Tokyo

I've been in Tokyo for 3 days, staying with my friends Manami and Tim. Manami was at SIT with me some years ago and after living in the US in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Iowa and Chicago, she and her American husband decided to live in Tokyo, so I'm lucky to be able to stay with them for a while. You can see some pictures of Manami and me posing on our visit to Akiba, the 'heaven of computer and animation nurds' as Manami puts it. This is a place where Japanese fans of computer technology hang out. Also in this area you can visit a 'maid cafe' where you are served by maids, some of whom stand on the street and try to entice customers. They don't like being photographed as you can see from the picture but everyone does it anyway.

I also visited Manami's junior high school and met 3 of her classes with approximately 42 13-14 year old boys in each class. With Manamis guidance, I spoke with each class for about 20 minutes .Some of them were very shy but others volunteered answers to my questions and asked their own questions, " Who is your favorite animator?", "Do you play computer games?", and "What is your favorite sport?"One of them asked me what time I was born, in the morning or the night and another, how much money I made!

Today's weather is uncertain- it's the rainy season- so we will be prepared with umbrellas as we venture to Kichijoji, an artsy area where there is an arts and craft market and live music around a lake. I will be able to use my JR ( Japan Rail) pass to travel there.

Nara trip

It's been a busy last few days. I spent the night at a wonderfully immaculate hostel in Kyoto and visited Ryoan-ji temple, which has a traditional rock garden, then went into Osaka to join Kris and her charming adoptive parents, Kazuo and Nobuko, pictured below, for happy hour back at El Pancho's, the Mexican restaurant we had visited earlier. Kris just loves those yuzu margaritas!!

A more memorable meal for me was in Kyoto at a tofu restaurant. Now I know many people find tofu very bland and boring, but I have to say this was one of the most delicious and aesthetic eating experiences of my life. Who knew that tofu could be prepared in so many ways, and have so many tastes and textures, sometimes, chewy, sometimes melt-in -your mouth, lighter than air soft? Even the dessert was a green tea flavored tofu souffle like concoction. I did take pictures but am having tech problems downloading them.....hence the double picture of me in the Nara tourist office. (Just can't figure out how to erase the second one!!)Since you may be wondering why the comical statue has horns, it symbolizes the town of Nara, known for its many Buddhist temples and also many deer wandering around, badgering tourists for food. The photo below those 2 is me at a temple in Kyoto, Ryoan-ji, famous for its traditional rock garden.

Today I am going to Osaka to get my Japan Rail pass tickets for my trip to Tokyo in a few days and also I hope to use it to travel to Koya-san, a Buddhist temple town , where I think I'll be staying overnight at Buddhist monastery. It's in the mountains and should be a little cooler than the plains. I've been pretty lucky with the weather so far...it's not nearly as hot as I expected and just yesterday we had the first heavy rain of the season. It will probably get increasingly hot and humid from this point on, so I'll appreciate the cool hill weather.

More later....

trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima

Over the weekend, Kris, Susanne and I took the shinkansen, or bullet train, to Hiroshima. The train is very fast, as the name implies, and very comfortable with attendants walking through the compartments offering drinks and snacks as they do on planes. We stayed in a hotel with traditional tatami rooms and both nights, we each unrolled our bedding side by side on the mats.

On the first day, Saturday, we visited the neighboring island of Miyajima, known for its temples and shrines and wild deer wandering around looking for any paper maps or pamphlets or better still, anything we normally think of as edible that an unsuspecting tourist may be holding. They are quite aggressive and there is a warning as you disembark the ferry to make sure that you put away your Japan Rail Pass safely before venturing on the island. I was lucky enough to witness a formal marriage ceremony

held in one of the shrines...many bystanders were watching and taking pictures as the bride in a gorgeous white satin kimono and the groom also in traditional clothes, went through the marriage rituals.

Hiroshima of course is known as the first place where an atomic bomb was exploded in 1945, initially killing about 140,000 people outright and many more who died of radiation related illnesses. The crane, a traditional Japanese symbol of happiness and longevity, became associated with HIroshima, when a little girl who developed leukemia at the age of 11 in 1955, decided to fold 1000 paper cranes. Unfortunately, she died before reaching her goal but her classmates folded the rest and since then, paper crane folding is a Japanese pastime. The pic at the top of this posting (sorry, the images are out of order with the text) is the remaining shell of a famous building that was left after the bombing.

The memorial hall has some moving stories of survivors on video and computerized records of the names of known victims, including some American servicemen and prisoners of war who happened to be in Hiroshima that August day.

These days, Hiroshima is also known as a prosperous city with a lively nightlife scene. We visited a bar after our okonomiyaki meal on Saturday but crashed pretty early. My final picture- which is the first one at the top- shows us posing with some college students who had an assignment to ask us questions in English!

shiatsu massage

Two days ago, I picked up Susanne- a friend of ours who taught in Istanbul with Kris and I- from the Osaka airport, successfully negotiating 4 trains to get there. The last train was a special airport express that resembled a plane from the outside, very fancy on the inside, with reserved seats. One interesting feature of many Japanese trains is the announcements, first in a high pitched female voice in Japanese and then in a deeper, serious voice in English. Girlishness is 'cute' in Japan and high pitched voices, ruffly dresses, impossibly high heels and all the "Hello Kitty" type accessories are manifestations of this. (There are, of course, some Japanese girls/women who rebel against this look and sport high top sneakers, baggy jeans, etc.)

Yesterday Susanne and I had massages from an English friend of Kris' who has lived in Kyoto for 15 years and trained in the shiatsu method. While Susanne was being massaged first, I visited a local temple and shrine, with a beautiful multi-level garden and, just sat for a while enjoying the peace, only interrupted by the croaking of a frog and soft murmuring of people working in the garden. Back at Brigid's, in her traditional screened studio, covered in tatami mats, I had an hour of mostly gentle, occasionally mildly painful but enjoyable and relaxing pressure massage. The area that is being massaged is covered with cloth and no oil is used, unlike my previous experience of shiatsu in NY where I was naked and massaged with lots of sesame oil. At various points, Brigid asked me how I felt as she applied pressure. At the end she said I was in good shape but the sensitivity in my small intestine area might indicate a tendency to hold feelings in.

After our massages were done, before heading back to Hirakata where Kris lives, we looked for a restaurant that Brigid recommended. When we entered and I told the two guys behind the counter that Brigid and Tad had sent us and there was no comprehension in their eyes, this should have been the sign that we were in the wrong place, but we stayed and instead of the recommended soba noodles, drank beer and ate yakitori, Japanese skewered and barbequed meat and vegetables. I used my Point It book again - the page with pics of pigs, cows, goats, hens and other livestock- to identify which yakitori we wanted to try. The ground chicken balls and tofu appetizer mixed with things that resembled curled up sea creatures were the most delicious. The two young guys who had about 3 words of English between them, scurried around their small area behind the bar, chopping pieces of meat and chicken, arranging the tiny plates of food just so, keeping meticulous track of everybody's order and loading the tiniest dishwasher I have ever seen when the sink got full with dirty dishes. I shot a short video of them, but they thought I was simply taking a picture so one of them remained still for the first 15 seconds of it, holding his peace sign in the air while the other ran off to attend to a customer.

Tomorrow, the 3 of us are off to Hiroshima on a shinkansen, a high speed bullet train. We are spending 2 nights there.

more photos

Wasn't able to put all my photos on previous post...here's 2 from the busy shopping area in Osaka...note Japanese Little Bo-Peep.

photos

Here's some photos taken around the beautiful Heian-Jingu temple gardens and previous days visits to Kyoto and Osaka.

cycling around Kyoto

I rented a bike and cycled around Kyoto yesterday. Somehow I find that cycling in a new city is one of the most enjoyable activities when I travel. It enables you to explore and get the feel of a place in a different way than walking, which I also love to do. I feel less like a tourist and more like one of the residents (and with my helmet and dark glasses, who knows I'm a tourist??). Who am I kidding? It's precisely because I'm wearing a helmet (and a dorky one at that- thank you Kris!- red, and covered in stickers) that I stand out, since the Japanese generally don't wear helmets. As it is, I had a slight accident when I rode into the bushes on the side of the cycling path, but only sustained minor scratches on my leg. Here, they drive on the left so that gets some getting used to and they are very reluctant to use their little bells when they go past pedestrians, although to me it seems cyclists ride precariously near the walkers. Kris say the reason they don't use their bells is they're shy!! Kyoto is a cycling friendly city and you can ride along the river and go up and down little alleys and canals lined with charming old homes, and some modern ones too, all with little gardens or at the least, pots of beautiful flowers. I can now see why people find Kyoto so attractive.

I have seen geishas walking on the street, although whether they are are 'real' geishas or simply girls who are 'trying out' the experience for the day, I'm not sure.

I visited another wonderful temple and watched a ceremony of purple clad Buddhist monks chanting and filing in and out of the shrine area. There was a lot of gold in the alter area, but the overall effect was beautifully balanced with the dark wood of the architecture, not gaudy at all, as I've seen in some temples in China.

Some other observations: I saw a restaurant that advertised an 'a ra carte' menu- that cracked me up. The trains here are quite impressive...very clean and very comfortable. Everyone lines up on the platform at designated spots to board in a civilized manner. At the end of the line , the conductor pushes a button and all the backs of the seats flip to face the other direction so that passengers are facing the direction of their travel. And finally, I saw a woman wearing a uniform carrying a flat oblong shaped thing with a handle, who was waiting at the front of the line- when the train stopped and the doors opened, she snapped open her package and it unfolded to become a platform she put on the ground, so that a passenger in a wheelchair could easily roll herself down. Quite impressive!