What I've been doing . . . .

Saturday: Tokyo
A fitful night - to be expected after a long flight and a fifteen hour time difference.  We got up in our tiny, tiny bedroom and made our way down to breakfast, not at all hungry with all of the body-time disruption.  Love the foreign breakfasts, though, as the hotels try to cater to a lot of different tastes: Japanese rice dishes, Western eggs and meat, cereals, great breads, a full salad bar - which I love - plus juice and strong coffee.

This morning we meet with Yoko who is our arranged introductory guide.  We head downstairs to . . . Starbucks for a green tea smoothie which tastes roughly like a concoction made up of grass clippings and whipped cream - ugh, not a fan.  We'll find out during our trip that green tea is king in Japan.  Yoko provides us with a dizzying array of pamphlets and diagrams which are meant to help us navigate the public transportation system.  The diagram of Tokyo's metro system looks vaguely like an electronic schematic of an advanced personal computer.  There is a public metro system and a rail system operated by a private company and a series of bullet trains and the subway, of course, and let's not forget the buses and river taxis.  Most of this stuff is accessed by an underground network of tunnels and walkways, that ascend and descend via stairways and escalators and walkways.  They are packed.  It doesn't appear to be humanly possible to ever figure this out, all the more jumbled in our minds because of culture shock and weariness.

A lot of time is spent in a variety of offices exchanging vouchers for actual tickets, loading up cards that can be used on certain lines at certain times under certain circumstances, getting refunds, and checking connections.  Tokyo has been suffering from a severe heat wave abetted by a wicked dose of humidity so the air is stifling.  Yoko is competent but her English isn't all that great and she gets a little flustered when we toss questions at her - she talks rapidly and throws brochures and schedules around willy-nilly.  I can feel my attention start to waver as I suffer info overload, aware that until I begin to do it myself I won't remember much.  It's like trying to commit to memory a long set of directions for a car trip - after a while you just can't keep taking it in.

Part of the tour package is that Yoko will accompany us on one short excursion.  We choose a complex called Asakusa, site of an ancient Buddhist temple.  Because our orientation lasted longer than expected we take a taxi to the temple - the driver has on a tie and is wearing white gloves, and his car is immaculate, including the handmade lace draping the seats.  Asakusa is Tokyo's oldest temple, and one of its most significant - formerly associated with the  Tendai sect of Buddhism, it became independent after WWII.  Adjacent to the temple is a five-story pagoda, a Shinto shrine, the Asakusa Shrine itself, as well as many shops with traditional goods in the Nakamise-dōri.

The Sensoji Kannon temple is dedicated to Kannon Bosatsu, the Bodhisattva of compassion, and is the most widely visited spiritual site in the world with over 30 million visitors annually.  It is packed and it is hot, hot, hot.  We bid adieu to Yoko and head over to the Sumida River, hop onto a river taxi which zooms downstream for about a half hour, winding between an endless string of high-rise apartment buildings, before depositing us at the Hama-Rikyu Gardens very close to our hotel.

Located at the mouth of the river, the gardens opened April 1, 1946.  The park is a landscaped area surrounding Shioiri Pond, with the park itself surrounded by a seawater moat filled by Tokyo Bay.  It was remodeled as a public garden park on the site of a villa of the Shogun Tokugawa family in the 17th century.

We stopped at a teahouse located on a small island in the middle of the pond that served up matcha (sort of a green tea soup) and Japanese sweets in a tea-ceremony style.  Shoes off in the pavilion, please.  Back to the hotel for a much-earned, much-needed shower and dinner at a more than passable Chinese restaurant in the lobby of the building.  It seems funny to us that people in Japan would go out for Chinese food but there you go.  I don't think either of us were still awake at 8PM, or 5AM yesterday back home.

At one point, as we were trying to figure out some subway connection, Yoko whipped out her cell phone, showed us an app that automatically tells you the best route to take: "I don't understand the system, either - this is what we locals use to figure out where to go."

All of the furniture is set too low to the ground.  I think this is going to be a theme.  I'm already tired of sitting with my knees up at ear level.  Our room is Tokyo small - a full sized bed and two small chairs and that's about it.

The streets are weirdly empty.  We assume this is because the underground warrens are weirdly packed.  The traffic is light for a city of this size - no doubt owing to the massive public transportation system.

Sunday:  Tokyo
I could design a rocket booster using the angles and alignment of everything in the breakfast area.  There are a ton of young women attending to the room, immaculately dressed, mostly quiet, communicating with hand gestures and nods.  On the first morning I wondered if I could just drink a coffee before returning to eat breakfast with my wife a bit later?  This was a breech of protocol, the head waitress a bit flustered but handling the request with aplomb and this theme of sticking to the rules will repeat itself endlessly during the next 30 days.  When you sit down a hard-plastic placard is placed on the table - dark side up: occupied, light side up: finished.

We brave the subway system alone for the first time.  Some tentative stops and starts but we get to Tokyo Station, jammed to the rafters . . . on a Sunday morning, and only the fifth busiest station in Tokyo, reportedly handing more passengers each day than live in Canada.  We exit the old station and make our way to the Imperial Palace and gardens.  These are just OK.  At 9AM the heat is oppressive, rivaling the tropical stew we endured in the south of Vietnam.  It is hot.

The area is is the primary residence of the Emperor of Japan.  It is a large park-like area which contains various buildings including the main palace, the private residences, an archive, museums, and administrative offices.  It really is more of a woods than a garden area.  We enjoy an encounter in the gardens that will also repeat itself many times: as we peer at a map and spin around and point this way and that way, trying to get our bearings, a little man who is helping with some kind of relay race - placarded runners are circling the grounds in the punishing heat and humidity - walks over and asks us in broken English if he can be of service.  He points us in the right direction and presents us with a map of The Gardens, all this done very seriously and formally.

When we're finished we hop into a cab and drive south to the Tokyo Tower.  This is the first of many cab rides we arrange ourselves, all of them in immaculately clean Toyotas that have an incredible array of electronic devices for the driver.  I will take every cab ride with complete confidence that the driver is taking the shortest, most efficient route and treating us with scrupulous honesty.  Also called Japan Radio Tower, our destination is a communications and observation tower and at 1,092 ft is the second-tallest structure in Japan.  The structure is inspired after the Eiffel Tower and is painted white and orange to comply with air-safety regulations.  

We shell out the $50 to go to the top and gaze out over the repeating varieties of skyscrapers marching off into the distance.  The whole tour is hilariously orchestrated, a labor-intensive system of dozens of darling young women, identically attired, directing everything with precision, often breaking into a little chant of some sort that must be connected with the tower's theme.  Moving people forward in the line is a big operation - no standing back, giving your neighbors some room.  Yesterday we crossed a street that was blocked off for a parade- the use of bullhorns was abstract and there were a lot of flexible barriers that were moved around by attendants, either blocking access or moving folks along.  And there were a lot of attendants - Japan will prove to be a very labor-intensive society, no doubt a way for the government to keep everyone employed.

We felt a bit peckish after the sight-seeing so stopped to eat at a pretty crappy restaurant on the ground floor of the tower, sort of a Japanese Chuckie Cheese.  It was too hot to eat outside and too busy everywhere else.  I had a dish of pancakes with chicken and avocado.  I thought "pancake" was code for something besides a pancake but it is indeed a small, dollar-sized pancake.  KK breaks out her phone GPS so that we can make the half hour walk back to the hotel, successful until the very end when we flag down a security guard who gets us home, with much waving and pointing and pantomiming.

Tokyo is a massive metropolis, not our favorite environment.  Moving through a big city is tiring when we're on our game and at this stage in the trip we are not yet on our game.

Monday:  Tokyo

Another big breakfast.  Again, too much coffee - it isn't espresso and it isn't coffee.  We confidently walk to Shiodome Station - underground the whole way, up and down stairs and escalators, across silent, cadaverous marble-floored atriums and lobbies, following a bafflling array of signs to our station.  The public spaces are always empty of all furniture and decoration and completely silent, the floors polished to a high shine.  No one talks.  Many people are texting or listening to music but no one is talking.  It reminds me of the march of the dead - huge crowds of people moving briskly in near total silence, in clothing that varies little from person to person, especially with the men.  Very few people wear shoes that have hard soles so there isn't even the sound of high heels or leather soles echoing between the walls.  Very quiet.  Very minimalist.  Very beige.

Rush hour appears to peak shortly before nine.  Everyone is dressed exactly the same - white shirts, no tie, dark slacks for the men; dark shirts and light-colored tops for the women, the clothing very loose and modest.  No bright colors or expressions of individuality.  No one is smiling.

We pile off at the Tsukiji Big Fish Market, the main commercial market serving all of Tokyo.  We wander a bit before a guard points us in the right direction.  The place is cooking, with forklifts and motorized carts and people scurrying everywhere.  There is a consumer side to the market offering every fish and sea creature imaginable - both live and dead - and a row of tiny sushi restaurants, packed at 9AM, with long rows of people patiently waiting outside for a table to clear.  The market is soon moving to a new, larger space and this is causing some public consternation.

Next stop on our hit parade is Meiji Jingu, a large modern Shinto Shrine.  Once again we are disgorged from the subway onto a busy intersection with absolutely no indication as to where the shrine is.  Once again, a nice man notices our indecision and walks us a few hundred yards to the entrance.  SuperK has become an expert at waylaying passers-by for help and it's invariably given.  Trying to be nice I compliment him on his English: "Your English is very good."  He replies: "So is yours."  He apologizes unnecessarily - it was pretty funny.  He's a little disappointed that we have forgotten how to say "Thanks" in Japanese although I recover at the last minute.

The shrine itself  is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken.  It was completed and dedicated to them in 1920, eight years after the passing of the emperor and six years after the passing of the empress.  The shrine was destroyed during the bombing in WWII but was rebuilt shortly thereafter.  Emperor Meiji was the first emperor of modern Japan. He was born in 1852 and ascended to the throne in 1867 at the peak of the Meiji Restoration when Japan's feudal era came to an end and the emperor was restored to power. During the Meiji Period, Japan modernized and westernized herself to join the world's major powers by the time Emperor Meiji passed away in 1912.

An historical aside . . . Shintoism is the traditional religion of Japan that focuses on ritual practices carried out diligently to establish a connection between present-day Japan and its ancient past.  Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century.  Still, these earliest Japanese writings do not refer to a unified religion, but rather to a collection of native beliefs and mythology.   Shinto today is the religion of public shrines devoted to the worship of a multitude of spirits or essences, suited to various purposes such as war memorials and harvest festivals, and applies as well to various sectarian organizations.  Practitioners express their diverse beliefs through a standard language and practice, adopting a similar style in dress and ritual, dating from around the time of the Nara and Heian periods (8th–12th century).

We head back to the hotel for a shower - it continues to be incredibly hot and humid, upper 90s with drenching humidity.  We enter the metro system, navigate several stops, and pop out for a shared food tour experience with a family from York and a couple from London.  Four stops with an exuberant and slightly drunk guide: One: a hibachi style place where the cook grills our meat on a tiny open-flame hibachi grill - pork, beef, and vegetables; Two: a sushi restaurant that must have cost $500 to feed everyone - every kind of fish imaginable, including sort of a grilled manta ray fin and a small fish so freshly slaughtered that the head and tail are still jerking about involuntarily; Three: a restaurant in a low-ceilinged, bakingly hot alley way, jammed with kids mostly.  We're pretty full at this point and it's almost too hot to eat, and the drinking people are sucking down sake, beer, and cocktails (our guide kept shouting at us: "And no alcohol, right?"); Four: an ice cream shop for something sweet.

It was a great experience - a little long, maybe, and probably more geared for the partying, drinking crowd but something we would have never done on our own.  We made our way to the nearby subway station in a driving thunderstorm.  We're getting better with the massive, complex public transportation system but it still feels a little like sitting in a roller coaster as it goes over the top of the first hill: everything is moving fast, it's loud and chaotic, you go left and right but not back - never back - confident that you aren't going to die but unsure why you feel this way.

Tuesday: Nikko

Time to get out of the big city.  Tokyo is meh.  Too big, too crowded, too hectic, the sites underwhelming and crowded.  We are definitely not big city people.  Like a lot of big cities the public spaces are meant to impress and intimidate - not to engender quiet reflection.  Maybe for night life it would be OK.  We're unaware of any museums.

Here's the deal: our 20 minute walk from the hotel to Shimbashi Station - the fact we've done it a few times doesn't really help much - we wander around some and inevitably get lost.  We're always saying: "Oh, yeah, we took that escalator by mistake yesterday;" subway from Shimbashi Station to Tokyo Station - two stops, piece of cake: confusion at this point, the place jammed with commuters - if you're going across the flow it's quite an event to make your way without being knocked down - but we finally find out that we have to go to the JR ticket counter to get reserved seats on the Shinkansen, or bullet train; 30 minute wait for the train; 45 minute high speed train (very nice, very comfy, very fast, very smooth) to Utsonomiya; finally a quiet station (finally!) where we get tickets on the local line to Nikko, this train a still pretty fast one but definitely not a high-end ride.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site shrines and temples of Nikkō encompasses 103 buildings or structures and the natural setting around them.  The buildings belong to two Shinto shrines (Futarasan Shrine and Tosho-gu) and one Buddhist temple (Rinno-ji).  Included in the nomination are the forested mountain slopes on which the buildings are located.  The dominating cedar forest was planted in the early 17th century during the construction of the Tōshō-gū. 

We pop off the local into the Nikko station which is roughly the same size as the bathroom in the Tokyo train station.  Ahhh.  I feel more relaxed already.  We walk about a half hour up hill to the Shrine complex and wander around for a few hours.  It is 25 degrees cooler, a little misty and foggy.  Very nice.

This scene from the train ride - a little man sits down next to me, puts one hand on top of the other in his lap, crosses his legs, and has not moved since.

On the trains there are little placards and signs suggesting quiet operation of everything.  One even warns against overly loud keyboard clacking.  All of the public conveyances are incredibly quiet.  Very few people even talk to each other.  They look at a screen or sit quietly.  No one shouts into a cell phone.  It's a public space and some respect for your fellows is expected.  We learned in our Great Courses study of Japan that consensus is very important here - individualism not so much.  Getting along with everyone is the way to go, not charging off on one's own.  Very not American in their thinking.

When I travel this question always arises: Exciting?  Or stressful?  Maybe both, I think.  I hate people that are seemingly comfortable in their own skins.  How do they DO that?

Back to Tokyo, in a reverse procedure.

Wednesday: Tokyo then in transit

Today we check out and head back to Tokyo Station with an overnight bag headed for Kawaguchi-ko, up in the mountains promising a view of Mt. Fuji in the background, weather permitting.  Today's logistics: the walk to Shimbashi Station swimming against the flow of commuters; subway to Tokyo Station; express bus (about two hours) to Kawaguchiko; cab to the hotel.

No early check-in at Japanese hotels so we lens up and put on shorts and head back toward the station, looking for rental bikes.  We find 'em at a Toyota repair shop (?) after about a ten minute walk where not much English is spoken so it takes us a while to get through the preliminaries about what they cost, where to go, the amount of the deposit, etc.  The bikes are in fine working condition but about 8 inches too short for me - I look like Krusty The Clown pedaling along, my knees coming up above my ears.  We wobble along for a little bit, getting the feel of the machines, through downtown and onto the shore of the lake itself.  We cruise for about an hour around the periphery, stopping to scarf down a sandwich at one point and a couple of coffees and an ice cream sundae at another.  Part of the path is on the road - not so much fun - and part is on a walkway right along the water's edge - a lot better.  We cruise past tiny Shinto shrines and holiday hotels and pleasure boat marinas.  We do not die.

Later at the hotel we have our first onsen experience, the Japanese public bath system.  It's a weird and tentative dip in the cultural waters for us, with a lot of different rules and rituals to be followed.  But basically you go into a locker room and remove all of your clothes, then head into the area containing a big heated pool.  There are a bunch of shower stations with all kinds of soaps and shampoos where you bathe perched on a small, low stool, a comically tiny stool.  Then into the steaming hot water.  Our onsen here had a pool about 6 ft by 30 ft.  

There is nothing quite so democratic as bathing with a bunch of naked men and boys all chattering in Japanese.  Another example of the country's interest in all for one and one for all.  You can't feel better or worse about anything if you're wandering around naked, cleaning your orifices.  It's also a time for boys and their fathers to be together, talking.  It's very intimate, blow-drying your son's hair.  It's also a way, I would think, to ease adolescent boys and girls through the time when their bodies are changing and they may not be comfortable with that.  Most importantly, no big scenes trying to get your kids to bathe - you do it together at the same time.

SuperK, grabbing a bottle of water that I just filled for myself: "Hey, where did this come from."

The Japanese have been unfailingly nice.  They are eager to help but they don't force themselves on you.  A goodly number speak enough English that they can get us where we want to go.  If they don't speak any English - no problem: they unleash a great torrent of Japanese at a ferocious pace, as if saying a lot of words in a language we can't understand is going to be helpful.  The language doesn't require a lot of lip movement and the Japanese don't freely show their teeth, especially when they laugh, where the hand comes up to cover the mouth.

I think we feel better about the trip after the lag has worn off and we've gotten free of the frenetic energy of one of the largest cities in the world.

Thursday:  Kawaguchi-ko

We're at the MyStay Hotel, on the 7th floor, with a view of Mt. Fuji straight ahead.  In every picture I've ever seen it has a nice cap of snow but apparently only for about 5 months of the year.  It looks like a big unwrapped Hershey's Kiss in August.  Kawaguchi-ko is a resort area that centers on five lakes, the biggest being Lake Kawaguchi-ko.

Breakfast and a cab back to Kawaguchi-ko Station where I purchase an unlimited two day pass for the tourist loops demarcated by the Red Line, Blue Line, and Green Line.  Our Audley guide had recommended a hike on the lower reaches of Mt. Fuji but it looks to us to be 4 or 5 hours of climbing and then a bus back, so we ask at the desk and find a series of hiking trials on the Blue Line which runs a big loop out by the more remote lakes which are less touristed, more pristine.

The Blue Line.  The fucking Blue Line.

We find our stop, expecting  some signage or at least some infrastructure.  It's in the middle of nowhere.  We ask some Japanese young people who are doing some kind of filming where the trail is - they wave us onward.  No trail.  We stop at a fruit stand and re-inquire - the proprietor blisters me with Japanese and waves us back and across the road.  We find sort of an off-road track and take off, stymied in short order by an intersection with a smaller road, the trail disappearing into heavy brush on the other side.  Some people with horses go by.  We consider capitulation but decide to go a little further, ending up at a restaurant at a horse ranch of some kind, ask another little woman about the trail - she, too, blisters me and waves us onward.  The road peters out into a dirt track which we follow up and up and up before it ends . . . at the trail head!

It's a nice hike but not a spectacular one.  It's hot and humid and the forest is so thick we can only catch a glimpse of the volcanic lake down below.  There are very few other hikers.  After a few hours we take a break and turn back, successfully not getting lost on the return route.

We pop back out at our bus stop but realize after a bit that the buses make the loop every two hours - not every half an hour like we expected -  and we just missed the bus.  We sit down on the grass just off the busy roadway.  There is an abandoned hotel across the street and we're sitting in the reception area of what appears to be an old ice cream stand that the forest is in the process of reclaiming as its own.  Right behind the stand is the collapsed ruins of a grocery store.  That's it.  There is nothing else around.  We walk up the road a bit.  Nothing.  We sit down and wait, throwing a arm up as an occasional taxi blows by.  No way to call anyone for a ride.

A representational travel experience.

Finally, the bus comes and we hop on gratefully.  The route takes us out to the most remote lake and we jump off, acutely aware that we have two hours before we need to return.  The lake is a little too remote, unfortunately - there are only a couple of restaurants and they're all closed.  The lake runs right up to the road - no walking track - and we're beat from our long hike and long wait, anyway.  

We don't go too far, getting right back on the goddam Blue Line when it comes back around.  The driver says not a word at this turn of events.  We are just grateful to be heading back to civilization.  In Kawaguchi-ko we walk from the station to a restaurant up on the second floor and eat a very, very late lunch of noodles, chicken, pork, and a whole lot of vegetables that remain nameless to this day.

Omson experience number two.  Every bit as good as yesterday - maybe more so because we're so filthy and exhausted.

Friday:  Kawaguchi-ko then in transit to Tsumago

You think this is easy, folks?

We got up early and packed, then took a taxi ($8) to the main bus and train station; a two hour ride on a cramped and hot bus back to the Tokyo train station; maneuver again through the crowds to get in our assigned seats on the Shinkansen (or bullet train) headed to Nagoya, a 2 hour trip; a local express train (still moving at a goodly clip) for 45 minutes to Nagano; a rickety local local train for 20 minutes to Nagasano, a one track backwater.  The station is closed when we get there and there are zero cabs waiting.  We can actually hear crickets.  Allegedly there's a bus line running but at 6PM we fail to see where and when as no buses show up.  It's getting dark.  After waiting for a while we start to get desperate - we're in the middle of nowhere and we don't speak the language so we can't just pick up the phone and call a cab and there's no one around and we don't know where the hell we're going anyway.

There's a rickety mom and pop variety store across the street - the only things I can see that's open - so I wander on over.  The elderly proprietors don't speak any English but after some hilarious back and forth they manage to discern that I need a taxi.  I buy, as an expression of brute gratitude - over mom's objections - a couple of fans (laughing to myself when I see that they're made in China) and a chocolate bar (this turns out to be mottled with age when I unwrap it later).  The taxi shows up.  It's raining and pitch dark.  The driver points at his dashboard clock (analog, of course), indicating that the trip is going to take 20 minutes.  He begins driving, taking rougher, narrower, more desolate looking roads.  

"I wonder if this guy is taking us for a ride," I remark to SuperK, as the meter begins clicking north of $40.  I vaguely knew this was ridiculous given the Japanese propensity for strict honesty.  The area is mountainous, wispy fog strung in the valleys and among the peaks, water running everywhere.  Out of the gloom we see this beautiful mountain ryokan.  We made it and we're alive.

After we check in we dash for the onsen to salve our aching muscles.  This upscale place includes an outside onsen, the cold air and the hot water proving to be an intoxicating mix.  After we dry off and get into clean clothes (our luggage has miraculously arrived, shipped from Tokyo using this amazing service where larger pieces of luggage can be sent ahead for like $15 a bag, allowing us to hop on and off the public transportation a lot more easily, and the price is based on size and weight and not location, so we get our bags even when end up in the middle of nowhere.)

Dinner is a wild, wild affair.  We are nearly dead when we finish eating.  Our meal is served in a small personal dining room, at a low table with a foot well that enables us to sit more comfortably.  Here are the courses: a series of small salads and pickled vegetables; sushi (all freshwater - no seafood this far inland); a hot pot course where you cook your own slices of raw beef in a little clay pot perched atop a Bunsen burner apparatus; a whole fish, fried and served on a skewer; a fish cake of some sort; tempura; fish and rice, and a small dessert; all of this washed down with the most gingerish ginger ale I have ever drank - it burns your nose and takes your breath away if you drink it too soon after pouring.

Saturday: Tsumago, 

We wake up to the sound of rain pounding down on the deck outside our room.  There's a community lounge with coffee and comfy chairs so we sit and watch the rain for awhile in our yukatas.  I have nothing on underneath just to show that I can do it.

The yukata, btw, is a more casual summer kimono and it is standard affair at our ryokans (hotels provide nice pajamas and both pieces of clothing are washed each day and returned to our rooms folded up).  These are worn around the ryokan and to meals in the resturants.  There is a sash provided - men tie the knot in the back, women in front, with younger people wearing brighter colors and more elaborate patterns while everything becomes more muted as you age (although our ryokans only provide one style).  I didn't wear for dinner the first night and I stood out like a sore thumb.

Breakfast is also a wild, wild affair.  It is served all at once and includes fruit, a mixed salad with a great dressing of indeterminate provenance, potato salad, fish, a tofu loaf stuffed with vegetables, a variety of little salads including seaweed and these great pickled vegetables, ham, yogurt with sauce, seasoned rice, and more fish and some more stuff that I can't remember.  On the table sits a little grill with a screen on top that you use to heat up anything that cools off.  There's a thick fruit juice, too.  I'm still full from the dinner last night but I eat everything.  Our rule is: if it is delivered to our table we eat it, although SuperK draws the line at the little sardine-type bait fish that come fried, baked, and battered with tempura.

Thank god we have a big hike planned for today on a section of the Nakasando Highway.

The Nakasendō (Central Mountain Route), also called the Kisokaidō was one of the five trade routes of the Edo Period and one of the two that connected Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to Kyoto in Japan.  There were 69 stations (staging-posts) between the two cities.  Because it was such a well-developed road, many famous persons, including the haiku master Matsuo Basho, traveled the road.  Many people preferred traveling along the Nakasendō because it did not require travelers to ford any rivers.

The ryokan has a shuttle bus that runs us into Tsumago town itself.  From there we hop onto a local public bus that chugs up the mountain to Magone, the idea being it's a hell of a lot easier hiking down from the top than the other way around.  Both Magone and Tsumago have been revitalized through the efforts of the local citizenry so there are a bunch of restored historical buildings to see.  This is a good thing because once the train network began to be developed the old towns on the walking routes fell into disrepair and were in danger of vanishing.  Both places turn out to be lovely.

As we pop off the bus in Magone the rain tapers off.  The start of the hike is mostly uphill, on dirt trails and stone paths - it's a workout in the incredible humidity.  Along the way we pass small shrines and graveyards, a water wheel, a 250 year old cherry tree.  Eventually - thankfully - the trail slopes downward and the crowd thins out.  Every few hundred yards we ring a bell, taking heed of the sign that asks us to give the bell a big ring to scare away bears.  Near the bottom a little old lady who is walking with a younger friend starts to chat us up.  She is a local tour guide so we have a great hour talk with them and glean some facts about the trail that would have passed up by.  Rice fields are everywhere, the grains just beginning to turn golden, ready for harvest. There's a free tea house about half-way down the slope for anyone who wants to take a break.

A cup of instant coffee and a few dumpling things filled with vegetables, bean curd, unknown stuff, and what could very well be cat meat, and we're off to try to find the pick-up point for our shuttle bus, the exact location we failed to note this morning, to our peril.  We walk all the way to the end of town to an unknown parking lot where the attendant helpfully points us all the way back to the other end of town.  As this is where SuperK had originally directed us - earning my mocking wrath - ummm, she's not too happy with me.

Onsen again.  Incredibly, the rain starts as we get on the bus to go back to the hotel.  Tonight I sneak to the outside onsen bath, naked as a jaybird, and sit in the steaming hot water, my face tilted up to receive the rain.  The path and bath are set up so that it's private but it's such a great feeling that I don't care.  There are very specific rules for onsen use: they're posted on the walls, spelled out in brochures and flyers, explained at reception desks.  No bathing suits, get completely naked, rinse off, into the hot tub, back out for a heavy body cleanse in one of the eight or ten showers used by perching on a tiny clown-sized stool (don't splash your neighbor!) - onsen again - light bathing - cool down.  Some guys shave on the tiny stool (great with all the humidity) - some in the bathroom (more comfortable).  No shoes, no cell phones, no peeing in the pool.

We are brutalized at dinner again.  The kid serving our meal is half-Korean, half-Japanese, and he knows more about world events than we do.  It turns out that when he gets off work he has to walk back through the dark woods to get home - he doesn't own a car - so the bears are a very real concern of his.  And here we thought the bear bells were a local joke.  WE are the local joke.

Any place where construction is occurring is manned with official looking guys in hard hats and vests and flags - they wave us across streets, bring us safely to a halt, or step into traffic to allow a bulldozer to back up.  It's very official and serious stuff.

Sunday:  Tsumago, then in transit to Kyoto

Think this is easy, folks?

Today we shuttle bus down to the Nagiso train station to catch the local back to Nagasakawa, a trip of about 20 minutes; we have an 6 minute turn-around to catch the next train, jumping onto the fast local back to Nagoya, a couple of hours - this leg is pretty nerve-wracking as there are no scrolling signs in the car telling us where we are and the announcements are all in Japanese (there is no rhyme or reason to this - you get a continually updating electronic sign in the bus or train or not, sometimes in English and Japanese, sometimes just in Japanese, sometimes telling you where you stop next or maybe just calculating the fare, or an electronic voice tells you in English and/or Japanese or whatever what's happening, or the actual conductor comes on just in Japanese, so we've taken to asking whoever is close what the hell is actually happening); a bullet train of 45 minutes into Kyoto (this train arrives about 10 minutes early so we hop on, surprised when the thing takes off immediately, very unusual in this more than punctual country - we then have a long discussion with a guy sitting in our pre-assigned seat, perplexed he has a ticket indicating that he has the exact same seat assignment, until we understand that he is telling us we are on the wrong train; luckily for us it's also going to Kyoto); a subway to Shijo Station; a 10 minute walk to our hotel.

After we rest up a bit we're met at our hotel by Peter McIntosh, a Canadian who has lived in Japan for many years and is a famous expert on geisha life.  We take a cab into one of the geisha districts and get an in depth educational tour of all things geisha.  Neither KK or I had any real idea what a geisha is, succumbing to the notion that geishas were fancy prostitutes (this misconception arose after WWII when many down and out Japanese women took to prostitution with Allied troops, calling themselves Geisha Girls.)

A brief explanation is that a small number of mostly working class girls contract themselves into the geisha world.  They live in small, private tea houses beginning at the age of 15.  They learn traditional Japanese dance and to play instruments, recite poetry, and the like - usually businessmen will hire them out for a set period of time as part of the entertainment for clients. The girls and women get only two days off a month but every expense of their upbringing and education is paid for by their tea house which is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The tea house recoups this expense by charging incredibly high hourly rates - two or three girls for an evening can run 4 or 5 thousand bucks.  The procedure for hiring the women is complex and formalized - only tea house members can request a geisha; the formal request must come from the tea house itself, not the member, and so on and so forth.

Peter was able to show us that the styles of hair and type of clothing that each woman wore told how long they had been geishas (new girls are called maiko and the older women are called geikos).  We were lucky enough to see a few of them, most of whom knew Peter.  They were definitely movie stars.  He explained that, in an Asian way, this is the equivalent to some businessman taking clients to a football game and then out to drinks afterward, maybe throwing in a strip club to end the evening.  A lot classier way but the amount of money spent would be equivalent.

From Wikipedia . . .   Geisha are highly skilled entertainers who appear at high-end dinners, private parties, and special events to add a special touch to the proceedings.  They are NOT prostitutes, despite various silly rumors and portrayals in certain books and movies.  Rather, they are ladies who have trained for years in the traditional Japanese arts to become the perfect entertainers. 

That's it for us - we buy some food at a convenience mart, eat in our room, fall asleep before nine.

Monday:  Kyoto

We're in an OK hotel here.  No goddam onsen so it's on my shit list right out of the chute.  The rooms continue to be walk-in closet size compared to The States, and this one has no TV.  I don't believe I've ever been in a hotel with no TV.  That's OK becausee there has not been a single English channel in any of our hotels.  It has been great.  Sometimes when we're eating our curry noodles in a cup we'll flick through the stations.  Game shows with exhuberant contestants are all over the dial.

Breakfast is a simpler affair - KK has a bowl of granola and fruit with a couple of boiled eggs; I chose the Japanese breakfast so I get a beautiful piece of salmon, rice, and the usual odds and ends of tofu and pickled mystery vegetables.  We'll find out that the Japanese breakfast varies little each day - salmon, miso soup (always with the miso soup - these people love this foul brew seasoned with strong dried fish flakes), rice, a bit of egg, and three or four pickled vegetables.  Our server boy laboriously explains that the only thing that changes in the Japanese selection each day is one of the pickled vegetables, and these are a bite or two each.

At 9 our guide, Duncan arrives and we start walking toward the Nishiki Food Market.  I love the love the cultural experience of sampling food in new places - there's nothing that reveals the soul of a people any more quickly than what they eat.  The market is a bustling affair, full of shops selling anything you can eat - fish predominating - and lots of other commercial establishments as well.  I purchase a pretty elaborate knife made with some super cool tempured steel, adorned with Japanese writing.  

At the end of the market is the Nishiki Tenmangu, a shrine dedicated to Tenjin, the kami now famous as the god of scholarship.  Nishiki Tenmangū is home to many features shared by Tenjin shrines, including not only plum trees and many students praying around exam season, but also the stone cows said to represent the divine messengers of the deity.  We pet the well-worn head of this nade-ushi cow in the hopes of improving our luck.

Next we hop into a cab and make our way to Yasak Pagoda, a Shinto shrine built in the 6th century and then rebuilt from around 1440 after the original burned to the ground (this seems to happen to many of the old wood buildings in Kyoto, although it was luckily spared from Allied firebombing during WWII, unlike Tokyo and other main cities of Japan).

Afterward we stroll down Ninenzaka Street, lined with beautifully restored traditional shop houses and blissfully free of the overhead power lines that mar the rest of Kyoto.  Sannen-zaka and Ninen-zaka are a pair of pedestrian-only lanes that make for some of the most atmospheric strolling in the whole city.  It’s here that we are able to imagine what Kyoto looked like before modernity descended in full force.  Duncan shows us plenty of restaurants and tea houses that have been restored.

Next on our hit parade is the Sanmon, the massive gate leading into the Chion-in Temple, dating from 1234 and marking the entrance into the complex that serves as the HQ of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism.  We sit for a bit under the gate, perched high above the city so we have a great view, and catch our breath.

We pause for lunch at Hotaru, a small Japanese restaurant (8 seats facing the kitchen along a long timber bar) where Duncan's wife joins us.  The chef/owner serves up a fixed menu for lunch consisting of fish and a variety of vegetables, miso soup, and fruit for dessert.  Midway he insists that we try the seasonal delicacy, eel.  He uses a huge cleaver to cut the eel into small strips which he pops into ice water and then blanches for 30 seconds, causing the eel to roll into small balls.  They're kind of chewy and weird.

Right before the restaurant there were a few Zen Buddhist monks beckoning travelers to come up, sit on a stool, and be gently whacked with a big soft mallet.  The thonks were supposed to relieve all kinds of ailments.  Worked better than some western medicine solutions I've tried.  And all of this done with the greatest good humor - there are no dour Buddhist monks.  These guys and gals like to have fun.

Then it's on to the Heian Jingu Shrine and Gardens.  Renowned gardener Ogawa Jihei VII, also known as Ueji, created the gardens over a 20-year period.  Species otherwise rare in Japan such as the yellow pond turtle and the Japanese pond turtle live in the ponds (there are three of them, increasing in size, incredible places with carefully manicured trees and little islands choked with vegetation.)  We toss in some gluten to feed the fish and turtles which swarm toward us as we toss the food in.

We finish the day at the Kenninji Zen Temple and Gardens.  When first built, the temple contained seven principal buildings.  It has suffered from fires through the centuries, and was rebuilt in the mid-thirteenth century by Zen master, Enni,  and again in the sixteenth century.  Today Kennin-ji's buildings include the Abbot's Quarters, given by Ankoku-ji in 1599; the Dharma Hall, built in 1765; a tea house built in 1587 to designs by tea master Sen no Rikyu for Toyotomi Hideyoshi; and the Imperial Messenger Gate, said to date from the Kamakura period, and still showing marks from arrows. 

In 2002, the architectural setting was enhanced by a dramatic ceiling painting of two dragons by Koizumi Junsaku.  The piece was first painted in the sport hall of a former Elementary school.  This bold artwork was installed to commemorate the temple's 800th anniversary.  The dragons - on panels roughly the size of two tennis courts - are the highlight of the show.

Funny, but the Japanese are very secular people - no monotheistic gods for them and a great tolerance of all faiths and philosophies.  It isn't unusual to see a small Shinto shrine built right on the grounds of a Buddhist Temple.  We laugh out loud when Duncan tells us that all of the huge Japanese lanterns hung at every temple, festooned with calligraphy, are actually advertisements sponsored by local businesses.  We were expecting some deep Zen wisdom.

And a brief history of sushi - long ago the only way to transport fresh fish into the interior of Japan was to wrap the fish in rice soaked with soy.  This preserved the fish until it was delivered, at which point the rice was tossed into the garbage.

Tuesday:  Kyoto:
The airwaves are crackling with warnings about imminent landfall for the biggest typhoon to hit Japan in 25 years.  No one seems too concerned at our hotel so our day proceeds as planned - post breakfast - with a guide picking us up in a taxi for a traditional tea ceremony in the private house of a local representative of the Kyoto Women's Guild.  The ceremony is a dying tradition in Japan so this group of women have taken it upon themselves to revive the practice by offering a two hour demonstration in their own homes.  

The house of the tea lady is a portrait of Japanese symmetry.  We start out in a dining area on the ground floor where she explains all of the history of the practice, translated ably by our escort, Jim, an employee of a local travel agency who is visibly nervous about the typhoon.  All trains have been cancelled, government offices closed, schools let out early, mostly because the lack of transportation - except for buses - makes it hard to get around.  There is a room on the second floor dedicated to the ceremony itself.

Ms. Tea Lady goes through a dry run on the ceremony itself, passing along three translated comments that are used at precise times: I apologize for going before you; I think that I'll join you; and thank you.  The cups and containers holding the tea are passed around, also in a very precise manner, rotated clockwise or counterclockwise depending on the phase of the ceremony, the comments directed to the right person at the right time.  The style and decorations on the items are even carefully selected for the season: heavier, thicker bowls for winter decorated with seasonal scenes, lighter, airier porcelain for hotter weather, and so on. We then head upstairs for the ceremony itself.

There are screens in the house which block off the business parts of her home - you can see kitchens and other practical areas behind them.  We see this phenomenon in the hotels as well - everything hidden behind sliding doors, items pulled out for use, then quickly stored away.  She has pointed out in the dining room, which overlooks a perfect little simple garden, that in some areas the upper part of the window is obscured by a blind - here she raises the blind to show us her neighbor's house which was not visible with the screen closed and your attention was drawn to the little garden - while in others the lower part remains closed - such as in the kitchen where its nice to have the light and see the tree tops when one is cooking but not having to look right into your neighbor's window.  This kind of attention to symmetry and order can be found everywhere in Japan.

The room for the ceremony is a very simple and orderly space covered by tatami mats which fit the room perfectly.  Everything in the room feels as if it is in exactly the right place, that if you moved anything the spell would be broken.  We perform the ceremony.  It is strangely moving.  Then SuperK gets her chance to run the show and does an admirable job - it's a very choreographed scene.

I tell the woman my thoughts about the room.  She smiled and said that she thought we understood the idea behind the ceremony perfectly.  

Outside the wind has really picked up.  We say goodbye to Jim, who has dropped us off at the food market, located under a covered dome.  Many of the shops are closed or closing, and by the time we leave the place is almost deserted.  The rain hasn't begun in earnest yet so we dash the five or so blocks back to the hotel to ride out the storm, eating some pre-packaged noodles for dinner.

SuperK has been in total control of all the documentation for our trip - she has done a great job managing everything: passports, PASMO cards (used for the subways), JR Pass (used for trains and shinkansen), and all kinds of vouchers and chits and stubs.  I hold the money.  That's it.  I would lose everything.

Wednesday: Kyoto

Post-cyclone day - Kyoto escaped the worst of the storm which hit Shikoku - location of our next series of hotels - then veered off and ran through Kobe and Osaka, where the damage was pretty severe.  In Kyoto there were strong wind gusts - you could hear pieces of construction material blowing around, trees whipping back and forth, debris skittering down the street.  The streets have a lot of garbage and tree litter in them today, very unusual in hyper-clean Japan.

We breakfast - alternating between a Japanese breakfast (a beautiful piece of salmon, rice, pickled vegetables, bits of fruit) and a Western (egg, bacon, fruit, and huge, thick slices of bread) and wash it down with juice, coffee, and Japanese tea.

The staff at our hotel are all students who speak passable to perfect English.  The rooms in our hotel are tiny with no amenities - one desk chair and two twin beds with the aforementioned lack of a TV - but the staff has been great. Most nights I went down to the lobby area - where there were full-sized chairs - to keep up with the journal and had a Wilkinson's ginger ale, chatting up whoever was manning the area.  One night there was a South Korean girl who was studying mixed media at Kyoto University . . . because "she liked watching movies."  She expected to work in IT.  I loved it.  Then there was Mio, from a rural village on Kyushu.  She spent a year at the University of Alabama studying black evangelical religious studies.  I loved this even more.  There was a Bose stereo in the lobby and an incredible collection of blues and jazz CDs which I listened to as I wrote.  Before I leave the hotel I write down these names: Miles Davis, Lightning Hopkins, and Muddy Waters, and urged her to give them a listen because what better way to get an insight into rural Southern black culture than through the music. 

We jump into a cab, our first stop being the Eikan-do Temple complex, started as a training center for the Shingon sect of Buddhism in the 9th century.  I say again: the cabs are great - cabbie in white gloves and a tie, the interior clean as a whistle, the fare clearly marked.  I trust these guys implicitly to charge the right amount and take the best route to my destination - the thought that they would cheat me somehow is laughable.  The grounds are beautiful as well - set right up against the hills surrounding Kyoto with a couple of lakes and a kindergarten right on the grounds.

Afterward we head north on a trail called The Philosopher's Path, a pedestrian path that follows a cherry-tree lined canal.  The route is so-named because the influential 20th-century Japanese philosopher and Kyoto University professor Nishida Kitaro is thought to have used it for daily meditation.  It passes a number of temples and shrines such as Honen-in, Otoyo Shrine, and Eikan-do.  A few times the path is nearly blocked with fallen trees and some wooded areas are a tangle of debris, proof that at this higher elevation the typhoon was more dangerous.

We end up at the Silver Pagoda, set in a maze of small shops and restaurants catering to the tourists.  This is a total contrast to the quiet Eikan-do Temple and the congestion sort of puts a damper on the experience.  Inside we find that about half of the gardens - set even higher on the hillside - are closed because of typhoon damage.  The lower gardens are very Zen-like - the temple, set on a little island in a small pond, is not, in fact, not silver.  The PLAN was to gild it in silver - the reality was that silver is pretty expensive.

A quick coffee and cake (or the ubiquitous pancake, served with butter and maple syrup) and back into another cab ($28) headed for Daitokoji Temple, a recommendation from Duncan, who preferred the smaller, remoter sites to the big tourist sites, often choked with tourists - mostly Chinese, who really have replaced the Ugly American.  

There are several shrines here, mostly closed to the public or closed for the day or closed randomly, and a Zen Buddhist Temple and garden complex.  We get a tour through the area with a detailed explanation of the gardens - these are spare spaces adorned with rocks and a little greenery - symbolizing mountains and forests -  and sand in a variety of patterns -symbolizing the flow and movement of water in various environments.  

As we're leaving an older monk - sitting behind a table that has a collection of souvenirs for sale, speaks up: "You are the happiest couple in the world," he said, smiling, almost laughing.  We hear this kind of thing surprisingly often - sometimes others see what we take for granted.  There are hand-painted scrolls with Zen sayings on them but they run north of $100.  I settle for a small placard with a whole litany of aphorisms, signed on the back with our names in Japanese characters.

We have decided to leave the cabs behind and use public transportation.  Of course, we leave the complex by a side entrance and get totally turned askew.  Of course, some tiny man on a bicycle stops and asks if we need any help, points us in the correct direction, tells us about his trip to The States, and off we go, the walk ending up being a lot longer than we anticipated.  

After a bit we stop and get a couple of sandwiches at either a Family Mart, Lawson's, or 7-11, the Big Three of Japan shopping.  We do this a lot when we travel, preferring a quick snack on the street or take-away meal to a long, drawn-out affair at a restaurant - we'd rather spend our time seeing stuff than eating, a decision made easier by the fact that neither of us is grooving much on the Japanese cuisine.  Sushi has been random and infrequent, with cooked fish, rice, and all kinds of odd pickled relishes and vegetables filling out the fare, all washed down with Cokes or ginger ales that run $4 or $5.

The remainder of the day is spent touring the Kyoto subway system - we drop down to the Imperial Palace and grounds - closed because of the typhoon - then take two different lines to the Niko Castle - closed as well.  You never know - sometimes the journey is the destination.  One of the Zen sayings that we liked was "One minute, one person," a reminder to be in the minute.  It is so easy to live our lives someplace other than where we are - so often we want to change what we find.  We figured that the mid to late afternoon was meant to be spent underground, figuring out which way to go on the excellent Kyoto public transportation system.

The bathrooms in Japan?  Unparalled in the world.  The toilets all have heated seats and a variety of sprays to clean your backside should things not come out as you had hoped.  Sometimes the controls are on the wall in front of you, sometimes on a small control panel by your side.  I feel like an F-16 jet fighter pilot every time I sit down to take a crap.  There are some standard options - sprays and heaters - and some unique to the particular toilet - air dryers and sound cover-uppers.

It has been hot and we're both drenched in perspiration, so when we get back to the hotel we both shower off the sweat.  I have had a hankering to use a public onsen - called a sento - so I make my way into the evening to find one in the neighborhood.  I weave in and out for a bit before I find it.  Out front is a black banner and a red banner and whole lotta Japanese.  I slide open the red banner - whoops, ladies room - before going black.  The public bath is a lot different than the swanky private ones we have been using, but the whole experience is a total trip.  The customers are clearly not as wealthy as the guests in our hotels - a little more ragged and urban.

The guy running the place is a real character - long, grey hair curling out from under a sock cap.  During my time there I watch him interact with customers, most of whom clearly know him well.  He's kind of a cross between a personal trainer in a Gold's Gym and a madame of an 1860s whorehouse.  There isn't any doubt who's in charge here.

"440 yen," he tells me.  $4.

"Towel?" he asks.  Whoops, no towel.  He rolls his eyes and tosses me a hanky-sized washcloth, then grabs my arm as I move off, gives me a skeptical look: "Everything off."  I nod and look around at his cluttered, worn dressing area, where a few less-than-swanky guys are peering at their cell phones or watching TV in various states of undress. I step away from the entrance area and he yells: "Shoes!  Shoes!"  Whoops, off they come.  On top of some of the makeshift, cobbled-together shelving are baskets filled with different kinds of soaps and shampoos, obviously the belongings of regulars at this particular sento.  (Private bathrooms were long out of reach for many Japanese, leading to the rise of the public bath - now it serves as much more of a social experience.)

I strip and open the door leading to the bathing area itself.  Whoa, in appearance very much a high school locker room.  There are three or four guys perched on the little stools cleaning up, at which point I figure out there are no amenities provided, a disadvantage to the guy who has brought no amenities.  I can only rinse off, turn to face five tubs of water, four one-man sized, with the fifth big enough to hold maybe three people.  I touch the first: freezing cold, obviously a cool-down pond.  Number two is at a temperature I would term as scalding.  I move past three - the big one -  and step into man-sized tub number four where I can't shake the impression that I'm being shocked.  I sit there for a minute or two, perplexed, unable to shake the feeling (later I learn that I was indeed in a tub that was running a minuscule electric current due to some dubious health benefit claim - I'm still shaking my head at the wisdom of running electricity into a bathtub.)  I spring out and into the bigger tub which is cooler than tub two but still hot as shit.  One of the grungy little men bathing turns around and chuckles.  The five tub is a churning cataclysm of lime-green water.  I do not attempt this tub although I watch one guy sit in there for five minutes.

It's too hot to soak for long so back into the dressing area I go.  There are a collection of couches and chairs and stools and benches, all mis-matched, some in OK shape and some derelict.  I sit down on a couch and watch a Japanese station reporting on the typhoon.  People come and go, most talking for a bit with the sento madame.  I am extraordinarily relaxed.  This is why I travel.  This right here.  I could not have hallucinated up this experience.

Back to the hotel where I bathe for the third time this day.  No offense but I don't really trust the water in my sento, even in hyper-clean Japan.

More democracy and conformity . . . from time to time you see groups of school kids: they wear uniforms, of course, right down to the exact same kind of backpack.  No one stands out, everyone blends in.  Consensus is hugely important here, even in the corporate boardroom.

Everywhere you look are vending machines and I mean everywhere.  Mostly they serve a variety of cold drinks although we've been told that in the cold months they'll start to add hot ones as well.  Interestingly enough, most of the machines offer beer.  Obviously anyone could buy the beer - kids, adolescents, reprobates - but it doesn't happen.  I'm sure some of this is due to the slow respectful burn of Japan but then again some of it is because its simple presence takes away some of the allure.  In the US we're trying to get access to something that is hard to access - here its accessibility makes it less of a thrill.  I guess if you make something illegal then people will abuse the privilege.

It's the same thing with litter, an unheard of occurrence.  No one does it so it isn't done by anyone - the public stance is not to litter so one feels uncomfortable littering.

At the nicer onsens there are the expected bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and soap (liquid or bar).  In the dressing room you'll find combs and razors and shaving cream and little packets with a tooth brush and tooth paste, as well as a brilliant selection of cremes and lotions: face care, scalp care, styling gel, body lotion.  I use 'em all.

Friday: Kyoto then in transit to Matsumaya

Think this is easy folks?  Cab from our hotel to the train station after arranging to have our luggage shipped not to the next hotel but to the hotel after that due to possible delays with the typhoon; Shinkansen to Osaka; fast local to Matsumaya; cab to the hotel.  Wait, that was pretty easy.

On the Shinkansen . . . the public bathrooms are top notch in all public places.  Even on the train the commode is super-charged, including a button to lift and lower the seat - you don't have to touch ANYTHING.  There is a sign in both English and Japanese: "How to use the bathroom."  One graphic shows a man sitting on the toilet: OK; a red line through a man perched on top of the toilet.  Another shows a guy throwing toilet paper in the garbage can: no, sir; thumbs up for the one flushing his paper.  I have had no qualms using bathrooms in hotel lobbies, train stations, or any of the shrines or sites we've visited.  Spotless, modern, maintained. Oddly enough, though, soap is rarely offered at the sinks.  

The landscape could be the hills of southern Ohio - very green, lots of water, no big deal, the only exotica being the omnipresent rice fields.  It has made it easy to write or snooze when we're on the move.

Public transportation is a marvel of engineering, especially the bullet trains, which MOVE, baby.  Stuff is ON TIME.  If something is a minute early, it sits there until the time is right.  At each station the corresponding car number is marked on the platform and the train stops right there, the middle of the door opening right on the number.  There have been dozens of satisfying little victories after we've deciphered directions and diagrams and successfully gotten on the right subway, train, or bus.

We're now off the tourist beaten track - English is not a big thing here, even with the hotel staff, and we haven't seen a Western tourist yet.  The good thing about this is that our hotel - in what must be a bit of a backwater - is a hell of a lot nicer than the ones we had in Tokyo and Kyoto.  There is a big dining room (that is transformed into a bedroom, futon-style, by the staff while we eat dinner) with kind of a fung shui meditation area off to the side, and a living room area with two half-Japanese, half-Western chairs, beach chair height.  Per usual everything is aesthetically pleasing to the minimalist control-freak in me - spare, muted colors, sliding panels everywhere to hide TVs and windows and the like.  The floors are tatami mats, fit together in a nice geometric pattern, and the windows can be obscured with sliding panels as well, which blocks the view but lets in a lot of light.  When the dining room is transformed into a sleeping quarters a small floor-based Japanese lantern appears, throwing a great muted light on the area.

I have spent most of the trip ducking.  Shit is low-down to the ground, not built for the tall gentleman.  I've taken to hanging towels over some of the low bridges so that I don't clang directly into something during the night but I've bashed my head more than once.  At this hotel there are so many overhangs that I've taken to walking with my head bent forward - low doorways into room, low supports for sliding doors, lights suspended at five feet.

We're grungy and beat so we make it down to the spectacular basement onsen.  We're back in high-class land with a great big space and all the lotions and soaps that the discerning gentleman has come to expect.  The pool looks out on a zen garden space, of course, the rocks and greenery split with a waterfall.

While I'm bathing on my tiny, tiny stool the woman taking care of the onsen comes into the spa. She nods hello and goes about her business.  OK, then.  I guess if you've seen one naked male ass you've seen them all.  This happens every time I use the room.  This happens in every onsen I visit.

Before dinner there is in our hotel binder this announcement: "We have Noh stage in fourth floor.  Noh is one of the Japanese traditional performing arts.  Experience of Noh: Start at 17:30 (about 30 minutes)."  Fair enough.  We go down to the fourth floor where a woman manning the entrances to three or four restaurant areas is completely befuddled by our question.  Eventually she gets our drift (and how many different questions could she have been asked, we wonder) and takes us to an outdoor stage, flanked by two huge burning torches and fronted by ten or fifteen folding benches.  We sit down with a few other tourists and wait.  Behind us is the dining room with a few people eating their dinner, preparing to watch the show as well.  

An older man in a traditional yukata robe comes out and unleashes a blistering stream of Japanese, then invites all of us up on stage where he continues talking in a conversational lecture style.  We smile stupidly and sweat under the klieg lights shining on the stage, nodding when everyone else nods.  He pulls out a Noe mask and invites the first guy to step forward, face the rest of us, hold the mask in front of his face, and look through the eye-holes, while slowly panning from left to right and back again, to what intent we have no idea.  We seize this opportunity to sneak off the stage and re-take our seats, sweating profusely from tension and the hot lights.  Our little guy runs through the rest of the crowd, looks down at us, smiles, and beckons us back up on stage.  Both of us do the mask bit.  We remain on stage.

Now he brings out a little drum, demonstrates the proper wrist and hand action to make it reverberate gently, and watches as we all do this.  I'm looking at people eating, enjoying the show, while I do my Ginger Baker bit.  It all feels a little surreal.  After each person taps the drum - the Japanese with great solemnity - the other participants applaud politely.

That's it.  He nods and everyone files back down the steps and out of the arena.  Weirdness multiplied exponentially.

Dinner . . . here we go . .  . Salads and a tofu cake with fish roe on top; a kind of broth with pieces of fish and mushrooms and an egg omelette; sushi including raw shrimp; raw beef and zucchini that we cook ourselves on top of a brazier (KK: "I've done more cooking on this trip than in the rest of my life."); a hot pot containing fish, squid, and more mushrooms; a bread dumpling with a mystery center in a sauce; fish tempura; rice with fish flakes on top (surprisingly good), more pickled mystery items, and a small piece of pink matter with the consistency of Styrofoam that looked like an exploding firework tied in the middle with a piece of dry seaweed (our waiter mimed several times in a manner that indicated we should eat all of it); Japanese tea; a tofu custard dish with a tangerine sauce (tangerines are the regional specialty) topped by one lone blueberry; and macha tea.  The meal is less of a presentation than in Tsumago so it only lasts about 45 minutes.   Fine with us.

Saturday: Matsumaya

We're enjoying the fact that when someone we're talking to doesn't speak any English that doesn't stop them from talking for a long time as if we understand Japanese.  As if more words that we don't understand will help us understand.  It's strangely endearing.  As an Anglo I speak verrrrry slowly, leaving out pronouns and adjectives and modifiers.  As if words slowly enunciated that they don't understand will help them understand.  Neither technique works at all.

The hotel staff - in the fractured English we'll come to expect out in the boondocks - has strongly urged us to select the Japanese breakfast over the Western option - so we do.  It's the hilariously weird affair we've come to expect: fish, vegetables, tofu, and rice.  I have never been so baffled by a cuisine in my life.  I mean I'm not in the game.  I'm not saying I can't tell what kind of vegetable I'm eating - I'm saying I can't tell if it's a vegetable.  The fish is pretty self-explanatory but there are a lot of odds and ends with indecipherable textures and tastes.  Down it goes.  Every bit of it  Our rule is this: if they bring it we eat it.  Or at least try to eat it with very few exceptions, I'm proud to say.  I don't mean to suggest that I'm going to start making corn tofu with cod roe on top but I'll eat it while I'm here.

Today we're going to do a bit of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, a multi-site pilgrimage of 88 temples associated with the Buddhist monk Kukai.  We're going to be dipping our toes into the route which goes for about 250 kilometers by doing temples 49, 50, and 51, a more modest distance of five or six miles.

We hop into a cab and are dropped off at Jodoji Temple, said to have been founded by Gyoki Kuya.  Burned during fighting in 1416, it was rebuilt by the Kono clan.   Sixteenth-century graffiti indicates that by that time Tendai priests and members of the peasantry had joined the ranks of pilgrims.

At this point we run into some problems.  Every blessed thing is in Japanese and we're not sure where to go next as we make our way to Hantaji Temple.  There's a path from the shrine leading to an ancient graveyard and it continues up the hill to a great viewpoint over Matsumaya.  We climb all the way back down on a different spur of the path and end up at a commercial establishment on a busy road - an onsen or spa, by the looks of it - with no sign of the trail.  We waylay a couple of local folks - no English at all - who take us inside.  The young woman manning the desk takes a lot of time trying to tell us what to do, all of it in Japanese - she knows the word "straight" which she keeps repeating as she traces her finger along the map: "straight, straight, straight."  We don't know if the route she is pointing out is a hundred yards or two miles.  She indicates she's going to make a copy of map for us, disappears, and that's the last we see of her.  We climb all the way back up the hill, spy another branch heading roughly in the right direction.  Off we go for a good little while, the path moving past derelict houses and rusting cars.  We hum the theme song from Deliverance.  We don't see anyone.

Our best bet, we figure at this point, is to head back to Temple #1.  At this point we've been walking for an hour and have made no progress on our three hour hike.  And there it is: a sign featuring what is clearly a pilgrim marking the way.  For the next couple of hours we successfully follow the markers through residential neighborhoods and wooded areas, finding the next temple and a few other shrines.  Alas, at some point we miss a marker - not hard to do as they are placed on all manner of walls and signposts and boundaries.  As so often happens here a guy in a van stops, gives us some directions. But don't get me wrong - the shrines are really cool and deserted for the most part.  We pass a few Japanese pilgrims and salute them with "konnichiwa," or "good day" literally but actually a better definition would be the Western "how ya doin'?"

Foot sore and damn tired we finally arrive at Ishiteji Temple - the final stop - and plop down for an ice cream cone.  The temple - originally called Annoyō-ji - was founded by Gyoki, and converted from a Hosso to a Shingon.  Rebuilt by the ruler of Iyo Province in the eighth century, many of the temple buildings were destroyed by the Chosokabe in the sixteenth century.  The etiology sees the temple's name changed to Ishite-ji or stone-hand temple after the tightly-clenched hand of the newborn son of the lord of Iyo Province was opened by a priest from the Annoyō-ji to reveal a stone inscribed "Emon Saburo is reborn."

We walk the last twenty minutes to our hotel and onsen, onsen, onsen.  Dinner is another extravaganza.

Sunday:  Matsumaya then in transit to The Middle Of Nowhere

We eat our last big Japanese breakfast in Matsumaya - baffled and bemused as usual - and take a cab to Orix Rent A Car, expecting a big, bright Avis office full of uniformed employees.  The outlet appears to be the tiny and cluttered office of a mechanic who gives us papers in Japanese to sign and tries to tell us what everything means.  He is unfailingly polite.  Everybody here is unfailingly polite - our cab driver held umbrellas over our heads as we got out of his cab in a very light rain and escorting us the five feet into the shop.   We program our GPS to the best of our ability and ease into traffic in a Japanese-specific version of a Toyota Corolla.  Right hand drive here for some reason.  But I'm in my element - behind the wheel of a car and in control.  For people who have never lived in a place with a robust public transportation system we both find it easier to drive than to juggle trains and buses.

The drive leads down into the Iya Valley, a rugged and remote area of Shikoku, most of the time the road appearing to be a never-ending strip mall - we're never out of sight of buildings and people and could be in Ft. Lauderdale or Denver except for the Japanese signage.  Everyone drives very slowly and very respectfully even though the traffic is unrelenting.  Our GPS takes a hike at some point and is lost to us forever - some of the instructions are in English, some in Japanese and we find that randomly pushing buttons doesn't get us too far.  The one big hamstring is that the display doesn't allow us to put in a space.  All of the driving is in a variety of rain from light to pelting. 

Eventually the road begins to follow a river and thickly forested hills press in on us - it reminds me of my few times in West Virginia.  The view is obscured by wisps of fog and mist swirling around the tops of the mountains - at least that's what KK tells me, my eyes glued to the narrow, winding road.  We jag left, feint right, backtrack a few times, pull off to peer at maps and phones, before finding our ryokan - somehow, some way.  We thought there wasn't much English spoken in Matsuyama . . . 

The place, advertised as fantastic, is kind of camping fantastic - a little worn, a little musty, a little in the middle of nowhere.  The big selling point is our own private hot tub right on our own screened in deck.  The hotel is built on stilts high, high above the small river winding down the middle of the valley, emerald in color normally and offering river rafting, dark brown and raging uncontrollably with all of the rain, the sound quite loud with the door open.  The saving grace is that the food here is the best we get on the trip.

Monday: The Middle of Nowhere

The rain thunders down, pours down, rains holy hell on our heads.  We are troopers with the correct gear to weather any weather, but this is too much rain - the suggestion is to stay off the roads because of all the water sluicing down them.  We're knocked off our game for a day, hopefully not more than that.  It's a little frustrating because we're in a pretty isolated spot with a marginally comfortable room in a spartan hotel - no restaurant or nice common areas - so we're just kind of stuck.  It happens when you travel.  Can't control the weather.  Tomorrow looks wet but doable.

 Sunday: The Middle of Nowhere

It's still raining when we eat our breakfast comprised of a hundred small dishes filled with foods that we have never eaten and cannot recognize. I'm glad I don't have to wash dishes here let alone prepare the food - we wonder what a typical Japanese has for breakfast?  Count Chocula?  Again, fish, tofu (big chunks of it coming at us relentlessly and with every meal), raw fish, smoked fish, tons of pickled vegetables and seaweeds, cooked fish (often by us on a variety of cooking surfaces including a hibachi device, a pot heated by a little candle, kettles hung over charcoal burning in a pit right in the middle of our table, and food items impaled on wooden sticks - including whole fish - cooking near the fire pit), and some more fish.  There is some kind of smallish local fish that is ubiquitous at every meal - it's always served with both the head and tail intact, either raw or cooked.  There are always many sauces that we are directed to use with various courses, the correct sauce for the correct food indicated by vigorous pantomiming waitstaff.  The meat is usually sliced very thin and cooks quickly whether we're searing it or boiling it in hot broth.

We climb into our Toyota Tiny Minuscule and head for a couple of recommended "tourist" sites in the valley.  The drive into the Iya Valley proper started in a slightly hilly terrain and changed gradually into a much more remote-feeling, thickly forested valley, always following a raging river, filled to capacity because of the recent rains.  There is white-water rafting offered but not today or anytime soon.  The Iya Valley itself is even more narrow, the mountains collapsing in on the road and river until the valley itself couldn't have been much more than a hundred yards across.  The road, narrow and twisting tortuously right from the git-go, becomes comical.  It is, at best, a very narrow two land road but it often loses one of the lanes, creating a game of motorized chicken.  In many places it's definitely one lane as it snakes through narrow villages and around sharp curves - the only way to see what's ahead is using the convex mirrors that are everywhere -  hung on trees, posts, or stuck into the ground.  There isn't much traffic but it's still stressful going into a curve not knowing what's coming at you.  When two cars meet one of two finds whatever turn-out is available, allowing the other guy to creep slowly by.  This can be an adventure in and of itself because the water gutters at the side of the road frequently sharply drop down a few feet - if you slip off you're in trouble.  Everyone is very friendly, giving the pull-off guy a wave or a friendly toot of a horn.  Once, I have to back up 50 yards or so to let three big dump trucks by.  They honked cheerfully as they made it past.

Our first stop is the very creepy Scarecrow Village, the whole atmospheric scene made creepier by the gloomy and wet day.  This village is living proof of Japan's concern about its aging population.  Resident Tsukimi Ayano has made over 200 scarecrows to represent past residents of the village - some living, some dead.  The scarecrows are scattered around the village, each with their own personality and job.  Once home to over 300 people there are only 29 residents still there.

A few miles down the road are a couple of the famous vine bridges of the Iya Valley - there's a pair of them at this location: the loftier Male Bridge and the lower Female Bridge.  It's five bucks a pop to walk across them or to pull yourself across by rope in a little basket but we only want to take a look - this technique proves impossible for the woman manning the ticket booth who won't let us pass until we fork over the cash.  Fair enough - five bucks it is.  We get to the bottom and there they are - bridges made of twisted vines supporting wooden planks that are widely enough spaced that an ankle could go through but not a whole body.  I give it a go, comforted by the fact that metal guy wires are supporting the bridge, disturbed by the fact that the wet planks are slippery and the whole bridge is rocking and rolling.

The history of the bridges is that they were built by the reclusive Heike Clan as a failsafe last defense against any attacking enemies - the Heike would flee across the bridges and then cut them down, leaving their enemies stranded on the other side of a fast-moving river flowing in a deep ravine.

Afterward we get a coffee at the small cafe that serves the site.  We watch as the matron hand grinds the coffee beans, brews the coffee,  which she then serves with a two-inch slice of banana, the peeling stripped back, and a pancake with butter cooked right into the middle.  She has a friend there and they're watching an intense, hokey Japanese soap opera.  We have a little fun laughing about the show with them.

We head back towards home, stopping at the Ochai mountain village, a Japanese historical site.  There are a few thatched-roof huts still there - the roofs themselves have to be a foot thick and they're efficiently wicking off the water.  The view down over the valley is nice but the preservation status only means there are strict rules as to what can architecturally be done in the area.  We were expecting sort of a demonstration village.

The rest of the day is a grind.  I enjoyed the driving part on the way out but the hyper-vigilance that the venomous road requires begins to take a toll on my body.  We make it home eventually, stunned when we have to make a left turn into our hotel's small parking lot - we thought we were coming in from the opposite direction.  These ridiculous roads have us all turned around.

Outside onsen again - now that the rain has stopped we can see that the hotel is built on stilts right on the edge of a steep incline, the river clearly visible right below, waterfalls pouring into it from several locations because of the heavy rain.  Most of the time there's a foggy mist - sometimes it hangs around the the tops of the mountains, at others completely obscures the view.  It really IS a beautiful spot - we're sorry we don't have the chance to take a couple of the hikes that we had planned but are skeptical that the trails would be anything but slippery mud.

Big dinner again and it takes forever to serve.  After about an hour and forty-five minutes of eating and sitting our lovely waitress disappears for a long time.  We sit and talk then sit and look at our cell phones then begin to fidget.  We knew we were almost done, waiting only for a noodle dish and a tiny dessert, which we were too full to eat anyway.  We finally get up to leave.  KK looks for our server in the warren of dining spaces separated by wall panels with no success so we scoot off.  A couple of minutes later a knock at our door - our server is standing there, bowing, scorching us with Japanese, obviously to the effect that we haven't eaten our entire dinner.  We pantomime blowing up and sleeping, letting her know we were done.  Faux Pas number one of the evening.

These people do not eat fruit.  These people should be punished by the World Court for the crap that passes as dessert -  last night we had cheesecake which was the first thing that has demonstrated any sweetness at all.  Bread is non-existent.

Before we retire for the night we decide to take the larger pieces of our luggage down to the front desk - Japan has this amazing luggage forwarding service whereby you can have your suitcases forwarded for under $20 a bag, saving you the chore of lugging the stuff through stations and on and off trains and buses and subways.  The guy speaks almost no English but we've brought the address of our next hotel for him to copy.  KK asks the price of a scarf displayed in the hotel lobby.  The attendant bows and leaves, comes back, talking a mile a minute, then disappears for good.  We never see him again.  After a while an older woman peeps through the curtain covering the door into the inner office, gives a little surprised squeak, backs into the office, and slams an official door shut.  We wait a little longer then go back to our room.  Ten minutes later a knock on our door.  A third woman tells us - we think - that they don't have that scarf.  In The States they would have sold the one on the wall - not here.

I mean, tatami mats as floor coverings, right?  Traditionally made using rice straw to form the core with a covering of woven soft rush straw, tatami are made in standard sizes, with the length exactly twice the width.  Usually, on the long sides, they have edging of brocade or plain cloth, although some tatami have no edging.  This type of floor covering was originally the domain of the wealthy with commoners using simpler mats sitting right on the dirt.  This architectural style reached its peak of development when tatami gradually came to be spread over whole rooms, beginning with the smaller rooms.  Rooms completely spread with tatami came to be known as zashiki (room spread out for sitting), and rules concerning seating and etiquette determined the arrangement of the tatami in the rooms.  

No shoes on the tatami, dude.  Not even slippers which can be worn in a lot of places but not the onsen.  Bathrooms always have a pair of more rubberized slippers that are only used in that room.  They do not leave that room.  I spent most of the trip getting yelled at for wearing the wrong foot gear in the wrong room or chided for taking off my shoes when there was no reason to do so.

Tuesday September 11: The Middle of Nowhere then in transit to Fukuoka

Breakfast and we're on the road to Takamatsu and there are no hitches.  We stock up on sandwiches and noodles - grateful we don't have a big meal planned anytime soon - fuel up and drop our car off at the station.  We drive right to the Orix Car Rental office only to be told that there are TWO of them within 100 yeards of each other.  The Marine Express takes us to the Okayama Shinkansen which drops us off at the train station in Fukuoka, the largest city on the island of Kyushu.  From there we figure out another subway system and get to within a few hundred yards of our hotel - the umpteenth very nice man points us in the correct directions as we navigate a bustling underground walkway/mall area, popping out on a jamming street.  We have arrived at our hotel, a comfortable business hotel with a Western Style bed by which I mean a bed.  It has been okay sleeping on mats on the floor except for the getting up and getting vertical during the night or first thing in the morning as well as the hip making contact with the hard floor when I try to sleep on my side.

A typical exchange . . . I stop for gas and can't figure out the pump instructions or whether I pump the gas myself or not.  A kid comes out.  We have to figure out the grade required.  Cash or credit?  Credit.  I pull out a Visa and he has to make me understand that only a company charge cards works.  Eventually, we get to where we need to be.

We have time for a quick shower and change of clothes before heading down to the lobby to meet Asako, our guide for a tour of the area's street food scene.  She has called an audible - shows us that the stalls are uncomfortable little affairs on a hot, busy street, full of kids slurping down noodles, and takes us to a nice restaurant instead.  Sushi, fish dishes, hot soup, and then we go to one of the largest department stores in the city, take the escalator down to the basement where there is a huge area selling high end - no, incredibly high end - foods of every type and style.  We buy some salads and tempura and chocolates for dessert, watch the hoi poli shell out big bucks for their consumables.  

In Japan there is a tradition of carefully cultivating fruit that is given as a special gift on special occasions by people who we assume must be wealthy.  I'm talking about $250 melons and a bunch of grapes costing $50 - farmers grow them in special soil under very strict conditions, producing these as status symbols.  I guess in a way this would be no different than substituting daisies for roses - just as pretty and a hell of a lot less expensive.  As a foodie I say again: I'm baffled by what these folks eat - I cannot tell what much of the food is.

Every entrance, exit, or transaction requires a huge stream of Japanese.  It makes no difference to the speaker that we obviously don't understand a word of what they're saying.  It comes out in such a pleasant manner that all we do is smile and nod, responding with the few Japanese niceties that we've memorized.  Every place we've been - from high end department stores to lowly shops is over-staffed to a comical degree.  You think Starbucks is fast in The States?  The speed is blinding here.  You're even handed a menu while you're in line in case the menu up on the wall in front of you (in English and Japanese) isn't convenient enough.

The women wear very loose clothing for the most part.  No tight pants, no clinging skirts, no body-hugging dresses.  Very modest in a '50s middle America housewife kind of way.  I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen jeans.

I pass a young woman on the street wearing a T-shirt with OHIO printed in big block letters, an Ohio University model.  I step over and point at her shirt, point at myself, repeating Ohio, trying to get her to understand that is where I'm from originally.

Asako is looking at me curiously: "Why did you keep telling her good morning?" she asked.  Yes, that's right - ohio means good morning in a colloquial way.  The kid with the shirt must have thought I was deranged.

  Back to the hotel and we're fast asleep with a big day behind us.

Wednesday: Fukuoka

We've eaten a ton of fish and a ton of vegetables and some pretty weird meat: beef and pork and chicken, sure, but also duck and horse intestine and wild boar.  Fruit has been few and far in between and bread has been non-existent.  I ask Asako what the real Japanese have for breakfast: fruit and bread.   Sheesh.  These workaholics obviously don't have time for big, elaborate breakfasts every day.

Everything has begun to taste a little fishy at this point.  We suspect that the fishiness has seeped into everything.  As in: "How's the coffee (this at Starbucks)?"  Reply:  "Tastes a little fishy."

Wet wipes are the order of the day.  Every purchase that concerns food receives a wet wipe.  In restaurants of any status you are given a wet cloth and - if you're really putting on the Ritz - the cloth is steaming hot.  A lot of people carry around their own personal small towel to mop their faces and necks in the heat and humidity.

Asako is back at our hotel this morning to lead us on half-day tour of the city.  We pop onto a public bus and head to the ruins of Fukuoka Castle.  It was completed in the early Edo Period for Kuroda Nagamasa and has been decreed a historic site by the Japanese government.  The castle lies in the centre of town, on top of Fukusaki hill.  The Naka River acts as a natural moat on the eastern side of the castle, while the western side uses a mudflat as a moat which is full of tall lotus plants, a few in bloom.  One has to use one's imagination as the castle was destroyed when the Shogun era ended so the site is pretty rudimentary.

Most of the tourists in Japan are Chinese.  None of our tour guides is very complimentary of their skills as tourists.  Asako says that they never visit any museums or other public sites that have admission charges.  The ugly Chinese have replaced the ugly Americans.  China, after all, is only a short flight or ferry ride away.

Next we swing by to see the Kushida Shrine founded in 757.  The Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival is centred on the shrine.  The festival is famous for the Kakiyama, that weigh around one ton and are carried around the city in a very competitive float-racing contest.  The festival is believed to be over 770 years old and attracts up to a million spectators each year.  There are a few of the floats displayed, massive structures attached to logs that the participants use to carry the thing around, at a stiff run.  We also see the small Makata Machiya Folk Museum on the grounds.

We did not see one Western face the six days we were on Shikoku.  Now on the island of Kyushu we've seen a couple.  Single digits and not one American.  We usually nod at each other when we pass someone who isn't obviously Asian.  The Japanese themselves are pretty averse to direct eye contact - everyone has that 1000 yard stare when they're walking past.

We stop for coffee at a shop that specializes in rice crackers of every flavor (including fish, I'm sure).  Next door is Tocho-ji Temple, founded in 806.  The highlight of Tocho-Ji is a giant seated Buddha carved out of wood that stands 30 feet high and weighs an estimated 30 tons.  KK is convinced at at this point that every Buddha she sees is looking at her and smiling faintly. There is a circular walkway that winds around this Buddha; at one point it enters an enclosed part of the walkway that is sealed so tightly that not a bit of light gets in.  It is seriously dark - my eyes start to play tricks on me.  It twists and turns - we mark our progess by holding our hands out at arm's length -  and near the end an iron ring is affixed to the wall - if you find the ring it signals the Buddha that you're a seeker of merit, hopefully speeding your way into Heaven.

We bid adieu to Asaka at the Kawabata Shopping Arcade, full of shops and restaurants of a local flavor.  We browse for a bit, at one point buying a wall-hanging.  As Mom and Pop are wrapping up our gift I make some room in my backpack, pulling out a container of grapes (about $8 for 30 or so large purple grapes).  Each of them politely take one big grape, thanking me profusely, and eat them as they finish their task.  The Japanese don't eat the skin, peeling a small section back a bit before popping the grape into their mouths, then ejecting the skin so surreptitiously that I don't see them do it.  I wolf the whole thing down, barely pausing to chew.

There is a shop called Akasaka Fukuoka - this sounds to me like a noise Jimi Hendrix would make using the wah-wah pedal on his Fender.  AK-ah-saka FUH-ka-waca.

We stop for lunch in the arcade at a local restaurant that has some noodle dishes displayed pictorially on signs outside the entrance.  Inside there are maybe ten tables, a couple of businessmen slurping down their meal (slurping and smacking one's lips are commonplace here,  a sign that you're enjoying your meal).  There are menus on the table in Japanese only.

English menus, I wonder.

No!

Fine, we point to a dish that appears to be chicken strips with ramen noodles.  Two of these, please.

Ginger Ale?

No!  No ginger ale.

Coke?

No! No.  No Coke.

KK goes upstairs to the bathroom to wash up before the food comes.  When she returns I follow her up.

No! No! No! yells the owner, running over, pointing to a bathroom on the ground floor, tucked in a corner that we couldn't see.

None of this was done in anger.  We weren't offended.  It was a fact and we're in a factual place.  No Ginger Ale.  Fact.  No Coke.  Fact.  Use this bathroom.  Fact.  We're laughing under our breath at that point.  The food was good - cheap and filling.  We slurped heartily.

Back to the hotel on foot, mostly in a straight line.  Both of us are running down at this point - still enjoying the trip but somewhat less so.  Our feet are sore and we're losing steam; the exotic things seem less exotic and more repetitious; we don't have the wonder and thrill of experiencing new things.  Raw fish at breakfast the first day?  Wow, what an experience.  On day twenty?  How about some toast and cereal instead, and can a brother get a banana?  The trip has been pretty long and we've changed locations pretty often, both of these facts adding to the weariness.

Thursday:  Fukuoka

Recommendations for today both involved shortish train trips out of town - one the Venice of Kyushu, the other a center for Japanese ceramics.  We're on a train again tomorrow - we're on trains a lot - so we pass and hang, Fukuoka-style.  Both of us are groggy and energy-deficient as we start the day with a subway ride back to the castle area to go to the Fukuoka Art Museum and a Japanese garden complex, both set on the shore of a large, centrally located lake.  Normally we can shake the malaise when we get moving but both of us feel water-logged today.

We walk half-way around the lake to the garden, a marvel of harmony and peace in the middle of a busy city.  The art museum is closed for renovations, alas, so we cross a series of bridges that link little islands in the middle of the lake, ending up at a coffee shop for caffeine and another bad Japanese sweet roll - they seem to be close on some of the desserts except when they're way, way off.

"I think we've done Fukuoka," KK remarked.  Back to the hotel for a wonderful nap; coffee at Starbucks (where we're shooed when we take two separate little tables so that we can both face the crowd - imagine that in a U.S. Starbucks); and some shopping at a IKEA-like store called The Loft.  KK has been looking for one of the robes that many of the hotels have provided (called yukatas), so far without success.

The cadence of the language is fascinating.  There is a lot of drawing out of vowels - particularly the ahh sound - and a lot of forceful emphasis on others.  We watched a Japanese newscaster one evening with the sound off - it was fascinating watching her mouth move in ways that English doesn't require.  There is no R in Japanese so they really struggle with that sound.  They also don't have letters that require them to push their tongue against the back of their top teeth and roof of the mouth, like with our TH sound, and they struggle reproducing the little explosive puff of air we make when saying the letter P.

The toilet paper here has been outstanding.  Thick, buttery soft, the perfect ending after the shower of warm water bathes your backside.  Mirror height, however, has been a problem, as has the level of the sinks.  If I stand in front of a mirror the highest I can see is about chest-level and I've taken to sitting down on the edge of the tub when I wash my face - bending over to rinse feels like a fairly complicated yoga move.

Weird weather so far - an earthquake, a bad typhoon, torrential rains, blistering heat and humidity.  We've either been roasting or drowning.  I'd call this the worst weather I've ever had on a trip.  The sun is rarely out and when it is you wish it wasn't.

Nobody ever admits to not knowing English.  Nobody ever hesitates and smiles.  Everyone just keeps talking in Japanese, and rapidly.  It's like it would be a failure to admit not knowing English so I always compliment anyone who can speak even a little.  Whatever the level and quality it's a lot better than my Japanese.   English has become so ubiquitous that I'm embarrassed to admit that I barely make the effort to learn even the few words required to be polite.   

Friday: Fukuoka then in transit to Beppu

Sigh.  I am so freaking sick of moving around.  After breakfast we ship our luggage ahead (which we had for a whole day - enough time to dig out some clean underwear and a change of pants) , check out, and re-start the wearying round of public transportation - something we've gotten pretty good at, actually.  The company that set our itinerary was too ambitious, I think.  We probably should have stayed at two or three fewer places and added a day or two at those that made the cut.  My fault for not studying the logistics more closely - some of the travel days take up a big chunk of time and are definitely tiring.

Subway to the train station where we take a local back east to the resort town of Beppu.  At one point in the journey the train reverses direction without physically turning around  - this means that everyone on the train gets up, flips a lever on the seats, and turns them around to face the other way.  Beppu is famous for the hot springs that fuel dozens of onsens, reputedly an area of geothermal activity exceeded only by Yellowstone.  

This place, I think, is our first whiff of the trip: it's pretty crappy and run down and bland.  One of the shopping arcades we visit is deserted, half the shops closed down, with the vaguely depressing air of a failing small town carnival wafting about.  It seriously feels like Ft. Lauderdale after the spring breakers have left.  I should have been a little more careful with some of the destinations.  Not sure I would have picked this one.

There is an onsen, however.  It is small and packed with what must either be Chinese tourists or drunk Japanese - it's loud, loud, loud, and not at all relaxing.  Dinner is more of the same - there is a big conference going on in one of the dining rooms - karaoke is on the menu so we get to listen to a lot of drunken shouting and bad, amplified singing.  Back in the room - easily perturbed at this stage of the trip - we find that our futon sleeping mats are paper thin.  We pile on another set in storage - two paper thin mats aren't much better than one.  One often reaches this stage of the trip - weary, homesick, tired of struggling with newness all of the time.  There is comfort in familiar routine after all.

Here's dinner ver batim off of our Kaiseki or menu:
Apertif - Kabosu Cocktail (we pass on this - :) - although I did sip a glass of sake before dinner one night.  Just enough to wet my lips as it really didn't have any alcohol smell to it at all.  The closest thing that came to mind was Boone's Farm Apple Wine.  One of our waitresses remembered that we didn't drink alcohol so she thoughfully brought a glass of plum juice one evening.  We mistakenly set it aside, thinking it was more sake.

Appetizer - Corn Tofu (which was not bad, believe it or not).

Sashimi - Sea Bream, Purplish Amberjack, and squid.

Lidded Pottery - Seafood Borscht.

Food on a Stand - Specialty of Beppu: Chanko Pot (here the server would light a little candle under a small, heavy pot containing broth and vegetables - it would peter out after getting the soup nice and hot.  We saw this process play out at many meals).

Tempura - Shrimp Tempura (the seafood and vegetables that came with the tempura course were always excellent - lightly fried with a delicate batter.  We always got a whole battered Japanese basil leaf each time - it tasted like a potato chip and was delicious).

Pickled Fish - Shrimp Salad.

Tomewan (yeah, I don't know what that means, either) - Miso Soup (Miso Soup is like bread here - it ALWAYS comes with the meal and is ALWAYS offered at every breakfast buffet.  It is a soup flavored with dried, fermented fish flakes, and it tastes like shit).

Shokuji - Rice and pickles. (Rice is ubiquitous, as you would imagine, and it's a sticky kind, very nice for chopstick work.  I've mentioned that there is a never-ending array of pickled vegetables and sea products, and they're very, very good.  The number of dishes that come with each meal is amazing).


Dessert - Lemon Jelly (this is a small slurp of gelatin stuff flavored with lemon.  Desserts are terrible here.  We had cheesecake once and ice cream a couple of times - the suggestion has constantly been that we try green tea ice cream, which defeats the whole purpose of dessert.  The idea of massive amounts of processed white sugar is apparently unknown).

Saturday:  Beppu

Fish, fish, and more fish for breakfast with a healthy dose of more fish, tofu, and a huge selection of pickled mystery vegetables, all of this washed down with fish juice.

We rouse the troops, fire up the energy banks, and pour out of the hotel, back into the heat and humidity, good Germans never giving up, always soldiering on.  The weather has been unrelentingly tropical, including the rain showers and storms that we've had to endure.

One of the odd things that happens from time to time when I've been immersed in a place where absolutely no one speaks English is that I occasionally hallucinate up an inane phrase or illogical grouping of words when I'm half paying attention to the babble around me.  There will be a lot of Japanese roiling around in the background - my mind will go into idle, aware of the sounds but not really listening - when all of a sudden I'll hear someone say: "Blasted greenery" or "Angry as that."  It's really quite funny.  It becomes even more noticeable if I'm dozing off a bit - on a train or bus, for instance - and the conductor will start to make an announcement that my dozing brain ignores, and suddenly I'll be jolted awake with what clearly sounds like a phrase in English.

Beppu is famous for its geothermal activity so we start to walk towards Beppu Station to catch a bus for a series of seven sites - called the "hells" - but manage to jump on some bus or other that seems to indicate it's heading toward the station that is closest to these sites.  It's always mildly anxiety-provoking to be on a public bus snaking through town with no certainty it's going where you want it to go.  People pile on and off, sometimes paying in cash, sometimes using cards or their phones, and they do this either when entering or exiting or both.  

Because this is Japan an older dude strikes up a conversation with us and confirms that the bus is stopping where we want to go.  He speaks passable English which he has taught himself by watching TV.  When we finally arrive at our stop the very nice woman bus driver helps us pay something fair - because we didn't log in when we got on the bus there was no record of what we should pay.  She charged us six or seven bucks for the ride, waved us off cheerfully.

Eventually we make it to the Seven Hells.  Not necessarily in this order . . . 

Umi Jigoku - one of the more beautiful hells - named the "Sea Hell" - it features a pond of boiling blue water.  In its spacious gardens there are a few smaller, orange colored hells and a clear water pond with lotus plants whose large leaves are strong enough to carry small children (and there is photographic proof).

Next is Oniishibozu Jigoku, named after the mud bubbles which emerge from boiling mud pools and look like the shaven heads of monks.  There is also a foot bath here where we sit down and catch our breath, soaking our feet in warm mineral water.  For some reason this hell doesn't have a name that translates well at all - the best I could come up with was "tremendously tremendous" or perhaps "extremely."

Next on the hit parade is Shiraike Jigoku - or "White Pond Hell" - featuring a pond of hot, milky water.  There's a small garden here as well and a building containing a run-down aquarium that has seen better days and - on a dark second floor where we struggled to find a light - a few Japanese wall hangings with pictures and calligraphy.   

Then Kamado Jigoku - "Cooking Pot Hell" - that has several boiling ponds and a flashy red demon statue as the cook.  A few people are drinking some of the hot spring water - not us - enjoying more hand and foot baths, inhaling the hot spring steam for health benefits, and trying various snacks cooked or steamed by the hot springs themselves (boiled eggs, a tapioca-like pudding, and corn on the cob are the big three - we get a couple of eggs, notable for their bright orange yolk).  

At one spot on the path leading up to the hells there are two stands right across the road from each other - no more that 20 feet apart - offering the exact same foods, cooked in steam venting through a cement stand with a metal grille.  We speculate on the likelihood that the proprietors engage in American-style cut-throat sales techniques.  Doubtful.  More likely is that we're looking at a husband-wife team capturing the market.

At Oniyama Jigoku a large number of crocodiles are kept on the grounds in small to medium sized pens.  They look pretty beat up as if they've been fighting in the confined spaces.  Anyway, thus the name "Monster Mountain Hell."

At this point we've done the Red Hells - five of 'em - and hit the road for a mile or so walk to the final two - the Blue Hells.  The walk sucks, frankly, along a busy road with non-existent sidewalks, through a dank tunnel - no big deal experience, one of the "sometimes you win them, sometimes you lose" part of travel.  We have to stop and lurk under an awning at one point for a ten minute rain shower to blow through.  Finally, we get to the entrance to the final two hells and stop into a tiny, three table restaurant that has a menu of five items.  The guy cooks us up some yakisobe noodles with bean sprouts and a kind of spicy fried chicken.  Very tasty and $12 with tip.  He did not accept my AmEx card.

Across the street is Chinoike Jigoku, the "Blood Pond Hell," so named because the main feature is a pond of boiling red water (the color from minerals leached from the clay in the ground).  Right next door is Tatsumaki Jigoku, the cheesiest of the hells - the attraction here is a boiling hot geyser which erupts every thirty or forty minutes for about five minutes.  There's a stone plate above the geyser which stops the geyser from reaching its full height so that it doesn't spray hot water on tourists.  A short walking trail leads up the forested slope and gives us a bit of a view over the valley and the geyser which gives this hell its name: "Spout Hell."

Nevertheless if you visit Beppu you will be confronted by a vision of eight terrifying hells appearing before you.  And these are certainly terrifying hells.  Hot water gushes forth from the ground, rumbling and roaring ferociously, as enormous crocodiles jostle violently with each other.  Though you may not be able to see demons, it's clear that one false step, one slip, will bring you to a rapid demise.

Human beings need to experience hell in this life at least once, to empty themselves of their superfluous accumulations, to reflect on their past conduct, and to contemplate the path ahead.  Only those who have lived through hell and lived to tell the tale are worthy to be called true human beings.   --- Kon Toukou, Buddhist Priest

The Hells have a reputation for being pretty touristy.  Well-deserved and packed with Chinese tourists.  Each Hell has a clearly marked path which always leads through the gift shop before the you gain access to the site itself.  At this point in the trip we have gotten pretty good at differentiating the Japanese from the Chinese, mostly due to their public behavior - one quiet, one not. 

We've been intrigued by the concept of Saving Face which is so prevalent here - it signifies a desire or defines a strategy to avoid humiliation or embarrassment or - just as important - to maintain dignity or preserve reputation.  Today I offered to help an older woman lift a shopping stroller onto a bus - she brushed off my request quickly.  I was trying to be nice but perhaps such assistance would have embarrassed her?  Twice at dinner - once because a meal lasted far too long and once because of an inattentive server - we got up and went back to our room.  Both times we tried to find the women who were taking care of us but with no success - the private dining areas are all segregated by sliding doors and wall panels, making it hard to see who is where.  At the first ryokan our waitress quickly tracked us down in our room to make sure we didn't want the dessert, apologizing profusely.  In the second instance the phone in our room began to ring . . . and ring and ring and ring, going unanswered.  Two minutes later a loud rapping at our door that we couldn't ignore.  Outside was our server - who didn't speak much English - and someone from the front desk who was pretty fluent, informing us that we missed dessert - ice cream - and could they bring it to the room?  I told them that we had simply forgotten about dessert, hoping this gentle lie would defuse any embarrassment.  Two minutes more and the ice cream was delivered to our room - on a little tray - accompanied by more apologizing.  When we were done I hand-carried the tray back to the dining area, thanking everyone I could see.  Compliments are received very gravely - "Your English is very good" is one I always toss out even if the English is very bad.

The mirror heights in our bathrooms have been comical - most of them cut my view of myself off at about chin height.  The sink itself is almost on the floor - I bring in a stool so that I cna wash my face without executing an advanced yoga move.

If a Japanese person doesn't speak English that doesn't stop them for one minute from talking and talking and talking, as if more words we don't understand will help us understand.  One shop clerk tried to help KK by pointing to each Japanese character and sounding it out for her.  This did not help at all.

Sunday: Beppu then in transit to Nagasaki
We have some time this morning so it's a quick onsen and then our final Japanese breakfast.  I'm afraid I have to say that I'm ready for a piece of toast or a bowl of cereal or some oatmeal.  It's enough with the breakfast fish already although this morning one of the offerings looks like a tiny baby manta raw - it is nice and chewy and the rigid tail makes for a convenient stick to chew the flesh off the . . . whatever it actually is.

We wander up to the Beppu train station, grateful to get out of this tacky, touristy, run-down town.  Think Myrtle Beach or the Wisconsin Dells or Gattlenburg or Niagara Falls.  Tacky.  Then it's a couple of fast locals to Nagasaki.  We almost miss the second train due to a six minute turnaround but step on board in time, and then it's about a 15 minute walk to our hotel.  We're done in at this point.  There are some local shopping arcades nearby so we wander around a bit, eat some spaghetti, and head for home, our second Richmond Hotel.

I have not had the occasion to sit in a single chair, couch, or any other piece of furniture that I would consider to be comfortable.  Everything is small and low to the ground and angled to force the human body into a rigidly upright position, catching me in some agonizing spot in my low back.  This is not a society built for the tall, skinny guy.

The hotel has a small laundry room with four devices that both wash and dry clothes, and that automatically dispense detergent into the machine, eliminating the irritating and frustrating need to find laundry soap when you travel.  After a month on the road we definitely had the need to do a load.  Each of these machines requires that you input a code - this locks the device so that no one else can snag your clothes.  This is great if you have a machine - less so if all the machines are taken and one is sitting there idle, with a load of clean clothes still locked inside.

One of the devices indicated that there were only a few minutes left (of course the Japanese washer/dryers have a digital timer on them) but as we didn't know how prompt the owner would be we decided to try later.  As we exited the room the load finished and a man in a robe walked by us.  KK signaled we should wait.  She peeked into the room and smiled - the man was taking his clothes out of the washer.  He had set a timer to return at exactly the right time.  Of course.  Japan - land of the considerate.

Monday: Nagasaki
One of the reasons that KK and I have been comfortable in Japan is that there is a great emphasis on The Rules, on contributing to an overall sense of group comfort and purpose.  These are not folks who go their own way, do their own thing.  They get along.  They consider how their actions will affect everyone as a whole.

Then comes Guncanjima - Battleship Island.  The story here is that in the early stages of Japan's industrialization coal was discovered on this many small island in Nagasaki Harbor so a thriving community was built - apartment buildings, restaurants, a theater, exercise facilities, etc.  At its heyday over 5,000 people lived there and they did well - the pay put them firmly in the middle class.  Eventually Japan began to make the transition to petroleum and the island fell into disuse and was eventually abandoned.  Today it is being slowly reclaimed by nature and has been listed as a somewhat eerie World Heritage site commemorating Japan's industrial rise.

We get good and lost - of course - finding the particular pier for this cruise.  We arrive hot and sweaty and a little frantically perturbed.  We have no tickets but the kid manning the desk quickly finds our reservations and we're given a number and directed to the dock where a young woman motions us forward and inserts us in the line - numerically.  From time to time she marshalls the line forward, taking up any slack between people waiting - we're all bunched together in the heat and humidity.   Then onto the boat where each person is told where they're going to sit.  We're in the middle aisle the inside cabin so we ask if we can sit in a couple of empty seats right next to the window: NO.  We've been warned that the commentary is only given in Japanese but that we can follow along on an audio guide they provide - it remains conspicuously silent as a dude on an intercom system talks and talks and talks in Japanese.  We figure we're either missing what we're supposed to hear about the island or these are the important safety instructions for the cruise.  

There's an employee posted at each door as sort of a guard, apparently to stop anyone from getting up and moving around.  Consequently, there is no getting up and moving around.  I'm pinned in my Japanese sized chair when the woman at my door tells KK and me that if we have to go to the bathroom now's the time to do it because the sea is going to be too rough once we get going.  I'm fairly incredulous at this point.

"Man, the Japanese can suck the fun out of everything," I lean over and tell KK.  I guess this is the agony and the ecstasy of the social contract here.  I've never been annoyed by someone in a restaurant talking loudly on a cell phone or someone in line cutting in front of me or a filthy public bathroom, but with all of the politeness comes a lot of rigidity.

The boat takes off, our audio guide finally crackles to life, and we chug down the middle of a very industrialized harbor - descriptions of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries buildings taking up most of the early portion - until we began to move out into more open water.  Here the audio guide keeps asking us if we can see this island or that landmark, all of them located directly in front of the boat, everything obscured by an inner bulkhead.  Our mood lightens as the idiocy compounds.

There were a lot of warnings about heavy seas preventing a landing on the island itself; we're shown barf bags and told to stay seated.  The ocean is placid, calm, glassy.  Once we reach the island the captain circles it once before attempting a landing at the dock there - he lurches closer, then farther, guns the engine, then cuts it, all of this taking for a while.  KK and I are rolling our eyes and looking at each other like: WTF?

Then the sad announcement: the seas are too rough for a landing so we're just going to go home.  My wife speculates that they never land there if they couldn't land on such a calm day, that this is all part of the master plan.  They will refund the island tour part of the admission fee but we eat the cruise part.  When we get back - an hour early - we pop into a cafe to wait for our guide who will be showing us around the rest of the day.  We're seated but no one comes to take our order - waitresses bustle around but give us White People a wide berth.  The drinks appear to be self-serve so I get us a couple of coffees.  Eventually we leave.  The kid on the cash register disappears when he hears me say: "Coffee," as I hold up two fingers.  He comes back with a bill a few minutes later and we're on our way.  We definitely did something wrong.

After this duo of debacles we meet up with our guide Yukiko and head off to the A-Bomb Museum - a credit to the local population who took the initiative to make sure the project was completed  - that takes us through the events that led up to the horrific day in 1945 when the bomb was dropped, exploding about 150 meters above the city center.  The actual target that day was the city of Kokura but the cloud cover prevented the crew from seeing the ground so they diverted to Nagasaki instead; and even there the plane flew around for a bit before the skies momentarily cleared.  Talk about some shitty luck.  The museum was very reasoned and thoughtful - there was very little sensationalizing and great effort was taken to stress that the whole point here was to make sure that a nuclear weapon should never be used again, especially on a civilian target (to be fair there was damage to industries involved in the war effort as well, including ship building and a Mitsubishi armaments factory).

We then strolled over to Hypocenter Park, marked by a small monument around which concentric circles represent the blast waves.  Here are also found the remains of a turret from the Catholic Cathedral that once stood on this site.  All that was left.  Another two minutes walk took us to The Peace Park which is full of sculptures dedicated to the peace movement donated from countries all over the world.  The whole experience is sobering.  Because Nagasaki was such an entry port for Japan a lot of foreigners were also killed - Chinese, American and Australian POWs, and many of the Christian population of Japan which was concentrated in Nagasaki.

To end our tour Yukiko flags down a taxi and we climb to the top of the highest hill above Nagasaki - it really is a pretty place, most of the people living in the little valleys that snake between the hills, the water never very far from anything.  It has a very rural feel.  

Back to the hotel for noodles and asleep by 10.

Tuesday:  Nagasaki then in transit back to Tokyo
This morning is another example of the Curse of the Polite.  We have a flight to catch from Nagasaki to Tokyo - our printed itinerary says that we will be picked up at the hotel by a bus that might possibly make additional stops but it also gives us a timetable from Nagasaki Station.  I don't clear this up at breakfast, vaguely uneasy that I'm messing up.  When we check out the nice, polite, helpful woman at the desk says: "Oh, no, the bus doesn't stop here" and whips out a map, draws some directions, tells us it's a five minute walk or that we can catch a taxi.   The map is in Japanese so we don't know exactly where to go.  Yesterday we asked Yukiko about the pick-up and she hand-wrote on our tickets: Nagasaki Bus Terminal.   This may or may not be the same as Nagasaki Station.

We blow out the front door and I flag down a taxi on the main road just down the side street from our hotel.  KK shows the driver the map, he nods, says: "JR, station, sure."  He goes to a weird nook in a building close to the main train station, accessed by a confusing series of entrances and hallways, before we find the bus to the airport idling in a back alley.  This driver looks at our ticket and motions us on the bus.

No one said: "Fuck if I know what you're supposed to do."  Everyone confidently gave us directions to several different locations, none of them correct.

The rest of the day trends uneventful - a flight and a pre-arranged limo driver who takes us to our hotel - and then I contact . . . EXO Travel!  I will say that the loading of the plane was a ten minute affair - the overhead bins were practically empty.  No one bringing two Buick-sized carry-ons into the cabin, everyone stepping briskly and quickly getting out of the way, then sitting quietly in their seat.  No cell phone blaring.  It was refreshing.

Think it's time for a meeting after a month?  This is not unusual for us when we take longer trips.  Part of it is the lack of organized recovery in English and part is simply the weariness brought on by having to constantly navigate unfamiliar systems and procedures.  The joy of the little victory in finally getting onto the right subway line going in the right direction has been replaced by the irritation when a 10 minute trip takes an hour because we don't know what the hell we're doing.


Case in point as an ending to my day: our main tour company organized a visit to a national sumo tournament on our last day. They also placed us in a hotel very close to the venue but the Asian company who is our local contact - located in Thailand, we think - booked the actual tour with a local Japanese company who started the tour several subway transfers away from our hotel.  Not a convenience for us.  So we contacted the Asian company and asked if we could just meet the group at the venue, saving us a lot of jockeying around.  No, they said - not possible.  We fumed and griped and took all of these confusing public transportation devices down to the meeting point, getting lost more than once, and totally surprising the local company who expected to meet us at the venue.  Then, we get back on the subway and retrace all of the steps we just took to get to the meeting point.  The unhelpful guy at the Asian company either lied to us or is incompetent, neither of which is good.  I realize there is probably some language translation problems that contribute to his brusque replies, problems that I would have more easily tolerated at the start of the trip.

Here is the final communication from EXO Travel!!

Good morning Steve:

How are you doing.  I hope you enjoy your trip to Japan.

The sumo tour is a shared tour.  It means that guide needs to take care around 20 members in the same time and it will be difficult for the guide to collect members in different places. 

Please understand in Japan people prefer to follow the rules to avoid any unexpected situation.  Indeed your hotel is near Sumo Stadium and far away from Hamamatscho Bus Terminal.  However, as there are other participants in the tour guide can't afford any risk if he can't find you or unexpected situation which results in delay the tour.

I will keep you informed as the tour company doesn't open until 10.

That was 12 hours ago.  He has keep me informed of precisely nothing.  I mean, I get it - everything can't be customized to my liking but I'm not sure why he couldn't have explained that, sure, you can try this but the guide isn't going to wait around and look for you so if you don't hook up with him you're shit out of luck and there's no refunds, buddy.  Then, it's on me - I get to take responsibility for finding the guide.  And later we'll find that there is one entrance to the sumo tournament - finding our contact would have been a breeze.

Every single room we've stayed in has had some kind of elaborate humidifier/de-humidifier/air purifier machine.  Even if there is barely enough room to turn around one of those machines is wedged in somewhere.  The instructions are all in Japanese so we don't really know what the hell they were doing but they would turn on and off, blow hard, little vents opening and closing, directing air around, all of this accompanied by a complex arrangement of lights flashing in a variety of patterns on the top of the machine.

Wednesday: Tokyo
We're in a new area of Tokyo - more north, near the Tokyo Dome where the Giants play.  The hotel is an upgrade from our previous places - more room, in a place where any room is appreciated, actually - which is a nice send-off for our last couple of days in Japan.


After breakfast we stroll by the dome itself - stopping to buy some sports paraphernalia, including a red hat with the Cincinnati wishbone-C, the insignia of the Yokohama Carp - headed for Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens.  And they are, of course, a marvel of Japanese symmetry and organization - ponds, manicured trees and shrubs, shrines, all laid out in a fashion that almost makes you forget you're in a busy area of one of the largest cities in the world.  From time to time, in some quiet nook, I'll look up and be surprised to see a couple of skyscrapers just out of reach.

The Sumo tournament itself was a bit of a cultural oddity.  The audience is very quiet most of the time, the silence broken occasionally by someone yelling out the name of one of the wrestlers, although there is a little polite buzz during the match itself.  There's a great deal of solemn pageantry as the men enter the ring, decked out in elaborate yakatas and accompanied by two or three much smaller assistants, also in yakatas.  One of the parts we were strongly encouraged to be in our seats for was at the start of each series of bouts the wrestlers would come out as a group and, one by one, parade around the ring, all turning to face the crowd at the end.  As each match is preparing to start young men slowly circle the ring - which is surprisingly small - carrying brightly colored banners with Japanese writing on them, advertisements for sponsors we assume.

Before the match begins the wrestlers toss salt into the ring - to purify the space; slap their bodies and lift one leg into the air, bringing the foot down with a loud bang - to scare away evil spirits; and hold their arms out - to show they are unarmed.  The men face each other and bend over, the match starting when both of them have their hands touching the ground.  There is a great deal of feinting and opaque strategy here, no doubt to gain an advantage with a quick start or to catch an opponent off-balance.  They have four minutes to do this before the referee - also in an elaborate costume - mandates the match has to begin.  The wrestlers often step away to their corner of the ring, - reminds me of a pitcher stepping off the rubber to freeze a batter -  with more body slapping or to grab a towel, swabbing their face, then both armpits.

The matches are incredibly short - ten seconds is a long time - and they end when any part of the wrestler's body is forced outside the ring.  This usually happens by brute force although a few guys successfully feint to one side, letting the aggressor's momentum propel him out of the ring.  This is no small event as the ring itself - made for each tournament out of clay and straw -is about four feet high and the most expensive seats (or mats for these places) are ringside.

It appears that many of the spectators are Americans.  This is not great news.  While the rigidity of the Japanese can be . . . well, irritating . . . the relentless politeness and consideration is refreshing.  Man, do Americans love the sound of their own voices.  They never shut up.  We endure an endless stream of mostly inane commentary from people all around us at a volume that makes it impossible to ignore.  Hey, buddy, you're not that funny. 

There's a small sumo museum on-site and an opportunity to go outside to where the wrestlers exit the arena and grab a picture with them.  They are big guys and pretty accommodating about signing autographs and having their pictures taken, although our guide suggests that we don't ask men who have lost their matches.  This is a professional sport for cash money, after all.  The very top guys earn big salaries but the wrestlers ranked in the lower tiers make most of their money when they win matches.

We hit the road after a few hours, subway successfully back to our hotel.  We're so close to the Tokyo Dome I had good intentions about going over to catch part of a game but both of us are done in.

Thursday:  Tokyo then in transit to LAX
Ready to go home.  Taxi to Haneda International Airport instead of trying to navigate the subway and monorail system with all of our luggage.  

I'm going to miss these little people.  I would say the highlight of the trip was the Japanese themselves.  I would say the surprise of the trip was the food and the dining experience in general.  I would not call this a particularly beautiful place - I take it that spring and fall are the best times for the natural beauty.  Even Mt Fuji was sort of a big brown lump.