Author: hinagiku

I’ve put together a brief timeline of events from when we were in Japan. If you’re having difficulty seeing the timeline above, here is a direct link to the site. I’ve also (finally) organized, tagged, and sorted all the pictures from Japan on my flickr account. You can see the whole collection here. I have never done much by way of digital video, but maybe by Christmas I’ll have gotten around to looking at the video clips we took.

We couldn`t travel all the way to Japan without visiting a sake brewery. Lance quite favours the beverage and we are travelling quite close to Kobe, which has several sake breweries that offer tours and tastings. I had heard about one, Hakutsuru, that had a free museum with information in English so we headed out there yesterday after touring a park in Okoyama.

The directions that I had to get to the museum were not great as they basically said to walk for 15 minutes south of the train station. However, they didn`t specify which of the 5 southbound streets to follow. So, after wandering for a while without finding anywhere tour-worthy, we asked an older fellow who was working in his garden. His English was not very well and our map was even worse. So, he walked us about halfway there, until the building was in sight and from there we could make it the rest of the way.

The museum was very cool. Not only did they have English brochures available, but they also had televisions set up that would describe the sake brewing process in both English and Japanese. It was very interesting to see the different historic methods for brewing.

At the end of the tour they have some freshly brewed sake that you can try – unpasteurized, chilled, strong and delicious. I`m not a huge fan of sake myself, but this stuff was really good! Then they also had a shop set up to buy products. The most expensive thing there was their line of rice skin care products, which we steered clear from and ended up with a few different and reasonably priced bottles to sample.

One of the things that most impressed me was the service and explanations of the different kinds of sake and the temperatures to serve them. They also gave an indication of the alcohol content in each one. (One of things we`ve discovered is that the alcohol here is generally cheaper, but also a lot weaker than back home, so you still drink an equivalent cost to back home.) I was so impressed that I decided to check and see if this brand of sake was available back home. Lo and behold, after a brief google search one of the first hits I find is for the liquor store across the street that`s attached to the Dublin Crossing Pub. The company also has a very good informative site in English (linked above).

After browsing through a bookstore here in Tokyo yesterday, I`m really wishing that I could read more Japanese. I knew that they had large bookstores here and lots of inexpensive books, but I still wasn`t prepared for the experience.

Back home, people think that places like Chapters are large and have good selection. Well imagine a Chapters that has 7 floors full of books. Yup, SEVEN floors of books! I know some of you will already be drooling at the thought of so many books, but wait, I haven`t finished yet. After perusing several floors (because the lack of reading ability isn`t enough to deter Lance and I from browsing and buying – we`ll need practice material for when we do start reading the language afterall) and not finding quite what we were looking for, Lance bravely approached a sales associate to ask where the Manga (comics) were. He handed us a little map and gave us some instructions. Apparently, there`s too much Manga to be kept in this one location so we had to go across the street to their other building! Yup, 7 floor plus another building that`s 3 floors of just CDs, DVDs, and Manga! And, according to the little map, they also have yet another store that`s located further south in the city. Not sure if the selection varies between the south and the main stores since we didn`t head quite that far.

And for those who are wondering, yes we are crazy – we bought books in Japanese.

So far we`ve attended two very different events here in Japan. In both cases, there were several distinct differences from how we do things back home.

The first event we attended was the Aoi festival. It was going to be a procession from the Imperial Palace to two Shinto shrines in order to do a couple of important rituals. As it was called a `festival` we were expecting a somewhat festive atmosphere. We knew that thousands attended the event and went early to avoid the crowds. I was expecting crowds and people standing as close as possible to observe the beautiful costumes and event characters as they went by. I was also expecting music, children, cheering, laughter, etc. Much of what we ended up seeing was the exact opposite. No bands or music of any kind unless you brought your own MP3 player. Except for a brief and quiet round of applause, there was no clapping or cheering. And the crowd willingly left a nice wide pathway between the seats at the front and the standing room at the back so that people could get by. There was very little necessary by way of crowd control at all. There were more information people than police officers. And there were almost no children present at all. Granted it was a school day, but with thousands of people, at least a few must have taken some time off work to attend. About the only normal thing compared to back home was the presence of booths selling food, drinks, souvenirs, etc.

The sumo festival we attended today was a bit more `normal.` People showed up in good numbers to watch todays bouts. There was some more cheering for the sumo wrestlers as they entered the ring for their match. Children were there with their parents calling out the name of their favourite sumo wrestler. Lots of merchandise and food available (much more reasonably priced than GM Place too!) However, there was almost no security present (and almost none necessary). And, all of the people who were dressed in security uniforms were women. That was almost the only official presence of women in the entire tournament – vendors, cleaners, admission staff, and . . . security? It seemed a little odd. They were dressed with official hats and wore skirts and heels. They would hurry over to an aisle if someone stood there to take a picture or if any part of the crowd looked too `excited.` The sumo wrestlers would walk right past the front seats into and out of the arena and despite their obvious status among the Japanese, no one tried to reach for them or yell at them as they passed by. There didn`t even seem to be much animosity between east and west. I was a bit nervous at first since we decided to root for the western wrestlers and Tokyo is in eastern Japan. But we didn`t get any dirty looks at all as we cheered on the western wrestlers.

Making our way to and from tourist spots has brought about many different realizations and a few minor hazards. A great part of the crowding at these sites comes from the hoardes of Japanese school children who are also touring famous spots. They are often `spirited` bunches, seldom rude, and often curious about the foreigners. The braver ones say hello. The ones with homework march right up to us in a big group and proceed through a script in one of their workbooks. So far, we`ve been the subject of four such assignments. We`ve given signatures, peace messages, messages to Junior High Students, and provided our thoughts on Japanese cities, food, and culture. In exchange, we`ve received a few nice hand-drawn student `name cards` and had a few nice group photos with the school kids.

Today Lance and I headed out to Nara. It`s a place known for its park, deer, and giant Buddha statue. We had a fabulous time there!

It was a bit unclear at first exactly which train to take to go to Nara. We hopped on one headed for Takara/Nara (I think?) thinking we could just take it the whole way out. Luckily, we could understand the announcements a little bit and got the idea that the train was actually splitting at one of the stations and then part of it was going to Takara (?) and the other part going to Nara. With the help of a few fellow passengers and a train conductor, we managed to switch to the correct part of the train and continue on to Nara.

Once we arrived we started walking down with the other crowd of tourists towards the large park with the many shrines and temples inside it. Once we got to the fringe of the park, we weren`t exactly sure where to go from there (the map wasn`t too clear on the relative distances). Luckily, we`ve found that when you are visiting a tourist spot in Japan and aren`t sure of your bearing, following any of the large groups of Japanese school children is a pretty safe bet. It`s very easy to spot them since they are almost always in uniform. If there are any outgoing kids in the group, you might have the added entertainment of exchanging a hello and sending them into a fit of giggles.

The deer here were a bit larger than at Miyajima and generally better behaved. I think that the people who run the deer cracker carts have probably had a hand in disciplining brazen and unruly deer. They didn`t really bother you unless you had purchased deer crackers with which to feed them. Lance and I decided to forgo this option and instead had a bit of a chuckle at the children who bought the deer crackers and proceeded to screech and panic and run away from the deer that they were trying to feed.

Once we arrived at the building that houses the giant Buddha statue it was a truly magnificent site. It is the largest wooden building in the world and is quite a bit smaller than the original structure was (destroyed by fire and rebuilt several times). Inside was quite crowded with tourists and it was a bit hard to catch any kind of Buddhist serenity.

After a bit more walking around in the park we stopped for lunch at the famous Mos Burger chain. The food was very good and it was a bit of an interesting twist on a `fast food` joint. The line-up at the counter is pretty similar, but then you go find a table and they bring your food to you. The food was very tasty though much smaller portions than north america.

After lunch we decided to wander around the town. We found all sorts of interesting and beautiful sites as we passed through. My favourites were the two cemetaries we walked through. I could really feel the spirits there as we walked through the tightly packed memorial stones with breezes rustling through the small bamboo groves.

After wandering to a point in the town where we once again knew roughly where we were, we realized we should probably head back to the train station as we were both pretty tired from all the walking at this point (and we had a fair bit more walking to get us back to the station). I think we both nearly fell asleep on the train back to Osaka.

From there we were hungry again and stopped at a place close to this internet cafe for dinner. It had really great food and lots of stuff we recognized. So, now we`re all caught up again and probably ready for some dessert. If the real selection of parfaits in this town taste half as good as their plastic display models make them look, I`ll be pretty happy.