My latest guests, part four

Continuing from part three:

Before we entered NijoJo, a friendly-looking man approached us on the street as we were walking. After showing his "credentials" (an article in the local newspaper about his art), he asked if we'd like to come to his studio, see him work, and learn about his artwork. We were intrigued, so after leaving the castle, we walked to the address on his business card (easier said than done-see my previous blog entry about finding addresses in Japan!) and received a warm greeting at his studio/house.

In brief, he paints on silk to create family crests that are incorporated into kimonos. The name for family crest in Japanese is "kamon" (see Wikipedia for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamon). It was absolutely remarkable to watch him painting these intricate designs, mostly by hand. For the basic outline, a stencil is occasionally used, and for geometric patterns, a compass is used, but all of the fine detail is done manually. As you can hopefully see in the close-up picture, each pattern is exactly the same. The amount of practice (and patience!) required is astonishing.

In one of the pictures you can see some of the kamon in color and the pattern book for the designs. There are thousands of designs and the artist, Toshio Kashima, has a couple hundred committed entirely to memory.

After enjoying his demonstration, when we told him our plans for the rest of the day, he offered to give us a ride up the hill to the Kiyomizu Temple (from my previous post). On the way, he gave us a mini-tour of that area of Kyoto. He is an amazing artist and a kind and gracious host. Kashima-san, doumo arigatou gozaimashita!

And now for something completely different...

"We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you this special feature"




One of my conversation class students, Tamami, often brings her very entertaining cat, Kewpie, to class with her. As you can see from the pictures, she is NOT a small cat! Kewpie likes to hang out while we're having our lesson. She wanders around the room, chases dust bunnies, and jumps on the furniture, making a loud *THUMP* sound (she's one of the noisiest cats I've ever met, which makes her even funnier). Tamami, thanks for bringing Kewpie; maybe someday she'll learn to meow in English!

My latest guests, part three

Two other places we visited in Kyoto are NijoJo (Nijo Castle) and part of the grounds of Kiyomizu Temple, two of the most famous sites in the area.

Nijo Castle was built in the early 1600s during Japan's feudal period. If you want more history, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nijo_Castle but I'll quote one short section:

One of the most striking features of Nijō Castle are the "nightingale floors" in the corridors. To protect the occupants from sneak attacks and assassins, the builders constructed the floors of the corridors in such a way as to squeak like birds when anyone walks on them.

After walking through that section and listening to the interesting sounds of the "security system floor", my brother commented that it was amazing workmanship that 400 years later the intricately constructed floor was still functioning exactly as it was designed to.

Surrounding the castle, there is a series of gardens and pathways. Walking around on the grounds and seeing the gardens with the castle in the background was as beautiful as touring the building itself.

Later, we went to Kiyomizu Temple. Unfortunately, we got there just about 15 minutes before the grounds closed, but we saw as much as we could in the short time we had, and then continued looking around from outside the area that had been roped off. We could still see quite a bit of the temple complex from there, and I continued to take pictures.

All of the pictures I'm including in this post were stitched together from multiple photos, which is why they have a long, panorama perspective.

My latest guests, part two

Our first destination after Asakusa in Tokyo was Kyoto. Kyoto is an amazing city-a very interesting combination of very old and very modern. That can be said of many places in Japan, but it's especially apparent in Kyoto.

We arrived by shinkansen (bullet train) at the first example of very modern: the station. It's actually a huge complex of buildings that includes all the train platforms, many restaurants, a mall, and the hotel where we stayed. It's one of those places that's difficult to photograph, but I'll include one picture I took to give a little idea of the inside of the building. Click on the picture to open a larger version, and then zoom in on the upper part-a series (five, I think) of long escalators heads outside of the building.

For an example of the very old aspect of the city, I included a picture of Gion, which is a beautiful district of temples, shops and restaurants, partly along a small canal.

More later...

A month?! (my latest guests, part one)

It's completely beyond me how it's been a month since I last updated (that's probably one of the tritest things you'll read on several thousand blogs all over the world, so enough of that).

My brother (Randy), his wife (Diane), and granddaughter (Paige) visited earlier this month. Everywhere I visited with them was amazing; we had a great time! The list of destinations: Tokyo (including Ueno Park and Asakusa), Kyoto, Nikko, Nagano City, the Sea of Japan near Joetsu, and Hakuba/Happo One (pronounced "hah-poh-oh-nay" -the city where many events were held during the '98 Olympics).

I'll start with just a couple of pictures. The first one is a group picture on top of a hill at Nijo-jo in Kyoto. It's a traditional Japanese castle with a lot of historical and cultural significance. I'll include more pictures of it in another post. The second picture is Diane and Paige in Asakusa. They had a great time touring the district on their rickshaw ride. BTW, our English word rickshaw comes from the Japanese word "jinrikisha" 人力車, 人 jin = human, 力 riki = strength, 車 sha = vehicle, which means "human-powered vehicle". (If you see random letters or squares instead of Japanese characters in the previous sentence, just ignore it; it means your computer isn't set up to read Japanese.)

I'm going to split their visit into several posts.

Parque España (aka "Supein Mura")

The day after we went to Inuyama, we took a train south into Mie Ken (Mie Prefecture). It was very beautiful, and even if it was kind of crazy to go two hours far out of our way just to visit an amusement park, even the train ride there was great! Again, Jane's words are in blue:

The next morning we left early for Parque España. The train went through more pretty scenery - more out in the country with hills and then getting to see the seashore again. We went through one little town where pearl diving is a big tourist draw. It looked like a neat place to visit. We got off at what our directions said was the correct station, only to be told by an employee at the station that we should have gotten off at the next one. We decided to go outside to the bus station, where a taxi driver told us where to wait for a bus. After a while a bus came by that was actually a shuttle bus for the hotel or park employees, but they asked us if we were customers and let us on. There were signs in Spanish on the bus. They let us off at the park and there was no charge for the bus! The park was SUPER COOL. We went on the cool rides we had read about, and also the silly ones that were still fun. The "brilliant sparkling luminous carnival" whatever it was called ride was indoors and you sat in a sideways car that went along and turned to face different scenes like Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, but everything was all sparkling lights with a flower & flamenco theme. The big coaster was awesome, and I lost track of all the inversions. It was also very smooth. It was a suspended coaster like the Batman Ride, and unlike some coasters, it had a couple really cool parts right at the very end rather than being anticlimactic. It looked like you were going to hit your feet on the ground at one point, and had a little zero-G hill, which I thought was unusual for a suspended coaster.

The mine train coaster had nice scenery

and was a lot faster than I expected. It was fun like Big Thunder Mountain Railway but with the speed cranked up several notches. Interwoven through it was the other
Montserrat-themed ride, the log flume ride. It was fun & not too wet. We went to the far end of the park where you walk quite a ways downhill through realistic Spanish village streets - they even had a little chapel and a wine shop. We went on the surprising long and good lagoon ride, and then discovered the “disco escalator” that Rob had read about in a park review: I wasn't looking forward to walking clear back up the long hill, but there is a very long indoor escalator that takes you back up to the main level of the park. There is fun, pseudo-Spanish music and loads of flashy lights, and if you look closely on the rock-looking walls they have a couple replicas of paintings - something Picasso-looking and a famous prehistoric cave drawing from Spain. The park also has a ride designed for looking at the view - something like Great America's giant donut tower, except the rotating big seating area is lifted up on a giant arm instead of going up a tower. It had a VERY nice view of the coastline and bay and Spanish-looking buildings and Spanish-looking hotel next door, and in the distance Japanese buildings - that part was a little surreal. Oh yeah, they even had a replica of the statue in the Plaza de Colon just like the real one.

This amusement park absolutely astounded me! It's one of the most fun parks I have ever visited. It's like Disneyland in that everything is impeccably themed (and the theming is actually, I think, more authentic looking than what is usually at a Disney park). BUT . . . it also has a couple of amazing thrill rides, like what you would find at a park like Magic Mountain. So I think it's the best of both worlds. Whatever you go to an amusement park for, they have it! AND, with almost no lines at all-we rarely waited more than five minutes to board anything and only waited more than ten minutes once: at the crazy bullfighting ring indoor roller coaster. That was truly a strange ride. It's an indoor coaster, something like SpaceMountain, but of course has a Spanish theme. Towards the end of the ride you enter a dark area, and the cars STOP. Suddenly, the lights turn on, and it looks like you're in the middle of a bullfighting ring; a trumpet fanfare plays, the cars start heading for a wall, and it opens, sending you into the final part of the ride. VERY creative (and strange!) The super roller coaster that Jane mentioned was SO intense, that even I (crazy roller coaster maniac!) could only go on it four times. One other note about the theming-there's a huge building that houses the area where stage shows are performed. Rather than just have the top of a big, ugly building in the middle of the park, they took the time to decorate it to look like Roman ruins! (You can see that in the long, panorama picture I posted.)

An absolutely fantastic park, but as I mentioned, not many people, so I'm afraid that if business doesn't increase, at some point it may close, which would be terrible for such an awesome park. So, anyone even slightly interested in amusement parks in Japan-please go and support their wonderful creation!

By the way, "Supein" means "Spain" in Japanese (if you didn't already know or figure that out), and "Mura" means village. The park is titled in Spanish and Japanese.

Inuyama and Ukai (Cormorant Fishing)

This is the next part of my sister's visit. She went to visit a friend in Osaka by herself for one day. The following day her friend Nancy and I took the shinkansen to Nagoya (about an hour closer to here) to meet her. Again, Jane's words are in blue.

I then proceeded to Nagoya station, where I arrived just a few minutes before Nancy & Rob were due so I was able to guess which train was theirs and meet them right on the platform. We went to our hotel where we were able to check in early. Rob had found a last-minute deal on a four-star hotel. The rooms we had were actually not very large but it was extremely clean with extremely comfortable beds and nightshirts provided. Then we set out for Inuyama where the ukai (cormorant fishing) is, about a half-hour train ride away. A big outdoor wooden map of the city at the station had north at the top, but you were facing south looking at it, so was glad I had my compass in my purse. Unfortunately the map also seemed to imply that we had to cross the river to get to the fishing area. We had well over an hour, and enjoyed a walk down a little street with very old buildings – it would be a cool place to spend a whole day or two. Finally, we got to the river, crossed it on a large dam, realized we were on the wrong side of the river and still had a long walk to get to the boat dock. I was pretty sure there was no way we were going to make it to the boat on time (we had a reservation). We got near the other bridge and started running and made it to the boat dock just in time, to my great relief. We boarded a long, low boat with tatami mats in it - they gave us plastic bags to put our shoes in while on the boat. We headed down the river and picked up several more passengers at a hotel downstream - Japanese tourists. It was lots of fun trying to converse with them. They were talking and laughing and kept asking Rob questions. One man kept making funny gestures, we weren't sure what he was trying to convey except part of it had to do with fishing or food, it was very amusing. The sun had set and we were below a castle up on a hill that they light up at night, and which I found out later is one of the oldest wooden castles in Japan (not one that has burned down and been rebuilt). The boat had a roof with paper lanterns with candles burning in them hanging down. The boat ride was so neat I thought that alone was worth the ticket price. Then we motored back upstream to where there were other spectator boats and the fisherman's boat came out. That was really amazing to watch. There were three men in the fisherman's boat and they had a fire burning in a big metal basket hanging over the water. They periodically pounded on the boat floor with a pole - not sure if that was to attract the fish or signal the birds. The actual fisherman had on traditional garb including a straw skirt (right next to the fire!) and had several birds on leashes, who just bobbed along swimming next to the boat and would periodically dive for fish. When the fisherman saw a bird had caught a fish, he would pull in the bird and make the bird spit out the fish into a basket and toss the bird back in the water, where it would bob along again like everything was fine. The birds are trained when they are young and live with the fisherman. The whole night-time scene with the fire reflecting in the water and everything really made it all extra amazing - was really one of those “had-to-be-there” experiences. I was really glad we got to see it. That style of fishing has been done for hundreds of years. It is no longer an economically feasible way to make a living, so the government sponsors it as an "intangible cultural asset".

As Jane said, the whole thing was completely amazing. When we were both children, our family had a book that described cormorant fishing. We both still remember the book, and I think Jane was inspired to arrange that part of our trip mostly because of that memory. That made the experience even more incredible. Sorry some of the pictures are rather dark, but hopefully you can get the idea (especially if you click on them for the larger size).

Next: Parque Espana!!!

My sister + Japan = FUN! (Edo Mura)

As I did when my cousin was here, I am going to take my sister's account of her trip, and use it as the start of my blog entries. My words will be in black, and hers will be in blue.

We went to Edo Wonderland, the Edo themed park. It was very cool & realistic - a reproduction of an Edo-era city. No rides, just the buildings and exhibits and some activities. There was a cool parade of elaborately costumed people. All the restaurants and kitschy souvenir shops were sort of disguised behind screens & doors of the buildings, so the street scene looked quite realistic. They even had live chickens in a basket cage along the street, and wide, deep street gutters with koi. There was a cool thing where two "Edo police" chased a ninja up the streets and to a bridge right where we were standing, and the ninja threw these guys off the bridge (actually they ran up to the rail and flipped over it) down into the small river several feet below, that was cool.

Many tour books only mention Edo Mura in passing, or even dismiss it as being a tourist trap, but I thought it was a very cool experience. In fact, I would definitely go back! There were some diorama scenes with wax models that were a bit gruesome, but when I showed pictures of them to the locals here, many people recognized the scenes as being important parts of Japanese history. Jane decided to join one of the scenes, but was later arrested by Edo policemen! After that, Jane and I fought off a fierce ninja attack-I have pictures to prove it! Look! All silliness aside, it was a very beautiful place, and much more culturally informative than I expected.

Help! I can't get caught up!

My sister, Jane, and her friend, Nancy, visited me a few weeks ago, and we had an amazing time! This is going to be my short "these pictures don't really fit in anywhere else" post. I'll start a more detailed explanation of our adventures in the next post, but this will at least get us started.
The picture of Jane and Nancy together is in Hachimanyama park in Utsunomiya. (Check back in my posts from a few months ago for more information.) There's a long suspension bridge that crosses a small ravine, and at each end there are statues of, uh..., well..., I think they are babies made of acorns. Or acorn forest spirits. Or acorn tree dryad beings, or acorn aliens. Well, they're kind of strange, whatever they are, so we took a picture!




The picture with the lily is outside the temple near the Oya Kannon that I have mentioned in other posts. I might post pics of our visit there later. I just thought it was an interesting picture with cool lighting.




The picture of Jane with the statue is the infamous gyoza statue outside of Utsunomiya Station. It's just SO odd, it makes me laugh every time I see it (in a good way!). It was inspired in part by Botticelli's "The Birth Of Venus", but instead of Venus emerging from a seashell on the shore, it's an abstract, faceless woman emerging from a Chinese dumpling on a stone surfboard. Makes perfect sense, right?




The last picture is in Nagoya. We saw this building close to the hotel we were staying in. I thought the design was odd, and Jane said it looked like something out of "Buck Rogers". I decided it was the church of the ethereal, transcendental egg. Or something like that. (Actually, when we thought about it later, we realized it was probably a wedding chapel. That's very common here for people to get married in a church-ish looking place that's not really a church.)

The Visitors-Batch 2!

Welcome to my latest visitors: my sister, Jane and her friend, Nancy! They arrived last week on Thursday.
Because I needed to ride the train to meet them at the airport in Narita, I decided I might as well go a little early and do something fun in the area before heading to the airport. I met my friend, Mondo, who picked me up at a train station between Ueno (Tokyo) and Narita terminal. We headed to lunch (Mos Burger, a Japanese fast food chain) and he told me that his friend would be joining us, but not to worry, because his friend spoke English. I put two and two together, and guessed that maybe we'd be meeting another one of my former students, because I knew that he's now working at the airport and living in the area. So, when Yosuke walked in the door, it wasn't too big of a surprise, but Yosuke, it was great to see you!!!
After lunch, Mondo (who works for Nike) took me to the Nike Factory store where I bought some new shoes. Not that exciting of a detail, except for something funny: the previous night when Mondo asked me what I wanted to do the next day, I said, "something cultural or historical; I don't want to go shopping!", but that's what we did... Next we headed to a small park right next to Narita airport where it looks like the planes are going to land on your head; many people were there just hanging out and watching the "show" overhead.
After we got to the airport, the arriving flight board announced that Jane's flight would be 15 minutes late, so we took a walk; someone made a mistake, because the flight was, in fact, on time (if not even a few minutes early). But amazingly, while I was waiting for Jane (who was actually already waiting for me in another part of the arrivals lobby) Joel Kaylor (from Portland Bible College where I was teaching English to international students before moving to Japan) walked out of the gate! Welcome to Japan!
Jane soon saw Mondo and I, and after meeting up with Nancy and getting organized (and seeing Yosuke working at the airport twice!) we left the airport. We made a quick stop at the park with the amazing view of the planes landing, and then went to dinner at a kaitenzushi restaurant (sushi bar or "sushi-go-round" as I call it sometimes). After dinner, Mondo dropped us off at the train station, and we got to my house, where two jet-lagged guests of course wanted to go to bed.
I'll upload some pictures, and continue in the next post . . .

Video links

Just a quick post with links to videos on YouTube. These are all from my cousin Paula's visit here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljh_Njk47I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUxYWP_ShY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOmdI6GtHIM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlYhieBE3So
The last link is me DDRing with Caitlin, Paula's daughter. It was fun to have somebody who can keep up with me-I challenge you to a rematch, Caitlin!

Aux environs d'Utsunomiya

The title of this blog is in French to remind me of a story: shortly after I arrived here, I was walking around in a store trying to find things on my shopping list. I was getting a little frustrated at not being able to read the packaging. I picked up a bag, looked at it, and in a very annoyed "tone of thought", prayed: "God, why did I study French?! Why didn't I study Japanese?! French is useless to me here!" Then I turned the package over; there was no English to be seen, but in addition to the Japanese, there was a complete listing of the product in French. It had apparently been manufactured in Vietnam (which has a long history of French influence, for those who didn't know that) as many other products here are. It almost made me laugh out loud in the store. Thanks, God! On to my post about the weekend . . .



On Saturday, my friend from church, Shouji, took me around the area just outside of Utsunomiya. We spent most of the time in Motegi and Mashiko. You don't have to go too far outside of town to see some beautiful countryside and it was wonderful just to drive around and see the scenery.

In Motegi, we went to Michi no Eki, which is translated as roadside station ("road's station", literally). It's kind of a combination rest stop, cafe and farmer's market. I bought some excellent fresh vegetables there. Near Mashiko, we visited an interesting art gallery on a hill, again with a beautiful view of the area.

We also stopped at the Utsunomiya Clan's ancestral cemetery and temple; it was very interesting to see the historical site and walk around on the grounds. Later, on the way back into town, we stopped at another historical site. It's a well-preserved, traditional, country house that was built by one of the early residents of the modern city.

I took several pictures on my cell phone, because I forgot to bring my regular camera. If I can find a convenient way to download the pictures, I'll post them later.

Shouji, thanks again for a fun day!

Paula's visit: Beach trip and Tokyo

Here's another post with extensive trip narration provided by Paula. Once again, my words are in black and hers are in blue:

Monday was our beach trip. Weird to have to take little country roads everywhere, but we saw them extending the expressway at one point. ...we couldn't swim anywhere, just where the little fenced off area was... when we sat down a little ways away where there were no pebbles, a lifeguard made a point of coming over & motioning to us "no swimming" by making swimming motions & then making an X with his hands. We got the idea...after walking around forever looking for a good place, I convinced the girls we didn't have all afternoon & had better get in the water. And that was lots of fun. I could see why it was roped off... the bottom dropped off VERY quickly & the undertow was very strong. But the fun part about the bottom going from knee-depth to waist-depth almost immediately is that the waves would surge in & get really big but break a lot later than we're used to, so most people had floaties & just went up & down with the waves. We enjoyed it even without floaties, like a giant wave pool but real. And the water temperature was perfect, not too cold & not too warm. We couldn't see California, though...

Stayed in the water for at least 45 minutes, then we got out & I told the girls if they wanted time to dry off, they'd better go back in now, but no, they were fine. Pretty soon we saw Shinya coming to find us & we all went back up to find the showers. So a lot of driving for not a whole lotta beach time, but at least we can say we saw the other side of the Pacific.

Tuesday we had wanted to get up early to get to Tokyo, but the girls were tired so we left a little later than we had intended & met Rob's friend Mondo at 9:15 in Ueno. I had met Mondo 2 years ago in Portland when he was Rob's roommate. He asked what we wanted to do, & we immediately said "Tower Records" in Shibuya, the trendy shopping area. Spent a very enjoyable hour there, although in hindsight we should've done that last so we weren't carrying shopping bags around all day... decided to go to TGI Friday's for lunch. Got a nice table in the corner & it was early but after a while people started trickling in including a couple of American businessmen with a Japanese businessman. I can only imagine the suffering of whoever has to do all the businessmen's laundry with the long-sleeves & ties in that humidity.

I think after that was when we found the Disney store, which Rob said we seemed to enjoy almost as much as Disney Sea. A cute little castle around the entrance, & the stairs up to the 2nd floor went through a couple little rooms like Mickey's house in Toontown & then up a spiral staircase, very original!

We had Haagen-Dazs... then we walked for a looong time up towards Harajuku, interesting stores but the girls & I were getting pretty hot. Stopped at a Uniqlo (short for Unique Clothing I guess) and found a t-shirt. Laura wanted to look at Levi's across street but since the jeans were close to $100 we passed... Mondo said they sold specialty stuff there. Then turned on a little alley that went toward another station that was cram-jammed with little shops, paper lanterns, and PEOPLE everywhere. I just can't imagine it being any more crowded in evenings or weekends. Lots of atmosphere, got great pictures!

Finally we found the station & took the subway to the emperor's garden; it was nice to step out near a big bare park with a moat (around the palace) & a swan... looked around there for a while & the kids were getting really tired of walking (as was I)... I think Rob had a hard time grasping that we didn't have the same level of energy that he did for walking around Tokyo. I'd wear different shoes next time... we walked back to the station, got out near Tokyo Tower (Eiffel Tower knockoff that is of course 13 meters higher than the Eiffel tower) Took the elevator to the top & enjoyed the tremendous view... we'd wanted to take another elevator up to the next observation deck, but the line didn't move for a long time so we gave up. I promised the girls we could take a taxi back to the train station, it was standing room only but finally in about 10 minutes we were at the main station where we could get on the shinkansen & sit down, wherein they promptly fell asleep.

I think a great time was had by all (including me!) The long picture I included is stitched together from two that I took from the Tokyo Tower. It should look good when you click on it and see it in a separate window. (Besides stitching two pictures together, I also "Photoshopped out" a window beam-all you perfectionists and graphic artists out there, see if you can find where (it's really not that hard to find, I didn't work at it that hard)). Thanks for letting me borrow your travel summaries, Paula.