The Fryhole

My impressions so far have been wonderful - Angela has been a patient and accomodating tour guide. The fact that I never have a clue which train we are taking or what track it might be on, what the food is or how to order it, which bathroom or even how to use, how to use the computer as I don’t type well in Kanji… Actually her job seems to be more like babysitting!

Japan is a beautiful country - right from the warm wash cloths when you enter a restaurant to the white gloves of the bus drivers; it is a unique experience. Favourites so far have been the hiking we did in Hokkaido (mostly cable cars up with tickets Angela or Remi purchase and then “Well Ma you can stay up her if you want but we are hiking down!”). Spending time with friends here has been wonderful as they open their homes and share their favourite experiences. Of course Angela bribed Nanoka so she liked her more!

The food is also amazing, the group consensus is that the crab from our feast with Yukari has been the best so far, but I really liked the mackerel and how it was prepared. The attention to the beauty of presentation even in fast food ramen shops is truly amazing.My favorite drink is ume-shu wine with Okasan, and cassis soda with Angela, bieru with Neil, sake with Remi and Otosan and lime sours with Andrew. (It’s great to have so many friends and family!)

Every day has a new and interesting twist, today during the short walk from one temple to another we glimpsed a geisha, heard drumming, and saw Creap (a coffee creamer apparently). Tonight we will sleep on our tatami mats with our bean bag hard pillows and dream of rice fields and onsen (hot springs).

Dad has been very interested in the architecture of Japanese buildings, so here’s some of his comments: 

Today we saw some temples and gardens in Kyoto originally built over a thousand years ago. It was really interesting to see how they had strategies to help buildings resist earthquakes back then. They used alternating layers of sand and clay to lessen the vibrations of the earthquake. Timbers in the frame of the building could pivot a bit also, wall panels were built to “give” and they avoided drywall.

The timbers of the Sanjusangen-do Temple were from Cyprus trees. The roof deck was made of 3-inch solid material covered with 2 layers of 1 and 1/2 inch material, so in total the roof deck was about 6 inches of solid wood. Thatch or clay tile (depending on the style) was put over that to keep the rain out. One very solid roof!

“Irimoya” means a hip and gable roof.

“Honkawarabuki” means a clay tile roof.

We’ve spent the last couple of days in Kyoto. Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan, and it’s always been a cultural and religious centre. In addition to this, it’s one of the few places that wasn’t bombed to pieces in WWII, so it seems like every time you turn around there’s another temple or shrine or World Heritage site of some sort. It’s absolutely impossible to see everything in 2 days (I have no idea how long it would actually take, but definitely quite a while), so we just went to a few of the most famous ones.

Yesterday, we went to Nijō Castle (famous for it’s nightengale floors - a ninja deterrent), Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavillion; yes, that’s real gold), and Ryōan-ji (has a beautiful rock garden).

Ryōan-ji also has a very Zen Andrew.

Today, we went to Ginkaku-ji (the Silver Pavillion - no silver though, as the shōgun who was building it died before he could finance it; it does have really lovely gardens around it though, including a stylized rock garden version of Mt. Fuji), Kiyomizu-dera (a famous landmark in Kyoto, as it is perched on a mountain-side and has a large veranda overlooking Kyoto), and Sanjuusangen-dō (a very long temple, with 33 bays filled with 1001 statues of the 1000-armed Kannons).

Sanjuusangen-dō is also famous for its archery competition, Tōshi-ya. It still has them (every January), although it’s not quite as rigourous as it used to be. Previously, one of the competitions was to see who could shoot the most arrows in a 24-hour period. They had to shoot the arrows from one end of the western veranda to the other. The record was set by a 17-year old in 1686 - over 13,000 arrows shot, with more than 8,000 hitting the target. The shredded beam is on display in the museum.

We arrived in Nagoya with just enough time to spare so that we could wander around my old neighbourhood in search of the curry house that Remi and I love. Mmmm.

After lunch we met up with Yukari, a former student of mine, and her husband, Shoji. They took us out to the Expo Park (the World Expo was in Nagoya last year). To get to the site we rode the “linimo” which is short for “linear motorcar” and uses magnetic fields to levitate off the track. It’s a very smooth, and very quiet ride.

Unfortunately, apparently practically all the tourist sites in Nagoya are closed on Mondays, so we just wandered around the empty park for a while, and I played on the slide.

Then we went to Meijo Park, around Nagoya Castle, and tried to make the ducks and carp fight each other for curry sembei (rice crackers).

Yukari and Shoji also took us to Sakae, the district where I used to work. A lot has changed in 3 years - for one thing, there is now a Ferris wheel in downtown Nagoya, and the bus station (called Oasis 21) is a 3 storey building/park. On the 3rd level there is patio with a shallow pond covering most of it. Dad estimates that it is about 4 inches deep, and probably weighs about 200 tons.

The TV Tower has also been repainted since I lived in Nagoya, so it looks much nicer.

To complete the evening, Yukari, Shoji, and Setsuko (a friend of Yukari’s, who also visited us in Canada) took us for a Japanese feast, complete with crab, sashimi, tempura (including matsutake mushrooms - mmm, ridiculously expensive), nabe, and a variety of baked fish. It was amazing! This is how it looked before we devoured it!

After leaving Yokohama, we travelled to Shin-Fuji - basically because we wanted to try to see Mt. Fuji while staying on the Shinkansen line (to go closer or to a better viewing site would have involved lots of local trains, transfers, and back-tracking). However, it was cloudy, so we didn’t actually get to see Mt. Fuji. We think we might have seen its outline, but that’s about it. However, we did get to drink some giant beer in our hotel room.

On Saturday, Kaori and Kenji took us to Kamakura, which was the old military capital. There’s also lots of temples and shrines, and the Big Buddha (a.k.a. Daibutsu).

We also visited the Museum of Literature and Hase-dera.

Before you go into a temple, you are supposed to cleanse yourself by washing your hands, and rinsing out your mouth - here’s Andrew washing away his sins. Or something.

Of course, Hase-dera also has the requisite koi pond.

One thing that is unique to Hase-dera is the tunnels, leading to various shrines, and lined by statues. For some of us, the height of the tunnels wasn’t an issue. For others…

Much of the rest of the time in Yokohama was spent visiting with the Matsuzaki family. And drinking with them. Notice the large bottle of nihon shu between Mr. Matsuzaki and Andrew. Mmmm.

Mrs. Matsuzaki also got Andrew to try natto (fermented soy beans). She’s constantly pushing people to eat it because it’s supposedly healthy. Too bad it doesn’t taste very good. Andrew actually didn’t seem to mind though.

And, Mom spent a lot of time bribing Nanako (Kaori’s daughter), so that Mom could hold her. Little did Mom know that all you have to do is take her outside to see the dog (named Leo; short for Leonardo DiCaprio, apparently).

On Saturday evening the Matsuzaki family took us to another izakaiya for dinner, where lots of eating and drinking ensued. Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures, as Mom somehow forgot her camera.

Shockingly, Remi did not make it to Akihabara the first time he visited Japan. So… of course we had to go this time (Andrew wanted to too! - Remi). For those who don’t know, it’s basically a large electronics district in Tokyo. Yeah. Right up Remi’s alley. And Andrew’s too, for that matter. Kenji and Kaori graciously offered to show us around, so we spent much of the day wandering the streets of Akihabara. Here’s one picture Mom took, which does show some lovely controller T-shirts, but really doesn’t show the vast array of electronics that is available in Akihabara.

Surprisingly, the only thing that anyone bought was watches. Dad and Remi both bought wristwatches, although Remi’s is decidely more high-tech. It automatically synchronizes every once in a while. No more switching times in each new time zone.

Actually, that’s not quite true. It synchronizes to any asian/american time source (which should cover all of Japan and all of North America, to my knowledge. You can get ones that would work against Europe time sources as well, but they aren’t as nice so I didn’t bother); but you still have to tell it what timezone you are in. After you’ve done that; you always know what time it is though. It synchronizes every night automatically; and you can force it to sync with the right button-press. It’s also solar-powered — the entire watch face is a solar cell, and the watch has a rechargeable battery that tops itself up whenever it is exposed to light. Very cool. - Remi

We went for sushi for lunch, and in the skyrise where we ate we discovered how much Japanese people love nature. Portable (and wheeled!) grass to sit on!

After the day spent shopping in Akihabara, there’s really only one thing left to do - hop a train to Shinjuku and go drinking! Kenji and Kaori took us to an izakaiya where you have to remove your shoes. Evidently, that is something more of a problem for Andrew than for those of us with smaller feet, as he had some difficulty shutting the door of the shoe locker…

There was a 2-hour limit on the izakaiya, so we had to leave. But we decided we weren’t done drinking yet, so we went to a pub to play darts. It’s a little different from the Black Dog though - it’s electronic for one thing; and the darts wouldn’t be dangerous even to a small child (not much of a tip on them). Here’s a shot of Kenji playing.

Andrew won the first round, and then we decided that the winner of each round had to do a shot (to help level the playing field). The first shot we ordered was a double Jack. We had to explain what it was. Mom won the next round, and got it — lucky her!

We also ordered a Prairie Fire, which Andrew had to drink as the winner of the first round. The waiter was a little grossed out by our order, and became more and more intrigued/amazed by our drinks as the evening wore on.

By the end of the night, we resorted to a Lotto 649 (count 6 bottles from the left in the first row, 4 bottles from the right in the second row, 9 bottles from the left in the third row; mix into a shot glass) that we tried to make Remi and Kaori split. Remi had the first half, and then it was Kaori’s turn…

After smelling it… she didn’t go for it.

But Kenji bravely accepted the challenge.

And quickly chased it with beer.

All in all - it was a very fun evening!

Since Nikkō is really close to Tokyo, it didn’t take us very long to get to Tokyo. While waiting for our Imperial Palace tour (you have to apply for a time slot online, and provide various information including your age, occupation, and other post-9/11 terrorist information), we wandered around Ginza. Since the Lonely Planet mentioned a Godzilla statue…. well, we obviously had to go in search of it! But since we were imagining some giant monument we were a little disappointed when we found this:

It is quite unnoticeable — we actually walked right by it in the street and went several blocks too far before deciding that we had gone too far and needed to go back and check again.

We ate a convenience store lunch (trust me, that’s not as gross as it sounds - convenience stores in Japan actually have decent food for a very reasonble price) at a fountain just outside the Palace walls.

The Palace itself was… underwhelming. A lot of it is off-limits, so there’s not a heck of a lot to see. Some if it is impressive though.

One of the best parts was the people who have to scale the walls of the moat to clean out the moss from in-between the rocks.

We think they should have ninja uniforms!  It would really add to the atmosphere of the Imperial Castle.  Maybe other retainers could even come out in mock-up Samurai armor and they could stage battles.
The gardens around the Imperial Palace are also quite nice - but you don’t need a reservation for those, just a number (like a coat check tag) so they can keep track of who is still there.  We entered them after our tour of the palace and walked around a bit… one of the most interesting things is that they have dedicated certain areas to be clones of other areas throughout Japan, so a lot of effort is taken to make them appear exactly as those other areas (including landscaping and foliage; and probably animals too).

After the Palace, we had some ramen and then took the Narita Express to meet Andrew. \o/  He was coming in on a flight from CDG (Paris), and we timed our arrival quite well, as neither group really had to wait for the other.  After collecting him, we took the Narita Express again, only this time Yokohama (and the Matsuzaki’s home) was our destination.

Upon our arrival there we got to meet Nanako (Kaori and Kenji’s child) for the very first time!

We introduced Andrew to everyone, and he fit right in. 

We relaxed and talked with the Matsuzaki family for a little bit and then headed off to bed.

After leaving Sendai on Halloween, we took the Shinkansen and then a local train to Nikkō. Nikkō is a national park area just a bit north of Tokyo that has several shrines and temples as well as lots of hot springs and waterfalls, and lays claim to something like 7,000 cedars. It is also the final resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu - so there’s some rather grandiose temples in his honour. Plus, it’s supposedly the origin of the 3 monkeys.

Which these 3 monkeys visited…

Since Nikkō is in the mountains, it’s a little chilly and autumn arrives a little earlier here than in Tokyo. Mom took a ridiculous number of pictures of this tree, as did virtually all the other tourists.

Nikkō’s fame is partly due to religious reasons - the Buddhist monk Shōdō Shōnin established a hermitage in it, and was carried across the river by two huge serpents. Nowadays, they have a nice bridge that they charge a toll for, so we just took pictures from the free bridge a bit (about 50m) downstream. Here it is at night, and the following day.

We stayed in Nikkō for a couple of days (in a rather nice hotel that royalty apparently also stays at when visiting Nikkō). For dinner on the evening of the first day, we went to Hippari Dako - a tiny little mama-san restaurant that people have decorated the walls of with their business cards and momentos.

Of course, we proved the adage “it’s a small world” when I looked at the wall across from me and saw a business card for Alikatu with Troy Hrushka’s name on it - he used to live in Greg’s basement, and now lives one block over from us! Weird.

And, also of course, we had to add our own contribution to Hippari Dako’s walls. Unfortunately, none of us have business cards, so instead… we used Canadian pins to tack a $5 bill with the added speech balloon “I heartily endorse this food and/or product.”

For our second day in Nikkō, we decided to go to Kegon Falls. Not being the type to take the easy way out, we opted to hike there (even though a bus can drop you off about 250m from the falls themselves).  It’s apparently impossible for us to go on any type of hike without the use of a cable car, as we ended up buying one-way tickets on the Akechi-daira cable car. Here’s the view of the falls from the top of that cable car:

It’s a little far away, and the trail… well - it looks like this:

And in other places, it looks like this:

It also didn’t help that the Lonely Planet we’re using apparently hasn’t been updated in a little while. We were going to hike from the Akechi-daira cable car to the Chuzenji cable car, which was reported to be 1.5 km (really it was 4 km to that point). And… the Chuzenji cable car no longer exists. Argh.  Another few km over the trails, but at the very least that hike was downhill, which was no small favour as by this time everyone was getting quite tired.
Eventually, we managed to get to the Kegon Falls parking lot, where all the nice comfy buses drop off their (sane) passengers to view the falls.

So… okay, it was worth it.

Feeling that we owed ourselves, we took the bus back to Nikkō proper and went to an Izakaiya for supper.  An Izakaiya is a cross between a bar and a restaurant; think like Earls only with more drinking.  There we sampled a large number of random dishes (all of which were quite good) and prompted the owner to remark something along the lines of osake sugoi ne?  Apparently we are quite strong drinkers; which we’ve proven since, as well…

We left Hokkaido early in the morning (caught our first train at 07:00) and travelled to Sendai. To get there, we went through the Seikan Tunnel, which is 53.85 km long, and 240 m below sea level. We also had our first ride on the Shinkansen, which apparently travels so fast that Mom can’t look out the window without feeling ill.  Hehe.

Once we got to Sendai, we found a place to stay (a business hotel instead of a ryokan this time - yay to free Internet access, the opportunity to rent a laptop for ¥800/night, and vending machines for pay-TV-porn) and went for lunch. We were trying to find a Japanese curry house, but instead found an Indian one. It’s always an interesting experience meeting foreigners living in Japan, as neither person is ever sure language it would be best to communicate it. We ended up ordering in a mix of Japanese and English.

After lunch, we took a train from Sendai to Matsushima-kaigan. The island views here are considered to be part of the Nihon Sankei (the 3 great sights of Japan). And it is beautiful. There’s supposedly a 252 m long red wooden bridge connecting Fukuura Island to the mainland. There is a bridge, but it’s definitely not wooden. It had an awfully metallic ring to it.

The bridge to Oshima Island, on the other hand, was actually wooden - although much shorter.

We wandered around the Fukuura Island for an hour or so - and were awed by the extremely dangerous flower that they keep captive there…

Also, I learned that there’s probably a good reason to stay on the path.

It’s always nice to have family members to help clean off your pants!

We also visited Godai-dō temple, and made Mom and Dad pay their respects.

At the vending machines by the train station, there was Coke Citrus. I have no idea why we don’t have this in Canada, as it is waaaay better than Coke with lime. Stupid Coca-Cola North America.

When we returned to the hotel, we rented the laptop and as Mom was starving while waiting for us, she explored the hotel vending machines, and was apparently shocked to find that you can buy ice cream and alcohol from them. Mmm, appetizers.

To find a restaurant for dinner, we used a tried and true method. Wander the streets. Look around. Hmmm, that place looks nice. And since it was a place that sold meat on a stick, we were sold! Plus, their specialty was something Sendai is famous for - cow tongue. So, we had tongue sashimi for appetizers, followed by various meats and veggies on sticks. Yummy!