Update two of three: this is a long one

Day four

I think this is the day that we had Japanese breakfast, which for us consisted of a single piece of cold fish, some rice, pickled vegetables, cold greens, seaweed strips to go with the rice, and a miscellany of other dishes I’d never had for breakfast before. It was served on little dishes for each side, rather than one plate. No bacon, eggs, cereal, or even (as I remember it) straight-up fruit.

Rock garden - Ryoanji

We travelled to this rock garden that’s a famous example of a Zen aesthetic (to paraphrase the pamphlet): simple and neat, using open space just as much as the art itself. It had fifteen rocks, but famously, the viewer can only see a maximum of fourteen from any angle (as long as you’re not inhumanly tall - also, you have to stick to your designated side of the garden). The woods all around were covered in moss - moss everywhere like a neat green carpet.

Golden Pavillion - Kinkakuji

This was a spectacle. It was built as a retirement home to be given to a designated Buddhist sect after the owner’s death. Like the name says, the pavillion is completely covered in gold. It sits by a little pond, and with the reflection it’s absolutely dazzling. Like many places here, there’s a little wishing pond for throwing coins. I made my first shot (unlike previous attempts during which I wasted three coins for nothing), did a fist pump, and then Emily and Andrew both said “Oh, nice,” and then a bunch of students nearby picked up the phrase and repeated “Oh, nice.” We laughed.

Lunch

We had lunch at some little shop - wasn’t great It was at this point that I noticed how many foreigners were walking the streets, and Andrew commented that Kyoto was the most visited city in Japan.

Silver Pavillion - Ginkakuji

As the name suggests, it’s the counterpart to the gold pavillion... but it never received its silver paint. Nonetheless, it’s very pretty, and the pond on the property was very serene. The path around it took us high up so we could get a nice elevated view, unlike the Golden Pavillion. We also saw a bunch of lizards scampering around.

Philosopher’s path

This path was taken by a Japanese professor of philosophy during his daily constitutional. It was pretty, curving along the stream past little shops and riverside flowers. It would have been amazing in the spring, though, because the cherry blossoms then make a gorgeous cavern of pink. We’ve been told that we came during the wrong season, but we’re dealing with that.

Big gate - Nanzenji

Here we walked into a temple with an enormous gate - probably four or five stories high. We couldn’t get into rock garden there, which was supposed to be famous, so we got on a subway to the station to take the bus home.

Dinner: Big Boy

Walking back to the ryokan, we saw a Big Boy, which ignited in us a series of references to Austin Powers. None of us had been to a Big Boy, and when we learned that the place we’d intended to dine at was closed, we had ourselves a good time at the Big Boy. Rather than burgers, they served a sort of Salsbury Steak, and it was quite rare. Since rare food is pretty common here (sushi and all), it didn’t keep us from eating and enjoying. On the way home, I bought chu-hi, a sort of fermented fruit product, from a vending machine. Nice.

Day five

Nara day - big Buddha - Todaiji temple - Nara Daibutsu

We got to Kyoto station, then we bought a train ticket to Nara, home of the biggest wooden building in the world, housing the biggest Buddha statue in the world. The building is... big. It’s also caught fire a bunch of times and been rebuilt each time, though the most recent model was downsized to conserve materials and costs. The Buddha is big, but I think the only thing ever replaced was the head, and the rest is all original. I want to say it’s at least four centuries old. I don’t know what else I can really say.

The deer

In Nara park, they have deer that basically roam free. They’re treated as ancestors/spirits, and that means you don’t mess with them. Emily fed them crackers that she’d bought from a seller of deer crackers. They were pretty to look at, lazy, and perfectly willing to be petted.

Lunch - Udon

Udon noodles are thick and hearty. They’re the a kind of specialty to the part of Japan we’re in now, but you can find them all over. I’ll say more about them later.

Ninja museum / oldest wooden building in the world / Fushimi-Inari Jinja

It was now two o’clock, and we had time for maybe one more thing before everything would be closed. I found a ninja museum in my guide book, but it was kind of risky since Andrew didn’t know whether it would be a tourist trap or the real deal. We could have gone to see the oldest wooden building in the world (a Buddhist temple, which we’d been seeing a lot of recently), but ultimately we decided to go to Fushimi-Inari Jinja, a gigantic collection of Shinto shrines. The most prominent feature is that the mountainous path between each shrine walks under hundreds or thousands of orange gates. At some places, you walk through tunnels of orange. The walk goes on and on, and you hike for a mile or two in a big circle with dramatic changes in elevation. Very cool.

Kyoto station - fried food of the highest quality - Kushikatsu

By the time we’d made our long hike, we were HUNGRY, so we found a place right in Kyoto Station. Andrew had mentioned Kushikatsu when we were in Osaka, but we never made it. Now was our chance, because we had an awesome Kushikatsu dinner right there in the station. The process is simple: you dine at a bar, and the chefs bring you items until you tell them to stop. However, the magic is that each item has been prepared in a high-class deep frier with tasty seasonings that I can’t describe. Items included: beef, shrimp, mushroom, asparagus, octopus, salmon, and about ten other things I don’t remember. Deeply satisfying.

Day six

It was finally raining. We’d beaten miserable forecasts so far, but it was time our luck caught up with us. We checked out, brought our stuff to station, and left it in lockers before our last Kyoto activity.

Nijo-jo (castle)

The castle was built between 1603 and 1626 by the Shogun. Andrew explained to us that the shogun was a separate ruler than the emperor, and one had more or less power than the other over long stretches of time. No pictures inside :(. However, we saw some really fine paintings on all the walls, and the ceiling was meticulously hand-painted, too. The floors were called “nightingale floors,” and they were squeaky by design; no one would sneak up on the Shogun in his own home.

We went back to station and caught the train to Osaka.

We had some delicious curry near the station while we waited for the bus. Also, we hammered through a crossword. We boarded the bus to Tokushima (located on the island of Shikoku) - this is where Andrew’s JET assignment is, and obviously his apartment is here too. We crossed over longest suspension bridge in the world - about one mile long. I bought a toy capsule during the mid-way stop (check another thing off the list), and once we arrived at the bus stop, Andrew drove us the rest of the way to his home in Honda. It’s disorienting to ride on the left side of the road.

Dinner - Onishi

We met Dave at Onishi for dinner. Dave is a large Aussie and a blackbelt in Aikido - he’s an amiable, warm guy too, but the first thing you notice is how much bigger and fairer he is than everyone else. He’s another JET, like Andrew. We had sashimi, sushi, tofu, and nankotsu karaage. They told us it was a fried piece of chicken, but they asked us to guess what part it was. It wasn’t the heart, liver, or gizzard. I guessed feet, and they said “higher.” After a bit of hot-and-cold, it was revealed that we were eating fried chickens’ knees. Yum. They were warm, salty, and high in calcium, seeing as how they were all cartelige. Some things are best left unspoken.

Day Seven

This day we woke up 5:15, had breakfast, and were on the road at 6:20. We had a ferry to catch to bring us to Naoshima island with enough time to explore and make our 6:30 dinner commitment.

It was an hour and a half drive, and we hit the ferry at 8:12. Naoshima is a small island with a lot of beach and a surprising art collection. We rented bikes instead of taking the bus everywhere. It was a beautiful sunny day, and biking seemed romantic until we reached our first steep hill. Andrew is an experienced cylcer, but Emily and I had to dismount and shamefully push the bikes uphill multiple times. Fortunately, all the steep uphill stuff was first. I wore no sunscreen, so unlike Emily my arms and nose were red by the end of the day.

We got to our destination, the Chinchu art museum, early, waited for a bit, got directions from a very polite guy with good English, and walked into the museum, itself a piece of art. The whole building was shaped into geometric figures buried in the ground with almost no architecture above ground (designed by Tadao Ando). It was very modest architecturally, but the form was very appealing without all the flash of, say, the Weisman in Minneapolis. Here are some notes on the exhibits:

James Turrell - ex Pomona grad

One room was simply an empty space in the ceiling, framed like a picture. In the evenings, when the colors change in the sky, the museum attendants cast intense light on the ceiling, making the sky seem to change colors. We were there at the wrong time. Another exhibit was a projected light that hit the corner of a wall in a hexagonal shape with the middle of the hexagon going straight through the room’s corner. If you looked at it right, the hexagon turned into a cube coming out of the corner. The third exhibit was amazing. The viewer stepped into a room with a small set of steps leading to a blue-lit, large rectangle on the wall. As the viewer steps closer, the rectangle no longer looks like a projected image but actually is the mouth of a blue-lit room. The shift in perspectives is a powerful illusion, like stepping into a projector screen.

Claude Monet: five selections of Lilies paintings

In a separate room with natural lighting, the museum had five Water Lily paintings on display. Emily told me a lot of things about Impressionism, Monet, his style, and his art philosophy. I really wish I understood visual art more, especially art history, but however little I could appreciate the paintings, I enjoyed them.

Walter De Maria - Time / Timeless / No Time

This was a display you could walk into and around. There was a granite sphere with a 2.2 meter diameter right in the center, and collections of three gold-painted cylindrical solids all along the perimeter. I guess I learned geometry for something. The ceiling was a wide window to the sky, and it’s length lay east-west. Like the name indicated, it was all very static but dynamic at the same time, with light coming in from different angles all the time, the sphere reflecting the room dully, the gold-painted solids reflecting light a little differently from moment to moment.

We had lunch in the museum - pitas with quiche, salad, soup. It was mostly tasty.

Then we biked into the town at the far end of the island. We went to the beach, took our pictures by a big squash, and saw this resort with some colorful, fun little animal sculptures. It was then that I started to worry about time, since we still had to bike back into the original side of town, drop off the bikes, and board the ferry before it took off at 2:20, and it was 12:50 when we got to this part of town. Andrew calmed me down and assured me we had enough time to see some art in town.

We went to the Naoshima art house project, and here are the notes:

One James Turrell exhibit was like a bat cave and had the most subtle light. You sit in there and wait for your eyes to adjust. Once you get your night vision, you see some very dull light at the end of the room. Before that time, however, you don’t know what’s happening. Are you pretending you’re seeing things? It seems the same with your eyes opened or closed. Are things moving? Is it going to be an image? Are you sure you see it? It’s very psychological.

One exhibit had a bunch of numbers displayed on bright sorts of stopwatches, some underwater. Not a lot to explain.

One that was two mirror images of mini teahouses, one with bamboo and the other with a fake wooden bamboo - I wasn’t impressed. Either I was grumpy then or I just didn’t get it.

Then we went to the “dentist’s office,” the craziest of them all. Each room was painted frantically, the floors were glass over crazy designs, and in one corner of the house sat a two-story scale of the Statue of Liberty, only it was white. The whole thing was almost disorienting.

Now it was 2:05 and we high-tailed it back to the port side of the island, dumped off the bikes and keys, and hustled onto the ferry. The word of the day from Andrew was “giri-giri” - “no time to spare” is about my understanding of it.

We drove back to Honda to freshen up before dinner at a friend of the JET program out here, a 60-year-old man named Yoma who cooks for the JET’s every Sunday night. It was good eatin: sprouts, tomatoes, kiwi, roast beef wraps, his take on an egg role with omelette-type wrap for the filling, miso soup, rice, meatballs, noodle-based egg salad, then green tea and chocolates for dessert. It was just an awesome meal with a bunch of nice English speakers, including the endlessly nice Yoma.

We came back to do laundry. I wrote first draft of this portion of the log, and now it’s on to the next two days (maybe with less detail)

Day Eight

We woke up a little late. I showered and shaved, and for the first time on the trip I was cleanshaven. No one likes a scruffy foreigner. We made our plans to get as full as possible a perspective on Tokushima. We decided to get some Udon (the pride of Tokushima), then go to a paper museum, then back home for a minute before going to an onsen (spa) then eventually our destination: a cabin in a remote, remote part of Tokushima.

The udon was something else: it’s prepared first with a raw egg, then the hot noodles are poured on and mixed. The noodles cook the egg into a fine layer around the noodles before serving. Let me tell you this: udon is HEARTY. I pride myself on generally finishing whatever is on my plate, but it was an immense undertaking to finish one bowl of this udon. It was good, though once I was finishing it, the noodles were getting cold, and it’s hard to eat cold, partially cooked egg. The first half was really good, though.

We tried to go to the paper museum, but it was closed. Now I’ll never know how ornate and fancy paper can be.

We proceeded right to the onsen. An onsen is a spa with hot water taken from hot springs. This one took water from underground, but it heated the water artificially. An onsen is divided by gender, and everyone is supposed to shower before entering the baths. It’s done completely in the nude, so you could say that there isn’t much between you and the others there. It was relaxing, but after an hour I’d had my fill. We met back up with Emily (who braved it on her own, determined to try it). We felt very relaxed. Andrew said that it was even better during the winter when his apartment is cold and uninsulated.

We went to get gelato, and at this time I was reminded why I don’t typically use saunas or hot tubs or jacuzzis: I have weak skin that’s easily irritated. The gelato smoothed things over. We had avocado(!) flavored gelato, though my flavor choice was the less risky “chocolate marble.” Andrew had avocado with potato, and Emily’s half of our double cup was straight avocado. It was the creamiest gelato I’d ever had, I’ll give it that.

We took the long drive up to Chiiyoru cabin, located in a very isolated spot on one mountain in a million. I didn’t know what to think of it before we got there, but it was awesome to see. I don’t think I can explain what made the cabin so pleasant. The wood was smooth and pleasing to look at, and the smells and sights were calm and pacifying. It was the quietest place we’ve yet been to. We had okinamiyaki (which I misspelled in my last update), and this time we made it ourselves. After the dishes, we played Scrabble - Emily and I took first and second place in our awkward game of five people. My play of the game was BAITING for a triple word score and 84 points. We made our beds (quite literally) out of some thin mattresses and covers and I was conked out in no time.

Day Nine - Today

We got moving a little late. We had breakfast of toast, fruit, and more toast, helped with the dishes, put away our beds, and read a little before settling up and saddling up (as Andrew put it). We had a little drive to get out of the mountains.

Lunch was at a soba place - soba is the other noodle I’d wanted to sample here. It’s a lot thinner, but it’s sort of tougher, pound-for-pound, I guess? Andrew and I had it cold with a tasty dipping sauce, and Emily had it hot in a broth. We were still hungry, so we had a couple soba spheres - I don’t know how else to describe them.

On the road again, we came across a mini collection of life-size puppet people. Andrew has explained them before: out in the mountainous parts of Japan, the population is especially declining (though it’s declining in general, too). In part to make these towns seem happier, in part to make them seem more populated, and possibly just for something to do, people out here sew life-size puppets. The puppets are then dressed and posed in convincing ways, and if you’re not expecting them, they can be very creepy. It was startling at first to see a bus stop full of still puppets wearing human clothes and expressions.

We continued around mountain roads to a vine bridge site. We parked and crossed the vine bridge over the river. Apparently, these bridges were meant to be easily cut down in case someone was being chased. Now, they’re reinforced with steel cable and a lot safer. There were two similar bridges, plus a little “flying house” suspended on two cables. You get into the “house” (a little cabin for two) and tug on the rope running through the “flying house” between either side of the river. It’s fun and a little like an amusement park ride.

We got back on the road, then stopped at this little ma-and-pa store by the roadside. Andrew bought some things for breakfast and chatted with the owner. We continued on down the road and eventually came to Ichiu school, one of Andrew’s assignments before the school closed due to lack of enrollment. We saw the principal as we passed through - he’s been reassigned to an elementary school.

A little ways down, we arrived at a sort of “horizontal waterfall,” as Andrew calls it. The water is this unbelievable green-blue, rushing around rocks and downhill for a long stretch. We clambered around rocks all over to see the water from a bunch of angles.

We finally got back to Andrew’s place. Emily wanted to nap, and I wanted to write this, so neither of us decided to go to another onsen with Andrew and Dave. When they get back, we’ll make dumplings, which I’m looking forward to.

I told Emily today that we’ve done everything I’d hoped to do in Japan, and we haven’t even been to Tokyo yet. We’re doing well, and we’re staying busy. I hope you’re enjoying the photos on Flickr. I’ll upload to facebook when I get back, I think. Thanks for reading this far, even if you skimmed. This one’s a monster - I’m on my eighth page, single-spaced. Stay classy,

-Matt