Japanese curiosities

Yes, everything you have heard about 7-11's in Japan is true.  They sell everything from fresh baked goods to pork baos to prepared dinners.  It was also where I had to go to buy stamps for postcards.  But they have competition; Family Mart and Lawson's are almost identical and I like the baked goods at Family Mart better.  Also, you never hand money to the cashier.  At 7-11, you feed bills and coins into a slot on your side of the counter, and change comes out.  At the other two, you put the cash in a little container and the clerk picks it up from there.  Of course, you can use credit or cash cards.

It is also true about Kit-Kats.  For whatever reason that no one knows, they make Kit-Kats in every weird flavor you can imagine and some you cannot:  green tea, wasabi, matcha.  And the store to buy them (go figure) is named Don Quixote.

I also bought some more authentic Japanese treats like wasabi peanuts, and a few less common treats like salmon jerky.

They drive on the left side in Japan.  Apparently this has nothing to do with the British Empire.  Rather, the samurai needed to stay to the left so that their sword was accessible for meeting a passing enemy.  Maybe, but it's a good story.  They also drive teeny, tiny cars, and only back into spaces, including spaces that are so small that I couldn't figure out how the driver gets out.  Then I remembered - they drive on the left and the driver sits on the right.

Everyone knows about the heated toilet seats and the toilets with so many buttons that you have no idea what they are for.  I have also mentioned that most public bathrooms do not have paper towels or garbage cans, so you have to carry a small towel with you.  But there were so many other oddities of Japanese bathrooms.  For example, how does a young mother manage with a baby?  What about a toddler son who cannot go to the men's room by himself?  The Japanese have answers for these problems and others.

Ladies toilet with baby holder

Only urinal I have ever seen in a women's bathroom.

You do not wear your shoes inside.  You also do not wear your inside sandals in a bathroom.  There are special sandals for that.

Toilet with a built-in sink on top.

So that's why they always close the lid.

It rains a fair amount here so everyone carries an umbrella.  When you go inside a museum or other public place, you put the umbrella in a special umbrella holder that locks it in place and gives you a key.  At the lovely restaurant we went to in Kyoto, if you wanted to walk in the garden, they supplied both sandals (since you did not have shoes on inside) and umbrellas.

Something I have never seen before:

And I could see someone inside holding a tiny pig

Finally, most translations here have been excellent but occasionally you see a sign and wonder:  did they really have to warn me about that?

More Kyoto and then back to Tokyo

After my tour ended, I got to spend two more days in Kyoto seeing a few more of the hundreds of shrines and temples.  Even more amazing.

According to our guide, the US did not bomb Kyoto conventionally (missiles and fire bombs) because they planned on dropping the atomic bomb here and they wanted a "pure" comparison of the damage done by various types of bombs.  But then someone figured out how important Kyoto is culturally to Japan and realized that if we bombed Kyoto, the Japanese would never forgive us.  So Kyoto escaped any bombing.  

We walked through narrow streets with original wood houses although the guide did say that they are losing two or three original houses a week and rebuilding with cheaper, modern materials.  The rounded section (inuyarai) at the bottom of the house, which is traditionally made of wood, is to protect the wooden walls from animals, specifically ... dog pee which rots the wood.  A lot of the wooden walls look burned because they are.  They are lightly scorched to dry out the wood and apparently, protect the walls for larger fires.

We took an evening walking tour of Gion which is traditionally the Geisha district, although in Kyoto, geishas are called geikos.  Each serves a one year apprenticeship as a maiko, essentially working as a servant.  If she makes it through that year, she continues as a trainee for five years, learning dance, music, and culture.  Our guide pointed out the signs and letters that were discreetly placed on buildings to designate Geisha houses, tea houses, and sake houses. We finished our tour at the lovely Yasaka Shrine.

The next day Kasey and I took a five hour e-bike tour of Kyoto where we got to really explore a much bigger section of the old parts of the city.  One comment about local guides:  on my tour of the fish market in Tokyo two weeks ago, my guide was an Israeli from a Russian family who made multiple trips to Japan and fell in love with it, so he moved here permanently a few years ago.  The guide from our evening walking tour of Gion was from Spain, and the bike tour guide, who is from London, moved here more than twenty five years ago.  And the best guide I would have (two days later) was from Ecuador.  I have two questions:  first, what makes these young people fall in love with Japan, a country that is so different and has a difficult language to learn?  Second, given what I have read about how unaccepting the Japanese are of foreigners, do they ever really "become" Japanese?  Is tour guiding the only work they can do here?  I wonder.

Back to our bike ride.  Kyoto has several canals and we rode along lovely trails, including the Philosopher's Path.  Kyoto is a university town, with students comprising one tenth the population.  At one point we walked (not rode) across the narrowest bridge in Kyoto.  It was a beautiful fall day with leaves changing colors, something I don't get to see in California.  And the tour ended with a fifteen minutes ride on the American River Bike Trail - whoops, it was the Kamo River Bike Trail - but I felt right at home passing white egrets and duck families.  Another Buddhist temple, the Nanzenji, has of all things ... a Roman aqueduct.  Okay, the Romans never got to Japan, but the Japanese definitely copied it.

Another beautiful Shinto shrine, the Heian, and then the highlight of the ride, the Imperial Palace and Garden.  The emperors may not have had much power - that rested in the Shogunate - but they were big on ceremony, and this was the home and ceremonial seat of the emperor from the eighth to the nineteenth century when the capital moved to Tokyo.

Lunch was another experience with too much food but it was our own fault.  We went to a sushi restaurant with a conveyor belt.  Not the kind that circulates pre-made, mediocre sushi endlessly.  Rather, this was a completely automatic experience.  At the entrance to the restaurant was a screen where we entered the number of people and it gave us a ticket with our table number so we could seat ourselves.  At the table was a screen that scrolled through pictures of the entire menu.  We clicked on whatever we wanted, and that dish appeared two minutes later, diverted from the main conveyor belt to a spur line to our table.  Just before it arrived, the screen announced:  your item(s) are about to arrive.  I was so intrigued by the process and the range of sushi that I kept ordering, eventually trying egg salad sushi and salted pork rib sushi (looked more like bacon).  We did not try the minihamburger sushi, salmon basil mozzarella sushi, or eggplant wasabi sushi.  When we finished eating, we took the slip we had been given on entering to the payment machine, and presto, there was the bill which, of course, we paid with a credit card.

Egg salad sushi

Salted pork rib sushi

The next day, Kasey and I took the bullet train to Tokyo.  Our first stop was back to the fish market.  It was already after 2:00 when we got there so a lot of stalls were closing down.  The fish market is definitely an early morning place.  But I did finally get (in the fish market, of course) ... my first waygu beef.  It was delicious.  Topped off with grilled and flamed scallops.

We took two night walking tour in different Tokyo neighborhoods:  a beautifully lit up stroll through Asakusa and the next night we joined the masses in Shinjuku, the entertainment district of Tokyo.  A bit overwhelming and not our kind of entertainment.  In the daytime, we took a long bike ride through a much quieter section of Tokyo stopping, of course, at a Shinto shrine and Buddhist temple or two, as well as riding around the Imperial Palace and Gardens.  The ride took us through narrow alleys and neighborhoods that we could not have seen any other way.  As a pedestrian, I was a bit mystified at the no jaywalking culture.  Even at a small street with nothing coming at 10:00 at night, if the walk sign is red, no one crosses.  That is not how I learned to cross streets in New York.  But as a biker, I loved it.  If I had a green, no one was going to walk in front of me or turn right on red.  I started to relax even at blind intersections, and there were a lot of them since the streets are so narrow with buildings right up to the sidewalk.  Even riding on the left in narrow bike lanes was not nearly as intimidating as I expected.

Godzilla in Shinjuku

One last walking tour on my last night alone in Tokyo after Kasey left.  No, I did not transport magically to Paris,  I had an excellent tour of the Tokyo Tower with the best guide I have had in Japan.  Ethan is from Ecuador and that is his real name although his mother speaks only Spanish and there is no "th" sound in Spanish (except for the lispy Castillians).  His mother watched and loved Mission Impossible and took Ethan's name from the movie.  He has lived in Japan for ten years and even attended university here.  He insisted that the Tokyo Tower is not a copy of the Eiffel Tower; rather, this is the best way to build a tower structurally.

And finally, one of the weirdest things I have seen in Japan ... kids playing pickleball on one of the levels of the Tokyo Tower.

Kyoto

Kyoto is amazing.  Traditionally, Kyoto, not Tokyo, was the capital of Japan, and each emperor and shogun built his own palace.   Fortunately, Kyoto was not bombed in WWII, so it has survived intact ... sorta.  Since the buildings are made primarily of wood, several have been destroyed or burned down over the centuries so we frequently visit a thirteenth century site that was rebuilt in the 1960's.  But they stuck to the original design so it's okay, right?  Kyoto has over 400 Shinto shrines and 1,650 Buddhist temples scattered around its regions.

Our first stop in Kyoto was the Golden Pavilion, a beautiful (and fairly recently reconstructed) building covered in gold leaf, and surrounded by a beautiful garden.  Unfortunately, you cannot go inside, but it was worth seeing the outside.

Next we visited the Nijo Castle
, which was built in 1603.  While the emperor had a primarily ceremonial role during most of Japan's history, the real power was held by the shogun.  Nijo Castle was the home of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a family that ruled for fifteen generations from 1603 to 1867, a rare period of peace and prosperity in Japan.  This so-called Edo period was also isolationist, with Japan closed off to most of the world.  In this Castle in 1867, the last Tokugawa shogun  "retired," ceding power back to the Meiji Emperor and thus beginning the Meiji restoration when Japan opened itself back up to the world (with a little help from an American incursion.)  

A unique design makes the floors of the castle make a sound like nightingales singing.  Also, the beautiful painted wall screens include scenes of tigers although there were none in Japan.  The artists created them from imported furs and sketches from China.

The next day we visited the Sanjusangendo Temple which is renowned for its 1000 life size statues of Kannon, the goddess of mercy and one gigantic one of him in the middle.  This Temple was first built in 1164, and although the original building was lost in a fire, it was reconstructed in 1266, and that is the building that we saw.  Each statue, which has a unique face, has 11 heads and 42 arms.  In front of the 1000 statues are more statues of various Buddhist gods and beings.  

In the afternoon, we visited the Miho Museum which contains Western antiquities (Egyptian, Greek, and Roman) as well as Japanese treasures.  The building itself is a work of art.  Designed by I.M. Pei, it is primarily underground so as not to destroy the view of the mountains where it is located.  But there is no sense of darkness in the building.  Unfortunately, I spent too much time in the Western wing and ran out of time to fully appreciate the Japanese art.  I should have started there.

We topped the day off with an incredible chicken yakitori dinner.  Of course they first served soup and then a salad.  Then, as I expected, a skewer of chicken.  Then they brought out another skewer with a different sauce.  Then wings on a skewer.  Then another skewer with a different sauce.  Every time I thought I could not eat another bite, they brought out another skewer.  How many different ways can you skewer chicken?  Well, then a skewer of chicken liver.  Then a skewer of grilled chicken skin.  I think there was a dessert but I was rolling on the floor by then.

Today we visited Nara, Japan's capital from 710 to 784, to see Daibutsu, the world's largest bronze Buddha statue in the Todaiji Temple.  The temple is located on the side of the mountain and the property is inhabited by hundreds of deer who coexist peacefully with the Buddha and the tourists (although the males do not always coexist peacefully with each other.)

We had one last half day in Osaka where we toured the Osaka Castle.  First built in 1583, it was the seat of a shogun who united Japan in the sixteenth century.  Over the centuries, the original castle was destroyed and rebuilt several times although the moat and moat walls are original.  The castle held ammunition supplies during WWII and was completely destroyed by American bombing raids.  So we toured the 1997 reconstruction.  But it looked pretty.  And a great view from the eighth floor.  We were rushed for time and the lines were long, so I even hiked up all eight floors.

And finally ... one last okonomiyako lunch.  That is the pancake/omelet with seafood in it that is cooked on a grill at our table.  After an appetizer and grilled vegetables (I might have skipped that course), we were each served a huge okonomiyako.  But before we finished it, they brought out noodles with more seafood!  We have certainly eaten well on this trip.

One Lunch in Kyoto

I really have not been able to describe the incredible and incredibly varied meals we have been served.  Since we see no menu, we have no idea if there is one course, five, or ten.  Each course is small and elegantly presented, and I cannot identify what a lot of the foods are.  Today we ate in a private dining room in a home built in the sixteenth century by a billionaire merchant.  The home is now a restaurant with its large garden intact.  And this was our lunch in the order that it was served.

Appetizer.  The skewer has sweet potato and radish.  Under the sweet potato was some kind of pate (liver?).  The three things that look like shrimp I think were mushrooms.  The round thing in front was hard boiled quail egg.  There was a piece of sushi tucked in one of the leaves. I have forgotten what the other things were.

Some kind of soup, I think.  I never quite figured it out.

Finally something recognizable.  Sashimi.  Although the white one with the red dot was something weird that I have not had before.

Three slices of duck with roasted scallions.  Excellent.

Not quite sure.  Some kind of concoction of bean curd, persimmon (I think), and something else.

Persimmon with some kind of cream.  We thought it might be dessert but ...

Another soupy thing with some kind of sweet potato thing in it.

A box on a tray.  Open it and ...

Sushi!  Fish, shrimp, cooked eel, and cucumber maki with plum sauce.

Miso soup.

This was finally dessert.  It was kind of like jello in an almond flavored liquid.

And this was our private room overlooking the garden.