Thoughts Near the End of Our Stay

As our departure date approaches, I reflect often on what I will miss about Japan and Kyoto. The first thing that comes to mind is one of the first things I noticed when we arrived: the way that people have of moving around each other, of intuitively knowing what’s going on all around them and gracefully moving to approach, but almost never collide, with others. One sees this in subway stations and stores, but mostly on the street. Sidewalks may be narrow or non-existent. Bicycles move back and forth between street and sidewalk. Motor scooters, cars, trucks, buses, bicycles and pedestrians all share the same thoroughfare. And it’s almost silent. Honking is so rare as to astonish on each occasion.

Speaking of silence, cell phone use is prohibited on subways and buses.

Schools (at least in our neighborhood) don’t have bells. They have chimes. There are several tunes, ranging from four notes to a full eight bars. Presumably each has its own meaning.

Every neighborhood has its koban, or police box, staffed with friendly, helpful officers who can help you find an address or retrieve something you’ve left somewhere or just get information about the area. They probably get bored. They seem to love visitors.

There are clean public restrooms everywhere. They don’t provide warm water for washing—only cold and sometimes no soap; sometimes you have to bring your own tissue; almost always you need your own towel—everyone carries a small towel or large handkerchief with them for the purpose. But they are clean, and they are ubiquitous.

You can get anywhere by train—by trains that run on time. Really, I think that all right-thinking Americans need to get on our Congress people to fund Amtrak better and to give it priority on track use so trains can run on time. You arrive at the station minutes before “take-off”. The station is close by and easy to get to. Seats are comfortable, with plenty of legroom. You can bring food from home without worry that it will confiscated at security. For much of the travel that we all do, total travel time is shorter, or at least no longer, than flying, and it’s certainly much more pleasant. Let’s import the no cell phone use rule, too.

On the subject of transportation, the fare boxes in buses and trolleys have change machines attached. This doesn’t hold up boarding because you board at the back and pay your fare when you get off at the front. You’re supposed to get your change sometime in between.

You notice I haven’t mentioned the food. But I have become quite fond of some of the local pickles that Kyoto and other places are famous for. My favorite is a Takayama specialty: pre-tofu albumin boiled in soy sauce with some other stuff—not technically a pickle I guess and sounds awful, but tastes delicious. I also love (from Kyoto) pickled baby ginger—not at all like the slices that we get with sushi at home.

Photos in order: 1. A School Zone sign; 2. An umbrella stand; 3. Toilet with sink built into the back; 4. Fare box with change machine attached. The lighted board tells you what your fare is based on where you boarded.

Final Field Trip

Last weekend, on our final trip away from Kyoto to another part of the country, we visited two museum villages—one Meiji era, one rural Japanese life from 16th-19th centuries. In each case, actual buildings from different parts of the country have been disassembled, moved and reassembled in the museum village setting. What a contrast!

The Meiji period buildings are massive and vary enormously in their design and construction—though all influenced by Western style. It’s hard to speak generally about them since they do vary so much. The simplest is a high school, a simple wood structure that could claim to come from 19th century U.S.; the most elaborate is the entrance and lobby of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Tokyo Imperial Hotel. Great bridges and the huge Kitasato Institute for medical research reflect the reference for engineering and science held by Meiji leaders.

A foreigner's western style house with Japanese style servants' quarters behind.

Hida-no-Sato, the rural life village is so different from anything else we’ve seen that it qualifies as unique. No tiled roofs with fancy ridge trim. No gracious verandas or soft tatami floors. Steep and thick thatched roofs tied down to prevent cold winter winds from tearing the house open. Gigantic, closely spaced rafters tied together with cord support meters of accumulated snow. Wood plank floors with large square fire pits in the middle of the room. Trees felled and planked by hand, then pulled on sledges, for building and firewood. It was a hard, hard life!

Roof construction shown from outside (above) and inside (below)

Both places are well conceived and produced. At Meiji-Mura, one can participate in historical leisure pursuits by riding an old tricycle with enormous front wheel or walking on stilts. At Hida-no-Sato, wood carvers and straw sandal makers work under the fascinated gaze of tourists. Both are laid out on hillsides, arranged as real villages. And of course…each has a saké brewery.

Cherry Blossoms - The Less Learned View

Cherry blossom season is in full swing and it’s all the poets claim for it and more. For one thing, cherry trees require warm weather to bloom, and after two months of wishful spring festivals, this celebration marks the real thing.

For another, the sheer profusion of tiny paper-thin petals with sunlight upon them or shining through them expresses more exuberance than all the Christmas lights in the world. They line rivers and streets as far as you can see. Up close, each tree has its own dramatic shape and sports its own subtle shades of pink and white making you gasp at its beauty.

The drama is enhanced by the contrasting colors of other things blooming nearby—maples in earthy yellow and orange, nejiki (I don’t know the translation) in electric purples from pale lavender to deep violet—and the sweet potent fragrance of spiraea.

And when, far too soon, the blooms pass maturity, each gentle breeze generates a small snowfall, slow, soft, silent and startling.

No wonder everyone takes off from work to sing and get tiddly under the trees. We’ve done it several times ourselves.

Sakura

An awful lot has been written and said about cherry blossoms in Japan. They have been made into Buddhist images of the evanescence of life, patriotic images of Japan’s national self, tragic images of young pilots on suicide missions and young lovers in difficult relationships. Gallons of ink and acres of paper—from botanical taxonomy (with Latin names) to classical poetry—have created a kind of sakura subculture, putatively unique to these islands, in which everyone is supposed to know what they mean and how important they are. The media begin discussing the sakura season weeks before it starts, analyzing temperature trends and centimeters of rainfall—Will they be early? Will they be late? Will this year’s blossoms be as profuse as last year’s? And the progression of budding and flowering from Okinawa northward appears on the nightly news as a pink cloud, spreading up the islands in slow, stately rhythm, bringing the blessings of national identity to the whole country. As the pink cloud approaches their part of Japan, folks plan their hanami (flower-viewing) outings—Which grove shall we visit this year? What shall we put in the picnic basket? How much sake is Grandpa likely to drink under the trees? For that’s the classic cherry-blossom outing: The whole family goes, spreads out a blanket under the cloud-like flowers, and eats and drinks until everyone’s happily tipsy, simultaneously wallowing in the transient beauty of the cherries and bemoaning their impending demise with the next strong wind or rain.

There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, except the notion that no one who isn’t Japanese can understand it. Sakura are stunningly beautiful flowers, dozens of varieties, in colors ranging from almost-pure-white via every-possible-pink to dark-almost-plum, planted in rows along rivers and streams, singly in tiny front yards or in huge groves around major temples and shrines. They would be hard to miss and harder still not to appreciate. Kyoto has become a particular mecca for hanami because so many types of cherries grow here in so many settings, from the most delicate and wispy weeping types to huge, dark-trunked, ancient, senior-citizen sakura that have enriched a hundred springs. There’s even a variety that sports both pink and white blossoms on the same branches (we saw one this afternoon). The city government estimates that 10,000,000 tourists will visit the Kyoto valley this spring to look at the flowers. That’s ten million people in about three weeks, 97% of them Japanese, and they will flood the grounds of Nijo Castle, the Imperial Palace, the Kiyomizu temple, the Daigo temple, and dozens of other spots famous for their cherries. In these places, the architecture, the garden design, the placement of the trees all contribute to the enjoyment (though the huge numbers of fellow viewers might not). Today we walked along the Path of Philosophy, a famous canal in eastern Kyoto planted with hundreds of cherry trees—the crowds were thick (but not unbearable), the foreigners plentiful (but reasonably well behaved), and the flowers just gorgeous.

Things only begin to get precarious when the viewing of beautiful flowers, possible (indeed likely) in many places and cultures, becomes conflated with nationalism, with how special we are because we love and appreciate sakura. Come on, people. They’re flowers, and we all love them, and many of us find part of their beauty in the fact that they stay with us for so short a time. Foreigners walk along the Kamo and Takano rivers (as they do the Tidal Basin in Washington) to enjoy the clouds of bloom. Some foreigners even squeeze their way into the famous viewing spots, sit on the ground, get tiddly, and enjoy a classic hanami. We, however, will not do that, though we did attempt the Philosopher’s Walk for an hour or two. For ourselves, we have found a much quieter and less traveled set of trees, spread out over half a mile or so of riverbank in the steep, narrow Kibune valley north of the city. There we will walk with friends in the rustic atmosphere, as gently as possible, from one tree to the next, breathing in the calming fragrance and greeting the season of growth and flowering. We might drink some sake; we might even eat a skewer of “flower-viewing glutinous rice dumplings,” colored green, white, and pink for the occasion. Rituals do matter, after all. Happy spring everyone, happy Passover and Easter, and happy hanami to us all!

Robatayaki

We had a new food experience last night. A friend took us to a “robata-yaki” restaurant. We began this experience by walking downstairs directly from the street into a low-ceilinged basement room so dark and smoky it was hard to see exactly how big it was. As the proprietor pointed us to seats at a low counter, he informed us that we were allowed to stay for two hours, no longer.

We stashed our coats and bags inside the stools we sat on and looked around. The room was packed with people. In front of us a large grill was surrounded on three sides by baskets of raw food—meat, fish and vegetables, some skewered, some in chunks—arrayed like giant flower petals. Behind the grill stood a young man dressed in knee-high rubber boots, light weight black pants and shirt and a sweatband. Near his right hand, half a dozen crocks held various sauces for brushing onto the grilling food. When a customer ordered a dish, he cooked and plated it (from a stack behind him), then placed it on a large paddle at the end of a long pole, which he used to pass the plate over the grill, the baskets of food and the width of the counter to the customer. The paddle, when he wasn’t using it, rested across the front of the grill, preventing him from leaning on it and burning himself. He never seemed hurried and he barely sweated. On the contrary, his movements were graceful and practiced. He seemed to love what he was doing.

We ordered beers while we studied the menu. The beer arrived in mugs so large I could barely lift mine. Our friend started ordering dishes, each one a tapa sized serving. As we finished the first ones, he ordered more. It was the cook’s responsibility to take the orders, keep track of what we’d eaten and prepare our bill at the end. He was doing this simultaneously for maybe two dozen people encircling him. The only assistance he had in this was that every dish was priced the same, ¥300.

Adding to the ambience was the exhaust fan in the ceiling over the grill, a box the size of a ping-pong table that sucked noisily, pulling the sounds of conversation and the smoke from cigarettes into it. Cooking smoke thinned, but did not entirely vanish into it.

The food was good—standard fare, fresh, unimaginatively but nicely presented. It was good accompaniment to beer, which J points out was probably the point. And the cooking of it was certainly a good show. I’d do it again anytime.

Sumo

Why would anyone be interested in the spectacle of immensely fat men trying to throw one another to the ground in the middle of a straw-bale ring? A strange sport, sumo, so an American friend and I headed down to Osaka last week to see what might be going on at the March Grand Sumo Tournament, starring Japan’s favorite wrestling elephants. I’ve seen sumo before and was prepared for the immensity of the combatants—they range from 5’8” to 6’6”, and few of them weigh less than 300 pounds, with the really big guys tipping the scale close to 400. I mean, they’re BIG. And they’re immensely strong, too, despite all the (consciously induced) flab—they eat 20,000 calories per day, much of it in beer. And they are intensely disciplined by their years of training in the “stables” (yes, that’s what they’re called) where they live and work—they have exceptional balance, quickness, and lateral movement, rather like the huge offensive and defensive linemen in American football.
A sumo match begins with the opening ritual of a ring official calling out the next wrestlers’ names—the two men, naked except for a loin cloth and thick silk belt—climb up onto the platform (which is square) and enter the ring (which is round), then squat opposite one another, staring intensely into one another’s eyes. At the highest levels, they then proceed to their corners, where they raise each leg high and stamp the dirt floor (to purify the ring), then sprinkle salt on themselves and fling some into the ring (also a purification). They take a sip of water from a corner attendant, rinse their mouths and spit (more purification), then return to the ring to squat and stare again, twice, with more salt-flinging, before the referee (who has been gesturing ritually with his wooden fan throughout this process) gives the signal to fight. Sumo used to be a temple ritual, not just an entertainment, so the purification seems a natural part of the sport.
The actual bout, which commences after the final squat and glare, can last from about a microsecond to a couple of minutes. The two men, separated by about a meter, charge at one another (there is no signal, it just happens) and collide with astonishing force, the tachiai which aficionados tell me determines the outcome of most matches. Sometimes one of the men steps aside with incredible grace (for such a huge lump) and the other falls flat on his face, helped by a push from above. Sometimes both men get grips on the other’s belt, and they proceed to micro-maneuver, sometimes for quite a while, before one of them busts a move and tries to overpower his adversary. Sometimes they slap (no punching is permitted, but slapping is), sometimes they attempt judo-like throws, and sometimes one just picks the other up by the belt and carries him out of the ring. The loser is the one who touches outside the ring or touches any part of his body (other than his feet) to the ground. There are eighty or more officially recognized ways to win a sumo match, and each has a name. The current Grand Champion, a Mongolian who uses the sumo name Asashoryu, has won sixteen of the past twenty tournaments (there are six tournaments a year)—each tournament consists of fifteen matches, fought on fifteen consecutive days, against fifteen different wrestlers. That is consistency.
Intrigued? Maybe it’s not just elephants in a ring after all.

A Perfect Coffee Moment

Japanese folks, contrary to stereotypes, love coffee and drink lots of it, despite its high cost (a single cup, no refills, of a high-end blend might run you more than $6.00). Kyoto has had coffee shops for well over a century, and the old ones downtown have exquisite wooden fixtures and tables and silent, almost religious decorum. We love coffee, too, so we’ve visited quite a few shops around town (including our favorite, which advertises a “perfect coffee moment”), but we hadn’t found one close to home that we liked until a couple weeks ago, on a walk, we spotted an odd-looking building a few blocks away, in our residential neighborhood. Modern in form, it had a small sign indicating that it sold coffee and had an art gallery within. Also, it permitted no smoking. Since it happened to be closed that day (we have noted before that Japanese businesses close on apparently randomly chosen weekdays, always the same one day per week per business), we peered through the window and saw a small, high-ceilinged space, wood paneled, with things hanging on the walls, a counter with maybe six seats, and two tables. Both tables were irregularly shaped wood, a small single log seating two and a large solid-top table seating six or seven.
It looked imaginative and fun, so on a bike ride yesterday, I stopped to check it out. As I opened the door, four middle-aged women came out—there was much bowing and apologizing (“forgive us for going first,” “no, forgive me for rudely keeping you waiting,” and so on), and I figured that in our suburban neighborhood, with its commuting men and high incomes, such folks would be the regulars of the shop. I ordered a cup of tea from the solo proprietor (also a middle-aged woman) and prepared to enjoy my book for an hour or so at a cost of around $3.50. The tea arrived, lovingly prepared in a blue and white porcelain cup, with a tiny packet of sugar and an equally tiny pitcher of cream, and I gazed admiringly at the beautifully polished wooden slab of a table at which I sat. It was altogether a satisfying coffee house.
Then the door opened and in walked three old men (at least 70+), in muddy work boots and old grungy clothing, all talking loudly and simultaneously (very not cool in Japan) in thick local dialect. They plonked themselves down at the large table, greeted the (very proper) proprietor in most informal language, and continued their conversation while they waited for their order. I guessed, without hope of verification, that these were fathers and uncles of families who had purchased large lots in the neighborhood and sought to reduce their taxes by having older retired relatives farm their yards (farmland is taxed at a much lower rate in Japan than residential plots)—that is, our local agricultural workers had joined me for a high-end break. They seemed so entirely out of place in that modern, polished-wood space, and yet they did not find themselves incongruous at all. The proprietress brought their tray, accompanied by precisely the same politesse that had brought me mine—three exquisite porcelain cups of steaming hot coffee, each prepared with the same care that I’m sure was lavished on the women who had preceded me. There’s something wonderfully democratic about Japan, at the same time as it is a very status-conscious, keep-up-appearances sort of society, and I hope we spend more time in that coffee house in the coming month. I was so intrigued by my fellow customers that I never even looked at the art on the walls.

Spring Really Arrives in Kyoto

We went to Taiwan for a week, and while we were away, spring came to Kyoto. (I know we've been celebrating spring for weeks, but now it's really here.) Branches that were bare when we left, or hosting only a tiny bud at the end, now flaunt sweet yellow or white blossoms. Daffodils bloom. The tennis players on the public courts behind our apartment have removed jackets and run about in short sleeves. The sun shines, and the air smells sweet.

Also while we were away, the official campaign season for governor of the prefecture opened. Elections are April 8. The campaign season began March 22. Can you imagine--does it make you giddy with pleasure to imagine--a 2-1/2 week (WEEK!) campaign season? Most messages are delivered via loudspeaker from vehicles that comb the streets from sun-up to sun-down. Spring is good for them. Windows are open. People are out and about on the streets. It is very loud. And very soon it will be all over.

By the time it is over, cherry blossom season will be upon us, and we will be inundated with 10 million visitors, 9,800,00 of them Japanese.

Welcoming Spring Photos III

Taken at Nara. First one is Japan's biggest Buddha. Second is the fire ritual of Ozimutori.

Welcoming Spring photo II

Welcoming Spring photos

Well, it seems that I've been taking pictures at too high a resolution, and I can't currently reduce that, so here are a series of posts with one or two Welcoming Spring photo(s) each. Sorry about that. I'll get it figured out.

Welcoming Spring

Friends from California were just here for six days of intense tourism. Timing was perfect as this area comes alive in spring—too early still for lush foliage, but the plum trees are blossoming and the city is celebrating.

One day, after we had already toured the temple grounds at Ginkakuji, walked the Path of Philosophy, shopped for kimono and been instructed in tea ceremony, we strolled downtown through dusk and a light rain into the opening evening of a Lighting and Flower Arrangement festival. In Maruyama Park, one thousand bamboo lanterns marched down the creek bed. Throughout Higashiyama district, ikebana displays fronted temple gates. Floodlit pagodas sprang up above the darkened tree tops. Lanterns lined walking paths. Children dressed in red costumes paraded, beating drums and clanging gongs. Unfortunately, we didn’t know about this festival when we set out in the morning or I’d have taken a tri-pod with me. The few photos on the accompanying post may convey some of the excitement.

The next day, we took a train to Nara, Japan’s first “permanent” capital established in year 710. The temple Tôdai-ji is the largest wooden building in the world and also houses Japan’s largest statue of Buddha. The festival we attended here, Omizutori, has taken place every year since 752 without break. Crowds gather beneath the high veranda at Nigatsu-do (worship hall at the top of the hill) where, beginning just after dark, monks carry huge pine basket torches—eleven of them, one at a time—up a stairway through the crowd, then further up steps onto the veranda. The monk then runs from one end of the veranda to the other, swinging and twisting the torch to release as many sparks as possible. The visitors ooh and aah and try to position themselves so that some of the thousands of sparks land on them, thus bringing good fortune for the coming year.

And that covers two of the six days. The others were equally full and magical, but that’s another story (or several).

More Photos from Daigo-ji

Here are more photos of the temple festival.

Godairikison Nonno-e, A Strength Competition

(Note: Some photos for this segment are in the next one.)

Kyoto has more than 2000 temples, and temples have festivals. So it’s possible to go to a temple festival almost any day of the week, though, after you’ve been to a few, you may reasonably ask, “What for?” We’ve been to a few. Here’s a description of one we missed: “During this send-off ceremony for old needles, professional seamstresses and housewives stick their used needles in a slab of konnyaku, a rubbery food made from the starch of a plant root; prayers are then said over them.” I’m not kidding.

However: Spring weather arrived in Kyoto on Friday, and we wanted an outing. The Kyoto Visitors Guide informed us that we could witness “a spectacular competition” beginning at noon at Daigo-ji (Temple). So off we set. The temple sits low in the eastern hills in a neighborhood we hadn’t visited before. As we exited the subway station, men thrust flyers at us advertising bus rides to the temple, but we chose to walk. A block or two before the temple grounds, barriers closed the streets to vehicular traffic, and dozens of police officers directed pedestrian hordes. This was obviously a big deal!

Beginning just inside the main temple entrance, booths selling fast food, pickles or sweets packaged to go, and cheap toys lined both sides of the path. From further uphill, we heard chanting of deep voices and saw huge billows of smoke. As we moved in that direction, food booths gave way to amulet stalls, and incense burned our noses. Turning a corner, we found ourselves in a large crowded courtyard that had, at its center, a raised platform resembling a boxing ring. Many men filled it: Buddhist monks in purple, gold or white robes were conducting a raffle to determine the order in which the other men, the contestants, would perform a weight-lifting feat.

What weight-lifting feat? What were they to do? Well….The contestants were to raise and hold off the platform 150 kilograms of pounded glutinous rice called mochi. Mochi is used to make pastries, often filled with sweet bean paste, delicious to some, sickening to others. But as heft in a weight-lifting competition? Pul-ease!

150 kilograms is impressive weight (330 lbs.), and we were anxious to see how lifting would be done and how long someone could really hold this much weight off the floor. But just before the first contestant approached, media were invited onto the platform. Cameramen (yes, men) and their assistants swarmed, and any notion of a mere attendee seeing anything disappeared. We circled the area, we moved forward, we moved backward, but all we could see were cameras and the butt of the judge who was making sure the pallet of mochi was off the floor. My best photos are above. In one, you can probably see the contestant who held the weight for 5 minutes, 23 seconds (the winning time was more than 12 minutes); the other shows the demonstration mochi cakes provided by corporate sponsors and the attitudes of some attendees. One of the demonstration cakes was set aside for people to touch, then touch themselves on the shoulder for good luck.

When we gave up trying to see anything at the mochi-lifting competition, we moved on to the bonfire. Here, there was primitive sounding music. (See the photo for the instruments.) People brought the amulets they had purchased (still wrapped in the bags provided by the temple so that the monks knew the temple had made money) to be blessed by the smoke of the fire. They handed their packages to the monks who held them over the fire briefly before returning them. This was, at least, wonderful pageantry—much better viewing than the mochi competition.

There was one more great treat for us here. Daigo-ji’s pagoda is the oldest building in Kyoto, and it is stunning. (See photo.) I often grumble about how all temples look pretty much alike, and “you’ve seen one temple, you’ve seen them all,” but this building truly is special. That’s why I’ll keep going to temple festivals.

Kyoto Miscellany (2)

Sound trucks: One of the (remarkably few) totally annoying things about living in Japan is some of the noise—not the generic traffic noise of a city or the conversation of folks in the street, which is quite normal for urbanites. In fact, Kyoto city streets are very quiet, except for the occasional badly muffled motorcycle, because hardly anyone ever honks a horn or even rings a bicycle bell. I am referring to the intentional noise made by sound trucks. We have a few small business trucks that come through the ‘hood regularly, and one of them, the cardboard-box guy in his old pick-up, incongruously but loudly plays a tinkly synthesizer version of “The Last Rose of Summer,” over and over and over, with a high-pitched female voice announcing his presence and his mission, over and over and over, early in the morning. In contrast, the vendor of roasted sweet potatoes, who comes around mid-evening, actually enunciates his own “Yaki-imo! Yaki-imo!” call, which is kind of comforting until the 50th or 60th repetition. Much worse, the political parties equip little mini-vans (REALLY little, about the size of a well-fed St. Bernard) with extra batteries and huge sound systems and send them through the narrow residential streets, blaring out their agit-prop at high volume—nothing quite so persuasive as a poorly-modulated recorded voice, at 8:30 a.m., yelling, “I’m Hiroshi Sato, candidate for this district from the Japan Communist Party, and I’m here to tell you….!!!”
The most menacing version comes not from the left but from the far right wing of Japanese politics, where fascism, religious (Emperor-worship) fanaticism, big business, and the yakuza underworld meet. We’ve only seen one of their sound trucks, but it was a full-scale, Greyhound-sized bus, painted black, with pro-Emperor long-live-Great-Japan slogans plastered all over it, rolling toward some political rally with retro-1930s ultranationalist speechification splashing out of its giant speakers. Wow. When these guys locate an enemy, they can use these monsters to devastating effect. In one case I know from the late 1980s, they targeted a city mayor who had made some comments about the Emperor’s responsibility for the war—they surrounded his house and his office with sound trucks, and went at him 24/7, at full blast. It would have gone on forever, I suppose, but finally one of the right-wingers took mercy on their poor victim and shot him. He survived, barely, but only because the perps decided it would have been cruel to the other patients to surround the hospital with sound trucks.

Hot springs: One of the most wonderful things about living in Japan derives from the islands’ continuing geo-history—these are still volcanic islands, so it’s mighty hot underground, and where water comes to the surface, it can be very hot water, filled with minerals leached (or borrowed or boiled) from the earth. This happens everywhere, so it’s hard to escape from soaking one’s body in naturally hot water, cooled to a tolerable 103-105 degrees. Bummer, huh? The spas (called onsen in Japanese) range from local working folks’ after-hours wash-and-soaks to high-end resorts with beautifully appointed guest houses and fabulous meals laid on. They all follow pretty much the same rules—they provide the baths, usually large enough to accommodate a bunch of folks and always (since the arrival of the 19th c. missionaries) segregated by sex. Near the big tubs (whether indoors or outdoors, and many places have both) the customer finds hand-held showers, sinks, mirrors, and (usually) soap and shampoo and other cleansers. So you get naked (put your stuff in a locker and put the key around your wrist), except for a small towel (held decorously in front of you), find yourself a shower-spot, and sit on a small stool in front of your mirror. There you perform your ablutions—wash, shampoo, condition, shave, whatever pleases you—and rinse very well. THEN you get into the tub and soak to your heart’s content. The small towel, which is what you’ve used as a washcloth and then rinsed and wrung out, either goes to the side of the tub or, if you’re male, it can be folded up and put on top of your head. At ordinary places, you soak a while, then get out and dry yourself with the same small towel (which is, of course, already wet), go back out to your locker, dress and go home. At fancier places, there might be a steam room or a sauna or a warmed resting bench, after which you can get back in for another soak, and you can keep a large towel in your locker if you don’t get dry enough with your washcloth. Some towns exist around these hot springs, and I’ve never been anywhere in Japan that doesn’t have them. Here in Kyoto there are a few in town, but we take our little train to the northern end of the line, out in the hills, where Kurama onsen lies among the tall pines, advertising that bathing in their mineral water heals what ails you, especially rheumatism, asthma, and muscular disorders. They have indoor baths, but we go to the outdoor ones, regardless of the weather, and have a good long soak whenever we like. Including the train ticket, it comes to around $15 a person for as much mineral hot springs as we can stand—after all, it doesn’t cost them anything to heat the water. THAT, as Martha would say, is a very good thing.

English in Japan: Especially since the USA occupied Japan after WWII, English has been an important part of Japanese. A century ago, when words like demokurashii (democracy) and saikoanarisusu (psychoanalysis) had a vogue among the intellectual elite, everyday vocabulary still came pretty much from the Japanese and Chinese words inherited from the past. Except for European foods like pan (“bread,” from Spanish or Portuguese) and kastera (“sponge cake,” again from Spanish or Portuguese), which had joined the lexicon way back. Unlike written Chinese, Japanese includes a phonetic writing system, so transliteration of useful foreign words makes a certain amount of sense. But nowadays, English words can be found everywhere, sometimes written in the Latin alphabet, sometimes in the katakana phonetic system (a special one for spelling out foreign words). A few years ago, Coca-Cola’s slogan for the Japan market was, “I feel Coke,” in English, plastered on every soft-drink machine in the country. Particular English words have special resonance with Japanese marketing folks—“happy,” “choice,” and “style” appear frequently—but even when a perfectly good Japanese word exists for something, very often the English word shows up instead. We’re snacking not on kawakashita budo (dried grapes) but on reizun (raisins); our friends drive around not in uchi no kuruma (our automobile) but in maikaa (my car). This could hardly be considered weird by an American, surrounded with pizza, sushi, hamburgers, and ketchup (all non-English words, after all, for non-local foods). A linguist friend who lives here thinks that it’s not only the utility of English words that attracts people—foreign words are just cooler than domestic words, and every Japanese student must take at least a few years of English, making ours the foreign language of choice. (There are exceptions, of course—“part-time work” is German arubaito, and one of our department stores is French biburei, or Vivre.) But the pleasure and flashiness of English makes good Japanese tori (chicken) turn into chikin, orthodox kekkonshiki (marriage ritual) into ueddingu, and a celebratory matsuri (festival) into a fueaa (fair). Our local greasy spoon might be a shokudo (dining hall) or a shokujisho (a place to eat), but nope, it’s a guriru (grill) or a resutoran. The quality of English in Japan has increased noticeably—the old jokes about “Japlish” don’t apply much any more—but I still feel a bit odd when I ask for an ichinichi joshaken (one-day pass) at the subway station, and the attendant replies, “Wan dei passu.” Or when I order our drinks at the counter, and the barrista shouts, “Burendo kohii, tsuu.” That is, blend coffee, two. Doesn’t Japanese have a good word for two, for goodness’ sake???

Jon’s Kyoto Miscellany

Curry rice: Folks here don’t have many local options for eating in the middle of the day—most everything you can get is called some variant of ranchi, the Japanese pronunciation of “lunch.” Convenience stores sell “mixed sandwiches,” which consist of fried meat or scrambled eggs, plus a few limp veggies, on bad white bread. The restaurants have thin noodles in soup (ramen), thick noodles in soup (udon), big rice bowls with all manner of things on top, rice-stuffed omelets decorated with ketchup…and curry rice (kareiraisu). Forget any connection to India, except the vaguest hint of turmeric or cumin. Curry rice consists of a lot of rice, usually on a plate, and a substantial scoopful of lightly flavored, thick, brown gravy poured over one side, never over all. The brown-white color contrast seems important in the presentation. A few forlorn chunks of beef or pork might languish in the goo, or you can get a thin piece of fried pork to sit atop the pile. But apart from some crunchy, peculiarly tasteless pickles, that’s it. You eat this with a soupspoon, not with chopsticks, and its vendors range from school cafeterias to specialty curry-rice restaurants where you can find exotica like curry-rice with fried squid or curry-rice and a hamburger or curry-rice and French fries. It’s unattractive, not especially tasty, not very nutritious—and nationally popular. Go figure. Worse yet, for reasons as yet undetermined, I love it. Ann (sensibly) won’t eat it, and who could blame her?

Public transportation: Everyone knows that Japan has a terrific public transportation system, and it’s true. We can get from anywhere to anywhere, in the Kyoto basin or beyond, by subway or train or bus, without inconvenience and with confidence that we will arrive on time. If the schedule says the subway leaves at 11:44 and takes 18 minutes to get to Shijo, that’s what happens. Even the buses run promptly, and none of it is insanely expensive—we get downtown, 20 minutes by subway or a little longer by bus, for a little more than $2 each way. Kyoto has public buses, several private bus companies, and a complex net of public and private railways. (Our outlying suburban neighborhood is served by a little privately owned train line that goes all the way from the city proper out into the hills, to a hot-springs resort far beyond the urban sprawl.) Bus drivers apologize to their passengers for taking a few extra seconds to edge out into traffic, train conductors apologize for keeping you waiting at every stop, and even the subway has an electronic announcer to inform you, in both Japanese and English, that the next stop will be Kitaoji and please don’t forget your umbrella. When we go a-touring, we take the comfortable, prompt, and usually convenient inter-city trains—we spent a week on the road this month, visited four cities and towns in southwestern Japan (a region roughly the size of the Boston-to-Philadelphia corridor), for about $300 apiece in train fares. Other railroad attractions: Train stations sell box lunches; vendors go up and down the aisles with chocolates, hot drinks, and beer; and everything’s clean. One foreigner’s gripe, though. Especially in town, the announcer never leaves you alone, not even for 30 seconds. There’s always something to say and someone saying it, at high volume and often in an annoying voice. (Both male and female public voices in Japanese can have a truly noxious, nasal, fingernails-on-blackboard quality.) But hey, that’s a small price to pay for a system that really works. We can always imitate the Kyoto kids—wear our headphones and listen to our iPods while we ride.

Fish: Whenever I mention that we live in Japan to non-Japanese folks, the first question is, “Can you survive on a diet of raw fish?” The answer, of course, is no, certainly not, and neither do Japanese people. However, raw fish does constitute a part of the diet—along with beef, pork, chicken, duck, cooked fish, endless pickled and fresh veggies, and vast quantities of rice and bread, among other things—so I guess it’s worth explaining. Since most of Japan is quite close to the ocean (no place more than about 80 miles), fish and other marine products form a crucial part of the local nutrition. Some inland folks have fresh-water sources, too. For anyone who lives away from the water (like the Kyotoites among whom we live, 40 km from the ocean), pickling, salting, and drying have long histories, but Really Fresh Fish has become a valued commodity. No better way to guarantee freshness than to serve the fish as soon as possible after removing it from the water! Thus, sashimi (a selection of raw fish) and some kinds of sushi. (Other types of sushi contain pickled or even cooked fish, eggs, tofu skin, etc.) But we’ve had wonderful cooked fish here, too—grilled, steamed, baked, stir-fried, poached, and sauced with everything from soy sauce to marinara.

Raw fish, some Japanese folks have discovered, is also a great way to gross out foreign guests, and so we have been served uncooked critters in some extreme forms—shrimp so recently skinned that they’re still twitching (odori-ebi, or “dancing shrimp”) or sashimi beautifully sliced then re-assembled so that the animal looks alive on the plate, even though it isn’t. In Hagi, a small fishing town, we even had a dish of paper-thin sliced fugu sashimi, the flesh of a blow-fish widely reknowned for its extremely toxic internal organs. This certainly can be off-putting, but the point is—raw fish doesn’t usually taste fishy! Its textures and tastes can vary widely, and even a very Euro-American palate can find it tasty, even wonderful. The fugu, for example, was quite delicate and lovely, and we found crab sashimi a lovely appetizer for a huge feast of crab stew.

For some more ordinary fish experiences, we recently visited Shinji Lake, near the north coast, which produces seven famous critters for the table—bass, carp, whitebait, shrimp, eel, a very delicate pike, and shijimi, a tiny clam-like shellfish. All are generally served cooked, in various ways, but some are also eaten raw, and all (except those that are preserved or vacuum packed for other parts of the country) are eaten on the day they are caught. First thing in the morning, the long narrow shijimi boats scoot out into the shallows, where the fishermen scrape the bottom with a long-handled basket, rinse the collected shellfish free of sand and muck, then deliver them to noisy markets, where restaurateurs, grocery-store buyers, and processing plants compete to buy them. We went to a tiny little bar-restaurant one evening in Matsue, on the shore of the lake, where Ann ordered the bass, steamed in thick local paper, and Jon had sashimi—a plate of raw fish, served with garnishes and thick soy sauce for dipping. To our surprise, none of the Seven Famous Fishes turned up on the sashimi plate—only aji, a tender pink-fleshed ocean fish, and (of all things) sazae, which my dictionary calls a “wreath shell.” The former tasted wonderfully non-fishy, sweet and delicate; the latter had the consistency of slightly crunchy pencil-erasers and tasted like iodine. You win some, you lose some. But we generally eat very well here, and so could a fastidious foreigner who refused raw fish—there’s always curry rice!!!

Western Honshu-First Day Hiroshima

We’re just back from a week touring the western end of this big island we live on. Everywhere we went, history is part of daily life, the political represented by the thousand year old castle on the highest, most visible hill in town, and the daily by ceramics crafted by twelfth generation potters. Each prefecture is proud of its own food products as well—fish and seafood or fruits and vegetables unique to the local area.

We started in Hiroshima. I really think that every American should make a pilgrimage to the Peace Park. It’s so powerful that I don’t know how to talk about it without diminishing its impact. The museum and park cover an enormous area of downtown close to ground zero, and everything about the installation is dedicated to the conviction that humanity cannot coexist with nuclear weapons. I can only give you a few snapshot impressions. I hope you can imagine more—or go yourself someday:

*Four walls covered with telegrams of protest sent by Hiroshima mayors to governments that have just tested nuclear bombs.

*Aerial views of the city before and after the bomb. Only a half-dozen buildings had even a few walls standing minutes after the bomb was dropped on this city of 350,000 people. One of these relics has been preserved; here’s a picture of the A-Bomb Dome.

*Tatters of clothing found by the parents of vaporized junior high school students who were out on the streets building fire lanes from City Hall so it could be saved if it was bombed (by conventional bombs.)

*Copies of letters and memos written by politicians and scientists in the U.S. as the decisions to first build, then when and where to use the bomb were made—long before the actual event. Chilling.

*Gazillions of paper cranes sent by children all over the world to contribute to the Children’s Peace Monument. The following from a Hiroshima website: “This connection between paper cranes and peace can be traced back to a young girl named Sadako Sasaki, who died of leukemia ten years after the atomic bombing.Sadako was two years old when she was exposed to the A-bomb. She had no apparent injuries and grew into a strong and healthy girl. However, nine years later in the fall when she was in the sixth grade of elementary school (1954), she suddenly developed signs of an illness. In February the following year she was diagnosed with leukemia and was admitted to the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital. Believing that folding paper cranes would help her recover, she kept folding them to the end, but on October 25, 1955, after an eight-month struggle with the disease, she passed away. Sadako's death triggered a campaign to build a monument to pray for world peace and the peaceful repose of the many children killed by the atomic bomb. The Children's Peace Monument that stands in Peace Park was built with funds donated from all over Japan. Later, this story spread to the world, and now, approximately 10 million cranes are offered each year before the Children's Peace Monument. ”

The rest of our tour was much cheerier than this. I’ll save it for the next installment.

Week 2: Seeking Something Familiar

Slowly, the unfamiliar becomes familiar, the exotic becomes the daily. I’m getting used to having no idea where I am or what’s going on around me. But I try. Some little part of me is always scanning for something familiar and rarely finding it. One day this week we went to a temple pagoda high on an eastern hill and looked down at Kyoto, identifying all the places we’ve been.

We are too big here, galumphing gaijin who don’t both fit in a two-person bus seat and whose heads bump the hand straps in subways.

The most poignant strangeness is the most intimate: we are cooking local foods using Japanese preparations, and our house smells like someone else’s house, not ours. So last night, we made spaghetti with marinara sauce and garlic bread. The house still smelled like garlic this morning, and I rejoiced.

BEING TOURISTS. Yesterday we went to Kyoto Handicrafts Center in search of a “Japanese” birthday gift for the grandson. Five floors of beautiful silk, cloisonné and damascene as well as samurai swords (ornamental), porcelain geisha dolls and hand-painted kites. And of course, kimonos and yukatas. For some reason, buying kimonos seems to be a big tourist thing, but I can’t imagine when or where I would ever wear one at home. Would I put it on display? Where?

The most popular place to buy kimonos is the Temple Fairs (flea market equivalent). Sunday, we went to Toji, reputed to be the largest of these. We took the subway to Kyoto Station, then walked the 1/2 kilometer to the temple grounds. About two blocks before we reached the temple, the sidewalks became so crowded we could only shuffle along at a snail’s pace. Inside the grounds, people were packed so tightly, we often couldn’t see what was on display, much less stop to make a purchase. But the atmosphere was like a county fair, and we sampled Japanese “fair food,” my favorite being sweet potato slabs deep-fried and rolled in sugar.

LIVING HERE. Having discovered a ¥50 Japanese language class at the Kyoto International Community House, I’ve decide to learn some Japanese while we’re here. However, since I seem to have a sieve where I used to have a memory, my expectations are modest.

We found a terrific bread bakery in the neighborhood, open 7am – 7 pm. By the way, most small retail businesses are open six days a week. Thing is, they all take different days off—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ve already lost count of the number of times we’ve gone someplace and arrived on “closing day.”

I’m trying to figure out how you find what you need here. For instance, let’s say you’re in the market for used furniture (as we are). How do you look that up in the Yellow Pages? What’s the organizing principle (not to mention how do you read it)? And then, addresses have nothing to do with street location except to identify the neighborhood. Inside the neighborhood, addresses are assigned in the order in which buildings were built. Each neighborhood has a map posted somewhere, if you can find it.

COFFEE. Starbucks still wins the marketing prize: We’ve sought coffee shops where we can stop and regroup on our outings, or just people-watch. Most places serve one small teacup-sized cup of coffee for $3.50-4.00—no refills—and are full of people smoking. Well, not FULL because, in fact, they often have few other people in them at all. Starbucks, on the other hand, serves their usual array of drinks at about the prices we’re used to, PLUS they have a Small size (yes, actually called Small) for this market. In addition, they have not just a section, but a whole separate room for non-smokers. Needless to say, they have been packed each time we’ve seen one.

MYSTERY. Here’s something else we cannot figure out: There’s a smattering of Westerners here, not a lot outside the tourist spots, but we see a few most days. Without exception, they studiously ignore us and each other. Jonathan says he finds himself doing the same thing, and now I’ve started to, too. Anyone have any ideas why that might be? I find it extraordinarily odd.

Week 1: First Impressions

We’ve been here just under a week, and impressions strike fast and furiously:

POLITENESS. Thank goodness Japanese people are so polite. A street the width of 1-1/2 American automobiles is shared by cars going both directions—fast, bicycles, pedestrians and sometimes buses. If people drove with typical American aggression and entitlement, we’d all be roadkill. As it is, everyone adjusts casually and it all works.

By the way, both Daimler-Chrysler and Mercedes Benz produce small, classy-looking, fuel efficient cars for sale here. Wonder if we’ll ever see them in the U.S.

COLD. Before we came, everyone kept telling us it would be very cold in Kyoto. I’d check the travel guides regarding climate; they all said that typically winter lows are around freezing, and most days top out in the high 40’s and 50’s—sounded easy after New England, and I scoffed at the softies. In fact, my New England outerwear has been more than adequate for the out of doors in Kyoto. It’s for the indoors I reserve my longjohns. We haven’t been here long enough to get a utility bill, but I guess that electricity is very expensive because SO much care is taken to minimize its use. We have a heater in the living room and one in the bedroom. They do not have thermostats sufficient to maintain a comfortable temperature; we turn them on until the room is too hot, then turn them off. The hallway and bathroom never get heated (except by a small and inadequate space heater a previous tenant left), The hardest part for me is that the hot water is on a switch that gets turned on before showers or washing dishes and the rest of the time, we are washing our hands in ice water. Silly me. I turned on the hot water the other day to prepare to do laundry, only to discover that the hot water is not even attached to the washing machine--all laundry is done in ice water, too.

HOT WATER. We found the solution to the cold is easy and pleasurable. Fifteen minutes by train from our house, we were in quiet, misty mountains at Kurama, home of natural hot springs. For about $10, we were granted access to beautiful outdoors baths for as long as we could stand it. We came home shiny-skinned, warm to the core and calmed by the views.

SHOPPING. Some things are incredibly expensive (Bring gifts of good peanut butter if you come!), some incredibly inexpensive (a dozen crab balls for ¥ 198 or about $1.70). I saw a ¥378 apple next to a ¥138 avocado. We bought most of what we needed to supply our apartment, including a toaster oven and CD-player, for ¥24,000 or a bit over $200.

Sudafed and Claritin are both prescription drugs here.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: Japan is known for trains and buses, and Kyoto fits the paradigm. We can go anywhere we want in the metropolitan area--including up the mountain to the hot springs--without a car. From our apartment to Doshisha University (where Jonathan is teaching), we take the subway. To go shopping at a department store, we take the bus. It's not cheap (most rides start at around $2), but it's certainly fast and convenient. What is sometimes confusing is the number of different companies that provide train, bus, subway service. The prices and rules vary and a ticket on one is of no use on another.

NEIGHBORHOOD: We live in a northern suburb of Kyoto, near two small village-center-like shopping areas. Thus far, we've found four grocery stores, myriad convenience stores (including Circle K and Seven-Eleven), a French bakery, a German bakery, a Kyoto-style bakery, two big drugstores, and many restaurants. We've been eating mostly at home, despite the enticing plastic models of sushi and other goodies that surround us, and we enjoy the shopping. We've got one bicycle so far (borrowed from the university), and a second one is promised this week. Wish us luck playing dodge-'em with the cars and motorcycles on the Kyoto streets!