Today’s mission was to see some more great Kyoto sites, but to lower the intensity levels a bit, and to do a bit less walking.

Nijo entrance

On Thursday, we had wandered past Nijo Castle, one of the only worthwhile attractions within reasonable walking distance from the Rhino Hotel.  It was closed by the time we wandered past on Thursday afternoon, but we had heard that it was worth visiting, so we went back. 
The day was sunnier than Saturday, but also a lot hotter.  We munched on four tasty French pastries (¥534) as we walked.  Leave it to International Rebecca to discover the boulangerie in Kyoto; she convinced me to go there by insisting that we had to compare the Japanese take on French pastry to the real French pastry we’d sampled in Paris six months earlier.  I had to confess that it sounded reasonable.
After hiking the mile or so to the castle (so much for walking less today), we paid our admission fee (¥600 each) and got to exploring yet another ancient Japanese historical site.  Although they are a little bit samey, somehow they are all rather fascinating, and are also just as different as they are the same.  Upon further trips to Japan, there will be plenty more to see; we only hit a fraction of them. 
The tickets we were given have a nice color photos of the site on them.  Like the passport stamps found at so many sites, the Japanese are all about subtle little souvenirs; I think that these people might have a little bit of a sentimental streak behind their well-mannered and often stoic exteriors.

Garden at Nijo

Nijo Castle is a large parcel of real estate with a moat around it, making it a sort of island.  Completed in 1623, it was home to the Tokugawas, the shoguns who ruled Japan for almost 300 years.  Inside the walls are the Ninomaru palace (itself made of six smaller buildings, connected by wooden walkways), the Ninomaru garden, and another concentric moat with a smaller palace and a smaller garden on the square island within an island).  Ninomaru palace was interesting to view with its “nightingale” floors (they squeak when walked upon so that visiting ninjas can’t be as stealthy as they might wish), its suibokuga (painting with black ink) panels, and its amazing garden.  We also liked the entrance gate, ornately decorated with wooden dragons, butterflies, cranes, flowers, and geometric patterns, detailed in gold leaf.

Next to a rack of handy informative brochures about the castle a sign said: “please take it yourself - free”, but also: “a person under alcohol can not enter the castle”.  Next to the latter was an icon of a sort of Pac-man character with lines indicating smelly booze breath.  A third sign, outside the castle walls said “no scribbling”. 

Near that, I got my souvenir rubber stamp on the memo page of my passport!

Sanjusangendo

After the castle tour, which was quite interesting (no photos allowed, and no shoes allowed), we headed east, towards the area at the southern part of Kyoto Walk #1, or the northern part of Kyoto Walk #2.  Same area.  This was the area with the museums and other cultural activites that had been near to closing time when we were there on Friday.

We investigated Sanjusangendo temple, which was covered in prodigious quantities of prayer boards in unusual curved shapes, almost like bowling pins.  Then we made for the Kyoto National Museum.  This is the Kyoto branch of the museum that I had wanted to see in Tokyo (The Tokyo National Museum, in Ueno park), but had mixed up with the inferior Tokyo Metropolitan Museum (also in Ueno park; home of hundreds of crappy contemporary paintings).  So anyway, it was time to see some traditional Japanese art. 
Again.

First we got a snack in the kombini.

Or really, two kombinis.  Rebecca got a salad in the Family Mart, and we got some beverages (¥555).  I wanted a rice ball, but they were all sold out.  So I went a few doors down to another kombini and got two of them (¥215 total).  Rice balls, which I do not think I have mentioned to date, are an amazing healthy snack available inexpensively, everywhere.  They are not really balls, but more of a wedge of sticky rice, a triangle of rice two inches on a side and over an inch high.  They come wrapped with a big sheet of dry seaweed paper, and usually there is a little surprise embedded in the center of the rice wedge, like a piece of shrimp or a glob of some sort of flavorful paste.  Rice balls usually sell for about ¥100 to ¥120, so you can get two or of them, a bit of fruit, and a drink for well under five bucks, and they will fill you right up.  Fast, neat, tasty, cheap, healthy.  Rice balls are key for Japanese lunches on the go.  It was rare that the first kombini we went into were sold out of them.  And, I must reiterate: although kombinis look more or less exactly like a convenience store in the West, and the prices are comparable, the quality of food there is three notches higher.  I would never eat prepared food from a 7-11 in America, ever, no matter what.  At a kombini, I would not hesitate. The grounds of the museum were virtually deserted.  We put some money into an automated ticket machine, and got our admissions (adults: ¥500). I made a lot of notes inside (naturally). Some highlights: Gallery 17: Tanto and katana swords; many of the hilts and scabbards are elaborately decorated, but sometimes just the simple unadorned blades remain, and appear to be treated just as reverently.  Samurai armor in here too. Gallery 15: Lacquerware (shikki or urushi-nuri) with amazing detail.  Mother of pearl inlays, sometimes hair-thin slivers, forming intricate images on the shiny black or red boxes.  You never see shikki this detailed in the West; all of the treasures have remained in Japan. Gallery 14: Kimonos from the 19th century.  Cool. Gallery 13, 11, 10: A lot of scrolls an screen prints, telling stories.  Most of them appeared to be several hundred feet long, and maybe a foot or eighteen inches tall, but only a section would be on display - although sometimes a long section, thirty feet or so.  Some of the scrolls alternate between text for a few feet and then images for a few feet.  Some just contain images.  Some are in color, and some in just black ink.  A few of the standouts (some artists listed, some not) are: Biography of the Poet Saigyo, Illustrated Biography of Priest Shinran (sp?), Illustrated Biography of Honen 1133-1212, Origin of Shakado Temple, History of Shinnyodo Temple (1524), Gentleman Lying Down in Snow (1556) by the Chinese artist Xie Shi Chen, Crows and Plum Trees by Unkoku Togan (1547-1618).

Some of these are quite colorful, and some show an interesting technique of rendering roofless houses so we can see the action inside without changing the general bird’s-eye point-of-view consistent in the exterior scenes.
I also liked a series of four large panels by Yokoyama Kazan (1784-1837), each perhaps three feet wide and five feet tall, and collectively entitled Eight Drunken Hermits.  The panels depict just that: eight guys in various states of inebriation, from lightly buzzed to completely plastered, each being attended to (or not) by the people around him.  One guy is trying to paint, one guy is being carried away on a horse, one guy is toasting a Buddha.  This scene is actually rather popular, as it is based (apparently in the past-tense) on a famous poem, Eight Drinking Hermits by the Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu. 
I believe I will invent a shochu cocktail and name it Du Fu.
Gallery 9: 14th century Zen paintings.  Amazing.  Ink wash on vertical hanging scrolls.  “In order to appreciate ink paintings, you must first locate yourself in the painting”.  Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers by Soami (sp?), with each view painted on a tall scroll done in black ink wash.  Also, another incredible horizontal scroll: Landscape by Isshi Kii (1476).  Gallery 8 is even older works in similar styles.
That’s it for the second floor, downstairs to gallery six, which contains sculpture, but which pales next to the totally cool gallery five: a bunch of larger-than-life wood or metal sculptures of various deities.  These are intricately carved masterworks, including the 44-armed Senju Kannon (8th century, plus Juichimenkannon (11th century), Juichimenkannon (again) (10th century), and Tamonten (11th century, from a set of the four heavenly kings, guardian of the northern direction).  These, and the others, are completely amazing. 
Gallery seven is also impressive, with five double life-sized Buddha statues (9th century), all sitting on lotus blossoms, and flanked with two other, different sculptures.
Getting to the beginning, galleries one through four are stone age crafts: spear points architectural fragment, and early bronze.
I got my coveted Shohaku Soga book (the one that was ¥5500 in Jimbocho/Kanda but only ¥2500 at this museum; pictured back in travelogue part three).  This is a really nice book, a few hundred pages long, with images reproduced in high quality, and a few fold--out pages.  Amazing art, and this book was a steal at the price.

Back on the streets, we immediately noticed a restaurant called Poon Poon, and all of the day’s culture and learning evaporated in a fit of infantile giggling. 
Even weirder: it is a Mediterranean restaurant, complete with belly dancers. 
It gets better (or worse): the restaurant next door to that is called Potti. 
Yet weirder: a small shop was selling shirts from a label called Downtown Black Gangs; the shirts were like retirement home grandpa-wear. 
We made it back to the busy Kawaramachi area, where we discovered yet another shrine, Nishiki Tenmangu, nestled into a corner of the mall.  It seemed to have been in place for 1000 years, as if the entire mall had been built around the immovable shrine; this may well have been the case.

Well, there was only one thing for it next.
We headed back to the corner of Sanjo-dori and Kawaramachi-dori, and revisited Musashi Sushi (the kaitenzushiya - or conveyor belt - restaurant where all plates are ¥137).  Last time we came here, we scarfed down seventeen plates of sushi, and tonight we were aiming to break our record of excess and gluttony.  We didn’t get a very good seat this visit - in fact we were sort of stuck in a cramped corner.  On our other visit we were right in front of the chefs, so we saw all of the new food coming up fresh, and were able to grab the good cuts of fish as soon as they hit the conveyor belt.  This time, all of the good stuff was getting snagged by other people before it got to us!  It was sort of annoying, and sometimes we had to wait a really long time to get good pieces.  But we eventually got our fill: twenty plates worth!  That is forty pieces of sushi between the two of us for the bargain price of ¥2740.  Granted, the pieces are a bit on the small side here (they have to be at a price point of two for ¥137), but I think we must have set a new record of some sort.  Rebecca made a little video on her camera of me grabbing plate number twenty, and you can see it here (right-click or Alt-click [Windoze]/Option-click [Mac], and then “Save As...” to your desktop).

On the way home we stopped at an internet cafe in an eight-story mall, just across the street from the train stop by the Hotel Rhino.  Like the others I’d investigated, this one required me to purchase a membership, and then pay for internet access by the full hour.  But I had no choice: there was some important surfing to be accomplished, and I’d been procrastinating it all week.  You see, we’d be going back to Tokyo on Tuesday for one night, before going back to Chicago on Wednesday, and we had no hotel room booked for the one night we’d be in Tokyo.  I had booked the Weekly Mansion Akasaka (my hotel for the previous ten nights in Tokyo) sight unseen on the internet.  It worked out fine, I have no real complaints about the place.  But the location was not superlative, and I was a little annoyed at how they’d gauged me for the extra that night I had added on to my stay.  Now that I know my way around Tokyo, I had the luxury of picking a place in a preferred location - even if it is just for one night.
Found a place called Green Hotel Tokyo in Ochanomizu (between Ueno and Kanda, and close to Akihabara) that suited all of our needs, and booked it through an American web site (no foreign transaction fee) for $130.
The internet cafe was fascinating.  There are at least one hundred little tiny cubicles in there.  It should be no surprise that they are tiny, but the word tiny has seldom been used with more accuracy than in this case.  I was physically unable to sit down at the computer, and was also unable to close the door to the cubicle behind me.  I was just too tall for the little computer booth.  I simply did not fit.  With the door partly opened, my chair was poking out into the aisle.  Rebecca camped out in an empty cubicle next to mine.
The large windowless room ("large" meaning just big enough to hold a hundred micro cubicles, each containing a computer and a chair and not much else) was extremely dimly lit, giving an impression of perpetual twilight.  It is easy to imagine club members coming into this place to play on-line video games and completely losing track of what time it is, or what day it is.  In fact, the bathrooms are equipped with complementary toothbrushes, toothpaste, razors, and showers.  This place is designed for members to spend many hours here, each cocooned in their own womb-like cubicle, staring at the computer for endless periods of time.  It is like the movie The Matrix, come to life, with marginally conscious life forms plugged into the cyber reality network, completely obliterating all sensory input from the outside world.
Food and beverages are available too, and for those wanting to take a break from staring at a light source for days at a time, there is a truly massive library of manga available for perusal, insuring that reality does not have an opportunity to leak back into the club member’s consciousness.

With a hotel secured for Tuesday night, we walked a block back to our current home, the Hotel Rhino.

For once: an early night!

Six MORE Famous Views of Cartoon Mascots of Japan!

Monday, June 02

Tokyo is the capital city of Japan and seat of the empire.  Before that, it was Kyoto.  And before Kyoto, the center of Japanese life was Nara, which is a small town about 45 minutes by JR train from Kyoto.  In addition to this Shinkansen (bullet train) line, there are local JR trains in the various cities.  There is one called the Nara Line, aka Niyakoji Rapid Service, that begins in Kyoto and ends in Nara with twenty stops between them.  Every other train runs express (about 45 mins); the non-express trains take about 80 mins.  Finally making good use of our JR passes (aside, of course, from the shinkansen ride from Tokyo to Kyoto), we caught an express, and made Nara by about noon on Monday.  The day was rainy and the parts of little Nara nearest to the train station are grey and urban looking.  A nice elderly lady in the tourist office (within the train station) gave us a map and thorough advice on what to see.  She circled six locations in orange crayon.  Looking at my own pre-trip notes, I had three places listed as must-see; all three of mine were among crayon lady’s six.  At least a quarter (if not a third) of the city is a big forest / garden / park / historical site.  Everything we wanted to see was in that area. We had a clear plan. Walking from the train station, the first thing we saw were two American fast food chains, and then gangsta rap blaring out of a kimono shop, and much more graffiti than we’d seen anywhere in Tokyo or Kyoto.  So much for visiting the eighth-century capital of Japan.  Walking up the slight incline of Sanjo-dori (different Sanjo-dori from the one in Kyoto.... I think), we passed lots of souvenir shops and restaurants.  This strip exists to catch cash from the tourists walking between the train and the historic area.  We saw more of those yummy sweet dumpling (or ravioli)-like pastries that we ate in Kyoto, plus lots more to eat and buy.  Entering a covered arcade (with the ends open to the air, like the ones in Kyoto), Rebecca and I got lunch in a place called The Don.  I believe that it must be part of a chain (which I usually avoid) because I ate in a The Don in Akihabra as well.  The one in Akihabara was much, much better.  Rebecca got curry udon with tofu, I got cold udon with a bowl of pickles and a bowl of rice and some sort of ground meat on the rice.  I’d asked for (and even pointed to) maguro on the rice, but didn’t get it.  It was a rather poor meal, and set us back ¥1430 (including a mystery charge of ¥150).  Their sign said: “THE healthy and natural.  Neptune New Wave Taste - The Don”.

Deer are friendly with the Buddha....

We decided to walk to the point furthest from the train station and work our way back.  Continuing up Sanjo-dori towards Kasuga Taisha shrine, at the distant end of the rainy street, we entered the park area.  Once we got into the ‘old’ quarter of the city, all of the crassness of the area by the train station evaporated, and we were indeed transported back in time a bit.  The commercial part of the road ended and Sanjo-dori began to wind through a forest. 
Here, we noticed the first of many deer.  Nara is known for its deer. 
The local religious sects venerate the ruminants, and deer wander the streets and temple grounds here like the sacred cows of India.  These deer are completely acclimated to humans, and have no fear of people at all.  This is so unlike the extremely skittish deer found almost anywhere else, who will dart away at the first inkling of human presence. 
The deer in Nara will let you walk up and pet them!

There are logos and deer emblems on all sorts of businesses and government offices, as well as handy informational signs that apparently provide tips on dealing with the animals -- tips that appear to be more for their safety than for yours (see picture to your right: I think the deer look friendly enough, but the crying children in their wheelchairs don't seem to agree!). 
I even saw a cartoon logo of a deer surfing the internet. 
Of course, I got a big stamp on my passport, picturing a deer and a shrine.

...but NOT with children in wheelchairs!

The first of the ten UNESCO World Heritage sites in the area (six of which were circled in orange crayon on the map, and three of which were on my must-see list) was Kofukuji temple, with its pair of pagodas, a three-story and a five-story. 
The large stone plaza was filled with both deer and children, and each were torturing the other! 
The deer were chasing the kids down, trying to get the kids to feed them, and the kids were offering the deer food and then running away. 
The gentle animals were not a danger to the children, who were having the time of their lives, especially when about four deer all converged on a kid with some candy at the same time. 
The kid was laughing his head off, but was also running for his life.

A man in a booth was creating shodo (calligraphy) with a brush and ink.  Some Japanese women gave him a sort of blank book, and he opened it up and brushed some characters onto one of the empty pages.  I got the feeling that these women had collected many examples of shodo from many shrines in their book.  How cool!  The balsa wood prayer boards at Kofukuji temple did not have pictures of deer on them, but rather they depicted a calligrapher.  I picked one up for my collection at the bargain price of ¥400 (they are ¥500 in most other shrines).  Rebecca is not collecting these like I am, but she got one here anyway because she liked the design.

As we walked steadily upwards along the boulevard through the forest, the rain continued, and it also grew chilly.  We’d come prepared with jackets and umbrellas, but the grey day was a little disappointing. 
We encountered a deer in the forest that was making a weird squeaking noise. 
We finally made it to the farthest point on our journey from the train station, deep into the woods at the very east end of Nara: Kasuga Taisha shrine.  At the shrine, we took a path even deeper into the forested area.  Along the way were hundreds of moss-covered stone lanterns, each a millennia old.  At the end were the actual shrines, painted in the traditional red-orange shade of all Shinto buildings.  In the forest is a famous tree, a gigantic and very ancient Chinese Juniper.  It has another tree - a Japanese Cedar - growing from within a nook high up the trunk.  This is called mizuya jinja no yadorigi, which roughly translates to “parasitic alien fetus growing out of my thorax”.

Two famous views of Kasuga Taisha, and one famous view of Rebecca and a deer.

Now ready to head along the northern end of the loop that would eventually take us back to the train station, our next impressive stop was at Nigatsu-do Hall.  This is an amazing temple set high up on a relatively treeless hill, offering spectacular views of the valley below.

The ubiquitous hand-washing area at Nigatsu-do Hall is adorned with a huge iron fountain with dragon motifs at the bottom, right next to the place for hanging prayer boards.  The motifs painted on the prayer boards here are pictures of the giant paper lanterns that hang all over the grounds, and are not very interesting, so I passed on this one. 

Nigatsu-do Hall is made entirely of wood, or so it seems, and this wood is a thousand years old.  One fire, and this whole thing is going to snap it stilts and go sliding down the hillside.  Thus, there are “no smoking” signs everywhere.  And really, this is just common sense.  One thing that we had read over and over again at many of the shrines and temples all over Kyoto, Tokyo, and Nara is that almost all of them have burned down at least once over the centuries (some of them several times), and had to be rebuilt.  They are all made predominantly of wood, and wood gets ready to flame when it gets old.  The amazing and picturesque Nigatsu-do Hall in particular seemed like a big pyre waiting to be lit up. 
So we were not surprised to see a caretaker reprimanding three gaijin jackasses smoking on some steps, not ten feet away from a sign (in Engrish) telling them not to.  They apologized in American English.  Grrr.... This is what pisses me off about my countrymen.  It is true, wherever you go, it is the Americans breaking the rules and making the rest of the world think we’re rude and ignorant jerks!

Next up was Todaji Temple, the largest wooden structure in the world (¥500 each to get in, including colorful souvenir ticket).
It looks more or less like all of the other buildings we have seen so far, but bigger.
Much, much bigger.
The original burnt down (natch), and the current building is actually 33% smaller than the previous one.
In any case, it is a freaking huge building.
Inside, there is a seriously huge wooden Buddha taking up most of the room.
It is big.
I mean, really, really big.
To give you a sense of scale, in the picture on the right, the golden Buddhas orbiting the big one's skull are the same size as the ones we saw in the Kyoto museum: double life sized (which is considered the 'perfect' size).

There isn’t much else in the building, which is one giant room inside.  Upon entering, big B is sitting there looking quite content. 
Walking around the massive sculpture, there are a pair of smaller golden Buddha statues (and by “smaller”, I mean only two or three stories tall), plus a couple of thirty-foot tall deities, and that’s about it. 
Still, it is a pretty incredible sight. 
The doorways to get in are logjammed with people who enter the building and then immediately stop to gawk at the big Buddha.  We had to sort of fight our way in, gently nudging the crowds in front of us along to get in the door.  The majority of the people were school kids, thousands of them.  Thousands.
It was a rainy Monday. 
I’d hate to see this place on a sunny Saturday. 
Madness.

A small but well-stocked commerce area in the corner sold me my fifth prayer board (¥600), and it also sold Rebecca a fortune (¥200) - she did the “shaking the chopstick out of the hexagonal tube” thing.  You may remember that I did the same a week earlier and got an amazingly good fortune.  Rebecca, on the other hand, got a really horrible one. 
In fact it said:
“Number 7.
No Luck.
Nothing will come your way, as if a bird that loses its wings.
Your problems will not become serious, your illness may be caused by curse of woman.
Trade: no possibility will come to you in either selling or buying.
Travel: it is not recommended that you make any travel.
The person you wait for: the person will not come.
The thing you have lost: you will not find it.”

Well, it goes without saying that Rebecca folded her paper up into a strip and tied it to a tree, or in this case a conveniently located thin metal rod on the temple’s porch.  Her bad luck joined hundreds of other folded paper misfortunes - but for what it is worth, she got a new job two months later that was a vast improvement in all ways over her old one, so I guess tying that misfortune to the tree definitely helped reverse the prophecy.  As she did this, I donated a coin to a statue of Binzuru (Edo period, 18th century), and contributed to polishing the smooth and hard wooden surface by rubbing the area of Binzuru’s anatomy that I most wanted to heal in myself.  It was not my aching feet - it was my tired back!

Walking outside and down the stairs, I spied an army of people walking down the forested path, each with a different color umbrella.  I was reminded of an old song by XTC from their Skylarking album: “one thousand umbrellas open and spoil the view”.  I wouldn’t so much say that the view was spoiled, as it actually made for sort of a nice picture, and here we are, half a world away from Cherbourg.

A decision was made to dine in Kyoto.
Back on the train and back to Kyoto’s bustling shopping and nightlife area along Kawaramachi-dori.  We did not go back to conveyor belt sushi, but instead opted for a place on my rather neglected list of restaurants to explore in Kyoto.  We hit a place in the covered shopping street of Teramachi called Mr. Young Men (which in turn triggered lyrics from the Village People to start cycling relentlessly through my head.  Please make it stop).  I was told that Mr. Young Men (there’s no need to feel down.. I said...) has the best okonomiyaki in Kyoto.  You’ll remember that okonomiyaki is sometimes called a Japanese pizza, but it is more like an omelette, prepared in a round skillet full of scrambled egg, topped with various vegetables or seafood.  Some of that sweet brown sauce that they put over unagi (eel) sushi might be drizzled over the top of it all. 
Mr. Young Men (there's a place you can go... I said...) was described as “pleasantly grubby”, and grubby it is, although I am not sure how pleasant the grubbiness is.  The place is run by a trio of stoic thirty-something women who don’t appear to like to clean much.  We were seated next to a seriously creepy middle aged guy, the exact template that movie producers use when looking for someone to appear as a child molester in a movie.  He was smoking and smelled bad, and making a lot of noise when he ate.  Rebecca went to freshen up, and I spied a pile of Japanese magazines in the corner of the room.  They looked like your basic entertainment magazines: movies and music and whatnot.  Just as Rebecca returned, I had discovered that the local media was a bit more entertaining that I had imagined: I turned the mag around so she should see the naked Asian chicks inside.  She wasn’t so interested, but now I know why the guy next to us comes to eat here.

The food was fine.
Mine came with a cup of miso soup and two big rice balls.
Rebecca’s was double-decker with some cheese and corn and bacon in there, and was topped with a relative of thousand island dressing.  A paper American flag was stuck in her okonomiyaki; I got nothing.

Rebecca poked around some of the department stores looking for shoes.

We went back to the hotel rather early.
It was still raining, and we were tired from a non-stop week (in Rebecca’s case) and a non stop two-plus weeks (in my case).  Rebecca sat down on her bed and was immediately too wiped out to move.  But as always, she had an insatiable craving for chocolate that had to be tended to.  With a monumental effort, I put my shoes back on, and ran across the street in the pouring rain to the Lawson’s kombini to get two big bottles of water, a little bottle of sake, a bag of malted milk balls called Choco-Cal-Chou, and a surprise: a bag of Haribo gummi bears, Rebecca’s favorite thing in the world.  Yes, even more than pizza, gin, and chocolate (her other three favorite things in the world), this girl worships at the temple of the golden bear.  We hadn’t seen them in Japan to date, but I scored her a surprise bag at the 11th hour.  Total spent was ¥944.
The lil’ sake bottle had a picture on the front of a guy laboring inside a giant barrel.  I think he was a sake maker, but he looked more like a hamster on an exercise wheel.  The Hotel Rhino has now officially been redubbed the Hotel Wino.

We watched a scary and hilarious television show about learning English.
A cute little cartoon dog named Charo seemed to be teaching people rather depressing sentences:
“I don’t care when your birthday is!”
“(Q): You were abandoned?  (A): I think so!”
“You were injured?”.
“I am sorry if I hurt you!”.
Really bad late-1970s yacht rock tunes were playing in the background.  Charo’s human co-hosts are the lovely Shelley and some young Japanese hipster guy with a haircut belonging to a middle aged Iowa soccer mom.
The good news is that you can visit Charo here.

After Charo, we saw a show about the industrialization of the Galapagos islands (in Japanese, but we got the gist of it).

An 11:30pm late-night snack run (#2 for the night - this is what happens to Americans watching television) set me back ¥1537 at the Family Mart store... including a souvenir bottle of shochu. 


Tuesday, June 03

With memories of last week’s humid and miserable walk from the JR train station to the hotel still fresh in our memories, we took a variety of public transportation options (including a good ol’ JR-brand bus) back to the central train station.  We rode the shinkansen (bullet train) back to Tokyo, catching a brief and shadowy glimpse of a foggy Mt. Fuji in the distance.  We spent the trip talking about how we’d almost never heard a cell phone ring the entire time we were in Japan, even though the Japanese people may possibly be even more obsessed with their gadgets (phones definitely included) than we Americans can be.  Rebecca thought that she’d seen a cell phone car on the train - a special car for people who needed to make calls without disturbing other passengers.  Another genius Japanese innovation, and a necessary one in a culture so admirably wrapped up in etiquette and polite behavior.  Rebecca also noted that every single Japanese person had a little charm hanging from their phone - from blue suited business men to cosplay girls in their Little Bo Peep outfits, this little adornment seemed to be a mandatory accessory. It was pouring rain in Tokyo, but fortunately we had umbrellas, plus the Tokyo Green Hotel was close to the Ochanomizu train station, so we got there quickly and without getting too soaked.  This was a relief after the miserable hike to the Hotel Rhino upon our arrival in Kyoto.  The trip was about four hours and ten minutes, door to door. We checked into the room - tiniest one to date! - and cleaned up a little.  This was our final full day in Japan, and we had spent half of it traveling from Kyoto to Tokyo.  I wanted to go do something before the sun set.  I really wanted Rebecca to experience Ueno Park, so we headed over there, even though it was pouring.  Worst case, I figured that I’d finally get to see the Tokyo National Museum (sister museum to the Kyoto National Museum that we had seen two days earlier, and the museum that I had previously missed when I visited the inferior Tokyo Metropolitan Museum by accident). By the time we got there, we only had a bit more than 90 minutes to see the museum, but it was enough time for a once-over, and at least Rebecca got some rainy glimpses of Ueno Park.

At the Ochanomizu subway station

The once-over included:
Gallery 19: Laquerware (shikki or urushi-nuri), including a piece called Bowl with Appliqued Crabs - we’re talking about the fine arts of taxidermy and ceramics, together at long last, two great tastes that taste great together, by Miazawa Kozan the first.
Gallery 18: Modern paintings in traditional style; Bamboo in Rain by Yokoyama Taikan (ink on silk) is a standout (Rebecca preferred Wisteria by Yamamoto Shunkyo from 1920).  And this is interesting: “The Tokyo National Museum’s collection of Modern art contains many important objects, including pieces form the Columbian Exhibition of 1893, held in Chicago”.   I’ve been reading about the Columbian Exhibition a lot lately - one the plane to Tokyo from Chicago, in fact.  I love the synchronicity of seeing some artifacts here in Japan, preserved from a World’s Fair held in my home town 115 years ago, at the same time as I was reading about the fair.
Gallery 13: More shikki (or urushi-nuri) and swords, similar to what we saw in Kyoto.
Gallery 15: Artifacts from the Ainu people, a sort of primitive tribe living in the northern Japanese islands.
Gallery 11: More very cool thousand-year-old statues similar to the ones in the Kyoto museum.  I liked the smooth and delicate treatment of one Buddha, carved of wood; the draped fabric of his robes was sculpted in a particularly skillful manner that caught my attention.  There are also three of the 1001 kannon (diety) statues from Sanjusangendo temple (which we gave the once-over while in Kyoto) here.  I guess there are only 998 left at Sanjusangendo temple, unless even more of them were deported to other museums.  I didn’t count them when we were at the temple - we didn’t pay to go inside and take the full tour of that one.  If these three statues are representative examples of the 998-ish that remain at Sanjusangendo, then we missed out, because they are quite amazing.  Life-sized wood diety effigies detailed with gold leaf.
In the middle of the building is a big gallery (number T5) with a balcony on three sides, filled with maps, sculptures, and architectural fragments tracing the course of Buddhism through the centuries.  From there, a giant marble staircase leads to the upper floor:
Gallery 10: Ukiyo-e and vintage kimonos, plus interesting combs inlaid with mother of pearl.  Rebecca and I both liked three hanging scrolls from the series Twelve Months in the Yoshiwara Pleasure District by Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814), which is not to be confused with another print on display: June from Twelve Months in the Shinagawa Pleasure District by Torii Kiyonaga (Edo period), or Night View of Sumida River by Katsukawa Shunzan, sort of a ukiyo-e triptych.
Gallery 9: More vintage costumes from Noh and Kabuki, the most impressive ones I have seen to date.
Gallery 8 and 7: More screens and panels, shikki, and other things that (like gallery 10) I regretted not having had the time to explore in detail.
Gallery 6 and 5: Lots of samurai armor. Rebecca noted how tiny it is.  Some of the helmets have partial masks built into the front, such as artificial beards joined to the chin straps.  Strange, but the bronze nipples on the chestpieces are even stranger.
Gallery 3: More ink wash paintings.

There was actually lots more on my tape recorder, but I’ll spare you the details.  I think I wanted to get as much as I could out of our quick stop, so I was reading the informational signs in a lot of the galleries onto tape, maybe so as to be able to assimilate the info later.  There’s a whole history of Japanese art ready to unspool  in my tape archives now...

Our time in Japan was now growing quite short.
For our last night in the East, we might have gone for another traditional Japanese meal, but we had decided to top the trip off with a visit to the Tokyo outpost of Trader Vic’s.  I had to visit Vic’s for my Tiki Magazine article, and since Rebecca is a fan of the world-wide institution as well, I waited for her to arrive before exploring this last nightspot on the to-do list that I had otherwise completed before her arrival.
Trader Vic’s has existed since 1934, and currently have about 25 restaurants world wide.  Over the years they have opened and closed more than fifty in total.  Normally, I loathe franchises and chains of any sort, preferring to dine and shop in independent businesses that are as unique as possible, but I will always make an exception for the Trader.  Also, when in Japan, I wanted to eat in Japanese restaurants and sample Japanese food as much as possible... but I will always make an exception for the Trader.

So, with the rain finally subsiding a little bit, we made it over to the New Otani Hotel (seen as an exterior location in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice).  This is a super-posh and tremendously swanky place to drop your bags for the night.  We discovered Vic’s up on the fifth floor (it takes up the entire floor), and were soon greeted by the General Manger, Larry Murakami.  I had emailed him in advance of our arrival in Japan, so he was expecting us.  Larry was born in San Diego so he speaks excellent English.  He gave us the grand tour of the historic restaurant, pointing out works of art by Victor Bergeron - the founder of Trader Vic’s - as well as real Oceanic carvings brought to the restaurant from Polynesia.

Trader Vic’s locations in North America can be a bit pricey - drinks in most of them are $10 to $12, and entrees can easily top $30 -  but the prices at their Tokyo location are off the charts, even by Tokyo standards - we were paying over $20 each for some of our drinks!  Given this perspective, my adventures at places like Bar King Rum and Bar Tender were suddenly not so painful after all.  Five drinks and three appetizers set us back ¥15,618, or about $150 (Navy Grog ¥2048, Hakata Sling ¥1785, Peach Tree Punch ¥1628, Eastern Sour ¥1890, Tiki Puka Puka ¥2048, Crab Rangoon ¥1700, Bongo Bongo Soup ¥1500, Quesadilla Vera Cruz ¥1600).
The quesadilla, by the way, was at Larry’s insistence - this sort of thing is exotic in Japan!  Of course, in Chicago (as in Southern California - Larry's home turf) there is a Mexican restaurant on every other street corner, so Mexican food is a basic staple for me.  But for Larry, the quesadilla represented his contribution to the Trader's reputation for exotica, as well as reminding him of home.
Larry comped us another drink, a special dessert cocktail that he likes to make for his friends and VIPs, and we had one final round courtesy of the only other person sitting at the bar: a drunken businessman in a blue suit.  This particular member of the blue suit mafia just happened to be (in a high position of authority that Rebecca suggested I not reveal, for fear of destroying the man's career!).  He was wasted, and had been sitting there at the bar the whole time we were there. 
I liked the symmetry in place here: on my very first night in Tokyo, I was in a swanky cocktail bar in a swanky hotel, and I met the man called Aki, a former diplomat.  He was wasted, and buying rounds.  And now, another powerful Japanese businessman is wasted and buying rounds on my last night in town, in a swanky bar within a swanky hotel.  Sort of weird bookends that almost define this whole trip in a certain odd way.

So, this hammered executive told us a story about being sent on a business trip to Alaska.  When he arrived, the business deal had fallen through already, so he had a few days to kill in Alaska before he was able to get a flight home.  So he went deep sea fishing.  The men on the fishing boat pulled out guns during the fishing trip and were shooting the fish while they were still in the water.  All but falling off his barstool, the dapper executive made his point to us more clearly as he mimed shooting guns at fish the size of small Japanese cars.  He was laughing like a manic the whole time he was telling us the story.

On the subway after Trader Vic's.

At this point the only thing for it was for Rebecca and I to spend the small change remaining at the bottom of our vacation in a manner most appropriate to the Japanese lifestyle: we got some shochu to go at a grocery store, and wandered around the vicinity of our hotel.  The last bit of tape on my recorder had run out at Trader Vic’s, but if the images on my camera are any indication, there was a certain level of jackassery going on that night.

Readers of this entire travelogue (it is almost over!) may have noticed that there was a bit of booze consumed over the course of the trip.  But it important to remember that in the case of the various cocktail bars and tiki bars that I visited in Tokyo, it was for the sake of the two articles I was writing, and my consumption was rather minimal in each place (a situation aided, no doubt by the prices!).  And, when Rebecca and I bought bottles of sake or shochu, we only had a little nip each night.  At no point on this trip were Rebecca or I drunk.

Until tonight.
The only thing missing was the blue suit.
It went on for quite a while... a random receipt for ¥696 issued at a quarter to one in the a.m. was for two juice boxes of sake, a sack of chocolate (Rebecca), and two rice balls (me).  I can state (almost) definitively that we did not partake of a Crunky bar.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when in Tokyo, get wasted and wander around the city until the subway stops running.

Yes, we did.


Wednesday, June 04

The only good thing about June 4th, 2008, was that our flights home were not until later in the afternoon.  Still, morning came far too soon.  The very second that I opened my eyes and realized that I might rather be dead than alive, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of dread at the prospect of not only getting out of bed, but of packing, and then hauling my luggage across Tokyo to Narita airport... and then sitting on an airplane for twelve hours... and then taking a train and two busses from O’Hare airport back to my home.  I was in no condition to travel to the bathroom, an arm’s length from the bed, let alone halfway around the world.  Rebecca reported that she felt slightly less vile - I think the last bottle of shochu (there were several, I think) was mine alone.  That said, she had an extra juice box of sake in her luggage, a souvenir to be enjoyed on another day. After partly resurrecting my pickled and zombified corpse to the point where shuffling down to the lobby was feasible, we checked out of the Tokyo Green Hotel.  It was too early to go to the airport, but the hotel were inflexible on check-out times (grrr... what I wouldn’t have given for just a little more sleep!).  So we had a little bit of time to kill.  Not enough time to embark on some major activity, but too much to head over to Narita quite so early. We got a leisurely lunch near the hotel.  Rebecca and I seem to have a knack for picking the worst Chinese restaurants possible when we travel.  From the dreadful Rose Garden (or the Wrong Garden as we dubbed it) in Ontario to the vile Restaurant Chino International in Barcelona, we seem unable to avoid the world’s most wretched Chinese food.  We had our last meal in Japan at a Chinese restaurant that definitively continued this most ignoble trend.  I can’t tell you the name of the place, nor how much we spent.  No photo exists of the bland exterior or the forgettable interior, there are no notes on my tape recorder, and no receipt in my expenses envelope.  All that we have left of the miserable excuse for a meal that we choked down our dehydrated gullets is a bitter memory.  This was the only truly poor meal that I ate during my entire time in Japan.  As I have already stated, even the bento boxes for sale in kombinis are more than edible, if not exactly gourmet cuisine.  A few of the bowls of udon or soba noodles that we had were so-so, and the okonomiyaki (Japanese pizza) at Mr. Young Men was fair at best... but none of these meals were poor or inedible; none of them inspired a sour mood or a feeling of having wasted time and money.  Only this mystery dogfood palace near the Ochanomizu subway stop inspired any real fear or loathing. The Chinese meal we had for lunch was just disgusting.

Yushima Seido - the last shrine!

There was a sort of open air market going on right outside of the Ochanomizu subway station.  The market, the Chinese restaurant, and the station are all right on the bank of the river.  We walked across a big bridge towards a shrine that we spotted across the water.  The Yushima Seido shrine dates from 1630, and was moved to its present location in 1690.  So its a relatively new one, by Japanese standards!  I liked the design on the prayer boards here, but the place was deserted, there was no one around at all.  So, with the commerce window closed, I didn’t get one.  I had collected eight of them in Kyoto, so I had enough for my little art project (seen in part four of this travelogue).  Rebecca and I relaxed on the grounds a little bit, just sort of loitering really, until it was time to head out to Narita.

One of the reasons I picked Ochanomizu as our home for the previous night had been its proximity to JR lines; we hopped a JR train to Tokyo Station, and then got on a JR train bound for Narita.  The trip out there was not as comfortable as the trip into Tokyo had been; the Suica/N’EX packages that we bought had only guaranteed a reserved (and more comfortable) seat on our trips from Narita to Tokyo, but not back to the airport.  So we had to sit in a standard subway-type car, as opposed to one of the more plush seats that the reserved customers get in other cars.  We even had to stand for a good part of the 90-minute trip.

Rebecca’s flight was leaving an hour before mine, so we checked her in a bit less than two hours before her flight, walked to her departure gate, and said our farewells. 
Now I had almost three hours to kill.  I wanted to get some of those little triangular pastry things that we’d enjoyed in Kyoto, I wanted to see about hootch prices at duty-free, and I wanted to trade our Suica cards in (the ¥500 deposit we’d paid on them is refundable, plus rebates are offered on the unused balance).  I figured I’d check in, ditch my baggage, and then go about these errands at leisure.  In doing so, I discovered that I was at the wrong terminal.  For some reason, not all international flights leave from the same terminal - I’d assumed that my airline and flight would be leaving from the same terminal as Rebecca’s.  No such luck.  I had to ride the JR train back to the previous stop, and it was pretty far back down the line.  Much further than most airports - Narita is really spread out.  All of a sudden, my time wasn’t so empty.  With some sense of urgency, I made my way back towards the JR station.  Just before entering the station, a random airport cop came over to me and insisted on seeing my passport.  It was a totally random check, and it wasn’t even in one of the secure areas of the airport.  This guy took his sweet time going over my papers, and I heard a train departing as he leisurely peered at my passport.
Well, finally I got to my terminal, and checked in just fine.
And I did get my Suica rebate, which came to something over ¥2000.  So I basically recycled this cash into snacks and souvenirs: I spent ¥500 each on three beautifully wrapped boxes of the pierogi-like pastries (one for Al, the guy whose lot my car was parked in, one for Kim, keeper of my turtles, and one for me), and with a water it all came to ¥1620.  I think I scarfed down at least three rice balls too. 
I was absolutely in no mood to even think about cocktails, but I just could not pass up Cointreau for ¥1800 per bottle in duty-free (that’s a little over seventeen bucks; it costs about $40 in most U.S. states, and is similarly priced in Europe).  I also bought my ritual bottle of Havana Club 7-year for ¥2100.  This stuff is unavailable in the US at all, so I grab a bottle on my way home whenever I travel abroad.  The best type is the Havana Club Gran Reserva, which I got for the equivalent of $8 on my way home from Chile in 2004 - it would probably be about $40 if it were available in the states.  Coming home from Spain, France, and now Japan, I had to settle for the slightly less delicious 7-year variety, which ironically cost me almost triple (in Europe and Japan) what the better stuff cost in South America.  That’s economics for ya’.  But the 7-year is still easily worth the $20 - $24 or so that I have paid for it, so there is no complaints.

The airport was filled with refugees from some unidentified country.  Seemed like somewhere that might have ended in -stan.  There were whole families, extended families, milling around, looking lost.  They all had big day-glo stickers on their clothes, for identification and so that officials from various nations could keep these tribes together on their journey to parts unknown to me and maybe unknown to them too.  They all had the same luggage: a large square green mesh bag.  This bag and its contents might be all that these people currently owned.
 
My seatmate was a petite Japanese woman, but I never even sat down next to her.  A friendly stewardess accommodated my plea for seating arrangements more comfortable to my six-foot-four (193 cm) frame, and directed me towards a pair of empty seats together in the last row.  I was able to stretch out over the two seats for the entire flight home, alternately napping, reading about the Columbian Exposition of 1893, playing Tetris, and counting myself fortunate that I’d never have to deal with Booger-san - my stinky seatmate from the flight eighteen days ago - ever again. 
I did, however, have to contend with refugee babies screaming the entire trip.  They were right across the aisle from me, and also right across the aisle from my officially assigned seat, so moving wouldn’t have helped.  These kids did not cease shrieking for twelve solid hours.  But how could I complain, given that they were not only fleeing from their homes, but their very lives and their countries of birth. 
I’d done the same three weeks ago, but I had the luxury of going home more or less whenever I wanted to.

That time was now.

My flight had left Narita at 5:35pm on Wednesday, and we landed at about 3:30pm - two hours before we left!

When I got home, it was as if the whole thing was a dream - as if I had never left.
But it is always like that.