6, 7 and 8, all featured in Perfect Dayswe did. And we met our first fellow Toileteers's (from Serbia). How did we know they were fellow Toileteers? Someone taking photos of toilets is a good clue. As we walked from one toilet to another, Monika started to cry. Okay she got emotional with some wetness to the eyes. But these were not Toilet Tears. They were tears of mud. And shovels. And children, at play with both. A whole playground devoted to dirt, water, energy and free, unstructured, creative play! What a concept!
Had our first izakaya yakatori dinner in a neighborhood restaurant not too far from the end of our toilet excursion. Empty when we arrived and packed when we left, we did serious damage to our novice QR menu ordering skills. (Oh, lunch was Buttermilk Channel in Harijuku. Brooklyn is VERY popular here!) The various yakitori chicken parts were sometimes delicious, sometimes texturally challenging, all on skewers and we finished a lot of skewers. Loved the grilled green peppers with mayo. Really, it was all pretty delicious.
The day closes with - Oh, forgot about the first Shinto Shrine and Cemetery! Red knitted caps on some of the small statues in the cemetery. Also of note: the ancient pine tree did not look good; the volunteer palms growing thanks to climate change looked as fine as palms can look.
Only time for a closing Zen thought from a sign in the subway car: "The passage you take depends on the direction you are going. Please pay attention."
Top of PageFirst Shinkansen travel day. Tokyo to Niigata. Then local train from Niigata to Murakami. We purchased tickets the day before at the ticket office, receiving three or four tickets with very clear instructions about when and in what order to use each of the identical-looking tickets. When faced with the actual use of those tickets in an automated gate with a very patient line of twenty or thirty people behind us, we folded. We decided to get in the line to see "the man" who would stamp the appropriate tickets. He asked us about our "IC card." This meant nothing to us. He stamped, we proceeded through and up the stairs to find our train. With six minutes to departure (and those trains DO leave on time!) Monika remarked, "I think we never got our Suica cards punched through an exit." Fearing massive charges to the cards when we exited hundreds of miles later, what followed was something that might have looked good in a Chaplin movie. Down the multi-level stairway, back to see "the man", a completely ridiculous panic-attempt to communicate the problem, a scan of our Suica cards, aka, apparently, "IC cards", a sprint up the multi-level staircase (no escalators for us!) all with packs and masks on, to find our line now much longer but still on the platform. A long entry for getting on the train.
Once on that train, things proceeded smoothly. Took a while to exit the Tokyo metropolis but then we started getting up to full Shinkansen speed. Impressive! Fast yet smooth and somehow it was much easier to still see the landscape than it is on the high speed European trains I've been on. Hit the mountains and the snow - beautiful - and finally to Niigata, where we switched to the already waiting train that goes to Murakami. Great coordination! Out of the mountains and down to the coast of the Sea of Japan (not yet renamed) and into Murakami where we were met by Monika's friend from Heidelberg, Anja, and her husband, Masayuki. They would be our companions in all things Murakami.
What a relief to not have to make so many decisions! Especially the "left or right" decisions. Anja helped us check into our authentic ryokan and that was a very good thing. I think zero English is a pretty fair estimation for this establishment. But a beautiful tatami mat room with low table and futon mattresses and sliding doors and too-small slippers and he-baths and she-baths and a little garden - as I said, the real deal. My low-table stamina is improving, and I did subsequently enjoy sleeping on the futon. A definite step up from the backpacking air mattress and I slept better, but not entirely differently than I do when backpacking.
After checking in, we headed to Anja and Masayuki's for Kaffee und Kuchen. She made a delicious Käsekuchen using drained yogurt and sour cream in place of the difficult to obtain German quark cheese. Excellent. And their house a tapestry of useful and lovingly collected items. A shrine to Masayuki's parents sits in a corner of the living room and the next day we would make our greetings there, providing fresh water, lighting incense, clapping, and bowing. Over the three days we were together my favorite object in the kitchen is a tossup: the vintage cast iron, hand-crank noodle maker or the Muurikka frying pan with, per Finnish instructions, "a suitable stick" for its handle.
Our intro to Murakami was a walk to the river, the fall salmon runs up which provide, along with tea-growing, the major traditional industries in the city. When I first saw wide river stretching west to the sea, and then looked east to see the snowy mountains I could imagine what my father must have seen when fishing for salmon in Alaska. Wide, dramatic, beautiful.
The river was modified to provide better spawning habitat for the salmon by a Samurai at the beginning of the 20th century, a feat memorialized in a small but interesting bronze statue. Along the river were sakura (cherry) trees, which would bloom in April or so, tea plants, community gardens, a walking/running/cycling path, and no golf courses. Masayuki says many people come to fish for salmon in the fall but the three day licenses are expensive (I think he mentioned a price of about $70).
Dinner, one train stop to the south in Iwafune, was stunning. Though Anja's second choice (the first now unaffordable due to recent Michelin star recognition), Ryuan (Michelin mention) means Willow or Pavillon) was an experience I'll remember well and very fondly. To reach Ryuan, we disembarked the train at the semi-derelict Iwafunemachi station, walked a few blandly residential streets, passed through the restaurant garden, and in a rapid-fire barrage of Japanese, were led into the screened table-and-chairs seating Anja had reserved. All smiles and enthusiasm, our waitress/food guide led us through each of the kaiseki "Wind" menu courses (5 plus rice and dessert) prepared by the Kyoto-trained chef:
Final stop on a packed day was Gakuya, Masayuki's Jazz Bar. I added another draft to my Japan list (now Sapporo, Kirin, and Asahi) and Monika and Anja had Cynars, their Max Bar drink of choice from college days in Heidelberg. Masayuki spun tunes from his rather extensive collection of vinyl and CDs, and we met their friends - I apologize for not getting the names - the real estate agent and his wife, and a woman with a long-haired dachshund on her lap and a younger man who may, or may not have been related to her. Masayuki asked me what sort of jazz I liked. "Do you have any Bill Evans?" He motioned to one-and-a-half shelves full of Bill Evans LPs! It's a GREAT bar, with lots of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink options, great music, a great location (steps from the train station), and a fantastic proprietor! Highly recommended!
Top of PageAnja cooked breakfast for us (pretty much all homemade): miso bread, soy milk soup with veggies, fruit salad, yogurt with kiwi jam, cheese, cucumber, coffee, and much happiness.
Drove for a few minutes to see the west coast and Sea of Japan. "Straight across is North Korea." We could not see it. Drove further north, along the coast, and the light was beautiful. Stopped two or three times for photos, including once at a rock shrine. I know nothing about the religious practices that would have designated a rock outcropping as a shrine but I LOVE that! I'm totally guessing that unusual natural formations are evidence of a certain kind of spirit at work in(?) or on(?) that place and that those spirits are recognized and honored. I climbed up the rock to a small collection spot and deposited the go-en (5 yen coin) Anja gave me (word play on 'significant connection' if I remember properly what Anja said). Then on to the harbor, where we bought salt, and back to Murakami.
Walked through streets and some important historical houses of Murakami, open to the public for Dolls Day or Girl's Day, a national holiday celebrating, yes, girls. I'm sure it goes much, much deeper than that. I don't know the tradition, but the craftsmanship and creativity in these dolls are apparent. On the wall of one house hung a photo of President Kennedy in Japan receiving one of the dolls as a gift from the Prime Minister.
Masayuki made a delicious dinner: homemade udon noodles (dough kneading accomplished by placing in a plastic bag, putting the bag on the floor, and stepping on it!), tsuyu (soy-based udon broth), Anja-made tempura (shiitake, lotus root, burdock root), salad with greens, wasabi greens, shredded carrots, yuzu-soy-oil dressing. More of Anja's cheesecake for dessert.
Evening at Gakuya, Masayuki's place, listening to another great selection of jazz: Victor Feldman (never heard of), the Animals (okay, some rock mixed in), Patti Smith, Nina Simone, and more. Such a cool place, and like many, a one-person show.
Top of PageBreakfast made by Masayukii: Japanese omelet, Murakami-style salmon, grated daikon, two flavors of homemade onagiri (rice balls for our travels), soup, kombu sheets, strawberries. I probably missed something. Fantastic Japanese breakfast! These guys prepared a welcome feast fit for royalty, all the while either working (in Masayuki's case), tour-guiding (in Anja's case) and packing (in both their cases) for a long-awaited, much-deserved and I'm sure too brief vacation of their own. A big thank you! (Domo?) Arigato gozaimasu!
Three trains and a bus to Kanazawa. Great day for people and speeding scenery watching. Kanazawa Gate outside the station is enormous! First of many, many artworks in this city. First bus in Japan. Much more nerve-wracking than the trains, which provide decent international signage or announcements. Not so for the busses and communicating our desired stop was a challenge.
And, side comment, the whole tech side of the trip (Maps, Translate) was iffy. Prepare to ASK A HUMAN! That can also be challenging, of course, but someone willing to spend a little time communicating (as was almost everyone we approached) was ALWAYS better than an app.
Arrived at the "Old-fashioned good time 1960's style ryokan" for one of our GCEs (Genuine Cultural Experiences). About $60 per night and worn but definitely workable. Upside? The price! The bathing room (with all the hot water) was first-come, first served and private (never too busy). Location, magnificent. Everything clean. Room cleaned, futons made (including an increasing number of blankets on one -- mine) and fresh yakutas (robes) every day. Downsides? Very thin futons, very hard floor, heater shuts down at night, I have to bend down through every doorway (Jim! How did you do it?). Low table, floor-level seating. Five nights here with the little bad and much good.
Dinner downstairs at arbitrarily-selected Haru, a pretty typical one-person show and a hungry second choice after being turned away from a packed izakaya Itaru (looks fantastic and very crowded). Few people in here but our chancing it turned out well. Pretty simple bar food: okonomiyaki and sobayaki. The okonomiyaki (a fluffy pancake-like dish) was one of Sue's favorite and soon became one of ours.
After dinner walk took us through the samurai district at night, a great time to see it. Ended at York, a jazz bar we had seen earlier on our walk, where I sat (unknowingly) in the (former) master's bar chair (a low barber's chair) and listened to some vinyl spun by the not very communicative current owner-operator of the bar. The collection, and knowledge of the collection (in which the printing on most of the album spines were worn off) was pretty impressive.
Top of PageCold, hard night's sleep. Breakfast at Café Merzbau, a recommendation of Anja's where she said we would find reliably good food. True. And great atmosphere. Two-person operation (with an invisible dishwasher I think). Turntable with a quiet mix of music, lots of books. Pretty simple, toast-based menu, or at least that's what I could understand. Places often have English menus but I've found them just marginally easier. That's on me. Brown rice toast, boiled egg, yogurt with jam. Coffee. Monika had a delicious cinnamon toast with hot slices of banana. And tea.
Cool-looking camera shop across the street w old Fujifilm sign. Surely I would find the "goods" in here! Looking for a Pentax 28 lens or a Contax AX camera. A pretty quick "nope" and we were off to see something tourist...
Which would turn out to be the famous Kenrokuen Garden, a guidebook "top three" in Japan. Well, it was spectacular in scope, in site, in its care, its artistry, but not, unfortunately, in its color or its photogeneity. The latter is not really the garden's fault, but rather a combination of dark skies backgrounding dark plants and a general lack of skill on the part of the photographer.
After we had seen most of the garden, including "Dragon Rock" and the chainsaw crew, we headed to the "Villa for the wife of one of the Maeda lords," the Sei Son Kaku house. Without knowing to whom the "mother" we saw constantly referenced on signage referred, we thoroughly enjoyed seeing, and not having the heating bill associated with, this lordly dwelling. Later we learned that "mother" referred to the mother of the lord's children. An odd, Mike-Pensean choice of appellation. I found use of screens on the porches to provided different glimpses and views of the gardens during different blooming or color seasons a very interesting concept. The ceilings magnificent in height and workmanship and materials.
Next, Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Traditional Arts and Crafts, a mixture of shop and museum. Fireworks display was fascinating.
We ate bento box lunches in the oldest (of several) teahouses in the garden. Our seats at the window overlooked a waterfall, a pond, beautiful very old trees, even older moss-accented "character rocks"*. We ordered, understanding little, ate everything but the sea snail (rumored to be a local delicacy, but I found nothing delicate about it), and (at least I) endured increasing leg and back pain.** But the view was worth it.
* I use this term to denote a general class of objects that are selected and/or cultivated to provide a sense of animation in things not normally thought of as animated: unusually shaped stones and dramatically shaped trees are two examples. We may, I hope, see the D.T. Suzuki museum (he was born here) before we leave and get a book (! Noooo !) with some explanation of the importance of this concept in the Japanese culture.
** I haven't any idea how Jim Bangs, my very tall and only slightly younger friend, managed his trip to Japan. But, Jim, thank you for your recommendation about the "Western bed accommodations," advice I ignored in favor of the more "genuine" cultural experience. Now I understand. But this note was intended to be about my recommendation for a thorough program of hip and leg stretching, and core strengthening, before a long "culturally genuine" trip to Japan.
After the garden, it began to rain. Monika saw someone in very tall rubber boots, the "Kanazawa uniform" as she dubbed it. Kanazawa is the "Seattle of Japan," and by golly we had a plan for that! Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa. We were not the only ones with this plan, but we dealt with the crowds, and had even made reservations earlier that day to visit the swimming pool, an exhibit where people walk above the pool and look down at the people at the bottom, and vice-versa. It was raining. They closed the top of the pool, so our biggest view from the bottom of the pool was of people taking photos or videos for Insta or Tok. We had fun too. It's weird to walk around in the bottom of a pool for five minutes without dying. We also saw a James Turrell skyscape, a square walk-in room with partially open ceilings and seating areas against each wall. We sat for a few minutes, alternately watching the rain fall from the sky and the patterns the drops made on the floor. Something of a preview of the upcoming House of Lights we would see in Tokamachi.
Back towards the ryokan with high hopes we were early enough to eat at the (last night) completely packed izakaya just around the corner. We got in the door, were told they were full, but "wait." We waited but not for a seat it turns out. We were waiting for a young man to tell us to go to a restaurant a five minute walk away, a restaurant "like this one." We were not confident and went back to the ryokan to reassess.
Dinner is not always easy to come by here, especially in the tourist areas. We chanced it with the young man's direction and headed in the rain to the Izakaya. Seated promptly despite the crowd (apparently the chef who had told us to "wait" had called ahead to his OTHER restaurant to get us a reservation. The language may be problematic but the generosity is not. We had another excellent meal, including a yellowtail (hamachi) sashimi dish that will also be a memory-sticker. Very cool to sit at the counter and watch the crew at work! And hear their callouts to fellow chefs and customers. A high-spirit meal!
"Sleep."
Top of PageThe trip has caught up with me and I'm fighting back today by taking the day more or less off, sitting in the Ishikawa Prefectural Library and working and trying to not emote more than I already have. The 1960's Old-Fashioned Good Time ryokan in which we're staying is pretty good but it's definitely a step more worn than the previous. The futon is thinner (or the floor harder), the room colder, the floor seating increasingly ubearable, the hot water bathroom occupied, the new neighbors noisy, the departure from our resident Japanians Anja and Masayuki increasingly tolling, and did I mention the thinner futon and colder room?
Walked 15 minutes in a light rain to have breakfast, again, at Café Merzbau. Ordered exactly the same breakfast as yesterday. The brown rice toast with butter is exceptionally good, reminiscent of days when white bread actually tasted like something. Big thick slices. Nancy Sinatra"s Boots spinning on vinyl.
After breakfast walked across street to camera shop again. Noticed a Contax IIa with 50mm 1.5 lens in window and thought hmmm. And then hmmm again. Still humming but not purchasing.
On the bus to the library I said, "It's just hard." Monika said, "You're having a Day 10." I didn't get it. It's Day 8. But she was referring to my meltdown day on our six week trip to Germany. I'm almost (but not quite) two years older so maybe that makes sense. Or maybe these things just come when they come. For me it really hit at the library today. Specifically in the coffee shop of the library. Maybe there because I love books, I love libraries, I love coffee, and all of those together in a spacious, serene setting, accompanied by soothing music? Too much good after too much hard. I asked Monika if she thought they had a nap room. "Probably." With all my heart I was wishing for a nice capsule pod. Nope, would have to sleep library style head down, on the arms, on the table.
By the way, it is feeling AMAZING to sit in a chair! Great invention! This place has over 500 different types of designer chairs. I wish I could sit in them all! For you furniture nerds (you know who you are) who either know Japanese or know how to translate here's a link you'll enjoy. It's just an incredible library. Or should I call it a stadium of books? As Monika has researched, it contains about 300,000 (physical) books and about 1.1 million "materials" in its four floors. And from where I sit, looking down to the "stadium" floor two levels down, it's like being at the quietest athletic event you could ever imagine!
We have decided we will not see the geisha dance at 2 pm. It is about 1:45 and the dancing is a long ways away. Instead, we went to the library coffee shop for an excellent chicken curry with an ume (plum?) rice and a green lettuce salad and a custard (mmm) with Carmel and a latte at just over 2000 yen and worth every yen of them. And back to catch-up work at the library. The current plan for the late afternoon/evening is: buy train tickets for Saturday's trip to Tokamachi and either find a laundromat or a place to add to the two good pair (I pared down a bit too much) of underwear I brought.
Ultimately made the notes for today and one of my three days I haven't done yet. Not a ton of accomplishment but it's something -- headway! In keeping with day off mentality, we went to JR Station, admired the same things the rest of the tourists did (the immense "gate" to the station and the Welcome Water (appropriate - still raining) clock (changing jets told the time), bought Saturday's Shinkansen tickets from an in-charge "English" captain, bought some (subsequently regretted) underwear at Muji, and ate pizza at some "4.5 rated" chain that was about 3.0 good. Definitely not the stuff of legend. Walked back through a "shopping street." Pretty dull as most stores were closed or just uninteresting, except for the "Cat and Nurse" business which was still accepting somewhat sheepish and furtive looking customers.
Then sleep?
Top of PageI'll bet you can guess where we had breakfast. Right, Café Merzbau. Tried to order the exact same breakfast but we were confronted with a problem. Today was the day for a special menu, and for only the special menu. We noticed the usual main cook sitting at a table. We asked her if it was her day off. She said, "Yes. I am a customer today." We ordered from the special menu. Turned out to be delicious, and I think used up some of the leftovers from the breakfast and lunch services from the week prior. They would - oh no! - be closed tomorrow!
Pretty soon the main cook/customer came over to talk with us a bit. We found out that the "main cook," Rika, was the owner of the restaurant she took over from her husband after he died. He had been an art student in Kanazawa, and wanted a cool café where he and his buddies could hang out. He built one. This is it. Just the greatest kind of place, run by someone friendly and kind, with care shown in everything, including her conversation with us. Turns out she lives in the apartment above the café, as was common at one time. We thought we would not see her again, so said some sad goodbyes. I asked about the camera shop across the street. Was it any good? "Oh yes. It's for professionals."
And that, along with a birthday donation from my daughter, and some patience and a transposition of the first two digits of the price by Monika during her conversion calculations, were all I needed to impulse-buy a 1950's vintage Contax IIa rangefinder with a 50 mm 1.4 Zeiss Jena lens from the cool little camera shop across the street from Café Merzbau. The owner of that store and I had a little chat of course, and with as much as you can tell from a 100% pocket translator conversation, he seemed very down to earth, very honest, very knowledgeable, and very happy to see me go. I had pestered him with questions about the camera - mostly how to operate it, which is a bit different than most modern cameras - and bought a roll of film. He threw in another. It's a small camera, weighs a ton, and has a sweet shutter sound that just feels and sounds like it's from another time. I love it!
To the Castle we stormed! Or walked. Maybe trudged, but something more peppy I think. The castle turned out to be mostly one reconstructed part and the story of that reconstruction - which was fascinating in its way but not exactly the original castle feel I was looking for. But no nails in this beast!
Made our way to Kanazawa's geisha (known here as geiki) district and were hungry. Very hungry. Went into a restaurant chain we knew from the library and were disappointed to find it served only ice cream. I asked the woman working there where we could find something good to eat. "Do you like soba?" "Sure. Yes," was my partially true answer. It was late in the afternoon, many places closed, we were hungry, and we had never before eaten soba noodles. Of course we/I would like them. She directed us to a small place off the Main Street where I ordered soba noodle soup, Monika stuck with an udon noodle soup, and we were both happy. The place had a large stone grinder to make the soba (and probably) udon noodle flour. Delicious.
After lunch we hit the geiki district, which turned out to be a bit less interesting than we hoped. The houses weren't terribly ornate or distinctive, the geiki themselves invisible, and the tourists mildly plentiful. Shops were open of course with many selling one form or another of gold leaf covered ice cream. Most of the gold leaf in Japan comes from Kanazawa, so something of a Kanazawa industry and a tourist gimmick. We bought some from the woman who told us about the soba. I can now authoritatively say that gold leaf tastes a lot like whatever ice cream is under it.
We made reservations for a fancy-looking restaurant for the next night, and started our search for our next meal. Somehow, that meal turned out to be in a shopping center. Tired, hungry, we opted for a tempura place ("We haven't had that yet") that turned out to be excellent. One thing of note for me. Pretty much every restaurant we've been in has toothpicks at the table. Often they are nothing to write home about, but TempuraLand turned out to have the same kind of "black character" toothpicks as the special store in Nihonbashi. Had I known that before leaving the table I would have had gifts for everyone back home! They really ARE great toothpicks.
Top of PageWith Café Merzbau not a breakfast option, we headed to the "German Bakery" for a pretty loose interpretation of German baked goods. As we perused the offerings, another couple walked in to do the same. "This looks pretty healthy," I said eying a solid-looking dark colored roll. "And it looks vaguely German" said Monika. "Very vaguely" said the German tourist behind us. We all agreed to agree, and it turns out we were right. Vaguely. I barely remember what else we got. Something with an egg I think. Middling cup of coffee. No Merzbau that's for sure.
D.T. Suzuki Museum was one of my highlights. It's was really intrigued to go here because at one time in my life I had several of Suzuki's books about Buddhism and its influence on the Japanese culture. I even read at least two of them. And I had not thought about him for many, many years after that until I read that there was a museum dedicated to him in Kanazawa, his home town. I read the reviews and all seemed to agree: the building and the pond is cool but otherwise "there's nothing there." E-x-a-c-t-l-y. A wonderful embodiment of a Zen koan, the building and its surroundings seem built around a concept of nothing. And at this point in there trip that was exactly what I craved. Beautiful nothingness.
But neither the day nor the trip ended there. Plenty of something to go. We headed to the Kanazawa marketplace to see everything a traditional marketplace has to offer: fresh fish, shellfish, vegetables, fruits, and food. We were hungry and this was supposedly the place to find good conveyor-belt sushi. We looked all over, and climbing to the second floor and looking down spotted a long line of people waiting for a restaurant below. We headed down and yes, indeed, we could wait in that line for conveyor-belt sushi. We did, and had an improved version of our earlier experience. Certainly livelier too. The tables were served with little Shinkansen trains headed out to their tables. The chefs work hard in these places!
Headed back to Museum of Contemporary Art to see Olafur Eliasson's chromatic piece in the sunlight. Also saw a cool composting teepee on the museum grounds. Thought about going back in to see the pool from above but it either started raining again or the museum was closing. Or both. Don't quite remember as I write this.
Dinner at the fancy restaurant we had reserved the prior day was spectacular - in decor. And the surprise seating on the floor with a low table located very close to my crossed legs? Not spectacular. Five minutes, maybe ten I endured the pain. The sides of my feet digging into the not-at-all-soft tatami mat, My back screaming. My knees nowhere near the floor. Scrunched into a pain ball. Something had to be done. It was pretty obvious I would not be enjoying the decor nor the dinner.
Monika asked for a chair. How embarrassing! I was thrilled to find out that yes, they would bring a chair. "Two," says Monika. Misery loves company. I can see why they don't provide chairs - the table height remained the same. So eating now became a bit of a chopstick skill test: how far could I transport this object I'm holding between two small round surfaces? Long enough to reach the height of a man sitting in a (low) chair? Sometimes! The dinner, a broth warmed by candle in what amount to a beaker, and three different courses of ingredients to add to the broth, was certainly beautiful and memorable. And with the chair, tolerable. Two other couples shared our room, much younger, but I know they had chair-envy.
Top of PageBefore leaving Kanazawa we managed one final breakfast at the Merzbau. Rika back in the kitchen, we ordered our usual, all was right with the world, said real good-byes, and away we went for our big adventureA: the House of Light in Tokamachi. One of my favorite things about going to Tokamachi is the fact that most people we talked to had never heard of it, or if they had they were probably confusing it with some other town with a similar name. We were going because we could stay in the House of Light, a traditional Japanese house designed by the light artist James Turrell for the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial Art Field.
But before we could do that we had to take three decreasingly fast trains to arrive in the city of Tokamachi. The snow levels increased each leg of the journey, as did our hunger. When we finally arrived lunchtime was nearly over. We asked the Visitor Information person where she recommended we eat for lunch and were directed to a couple of places, both offering the regional specialty - soba noodles. Easy. I enjoyed my previous soba, so, yes. We picked the closest place.
Like many dishes in Japan, soba noodles can be served in several ways, the principal difference being hot or cold. My previous experience was hot. This one was not. And instead of being presented in a soup, they were presented in maybe a dozen nicely shaped nests. Some cold broth was brought in small bowls. Maybe some pickles, I don't remember. But what I do remember is I had NO idea how we were supposed to eat this platter of cold noodle nests. And here's another thing about soba noodles. They are made of buckwheat, have no gluten, and thus no way to bind the flour together. So the flour is held together with seaweed. And there you have the full picture: a platter full of a dozen cold, fist-sized, seaweed-bound noodles along with a small cup of cold broth of indeterminate purpose. No other customers in the restaurant to watch and imitate. What would you do?
Down the hatch was my approach to this gustatory conundrum as it was to every other unknown ingredient I had previously encountered. I wrangled that noodle nest onto my chopsticks and into my mouth, whole, cold, slimey, and attempted to chew. It didn't go well. Details are not necessary. Somehow, I subsequently learned that the nest went into the broth and then a FEW noodles went into my mouth, an approach that minimized choking considerably.
After the choking lunch, we returned to the station to get a taxi ride to the House of Light. Despite recent heavy snowfall, the roads were clear thanks to a rather ingenious method of snow removal: hot water. In many of the snow-friendly cities the roads plumbed with outlets (like pop-up sprinklers) where (hot?) water flows out from the middle of the street to melt any fallen snow! Saw this in Murakami, Kanazawa, and now Tokamachi, all with recent snowfall, all with clear roads. I think the same technique works for the railroads to some extent. In one station I saw rainbird sprinklers deployed between the tracks. Of course, I also saw several snow-plough engines in the more remote regions but what a simple, brilliant idea!
Turrell's idea was for the house was similar to installations we've seen in museums - to serve as an enclosure for looking at the sky - Skyspaces he calls them. When it is not covered with snow or pouring rain, House of Light overnight guests can open the roof just before sunset and sunrise and, with the accompanying light program, see the changes in the appearance of the sky. When the roof is not able to open, overnight visitors look out the windows while the lights in the room change. The latter option is what we had. Supposedly Turrell was inspired to build this traditional-style house after reading In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki. It's a quick and reasonably interesting read "about," well, shadows, in Japanese culture. And if reading is not your thing, here's a link to a very slow-moving documentary about the book: In Praise of Shadows.
Also per Turrell's vision, we shared this experience with two others, a Japanese couple, our housemates for the evening. The house has three rooms, all large enough to sleep several people, and while this is allowed, the roof and light program is only in one room, so I think that would be the limiting factor. Reservations go quickly and we felt lucky to be there. So did our housemates.
I think the light program itself suffered a bit for not being able to open the roof, but we did enjoy that while attempting to converse with our new friends. What I most enjoyed though was the bathing pool at night - a very dark enclosure, an even darker pool lit only on its edge with a faint blue strip of light. You enter the pool and your body instantly becomes bioluminescent. We are the light, the only source of light in the pool. So bizarre, so great! I felt like an alien! The rest of the light in the house was also beautiful: the bathroom, the kitchen, the light painting at the end of the hallway that looked like a Rothko painting. And though we may have missed the main feature of the house (the open roof) I did emerge, for a while at least, with a much greater sensitivity to the colors and shades of my surroundings.
One more seemingly anticlimactic note about the House of Light. We had to cook our own food in this place. No restaurants anywhere around. I had worried about this enough to send an email asking ahead of time what people usually cook here, afraid that we would be reduced to instant ramen. The reply was fairly typical. "Yes, people do cook here. Bring your own food." Thank you.
Our Japanese housemates rather sensibly brought sushi rolls. We were a bit bolder?? Before heading up to the house we went shopping in the Lion d' Or grocery store in town. Skipping the baby sardines, we opted for beef that looked like what I thought it was - bacon. Let's call it bacon-beef. And salad, and then to mix with the bacon-beef, fresh yakitori noodles with a delicious mystery sauce packet, and half a cabbage and an onion. Not bad! Enjoyed getting to cook again! Sat at the low table with fully-stretched out legs and enjoyed the meal.
Top of PageWe got up EARLY the next morning to watch the sunrise light program, something I am not much prone to do. One of our tentative plans for the trip had us going to a monastery in Nara where we would sleep and them be awakened at 5 or 6 (can't remember which) so that we could sit on the floor and listen to a half hour or so of prayer chanting. While a GCE (Genuine Cultural Experience), this idea did not hold enough interest for me to make the cut. This (the morning sunrise light program), however, did. Barely. Again, the open roof would have added another dimension to the experience (including a lot of cold air), but to just sit quietly and watch the subtle changes in light as sunrise approached was interesting and satisfying on its own.
Breakfast, photos, goodbyes, and a taxi back to town. Had a bit of time before catching our next train. Without high expectations, we decided to visit the Tokamachi Museum of Contemporary Art Monet, a short walk from the train station. I don't know what the "Monet" part of the museum was (didn't see any) but otherwise this place exceeded our low expectations a million times over. Our first experience was the shouts and laughter of kids and adults playing with the artworks. What!?! A ping-pong table shaped like an irregular checkerboard with catch-basins as targets (inspired by beer-pong?). A teeter-totter with a xylophone in the middle and a rolling metal ball playing tunes at every up and down of the seats. Squishy balls to throw. Variable height blocks to traverse. Split-level basketball hoops. In another area, crazy percussive machines we were invited to roll down the sidewalk. In the central, open-air space, a snow-maze. This is a museum?!? Yes, please!
This is the home exhibition space for the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, started in 2000 as a means of bringing visitors and their wallets to an area where "aging and depopulation are rapidly advancing." Like in the US and probably elsewhere around the world, Japan is full of dying rural communities. Farming is hard and difficult and doesn't pay that well. The young people don't want to do this work and go to the city. We saw them all in Tokyo. It's great to see something like this actually work to change the economy of an area that would otherwise be mired in poverty. By the way, the rest of the museum was also really interesting, though not as boisterous.
Ate lunch at the onsen (public bath) IN THE MUSEUM. Yes, the museum has a public bath/spa!! In the afternoon we caught the train to Echigo-Yuzawa, something of a "Where should we go between Tokamachi and Kyoto?" destination and checked into The New Otani our eighth straight night on a futon. Neither the hotel, nor the futon, had much "new" about it by this point in the trip, but the hotel at least would grow on me.
We did not have a lot of time in the hotel because, as seemed to be the case quite often, we were hungry. But what to eat? One of our favorite meals, and a kind of comfort food, had been okonomiyaki (which I consistently pronounce as okonomyomi and then correct), a fluffy pancake-like dish with egg, flour, cabbage, and pork, topped with Kewpie mayonnaise and mystery (okonomiyaki) sauce. We did a Google search, "Okonomiyaki restaurants near me," and found a spot a few minutes' walk away on the other side of the tracks.
It's not always easy to find the place you're looking for when you can't read the signs outside a place and this one proved to be particularly difficult. At our best guess we popped under the curtain, slid open the door, and asked a young woman, "Okonomiyaki?" She looked confused. We looked confused. She said something that turned out to be "takoyaki," which we thought sounded close enough to "okinomiyaki" to satisfy our growing hunger. In we went.
By this point in the trip, we had obtained food from an number of different establishments - everything from conveyor-belts to convenience stores to our fine-dining kaiseki restaurant in Murakami. We had certainly sampled a few different izakaya restaurants, all small but uniformly clean and relatively orderly places. This was another different kind of izakaya. If you want look up the Wikipedia entry for izakaya at the end of the History section you will find the following: "Izakaya and other small pubs or establishments are exempted from an indoor smoking ban that was passed by the National Diet in July 2018 and fully enforced since April 2020." And this place took that exemption very seriously.
Of all the restaurants we frequented this one set the bar for gaps in language comprehension and age. We were easily 40 years older (50 in my case) than anyone else, except for the owner/chef and another woman/chef(?) who might have been related to him. Both were about our age (guess) but looked massively less healthy. She worked in the back kitchen and struggled to walk out with a small bowl of soup. He sat behind the bar and when not taking a smoke break - while still seated at the bar/cooking station - cooked the specialty of the house - takoyaki. Zero attempt at easing our communication or breathing difficulties.
We wanted to sit at the bar to eat. Chairs! No. We were directed to an open table, a floor-seating table, in a room otherwise filled with rowdy young weekend snow-sliders, smoking, drinking and having a great time before heading back on the late train to Tokyo. I had learned a thing or two about the low tables and here I felt fully at ease to stretch my legs out fully under the table. Were my socks showing? Did I care?
We struggled to order. Monika ordered the takoyaki, knowing we had heard that word at the door, and thinking "yaki" (meaning 'grilled') would bring us food similar to the yokonomiyaki we wanted to eat. I looked around in some desperation and saw a special menu item written on a post-it and stuck to the wall with the crayon drawing of a face of a pig on it. Ah! Pork! I like pork! I'll have that. I pointed and nodded. Monika said, "Wow! You're adventurous." Since she also had no idea what that was, I was not overly concerned.
We sat in the smoke and the noise for what seemed to be an hour. Tables had come and gone, new tables were getting food. Us? Nothing. We exchanged enough hand gestures with the waitress to understand that it would not be too much longer but my dish "takes time." At last, out comes the frail woman bearing a small bowl of soup and places it down on our table. I stir it and see that it's full of pieces of something that does not especially remind me of bits of pork meat. Well, yes, you guessed it. Apparently I had ordered the Japanese version of menudo - delicious but pretty chewy. Maybe could have cooked longer...
Long entry here, but so was the wait for our next course, the takoyaki. When the proprietor didn't feel like smoking, he would occasionally turn one of the takoyaki balls in the special pan situated behind the bar. Within a very reasonable half hour or so we had our second course: grilled meatball-looking objects topped with mayo and a special sauce. Fairly tasty but also very chewy. Hmmm. No internet and keeping my cell data off, we tried to guess. Squid? Fish? Cartilage? Later, research would reveal the truth: pieces of octopus. So octopus balls and intestine soup. And smoke. An excellent memory and enough material for one long journal entry!
Evening brought on bath hour at the hotel hot springs. One side for her, one for him, as is typically the custom. We wore our yukatas (robes) and shuffled our one-size-does-not-fit-all slippers down the hall, down the elevator to the basement, past the ping-pong tables for rent, and into our separate pools. I took off my slippers, wrote my name on the stickers provided for the shoes and placed them in a shoe cubby. I proceeded to sit down on the small stool, wash my hair with the provided shampoo (twice), soap up, scrub every bit of skin on my body and rinse thoroughly before holding my modesty towel in place and then entering the common hot pool. The towel, as I learned from observation, would be placed on top of my head while I soaked. The most distinctive feature of the pool was the "waterfall," a strong and continuous stream of very hot water pouring into the pool. Very relaxing. For about ten minutes. I rinsed off, dried, robed up, and began looking for the slippers someone else was apparently wearing. Writing your name on a sticker was apparently not a foolproof method for distinguishing identical hotel slippers. I put on someone else's slippers and moved on.
Outside the onsen I waited for Monika and discovered an appliance that, were I wealthy, would definitely change my life - the Massage Chair! (According to AI, these chairs run between $1000 and $10000. This one was probably closer to $1000, but...) Amazing!!! For 300 yen, about $2, I would receive 15 minutes of some really hard-core massage. I did have some small fears that my body would be crushed, my kidneys permanently damaged, but I hung in there and the machine did not do its worst. It was, after all, the medium (default) setting (which may have been developed for a slightly smaller body). Next day I felt bruised, but great. I slept great and vowed that if I should ever see one again I would, without question, be in that chair!
Top of PageEchigo-Yuzawa is in the Japanese Alps and known for its snow and its hot springs. We weren't skiing this trip and our hotel was equipped with his and hers onsens, so we wondered what we were going to do on this rather warm but very snow-surrounded day. We thought about going cross country skiing, but when we mentioned that in a couple of places they looked at us like we were from Mars. It's definitely not a thing there. Snowshoes could be had but, well, why? Where would we walk anyway? There were some snowshoe "tours" you could do at the ski resorts but you had to take a tram to get there. I was not feeling it. We decided to walk "to the river."
To get to the river, you walked through the city, which, for its size, had a remarkable number of cars and heavy trucks moving at very high rates of speed. We walked and walked, listening to traffic, and finally found one possible path to the river at an underpass. All we needed to do was climb a six-foot-high snow embankment and then posthole through about a quarter mile of snow (where were our snowshoes?!?) to reach it. We decided against this course. Walked some more and came to a bridge with someone painting the river scene. We had arrived!
We could not walk along the river, but we enjoyed the view from the bridge and the sound of dump trucks hauling and depositing excess town-snow into the river. Ah memories of season before last in Mammoth! We walked over the bridge and found a strawberry farm. Under glass (or plastic). Greenhouse strawberries in March? Pick your own greenhouse strawberries with snow outside and a pretty stiff wind? Of course. Light lunch of "we picked our own strawberries and enjoyed them, thank you very much." Eventually, with hunger increasing, we found a proper lunch with train station ramen. Not Tokyo Station ramen, but good enough. The station is pretty large, and we noted, but did not partake of, the Sake Museum, which boasted its own hot pool of sake for bathing. The region is known for producing excellent sake. And, as I said, its hot springs. So why not combine the two?!?
Dinner from 7-11, microwave yakisoba, and no need for a long journal entry.
Bath time brought me to the other onsen (the his and hers pools get switched every day for some reason), this one a bubble bath - meaning high-intensity bubble jets instead of the waterfall. The pre-soak drill was the same, except this time I put my shoes in the locker with my robe. Smart. Again, ten minutes and into the massage chair. Monika had given me 6 100-yen coins so that I could get a double session this time. But through one, my body said, "That's enough."
Top of PageAte some kind of breakfast somewhere (7-11?) because the coffee shop we found yesterday was not open until 11. Today was travel day, we had our luggage, and headed to the station for the bullet train to Tokyo and another to Kyoto, our penultimate destination. While waiting on the platform, another bullet train came into the station on the central express tracks at absolutely full speed! I have never been that close to something moving at that speed. Felt like a little kid, mouth agape, the only words that I could muster were, "Wow! Just wow!" Unforgettable sight.
One thing I might mention about the Japanese train stations, and the platforms specifically. People waiting to get on the trains line up at specific (marked) spots, where the train will stop and open its doors. Those spots are about three feet back from the edge of the platform, and everyone pays attention to them. Between the lined up people and the edge of the platform (and the tracks on which the train rides) is a three or four foot wall with sliding steel doors which are CLOSED until the train enters the station and STOPS at the proper location. Then, only then, do the steel doors open and the train doors open. When the train doors close, so do the platform doors! Safety!!! New York???
Three hours, two Shinkansen trains, and a lot of countryside later, we were out of the Alps, through Tokyo, and into Kyoto and catching a bus to Hotel Mume, a New York Times 2017 36 Hours in Kyoto recommendation for a "boutique" hotel in Kyoto. Most importantly to me, we would have a king-sized western bed for the first time since day 3 in Tokyo. To say I was looking forward to this would be a massive understatement.
I do not believe any other guests of the Hotel Mume have ever arrived by public bus. Our backpack-suitcases and in my case, neck-hanging Samsonite overnight bag doubling as my camera bag must have been a pretty remarkable sight. But to the credit of this incredibly well-trained and welcoming staff we got not the slightest whiff of amusement or condescension. The front desk staff were all slight young women, and when one insisted on taking the 40 pound suitcase off my back I wondered how that would go. They are apparently as strong as they are well-trained. No problem.
Quite a bit could be written about Hotel Mume, their drinks-and-induction process, their near-constant offers of assistance in anything at all that we might need, the 5-7 pm free happy hour, the impeccable daily room arrangement, the large breakfast every morning, and the ultra-gracious owner who introduced herself, had a long conversation with us, and remembered my birthday with a beautiful box of macarons from "her favorite" pastry shop. Just the amount of time the staff spent getting us to restaurants for the day we arrived, and especially for my Thursday birthday (a day MANY of Kyoto's restaurants are closed) was remarkable. Ir you like to check into a hotel in anonymity and remain in anonymity, Hotel Mume is NOT your place. Otherwise...
First night dinner was at a small place the hotel had arranged, and served a type of food we had not yet tried - oden, or Japanese-style hot pot. The hotel had made us a reservation for a cozy little place with maybe a dozen seats of less and the chefs working right in front of us. Our sashimi course had several pieces of nice fish and a nice thick piece of squid with a beautiful, buttery taste and a texture of something Monika did not care for. The oden dish, the hot pot, is a huge kettle of broth, which in some cases (and almost certainly in this case) is a "master broth," added to but maintained over time as the flavors deepen and take on the flavors of the ingredients that cook in that broth. We received ladled broth and its cooking constituents: tofu, fish cakes, wheat gluten, daikon radish, and more. Very interesting experience, and for some reason some elderly Japanese ladies enjoyed our dining adventure.
Zen quote of the day: "Nothing is better than nothing!"
Top of PageThe "Western Breakfast" at Hotel Mume consisted of yogurt, fruit salad, three kinds of rolls (different each day), a hard-boiled egg, three kinds of jam (different every day), some kind of vegetable soup (different every day) and a beverage of our choice (n my case always the same: coffee with hot milk). Excellent. Off for our day of Zen Rock Gardens and a temple with 1000 statues and a cooking class!
Took the bus to the oldest Zen monestery in Kyoto and looked for the rock garden. And we walked, and looked more for the famous rock garden. Saw some rocks, saw some trees, saw a bit of grass, but no rock garden. Finally we showed a picture from the guidebook to the person at the admission window. We had not yet paid for admission (walking the grounds outside the main building is free), and she looked at the picture and said, "That is not here." Interesting! The guidebook says it is, and she says it isn't. "The picture is of another place." Okay. We decide to pay the admission and see what there is inside anyway. Wouldn't you know? Not one, but two nice rock gardens that look close enough to the guidebook picture to not quibble about it. Loved it. We'll see what my pictures look like. I took a lot. The configuration of one of the gardens used a circle, a square, and a triangle to, well, honestly I don't know what the intention was for these three shapes but there's some conversation about it here.
Too late to visit the temple with the 1000 statues, we headed to the cooking class isna part of Kyoto that the hotel would have been happy to call us a taxi to get to. It wasn't a bad neighborhood or anything but it was a long bus ride and a long walk to our class. We were second to last to arrive at Cooking Sun, just in time to take shoes off, wash our hands, get our aprons, and (for you fans of Iron Chef) enter Cooking Stadium! I've never been to a cooking class, and certainly never been to a class about cooking Japanese cuisine. Monika found this one and made it a thoughtful, beautiful and delicious birthday present!
About a dozen of us sat at an L-shaped counter surrounding the instruction space. We were at the far end of the short side of the L. Every student station (some set up for one, some for two) had an induction burner and several small dishes with ingredients. Three instructors, one of whom spoke (English) at a time while the other two cleaned up or brought out new ingredients or assisted the troubled. They took turns. This operation hummed.
The first order of business was introductions. We went around the room starting at the end opposite us. First person was a normal sounding woman, here on vacation who enjoys cooking and learning about new cuisines. Something like that. Basically same reason we were there. Second guy looked a little intense: somewhere in late 30's to early 40's, clean-shaven head, a few tats, and wearing not an apron like the rest of us, but a chef's coat. Spaniard, working as a chef at a Michelin star restaurant in Barcelona. Uh-oh!. It's like I joined an adult ed physics course and the second "intro" was, "Hi everyone. My name is Albert and I have dabbled in physics and mathematics for a few years. Haven't done too much since my theory was published, so just wanted to brush up." (I talked with the guy after the class and he said his food was very showy, very technical, and he just really enjoyed learning "simpler" food presented cleanly and beautifully. He came to the right country.)
We were also asked about what had been our favorite memories of our trip. Monika went first and said the same thing I would have said: staying in Murakami with Anja and Masayuki. Hands down. I said "that" plus the House of Light. I could also have said the library in Kanasawa, the day we went nowhere, did nothing. Or the day I bought my new camera. Or ... We had had an amazing trip! I stuck with the House of Light.
Our mission today? Learn to cook izakaya food, "bar" food. Six courses, no octopus balls. We started with yuzu gelatin, which required some refrigeration and would be our dessert. Then three more dishes: stir-fried burdock root and carrots with sesame, hijiki seaweed and lotus root salad with miso and a ground sesame seed dressing, and finally, tofu-chicken meatballs with Japanese leek and a sauce of ground ginger and mushroom. Lunch break to test the fruits of our labors. Definitely passed!
After lunch, two more courses: kaarage, chicken marinated in an aromatic sauce, coated with a tempura batter, and then fried; and finally, okonomiyaki. Yes, not takoyaki. Ate those dishes and then the dessert of yuzu gelatin. Excellent!!! We have recipes for all and now the ingredients to make most of these for our willing friends. The capper was a GIANT pour of sake, overflowing the glass and into the wooden box, as is, apparently, a tradition of hospitality. And intoxication. A great pre-birthday treat!
Welcome, Western bed!
Top of PageThis was a significant birthday for me, and I wanted to stretch myself with something I would remember for the rest of my viable mental life. I had never been to Japan (or any other part of Asia), had been interested for a long time, but "konichiwa" and "arigato" were the extent of my knowledge of the Japanese language. I had no clue how to interpret a Kanji character, and though I had been to some big cities, my understanding was that Tokyo was "next level." It seemed like it would be an adventure.
The trip ultimately had plenty of adventure and novelty, but for my birthday itself I had limited ideas as to what I wanted to do. The only thing I really wanted was to do something a little physically and maybe mentally strenuous. My idea was that we could accomplish this with a hike through the famous Torij gates on the way up to Fushimi Inari-taisha Shinto shrine, at the base of Mt. Inari. So this was the main reason we were in Kyoto. The main route to the top has about 800 of the reddish-orange gates, set closely together to form a kind of tunnel. The shrine as a whole has some 10,000 Torij gates. These are the subject of countless photographs by even more countless tourists, including us.
I don't think I was aware of why exactly this appealed to me. From the outset it was clear that we wouldn't be doing this in reflective solitude. Wikipedia said that over the three days(!) of the Japanese New Year in 2006, the shrine received over two and a half million worshipers. (We did not see quite that many but it must have been close.) I had been told by friends who visited previously that the "crowds thin out the higher you go." This was patently not true. Or if true, so minimal a falling off as to be indiscernible to me.
I had my own plan for the gates. I remembered seeing people bow before they went through, so I decided I would do that, and would say silent and sincere words of gratitude at each gate. Seemed like a very appropriate Big Birthday thing to do, which I did for the first maybe dozen gates or so. After that, I maintained my gratitude, but felt that our progress would be significantly delayed by bowing at all 800.
Sometimes people have a hard time telling if I am serious or if I'm joking. I think that might be an issue here, so let me just say that my most true and sincerest birthday wish was to feel deep gratitude for the life I've been given, and for the love and friendship that has been given to me through my life. I feel so lucky to have been loved by, and to have been able to love, so many people. I wanted to use this occasion to remember and celebrate that. And that's my serious paragraph.
We got lost on the way up the mountain, and that too, it turns out was fortunate. We hung a right when we should have made a left, abandoning the Torij gates pretty much altogether, which brought us to a dirt trail, mostly devoid of people, skirting the edge of a bamboo forest. There we found several mall shrines and moss-covered cemetery stones, and spent some moments in, yes, quiet reflection. Memento mori is not a bad thing to do on one's birthday. Up top, we met up with some decent portion of the million or so other visitors, tossed a few coins into the offering box, and descended the 800 gate tunnel at the pace of the other tourists back down to the entrance.
We returned to Hotel Mume just in time for some complimentary birthday bubbly and a gift of sweets from Hotel Mume owner. Then we were off to the dinner they had set up at a family-run, and as we had repeatedly heard, cash-only, Japanese "barbecue" restaurant. We were surprised to find ourselves the only customers in the place, something the owner/chef says happens to him "about once a month." And though the custom is for the customers to grill their own Waygu meals, this evening he would cook for us himself.
Our attempts at communication with the owner and his wife/girlfriend/employee/waitress/bartender (any and all of the above???) were difficult and conducted entirely via translation device, and often met with mixed success. The actual dinner proceeded more smoothly, though we had some initial concerns.
We had zero experience with Japanese barbecue so it was unclear to us how the meal would proceed. We knew how much cash we were expected to bring and that's it. As soon as we sat down the chef rubbed the grill in front of us with a big chunk of beef tallow and two quarter-inch -thick slices of heavily marbled Grade A5 Waygu beef went on. Add a slice of green pepper and about two minutes and our tastings could begin. Immediately, two more slices of beef went on. Then two more. So three pieces each, about 10 minutes to eat delicious pieces of beef (our FIRST beef of the trip), dipped in Japanese barbeque sauce and accompanied by a green pepper and wasabi. Fast and furious! I think the Japanese tend to eat meals quickly, but then I think that of most people, so maybe that's not true.
At this point we were concerned about two things. First, if our meal had just finished, well, it was delicious but very brief, and very expensive. Second, if we had more courses coming, the pace would be difficult to sustain. Monika said, "We like to eat slowly," which resulted in a nod of possible comprehension and a very slight change in tempo. We had a delicious sweet onion steamed in a foil packet and then another round of three different (but equally sized) cuts of Waygu. These would be dipped into a different sauce, almost like a French dip sauce, with a mound of grated daikon radish topped with yuzu, This was all stirred together for the beef dip, and accompanied with a grilled shiitake mushroom. Mushroom, daikon and yuzu was a flavor combination I'd never experienced before and was outstanding.
A delicious tomato (everything seasonal and of high quality) made an appearance between one of the rounds of beef. Then came our final round of three pieces each of Waygu loin, the location of which on the animal was demonstrated by the owner grabbing the lower back of his wife/gf/waitress/bartender, who, as we laughed, said, "That's my job!" This course was the trickiest for me. I picked up the cooked beef with chopsticks, dipped it into beaten egg, and then placed it on top of some rice and scooped the rice up into the outstretched beef, sealed the whole "enchilada" and popped it into my mouth. The chef demonstrated this technique and Monika picked it up pretty quickly. The other one of us had some trouble.
By the end, we were certainly full, and definitely feeling the effects of nine pieces of exquisitely marbled beef. I was happy to learn that dessert was a strawberry. Of course it was a large strawberry, and was told, via translator, "It's best eaten whole." As I attempted this feat, some laughter and a more detailed explanation ensued. Apparently "whole" was Google's understanding of "without interspersing other foods in between bites." That would have lessened my level of achievement considerably.
Birthday beef-dreams in a Western bed.
Top of PageSince we had not been able to visit the ancient Sanjusangendo Temple a couple of days earlier, and because it was our last day, we decided to give it a go first thing in the morning, which for us, is about 10 a.m. A fifteen minute bus ride and a short walk brought us to the longest wooden building in Japan, 120-meters long and housing an impressively large wooden statue of Kannon, goddess of mercy, surrounded by 1000 human-sized statues. Each statue has 11 heads and 42 arms, all the better to fully witness, and then fight, human suffering. Again, on a serious note, I found myself deeply moved here, thinking about the suffering that continues seemingly unabated, and even perhaps increasing, in our world right now. The past two days felt very grounding to me, appropriate, as our trip was nearing a close.
After the temple we decided to walk back to the hotel and managed to see not one but two pagodas. To this point in the trip, pagodas had not entered our view at all, and we were excited to see them. This excitement was shared with most of the rest of the visitors to Kyoto - all those who were not climbing up Mt. Inari that is. We took a few photos, dodged thousands of fellow tourists, and made it back to the hotel, where we readily accepted the hotel's offer to call us a cab to go to Kyoto Station, where we caught our train to Tokyo and the Sotetsu Fresa Hotel in Ueno, home of one more (slightly cozier) western bed.
Dinner across the street from the hotel was another ramen restaurant where we ordered by vending machine. Decent but no Tokyo Station ramen. Outside the neighborhood had a bit of nightlife. Several young ladies had signs with prices with time for "Cat or Nurse." Our internet search was not conclusive on the activities involved in Cat or Nurse, but apparently a gentle patting on the head may or may not be part of this. We just don't know.
Top of PageLight breakfast (7-11 yogurt with a few apple pieces) then Ueno Park to see the beautiful pond and, unbeknownst to only us, cherry trees. The cherry trees, though almost as plentiful as the hopeful sightseers, were not, alas, in bloom. Indications are that some may look soon though: the walkways were organized with cones and designated areas for picnics on asphalt under the trees, and people thronged the walkways in the appropriate directions. Food vendors offer their specialties and we sampled three meats on three sticks for 500 yen.
We sauntered around the pond, which in this season lacked some of the charms to which the guidebooks had alluded. Spent lotus stems dominated the views, except for some open water occupied by paddle-boats of a waterfowl design. Around the back side of the pond, hundreds of 5 year old girls-with-entourage lined up to perform some kind of (dance?) routine on a giant stage.
Next stop, Ameyoko street, a bunch of marketplace stalls set up under and around an underpass, which at one time served as the black market for American goods. Now? Not American goods. Perhaps when we are great again!? As people do, we wandered down the street not buying anything. Except that we worked up a hunger with all this not-buying. Some real Turkish guys were hawking Döner kebab, and with Monika's early (and subsequent) years there, that was the meal for us. One Döner kebab to share. Delicious! Still hungry. We found another place where we had a coffee and second-hand smoke. Still hungry.We headed to our main goal for the day, Kappabashi dori Street. Dori means street, so it's street-street. Like Alice Keck Park Park in Santa Barbara, sort of. This street, more accurately, this few blocks of streets, are FULL of food related items. They sell no food, but EVERYTHING that surrounds the food. And here's the magic: one store = one category of food-related product. Examples? Glad to provide. One store sells signs for restaurants. Another sells ceramic plates. Another sells metal bowls and whisks. Another coffee grinders of every conceivable size and type. You think of something to put on or around a table, there's a store for every one of those things. An appliance? One store for each. Or more than one store. Knives are HUGE on this street. Many knife shops. In one we heard the salesman ask What is the largest cut of meat that you work with? When you cut vegetables, do you rock or chop with the knife? The answers led to a specific shelf of maybe 20 knives from which the customer might want to begin his evaluation. I was interested in having a Japanese chef's knife but after listening to and watching a bit of that, nope. Too much. It seems like a great experience though if you have some idea of what you want. No doubt undoubtedly you will find it on Kappabashi dori Street.
Still hungry. Monika found a cool coffee place nearby. We split a small piece of delicious "Sakura" (cherry) cake and each had our own incredibly competent coffee. So many cool small businesses in Japan! Nice music, great decor (old tube radios, among other stuff), maybe a dozen or so seats, upstairs and down.
Off to the Ginza for serious shopping! I had a couple of requests to fill, and the Ginza was just the place for it -- every luxury brand in the world has a flagship-level presence on the Ginza. I was after pencils and soy sauce. Monika wanted to go to the Muji flagship. Also, I was still hungry.
First stop, Itoya, probably the largest (at seven floors and counting) and certainly the fanciest stationery store in Japan. Memory fails at what was on each floor - fancy pens on one, stationery on another - but memory does not fail in recalling where 90% of the people were: the cheap pen and, yes, pencil floor. Truly an OMG experience, we navigated through the madness of pen-samplers of every order (ball points, every kind of felt and roller tip, every color, all being sampled by somebody, everybody! Finally we found a shelf of pencils, relatively devoid of Samplers (because there were no pencils open to "try") and made my selection. Unfortunately this was the same floor that had the cartridge ink Monika needed, so back we went into the thicket and managed to find our way to the ink. Mission Accomplished.
Still hungry. Off to Muji. Again, flagship, lots of floors. Monika went to women's. I went to men's. She ultimately bought a stick of sandalwood perfume. I bought nothing. More hungry. Did you know that the Muji Flagship has a restaurant? They do! They also had salmon and dill lasagne, for which we luxuriously placed two orders. We've never had that may have been said. What came to the table DID taste good. Did it look like the lasagne anyone might think of when presented with the word lasagne? In a way it did. It had lasagne noodles, two, one top and one bottom, and in between it had filling - salmon flakes, a hint of dill, and béchamel sauce. A flat lasagne, let's call it. Filling? You guess.
Finally, Mitsukoshi, a cousin, a fancy cousin, of the store we visited our first day in Tokyo. We got the tip that good soy sauce can usually be found in the basement of department stores, so in we went. To the third basement! Such is the Ginza. Not content with just one basement... The woman I asked about "special" soy sauce understood my question as "Where is the soy sauce I'm standing right in front of?" And once again my lack of Japanese did not do me any favors. I tried Google Translate but not much progress. With perseverance, and remembering I had to pack this stuff out, we made a selection and moved on to head back to the hotel.
Top of PageEight degrees (Celsius) and raining is Monika's idea of the most horrible weather. Such was today. We'd seen it on the weather app and made a plan. We would visit the Tokyo Museum of Photographic Art or TOP Museum, a pretty good acronym, for an exhibition entitled War. I was particularly attracted to this exhibition for two reasons. First, plain and simple, Robert Capa was a great photographer, and that's about all I knew. The second reason was one of those silly things. When Robert Capa landed in Normandy on D-Day his camera was a Contax II. The camera I purchased in Kanazawa was a Contax IIa, the successor to the II. I was curious what kind of photos I could look forward to taking, minus the immediate exposure to death and the lack of disciplined training in the field, of course.
But before we could execute our plan we would need breakfast and we had no food in the room. Strangely, I was hungry. Generally business do not open until 10 or 11 but a reliable exception is 7-11, which happened to be close to the Sotetsu Fresa Ueno. They also happen to have a reliable selection of breakfast food, which is the same as the food for lunch and dinner. We chose onigiri, sticky rice balls, and decided to do some rapid-fire furtive public eating (frowned upon) huddled in a somewhat less visible corned just outside the store. I was hungry, as I have repeatedly said, and ate the sticky rice too quickly. It did its job and stuck to my throat. Whatever public shame I might have felt about eating in public diminished significantly while I pursued my next throat-clearing operations in public. I survived, as did Japan, not much worse for the shame.
The TOP Museum, a 45-minute subway ride away (like every other Tokyo destination), did not disappoint. One hundred and forty Capa photos from the Spanish Civil War, the French Occupation and Liberation, the Normandy and Tunisia and Italy and Belgian invasions, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and finally the IndoChina (French war in Vietnam and Laos) War where he was killed stepping on a landmine. Texts were brief and clear, describing the significance of the moment captured in each photo. All black and white prints, cream mat board, brown frames. And the photos just dynamite. We bought hard-bound, Japanese-language catalog if anyone is interested in taking a look.
Ate some lunch in the TOP café, took in a second exhibition briefly, then back out into the same weather. But more wind. Destination? After a bit of conversation about the weather, several dance steps around the should-we/should-we-not floor, we decided to go. Yes, more Tokyo Toilets! Checked four more off our list! My favorite had the roofline of an old Japanese house and was close to a playground with a big octopus slide, giving rise the name Octopus Park. The park also had two beautiful cherry trees in full bloom! Number of people there to enjoy them? Two! Amazing!
For a final dinner in Japan we wanted to reprise our most enjoyable Tokyo meal: tonkatsu (pork-bone broth) ramen at Ramen Street, Tokyo Station. Now fearless, intrepid, hungry, we whizzed through Tokyo Station, right through the throngs of humanity in Character Street (shops and walkways FULL of anime fans), down Ramen Street and into Tonkatsu line. Had a bit of trouble figuring out the vending machine, got help from a Japanese machine-veteran, (it wants cash BEFORE the selection), got our tickets, waited five minutes in line, and in! Teriyaki pork for me, black garlic with pork for Monika, both happy.
One more shopping to go. Back to Character Street and into the masses, in search of the Ghibli shop, which turned out to surprisingly elusive. Eventually we found it, its line, and its merchandise, made the grab, and headed back to Sotetsu Fresa Ueno for a solid couple of hours' sleep.
Top of PageIt all started innocently enough. We had packed the night before, taking our time to arrange everything very carefully so that the not-too numerous items we had collected and purchased (specifically for their flatness and compatibility with our carry-on luggage) would still allow our backpacks and other bags to close. Big check mark!
We got out of bed, through the morning routines, dressed, saddled up and out the hotel in plenty of time to make our domestic flight at Haneda Airport to Osaka, where we would have about three hours or so to kill before the flight to LAX. Why such a long layover? they wondered. The subway connections were less than clear and could have easily gone very wrong but for the help of a man Monika had previously asked whether we were getting on the right train. He motioned yes so we got on, as did he, and rode blissfully on to Haneda Airport. But at the next stop, the man frantically motioned us off the train. We looked dubious. He insisted. And we obeyed. Thank you to one more of the anonymous kind and helpful Japanese people we've encountered every step through this country! We got onto the next train which was the one actually headed to Haneda.
At the airport things got just a bit more complicated. I had six rolls of shot film to hand-inspect (no x-ray) and the kind gentleman at airport security immediately understood what I wanted. No yelling, no questioning of motives. Understood. Film? Hand-inspect. But - what about film cameras? Ah, yes, indeed I did have film cameras, now counting three, all carefully packed in a camera bag under even more carefully packed gifts and assorted odds and ends that I needed for the plane. I have to get those out?Yes.You might be able to imagine the havoc, the panic that would be ensuing at LAX or JFK. NONE of that. Take your time. There's no rush. Clearly I am in a different land! Still, I forgot to take off my boots (which need to come off because they are BOOTS not ordinary shoes) and was given one final pair of undersized slippers to wear through the metal detector. But -- there was no rush, no problem, no people behind me. Easy. I was asked to demonstrate that the cameras functioned by taking pictures of the floor, which, because there was no film in the cameras, did not feel wasteful.
Every ounce of bliss I felt in the experience at Haneda was quickly corrected upon arrival in Osaka. Traveling is hell was my first remembered thought. My backpack and cameral bag weighted about 40 pounds when we came to Japan. My guess is just shy of 50 now. Passports had been scanned in Haneda, security had been done in Haneda, so my impression was that we walk out and into the terminal for our flight to LAX. The next experience did remind me of LAX. Walk five miles, through Customs, through Immigration, out of the airport, back into the airport, through the labyrinthian lines of International security (though without the yelling of American airports), through the WHOLE camera/film/boots-off/un-pack/re-pack/shoot -cameras thing but definitely rushed, added the pleasure of removing the soy sauce from my other suitcase and having to repack that, then through an another maze of Duty-Free Dawdlers to the gate area with bad food options (3 pm and little breakfast, no lunch, lots of stress) and discovering our gate was another shuttle ride away with even more limited food options. We opted for the Onigiriburger one spicy chicken and one tuna-mayo.
Were we happy with these food choices? Mmmm, reasonably so. We haven't had this yet. What to try it? came up again, and sure. I would have tried pretty much anything at that point. Except, it turns out Onigiriburger. It's an interesting idea, this onigiriburger. Onigiri is basically sticky rice, sometimes mixed with other things (meat, veggies), shaped into a ball and wrapped with kombu (dried seaweed) or plastic (one wrapping you eat, the other you don't). An onigiriburger uses two sheets of kombu like buns to house its filling. Which could be good. Bring this idea to an airport, say LAX or in the equal case, Osaka, and let's just say we've eaten a LOT of great food in Japan. Not at Osaka Airport Onigiriburger.
Our three hours had dwindled to one (or less) but we still had a bit of time. Monika browsed shops, I luggage-sat and sulked. A rambunctious mother and and even more rambunctious child decided I needed company. I moved. After Monika returned, we boarded a shuttle to some other terminal and after a walk of less than a mile, got to our gate. I'm going for a short run was properly understood to mean I need to do something to change my attitude and enthusiastically endorsed. 15 minutes and counting. And not 20 yards from where we were sitting I discovered them: 3 massage chairs with one empty!! I did run, back to give Monika my 500 yen coin in exchange for the 3 100 yen coins the machine wanted. Done. Back to the still empty chair and EXACTLY the attitude adjustment I needed. Godsend! 12 minutes of bliss and ready for the next adventure, arrival at LAX.
LAX was, of course, a bit of a horror show. No customs to declare but plenty of waiting to be done at immigration. We were concerned about Monika's green card being accepted but everything finally went smoothly. Discovered we could possibly make the earlier Airbus, we hustled out to the curb, reveled in the sounds of LAX, and waited for the bus. Uneventful ride to Santa Barbara left us with just a short bus ride on the #7 from La Cumbre and home. Recovering from jet lag? One full week!
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