Author: Sharon

We went to Nikko today, up to the mountains to see the shrine and temple complex. We took a lot of pictures – that will have to be another post. Instead, today I want to tell you about bathrooms. Or, to be more specific, Japanese toilets. Wow – such in infinite variety! And I’m not even talking about Japanese style toilets – I’ve manage to avoid those altogether.

The Japanese love of gadgetry has been applied to toilets, producing appliances that need instruction manuals. Heated seats with temperature controls are pretty much standard everywhere. Dual flush mechanisms are fairly common, too, although they don’t use simple symbols. And since we can’t read the Japanese characters we have a 50/50 chance of getting either half or full flush…. Its the options for – shall we say – undercarriage rinsing that can be surprising. Some have simple controls attached to the side of the toilet seat itself – simple pictures. And then you get something like this:

complete with time….. Or this one:

That’s the men’s room. Ladies’ room at the same facility was so confusing that someone had put a little paper sign ‘flush’ to give us a clue.

And I’m not even talking about the startling sound effects. Apparently Japanese women are quite modest about having anyone hear what they might be up to, so they flush the toilet immediately upon entering the cubicle, then get on with their business, then flush again. Big waste of water. One solution is to have either music play, or the sound of water. Which can be a surprise if you don’t expect it.

Oh – and this was a whole new one at one hotel:

I’ll have to say, though, that the facilities are spotlessly clean. Often, in the West, if you want to come up with a synonym for disgusting ‘as bad as a train station toilet’ will suffice. Or even worse  – ‘a subway toilet’. Not so, here. Absolute palaces. Public restrooms on the street – no problem. Quite a change from some places we’ve been to.

This leads to a situation that Wilf has run across. In the train station there are the pink ladies. Usually older ladies, in pink uniforms. When the big trains pull in a team of pink ladies will descend upon each car and in a flurry of sweeping, tidying, washing and polishing will whip that train car into perfection in a matter of minutes. In the Kyoto station one morning  Wilf was gone for a long time. When he appeared he said that he was rather taken aback because one of the pink ladies was in the men’s room cleaning the sinks – didn’t seem to concerned that he was there. And yesterday when we arrived at the Tokyo station he came back from a visit. The men’s was very busy but at the urinal next to him was a pink lady, cleaning away. Two more were standing back by the wall having a grand old chat, seemingly oblivious to the activity around them.

Its a humbling thing, going from being an avid fan of all things written to not being able to read at all. It isn’t like in Europe, where I might or might not have spoken the language. Usually I could start to recognize patterns, so even if didn’t speak German I would see the letters strasse and see that it meant street and know that the next time I saw strasse we were talking about a street again. Even Czech, which made no sense to me, had some words that I came to recognize.

Japan – not so much. Heck, not at all. Surrounded by symbols, but they are meaningless to us. Some of our guidebooks give us the names of places in English, then the characters so we can recognize them. But we are usually confronted with such a blizzard of symbols that we can’t pick out anything.

Yesterday we went to the town of Furukawa, in the Hida district. We’re getting off the beaten path, for Western travelers, at least. They’re set up for a huge number of Japanese visitors. We were whiling away time in the train station, confirming to ourselves that we were headed in the right direction. We compared our guide book with the train station signage and managed to match up the symbols for the name of the town. Of course, once we knew those two symbols we saw them everywhere. We even figured out that that the symbols following probably meant ‘station’. Later that day we were at the Furukawa station, waiting for the return train in the cold and rain. We were staring at the hotel across the way when Wilf said ‘Hey – that sign says Hida-Furukawa.’ And sure enough – we both remembered and recognized the symbols. We were as pleased with ourselves as if we’d discovered fire. Now, if we could just remember something useful.

When we got to our hotel here in Tokyo we noticed that the remote for the tv had a button for TV guide. Hey, we thought, maybe it’ll help us figure out what’s going on:

Yeah, again with the not so much!

Of course, English is not always supremely helpful here, either. When we got to Furukawa yesterday they were very pleased to present us with a copy of the English version of their tourist map. At the top it says:

A town where Japanese spirit live unchanged since olden times.

Hida Furukawa stroll map

From long ago, people full of human touch and cityscape where master technique lives are also expressed ‘Come to Furukawa if you get bored with the free world’ Touch the feeling of Furukawa where you can just relief and feel nostalgic.

Pretty hard to argue with that, eh?

Light picture day today as we spent most of it on the train. We took a smaller local train from Takayama to Nagoya, then switched to the Shinkasen for the ride to Tokyo. And that thing flies! Being a clear day look who put in an appearance:

Fuji-san!

Tomorrow we’re off to see the over the top extravagance of Nikko

Not too surprisingly, everyone here seems to have a cell phone. Unlike in North America or Europe, where phones tend to be Blackberry/IPhone size, or tiny tiny, the phones here a sort of midsize – maybe 2” by 4”. Most flip open, some have a top layer that slides up. The thing is that the screen area is large – certainly much larger than my little Koodo phone. 

People refer to their phones constantly – pulling them in and out of pockets, wearing them on straps around their necks. On the train one day last week one young women spent the entire 3 hour train ride looking at the screen of her phone. The big difference – you rarely hear them ring and people don’t talk on their phones that often. But the thumbs are flying as lots of texting and web surfing goes on.

I’m always a little surprised when an incredibly elegant, expensively dressed woman pulls out her phone and it has all this stuff hanging off of it. Charms and do dads. I started watching and its everyone one – men, women , children, everyone. And not just a charm or two. Whole small stuffed animals (which look really ratty after being pulled in and out of pockets or bags). Purses and backpacks, too.  Hmm, thought I.

Then we went to a Buddhist temple. And at most temples there are booths/kiosks that sell charms. Charms for good luck, good health, safe driving, good grades. Most of these are little coloured silk bags with a cord. They are worn close to the body and are not to be opened, or they do not work. The good grades charms are little backpacks, like the ones school kids wear.  So, it would appear that there is a tradition of having charms, and cell phones are one of the places they wind up.

I don’t have my cell phone with me, so I’ve got one for my camera:

A stamp of Kyoto and a little maple leaf – ‘cause one must be au courant with the seasons…..

Clearly I need a tricky little strap for my camera.

The Japanese esthetic is interesting. On the one hand there is the elegant and refined style, perfected over hundreds of years of applied effort. And then there’s Hello Kitty. Cute to the point that your teeth hurt.

We ate lunch today at a restaurant in Furukawa. Being way up in the mountains this is cow country, so we had Hida beef with curry sauce. The placemat was beautiful – an elegant sketch of maple leaves and a mountain. And the chopsticks holder was a ceramic Pokeman character. Go figure.

The beef with curry sauce was delicious, as were all the components of the meal – this was a sort of first course –colours and decorations to match the season. Its a croquette of mashed potatoes and vegetables – very good!

While we were in Furukawa the weather took a turn for the worse. It began to rain. And then it got serious and really began to rain. And the wind came up. The train station is a pretty minimal operation and today it won the ‘Coldest place I’ve ever been’ prize. In fact we resorted to a can of hot coffee from the vending machine. And then the train didn’t come and we were beginning to wonder how we would get out of there. But another train came and all was well. We got back to the hotel, added sweaters and gloves and carried on. Now we’re tucked up in our room with the heat on and drinking tea. Tomorrow we head for Tokyo – back to the crowds!

And a room with a real bed, tables and chairs:

Takayama is not unusual in that it has big festivals, or even that it has them twice a year. But they are known for the parade floats at their festivals. The festivals date way way back – one in the spring before the crops are planted, one in the fall after the harvest. 350,000 people come to see the events, which is more than the population of the city. They have a museum where some of the floats are on display, so we went for a look see. And we were amazed!

There are 23 floats – some for spring, some for fall. They are over 300 years old, they are huge and I would say that they are priceless, but they are in fact valued in the millions of dollars, each one. They are all considered to be national treasures.

At any given time there are three floats in the museum, along with an immense portable shrine.

The floats have wheels, and are pulled by ropes through the streets. There is a night procession through the old town with the floats decked with lanterns. The upper level of each float can be lowered down into the red curtained area.

The painting, carving and gilding on each structure is astonishing.When they are not in the museum the floats live in shed like barns in the old part of town – here’s a link to a picture: Float Barn – we saw them as we walked through town. And more pictures here: Takayama festival

The shrine, below, weighs several tons (the bottom part is cast iron). It is no longer carried through town – they need 80 people of the same height to carry it (two teams of 40, 10 men to a pole) and can’t raise such a group any more. Each float has its club that wheels it through town and is associated with it.

We came out of the museum in front of the main shrine for the city – just in time for a wedding party to be passing by!

There were also flocks of children in traditional dress. In November there is the 7-5-3 festival for children. Three and five year old boys and three and seven year old girls are brought to the shrine for blessings of those auspicious ages. They are dressed in formal traditional wear. Their parents and grandparents may or may not be in traditional wear. It is an occasion of much picture taking. The festival date is November 15, but lots of people were getting a head start today:

this little lady was all about posing for pictures – her brother, not so much!

And then, just as we were about head out – another wedding party:

In this procession there was the attendant, the father of the bride in western style formal wear, the bride in her mother in full Japanese regalia (note the mother’s very formal black kimono with family crests) followed by members of the bride’s party in a mix of Japanese and western formal wear. They were greeted by the entrance to the office by the groom’s party:

In the first wedding party the bride and groom walked together, followed by relatives and greeted a group by the door. We never did figure out all the details – was this the wedding ceremony? Why not in the main shrine  – was there a service? why were the wedding parties and the children and their families all going in the same door, but only the kids and families coming back out? Were the wedding people going out another entrance (there was one) or was there another room for a reception in there? They came by hired bus, which was still in the parking lot. So many questions…..

Fortunately all this happened before the big rain came!

And once again those little flag pins lead to adventures. We’re in Takayama, a town in the mountains. The old part of town has been well preserved and is a UNESCO world heritage site, which means it is a big tourist destination – both for international and domestic tourism. Wilf has booked us into a little hotel that has a selection of types of rooms – we’re in a Japanese style room with a private bath. You know what that means – we’re sleeping on the floor!

There’s himself reclining on his futon.

And here he is watching a baseball game:

Traditional it may be, but we do have Internet access! Anyhoo, we set out tonight to walk around the old town. Bought some skewers of grilled something from a street vendor – don’t know what it was but she was doing a brisk business, so we figured we should join in. Takayama is known for its sake distilleries and we dropped into one store for a sample. Or two.

Eventually we found our way to a pub listed in our guide book. It gave the name – Wada, but of course none of the restaurants have their names in Roman letters. The guide had the name in Kanjii, so by following the map and trying to match the characters we figured we were in the right spot. We snuggled up to the bar and were given English menus. Which are of limited help, sometimes. I mean, really, when the menu says ‘Chicken tail on skewer’ what are you to make of that? What do they consider to be a tail on a chicken?  ‘Chicken entrails on skewer’ – I actually figure they mean that one and thanks but no thanks.

We settled on chicken yakitori, fried squid and grilled shiitake mushrooms and with enough pointing at the menu and hand signals got things underway. The rest of the people at the bar were vastly amused by the cook’s attempts to speak English and were giving him a hard time. After a lot of head nodding and smiling eventually came the sentence out of which I could pick ‘America?’ Which led to ‘Ah, Canada’, then a lot of had signals to ascertain that, yes, Canada does have mountains. Pretty soon the two couple next to us were sending over skewers (nothing scary, thank heavens) and they passed their dish of squid just as ours arrived.

I gave each of the two women a Canadian flag pin – and what a commotion that caused. Such excitement!In fact one of them got on the cell phone – I could hear a torrent of Japanese, out of which I could pick ‘Canada’ and ‘Vancouver’ – and then then phone is handed to me to speak to this person! It was so loud in the bar that neither one of us could hear the other….

Anyway, much bonding occurred – I was presented with a bead bracelet, cards were exchanged, drinks were bought and by the time they all left it was handshakes and air kisses all around.

And no, I don’t know why all Japanese feel the need to make the rabbit ears when they are having their picture taken.

The Japanese have been extremely polite, helpful and kind to us all along. I’ve been really trying to speak a few words of Japanese. I think I’ve got  Good morning and Thank you very much down quite well – people seem to recognize what I’m saying. We were walking in a garden yesterday and I said Good morning  – Ohayo gozaimasu (which sounds like ohio gozaimasss) to a man as we passed on a narrow path. I don’t think that the fellow could looked any more surprised if a unicorn had walked by and spoken to him. Today at lunch I said Thank you – arigato gozaimasu to the hostess and she looked surprised and blurted out ‘Very Good!’

I’ll leave you for today with the following as a warning to what happens when someone has one too many beers on a Saturday night:

Okay – enough about coffee. Tea comes in three basic forms here. There is brown tea, which is probably the equivalent of our orange pekoe – your basic everyday stuff. There is green tea. And there is Green Tea! The green tea is pale green in colour and doesn’t, to my uneducated palate, taste too different from the brown stuff.

Green Tea! is the stuff of the famous tea ceremony. In the interest of maintaining international relations I will not use words like – algae, or pond scum or, well you get the idea. Let’s just say that it must be an acquired taste.

Now, we did not partake in a classic tea ceremony. While we were in Kyoto we were visiting various shrines and temples (and they sure have a lot of them). We went to the Golden Temple, which is one of the very important ones. And it is beautiful. The gardens are exquisite. The temple itself is lovely, and then being gilded it is magical, perched the edge of its lake. Well, here:

There is a lovely path through the garden, and lanterns and out buildings to admire. It is also one of the most popular sites in Kyoto, and it tends to look like this:

There were school kids in uniform, school kids in matching hats, women in saris from India, a group of Russians in business suits with interpreters and guides. People, people, every where. We came to a little tea spot amongst the trees right about when we needed a little sit down, so in we went.

We’ve learned that when you see red felt coverings on benches that there is food or a place to rest at hand. We each received a bowl of green tea and a small  – cookie? sweet? pastry?, along with instructions to eat the sweet first.

I’m not sure if you can tell, but pressed into the surface is the temple (lower right corner), a phoenix (upper right corner) and two little squares of gold leaf.  Like many Japanese sweets this is a bean concoction, with an oddly sweet taste and a strange texture – a bit gritty. Not bad, but not what we were expecting. The tea has been beaten with a whisk, so there is a layer of foam on top, with the bitter green tea underneath. You are supposed to pick it up the bowl with both hands, hold it in your right hand, turn it 180 degrees with your left and then drink it in three gulps. I must admit I saved a bit of the sweet for after cause I thought I might want to get the taste of the tea out of my mouth. So – interesting, but not exactly a refreshing cuppa!

Towards the exit of the temple there was a a souvenir area that had all kinds of boxed candy and treats. We’ve seen them everywhere, but haven’t bought any because we have no idea what they are and just because they look pretty doesn’t mean they are nice (may I remind you – bean paste?) But they were giving samples, so we decided to man up and try them. Not the best idea we’ve had. We take a little sample, taste it, then try to keep a straight face and get away from the vendor as politely as possible. I have to keep remembering that just because I don’t understand what the people around me are saying doesn’t mean that they don’t understand me – no shouting ‘Oh my God that’s terrible!’ Wilf took one last bite – something that looked like a grape jelly candy. He reeled to one side, looked stricken and muttered to me ‘That was the worst one EVER’. So there we were, trying to maintain some decorum, giggling hysterically…… The good news is that we did find a box of something called chocolates – they have the word chocolate, the word milk and the word chestnut on the packaging. They taste good, and that’s the main thing…

Finding coffee isn’t really a problem in Japan – there’s a Starbucks almost anywhere we go, and there are all sorts of other coffee shops around, too. Even the temples and shrines have coffee spots. Sometimes its a coffee machine – put in the money, push the button, wait, open the little door and there’s a paper cup of coffee. Usually its 2/3 of a cup of coffee – getting an actual full cup isn’t the norm.

Anyhoo, we wanted to tour the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. There’s an English tour at 10:00 am, but you have to present yourself at least 30 minutes early at the Imperial Household Office (with your passport, please and thank you) to get a ticket. We figured we’d better get an early start on this one. We stopped at the coffee shop near our hotel for breakfast – the one called ‘Open’. We think because it almost always is open. They have a morning set, which is coffee and…. I chose cheese toast, Wilf chose the breakfast sandwich. Both came with sides. I wound up with a big thick slice of white bread, lightly toasted, with barbque sauce and melted white cheese on top. Wilf had a white bread sandwich with a scrambled egg inside. And barbque sauce. The sides were a hard boiled egg and a salad, of shredded lettuce, onions and carrots with a dressing. Included was a big mug of coffee. Considering some of the things we’ve been faced with for breakfast this seemed refreshingly normal.

We found our way by subway to the palace, filled out the forms and got our tickets, then had a bit of a wait. It was a nice morning and we sat at a table under the trees. Wilf was wishing for a second cup of coffee, so I went off to the pavillion. No joy in the food service area, but there’s always a vending machine within sight around here. And sure enough:

A hot cuppa joe, in a can! I’ve heard that you can get anything from a vending machine around here. Mostly the ones we’ve seen sell drinks, hot and cold in cans or bottles. We saw one in the train station that had a frozen food company logo on it, but the pictures of the food had steam rising from them. And they included such things as spaghetti and French fries. We decided that frozen spaghetti micro-waved in train station vending machine was probably not something we wanted to do!

Today we had breakfast at The Cafe du Monde. No need to go all the way to New Orleans – there’s one in the Kyoto train station! The sign said coffee and beignets, but we didn’t see beignets, so we went for ham sandwiches, instead. Then, when we decided that we did want a donut we went next door to Mr. Donut!

Oh, and by the way – the Merry Xmas signs were up around the train station, as well as a big Christmas tree or two. Right next to the Hallowe’en decorations!

After a long day sightseeing we’re sure enjoying  a bath in the evening. Our hotel has men’s and women’s baths on the top floor looking out over the city. It sounds like mixed communal baths are no longer common, but separate communal baths are common in some hotels.

Our first experience with the communal bath was at the ryoken in Hakone and the instructions seem to be standard. The hotel provides us with a cotton yukata (kimono style robe), a sash and slippers. Ladies tie the sash higher – waist level, gentlemen tie it lower, around their hips. We have to remember left side of the robe over the right, which feels opposite to the usual. There is also a short hapi coat to wear if it is cold out. In our bathroom there are small plastic drawstring bags into which we put a small towel, shower cap if needed. We also take a large towel with us. Here I am in Hakone all ready to head out:

At this hotel the bath was in a small separate building across from where our room was. It really wasn’t cold enough for the hapi coat and I only used it the once. Here in Kyoto we just ride the elevator up, so no coat needed.

There is a rack at the entrance where the slippers are left, then into the dressing room. There are lockers there, with baskets in them, into which everything but the small towel go. From there it is into the bathing room proper. There seem to be less men around in the early evening, so Wilf took the camera up and managed a few pictures when there was no one else around.

First order of business is to go to the left where the little seats and taps are. Sit down on the seat, fill the  basin with water, turn on the hand held shower and start soaping and scrubbing and rinsing. There are bottles of soap, shampoo and conditioner provided. After much cleaning and rinsing it is time to get into the bath proper:

The little towel (a little bigger and thinner than a standard hand towel) is used as a washcloth, to preserve one’s modesty (sort of) when moving about, to wrap up one’s hair. It doesn’t go into the bath. Some people just fold it up and put it on top of their head, or wrap up their hair. The water is very hot – I have to ease in by degrees. When all the way in and sitting on the bottom the water is just about to my chin.

Once suitably parboiled it is time for another rinse, then out to dry off and get back into the yukata. It is a great way to end the day. The bath is open from about 6:oo am to mid morning. It opens again at 5:30 pm and stays open until about 1:00 am.

So much to see and do. And reading the signage and trying to figure out what the intent was is high on the list of entertainment. For instance, today I saw this shopping bag in the 7-11 and couldn’t resist:

Don’t we all hate it being left?

We are staying at the Aranvert Hotel Kyoto. I thought that Aranvert was an unusual name for a Japanese hotel, having a vaguely French sound to it. Well, here is the explanation from the brochure in our room:

The name of Hotel: Aranvert Hotel Kyoto:

“Aranvert” means the nature of Ireland. Aranvert Hotel Kyoto intergrated the British traditioninto Kyoto’s long years of history. We provide the mixturised traditional atmosphare in perfect harmony.

Yeah. I’ll let you think about that one for a minute. (And, no, I’m not having trouble with the little keyboard on the netbook)

I do have to say that the fractured language is not limited to English. Today we saw a shop with a big electronic sign that said: Boulangfrie. The awning below said Boulangerie. Do you suppose anyone involved has even noticed the difference?

Today we went to Nara to see the Todai-ji Temple. We left Kyoto by train in the rain, and by the time we arrived in Nara it had graduated to pouring rain. We transferred from the train to a local bus and off we went. The guide books mentioned that there were over 1,000 tame deer that lived in the park around the temple. They are considered ‘messengers of the gods’. Maybe so. But they’re pretty feisty, too.

We got off the bus and began to walk up the big path toward the temple. First thing we saw was a rickshaw driver trying to eat his lunch:

This particular ‘messenger of the gods’ ain’t too proud to beg.

There were women with pushcarts selling cookies that you could feed to the deer. That meant, of course, that there were a lot of deer around. Wet deer. Aggressive deer. We were looking around when Wilf lurched into me. At first he had the ‘why did you push me look’, but then he realized that I was in front him. He looked behind him and there was a deer with a ‘Dude! Where’s my cookie’ look about it. I guess when no cookie was forthcoming he decided a good head butt was in order. When Wilf turned around to take a picture I realized that the deer had left a mark:

And they were everywhere but in the temple proper:

But it was the temple and the Buddha within that we were there to see:

The temple is huge. The Buddha is huge. It is an amazing place. The Buddha was cast in 752 AD – he is 53ft high. Through fire, earthquake and political upheaval he has sat there for more than a thousand years, blessing those who seek his blessings.