Arrival in Kyoto

I'm pretty tired so have put some captions on the photos from today's major events and will leave it at that. See you tomorrow.

Kyoto day one

Shinkansen!

Riding the worlds fastest train for the first time, WOW. And I nearly missed it! You can never estimate correctly the time it takes to navigate a train station in a foreign land. The hotel clerk thought 20 minutes would be fine. I thought that sounded reasonable, but no! When I got to the station, I thought I knew where the underground tunnel was to the shinkasen side, but I got turned around. When I found the tunnel it was twice as long as it was when I arrived two days ago.( Have you noticed how that happens?) I got to the bullet train side with 10 minutes to departure. Dragging my heavy suitcase behind me I looked for the correct gate or platform but this was not immediately evident. After finding the gate, the ticket man said I needed all three of my tickets, not just the one that said Himeji on it, so I had to go fishing through my suitcase to find the other two that I had stored for safekeeping. By the time I got through the ticket gate it was 5 minutes to departure and I still had another escalator to ascend. As I reached the platform the train was pulling in. I had a reserved seat so was looking for car 7. Time was short so I entered in car 6 and by the time I got to my seat in car 7 the train had left the station!

I have a window seat but we’ve in a tunnel most of the time since leaving the station. You can tell this baby is going FAST! There are tantalizing glimpses of countryside between tunnels, less then a second to see the sites! As fate would have it I’m on the landward side and the best views are on the seaward side, or am I just thinking the grass is greener on the other side, as usual? Ah, a town, lots of blue tile roofs. Gone. More tunnel.

>>>>>>>
When I got to Himeji I wondered around a bit before I found my hotel. I couldn’t have my room until 2:00 so I left my bags and headed for the castle. I walked most of the way through a huge arcade filled with shops of all sorts and all lit up for the holidays. When I came out the castle loomed ahead of me, high, white and magnificent. I approached leisurely, savoring the expectation of seeing this legendary building. When I reached the moat and the Edo period gate I was confronted by a large sign in both Japanese and English. The castle is closed on December 29 and 30. The only two days that I will be here, they decide to close the place, for what I can only guess. From the faces on the crowds, I was not the only one surprised by this news. Not only the castle, but the nearby park and formal garden, the botanical gardens and just about everywhere else a tourist might go was closed. Well, on the bright side, the weather was great and until this evening my camera was working! Since there was little else to do, I walked all around the castle and took pictures from every angle. I also took pictures of the cats! Yes, cats. What a surprise to find that the parks around the castle are home to dozens of wild or at least un-owned cats who seem to be well fed by the visitors to the area. They are sort of like the deer on Miyajima, only you are allowed to feed them.
Forgive me for post so many pictures of the White Heron ( or Egret, depending on your translation, the word is the same in Japanese).

Himeji

Miyajima

I arrived in Hiroshima late last night and spend most of today on Miyajima, one of the most spectacular places in Japan, (according to the guide book). It really is hard to describe and it's late so I'll just plop in a link for some pictures I took. My camera is acting up and seems to need a cleaning so I wasn't very happy with a lot of the pictures and I have to apologize for taking so many of the famous red Tori gate, but it is sooo picturesque and I have wanted to see it for a long time. The deer are cute and are everywhere. You are forbidden to feed them and really shouldn't pet them, but everyone does. The males are more aggressive and will eat your map right out of your hands if you don't watch out!

Miyajima

Okinawa

I can’t believe that I’m already on a plane heading back to “Honto” Japan, as the Okinawans call the rest of Japan. My five days with Takeshi and his family were just fabulous. They treated me like visiting royalty and family at the same time. Takeshi took five days off from work just to show me around and what a great job he did. I saw so many spectacular places. Here are a few: 1) the worlds second largest aquarium with the worlds largest tank holding not one, but three whale sharks who they are hopeful about breeding! 2) countless beautiful beaches with coral sands and turquoise waters ( when the sun was shining), 3) the restored ancient palace of the kings of the Ryukyu Kingdom, Shurijo, as Okinawa was called before it was annexed by Japan in 1879, 4) The Peace memorial to the dead from the Battle of Okinawa that ended the Pacific War for Okinawa in 1943, this was a place to reflect on the great suffering and death caused by war, 5) the Okinawa World theme park which also had a spectacular limestone cave through which we walked for 800 meters, only a fraction of the 8 kilometers of caves there! 6) and a not be forgotten trip through a “real” Okinawan market, Makishi Public Market, which reminded me a bit of Thailand’s open air markets. Here I tasted the alcohol made with a poison snake (poison removed) fermenting at the bottom of the bottle, vat, or jar. I was also tricked by Takeshi into tasting pig ears! This was disguised as some tasty unknown substance. The vendor who was giving me samples of sea grape (umibudou) seaweed, then offered me some other things. After I ate this sort of crunchy but good tasting stuff they asked me what I thought it was. I thought might be another seaweed, but they announced with glee that it was prepared pig ears!!! I think I just escaped eating pig’s feet too!

Throughout my visit I was treated to delicious food, both at Takeshi’s home and at famous restaurants and cafes. Delicious sushi, fresh sashimi from a little restaurant 20 feet from the sea where the fish was caught, yummy udon (noodles) that only cost 200 yen, fresh fruit and Okinawa’s favorite Blue Seal ice-cream, the list goes on and on. Okinawa is full of English names and English signs, the result of years of American rule and the continued presence of thousands of American military personnel living on and off the many bases still operating here.

Shoko, Takeshi’s girlfriend, could only get off one day while I was here. She went with us on my first day on the island. Megu, Takeshi’s sister is a high-school English teacher. Her year-end vacation started on the 26th and she left on that day for Canada and a 10 day vacation! Talk about a change in climate! It was 78 F. in Okinawa today!

Here’s a link to some of the pictures I took:

Okinawa

Happy Holidays!

Today is the 22nd of December, the first day of winter, but here in Japan the weather is mild and I am on my way to Okinawa where the weather will be warm and breezy. Okinawa is in the southern most islands of Japan and are viewed as a holiday destination much the way Hawaii is to Americans!

I will spend Christmas this year with my friend Takeshi and his family. This is the first time since my daughters were born that I am not spending the holidays with at least one of them. It certainly feels strange. Right now I’m in the airport waiting for my flight, listing to the messages in Japanese that I still cannot understand. Hopefully it’s not something I really need to know! Luckily, the boarding process is virtually the same everywhere so I can just guess what they are saying.

The last couple of weeks of school flew by. There were a lot of tests and time spent with friends, the knitting group, making travel plans, and buying a cell phone so I could stay in touch while on my trip. All the while, fighting off homesickness. No baking of cookies, no making of whisky cakes (a annual event in my house) and no stockings to fill or tree to trim….chiotto sabishii, as they say here (a bit lonely), but don’t feel too sorry for me, I’m looking forward to this bit of traveling around Japan and finally going to Kyoto, the ancient capital and cultural center of Japan. I will stop in Hiroshima, Himeji and Nara as well. New Years celebrations in Kyoto should be quite something.

I’m now two thirds through my stay here but feel like I have only just gotten here in terms of understanding Japanese and feeling more comfortable with my ability to negotiate the challenges of daily life, train travel, bill paying, reservation making. As my understanding grows, what I don’t understand seems to grow faster! I have eaten lots of yummy homemade dishes, but don’t know how to make any of them. I still want to learn how to tie an obi correctly, make “scatter sushi” and inari sushi, and see a Kabuki performance. And there’s always school. This new term will be more challenging and I will have to work hard to stay on top on it all.

I talked to Krista on Skype today and learned that they were having another Nor’easter, we call the big winter storms in Maine. They pointed the computer toward the window so I could see the snow coming down and the trees all looking white. It’s fun to actually miss these things. It has been cool (in the fifties for the most part) here, but I am headed for temperatures in the 70’s in Okinawa!

Because this entry is doubling as my annual holiday letter, I want to update some of you who may not know that Krista is planning for a July wedding next year! Kevin proposed to her on the day I left for Japan! So we toasted their engagement and my trip all in the same sip of champagne!

Anna and Jake have a new home in Hallowell, Maine and are getting settled again. With these hard financial times, we are all just glad to be getting along. You may not be staying up on the yen, but it has become stronger and stronger since I got here and my dollars are only getting 89 yen today compared to 105 when I got here! Ouch!

I am hoping for much better things for us all next year with the new administration. Yes, I know it will take time, but if an effort is being made to improve things on a global scale, maybe we will see some change soon!

(These pictures were taken in Okinawa with my friends Takeshi and Shoko.)

I hope you are all well. My best wishes for a Happy New Year to you all!

Miso

Since time is short and I wrote too much last week I'll just include a couple of pictures from this week and a write a few words about miso.

I'll just assume that you all know what miso is and just get to the point: today I went to the locally famous red miso, or Hacho miso as it is called, factories here in Okazaki. Tomoko and I visited two big factories, took their tours and ate their samples, and bought miso products to take home and give as gifts. The most interesting thing to me about the visit was how this centuries old industry has changed very little and how the fermentation process still involves placing by hand several tons of stones on top of each barrel full of prepared soybeans. The placement of the stones has to be just so, as to stay in place for the three years of fermentation and even to withstand minor earthquakes! Hundreds of huge cedar barrels were resting in the warehouse, each with it's pyramid of stones of different sizes, especially picked, and laid by specially trained stone-layers.

This has also been a great week for a sushi lover such as myself. My English class had a pot luck on before class this week and brought all sorts of goodies, including this "pressed sushi" which was served in a lovey lacquer ware box. Then, today, I went to a new (to me) conveyor-belt sushi place that was several notches above the one I had eaten at before. Tomoko and I shared all the plates, ate our fill and only paid a little over $10 each. When we first sat down at the counter, the lady sitting next to me exclaimed in amazement, and in English, " You can eat raw fish??". We assured her I could and that was the end of the conversation, but it sort of sums up how the Japanese perceive Westerners when it comes to Japanese food.

Tea and a hike

Sorry to have made this so long, just skip it and check out the pictures below if time is short.

This morning Tomoko san picked me up in front of my room and we headed north to a garden and shrine and a trail to hike. I was a crisp but sunny day. There was still frost on the moss in the garden when we arrived, but the gold of the last fall leaves was glowing against the bright, blue sky. I had come prepared for a hike, but then it sounded like a walk in a garden, so I didn’t bring my backpack from the car and later regretted it. First, we checked out a vegetable stand where produce was sold for prices way below those in the supper market. I bought taro, which I have learned to cook, and pickled plums (because they are sort of a specialty) and Tomoko bought some huge fresh oyster mushroom, and taro also. The shop let us leave our bags there while we were enjoying the teahouse and gardens. (When we came back hours later, the shop was closed but our bag was still there waiting for us!)

When we entered the teahouse/shop I was surprised to see it full of kimono glad young ladies, but Tomoko explained that in the year when a girl will turn twenty, she gets all dressed up in traditional garb and goes to a shrine on New Year’s day. Since there are a million young ladies there on that day it’s not a good one for taking pictures in the formal gardens, so these young ladies were all decked out like geisha without the face paint just for a photo shoot in the teahouse gardens. This way they will have a really nice picture of this special event and won’t have to worry about the crowds on January first.

After looking at all the lovely, but expensive, things in the gift shop, we inspected the gardens. You can see a few pictures of it in the slide show below. We then hiked up the mountain to a famous look out point and hill top shrine. The sign said it was 900 meters, which didn’t seem like a lot, but most of it was up hill so it took us a while to finally get to the top. The trail up went though a old cedar forest with very tall straight trees and a carpet of leaves. On the way, we met a elderly lady who was coming down. She offered me her stick, which she had apparently picked up along the way. A kind gesture, but I declined as the hardest part is going down and she still had a ways to go. At the top we could see Okazaki and some of the surrounding towns way below. The late fall light was pretty, but it was a bit hazy so the distant mountains were barely visible. We had the place to ourselves except for one couple, who had hiked up another path and joined us as we were reaching the old shrine with the red tori gate.

After hiking back down we were ready for a good meal and that is what we had at the little restaurant that was also in the garden. They offered two set meals, for 1000 yen (that is now about $11) but it was close to closing time and only one choice was left. I can’t tell you the name of the dish, they just go in one ear and out the other, but it was tasty. It came with a rice dish that was still cooking in a little pot over a flame on the tray, an assortment of pickles and sweet things, a seafood ball of some sort, and a bowl of miso soup, and of course tea. The picture I took is terrible but I included it any way so you could at least see how pretty the presentation was. With our meal we got a discount on macha tea and a sweet at the teahouse, so after our lunch we went there for a little tea. Macha tea a the green powder tea that is used in tea ceremony and is always served to the guest in a beautiful bowl with a little sweet to eat before drinking it. You can see a picture of the bowl and the sweet, which was wrapped in a bamboo leaf, in the slide show below.

In the slide show I also included some pictures from earlier this week. On Thursday, Mia and I went to Tomoko’s apartment for a knitting session and dinner. Junco also joined us. She is a friend of Tomoko’s and one of my English class students. She is very sweet and down to earth, does gardening, and yoga, and looks after her husband who is retired. We four ladies decided to dust off our long dormant knitting, or in my case crochet, skills. Tomoko has a huge collection of wool she wants to use up, and I am working on a scarf just to have something to do besides study. Mia is a mad knitter who takes her knitting to school to work on it on her lunch break. Mostly it was just fun to have this very mundane activity to share with our new friends. Just for you plant lovers, also in the slide show a couple of shots of this amazing dahlia that grows here. It towers over the gardens and even passes the roof line on implausibly delicate stems and seems to only come in the pale lavender color.

Tea & a hike