Sauntering Sunflower

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.

It is perhaps fitting that my final blog entry from Japan is also the title of a great jazz standard. During our stay, I was amazed at how pervasive jazz music was in this culture. Almost every other shop we visited was streaming jazz. And great jazz music, too! I heard Nina Simone, Chet Baker, and Oscar Peterson to name a few. It was not something I ever expected, and it was something I was delighted to discover.

In about an hour, we are heading to Kansai International Airport to fly home. We both had a terrific time in Japan. After three weeks, we were both becoming quite comfortable staying here. We were navigating the shinkansens and local trains with seasoned ease, and able to unravel the secrets of the time tables charts.

I became much more comfortable using the language during the stay. Being naturally verbose, I frequently lamented my lack of vocabulary: but I was able to ask and understand directions, chat some with store clerks and inquisitive natives, and was even becoming adept at placing orders in restaurants without having to point at the pictures like a baka gaijin.

We saw the sights we intended to see and snagged some great swag along the way. Jenn and I both agreed that – had circumstances been different – we could have lived here quite happily teaching ESL. We would like to visit the country again, because there is still so much more we could see and do.

But for now, I think my feet need a rest.

Alcohol is readily available here. Virtually every corner has a vending machine that dispenses a random selection of beer, whiskey, sake or various cocktails. There are no laws against drinking in public, so it was quite common to see people drinking sake or beer whenever we went out. And everything is quite inexpensive.

Despite this prevelance of alcohol, it would be very difficult to get drunk. Most of the beverages were about 4% alcohol. Some of the canned whiskeys-and-waters were about 9% (about the same as a good stout back home) but served in half cans. At the sake brewery, the strongest alcohol made by the company was the unpasturized sake, and it comes in at around 16-20%.

But most sakes were in the 4% to 9% range. Most Japanese will drink three or four small bottles of sake in an evening. Personally, I became rather fond of the whiskey-and-waters while I was here. One can of whiskey ran about 300 Yen, or 3 dollars Canadian (4 dollars American). I am going to miss those little canned-whiskeys when I get home.

The three private baths were each very unique and deserve a little better description than I provided earlier.

As I mentioned previously, I was quite anxious to try the onsens. Soon after arriving at the ryokan in the afternoon, we donned our yukatas and ventured forth.

The first bath we tried was two cauldrons set into a raised concrete platform. We could not decide whether the cauldrons were originally iron or concrete, for they were covered with the mineral sediment of many years. It gave the edges of the bath a rough texture.

Each cauldron was about three feet deep at its centre, and about two and a half feet in diameter. Hot water seeped in through a small fissure in the bottom of the cauldron, and the water spilled out the top and cascaded down the platform. Upon entering the room, the water was so still that the cauldrons appeared empty!

Perhaps because I was to sit inside a bath that closely resembled something of a witch`s repetoire, I expected the bath to be hotter than it was. It was pleasantly warm, and certainly no hotter than one might expect from a hot tub back home. A half hour soak was enough to leave me feeling pleasantly warm and relaxed after arriving.

It was time to try the next bath! The baths were seperated by outside corridors, so the short walk between the baths left me feeling cool and refreshed.

The second bath was a lying down bath. It was a shallow pool, maybe six inches deep, and about five feet wide and six and a half feet long. The bottom of the pool was lined with smooth river rocks and there was a raised bench on one side, should you prefer only to soak your feet. Like the previous bath, the water seeped in through a small fissure in the base of the pool and the water cascaded gently over one side.

This bath was warmer than the first and lying on the river rocks felt so good. The room was lit by a black light and the ryokan staff had painted a starscape scene across the walls, giving the small room a feeling of considerable openess. ]

The third bath – the outside rotenburo – we tried the following morning before check out. The bath was set inside a small glade. The pool itself was fashioned from flagstone and concrete. Japanese maple trees draped their branches over the water and an impressive flower garden lent a rich, clean scent. Stones beside the pool were arranged to splash the hot spring water like a waterfall as it drained from the corner.

The bench inclined, so that you could choose a depth that was comfortable, but the pool was not very deep. It was also the hottest of the baths. And the contrast of hot water and cool morning air was delightful. Add the serenades of early morning birds and you have a spectacular way to begin the day.

I did have a chance to sneak a peak at the two larger public baths. Both were vacant when I had a look. The larger of the tubs (traditionally the bath for the men, but the onsen rotated the baths on a timed schedule) could seat thirty to forty quite easily; the smaller could seat twenty. The public baths were a little more austere – with the smooth tiled floors and very clean lines, they greatly resembled a swimming pool from back home.

Next vacation, forget sight-seeing. I am going to spend all my time at an onsen ryokan.

An onsen was one of the events I was most anticipating on our trip. Onsen are natural hotsprings that well up from the ground. Seasoned travelers would visit onsens on long journeys, to soak away weariness. At some point, someone clever built a hotel beside a hotspring and an industry was born.

Nowadays, the onsen are mostly regulated by a city-wide guild to ensure that all onsen ryokan have egalitarian access to the hot spring supply and that the onsen service is fairly uniform. All onsen ryokan have public bathing hours, where anybody can visit and pay a fee to soak. Only overnight guests have access to the ryokan after a certain time. And the ryokan themselves still vary in quality from inexpensive hostels to expensive resorts.

It was early this week we realized if we did not book somewhere, and soon, we might miss the opportunity to stay at an onsen ryokan. We had set aside a considerable amount of money so that we could stay at nice onsen ryokans at least three times during our vacation. Because we had not managed one stay once during our travels, we had a lot of money for our accomodation. Doing what any sensible person would do in our position, we decided to spend it all on one, extravagant stay.

We ventured online to find the most expensive room we could find. Sadly, all the rooms were booked. Frustrated, we asked at the travel info centre whether they represented any onsen ryokan. And as fate would have it, they did.

The ryokan we visted was located in Itou, a small seaside town about on a southern penninsula between Tokyo and Nagasaki. The ryokan had five baths: two public baths, segregated by gender; two private family baths, that could be booked for private use; and a rotenburo, an outdoor bath, which could also be reserved for private use.

The room was enormous. It was larger than our first apartment, we a pleasant view of the city. It had its own sitting room and was large enough to sleep about ten. Or more, if everyone was real friendly-like.

We entered the ryokan weary and sore, and left feeling invigorated and refreshed. Sadly, it did not cost nearly as much as we had intended to spend.

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.

Okay, there was one other thing that did not suck about Tokyo. But it not-sucked because we made it great by ourselves. Last night we were hungry. It was about dinner time. And we are often hungry at dinner time. That is why we go for dinner.

There are buildings here that are restaurant buildings. You hop on an elevator, select the floor, and the elevator takes you right into the lobby of the restaurant. A lot of the buildings are narrow, so a single restaurant occupies an entire floor. We saw a great-looking Italian restaurant that served pizza. Japan has freakish pizzas choices and I really wanted to try a weird pizza before we went home.

We hopped on the elevator, hit the button, and were delivered unto the lobby. A lobby that was packed with Japanese people. And the smell! It is the smell that I will forever associate with the concrete playground whale at White Rock beach; a smell that I would later learn in life meant drunk people had been here, accidents had happened.

It was particularly unappetizing.

We hopped back in the elevator to choose another restaurant. We selected a floor at random. And random was to be the theme of the night, as it turned out. Though little did we know it at that time. And lo, we were delivered unto the Tapas bar.

The bar did not smell like stale piss and beer. Which was a good start. And even better, the waiter told us we would only wait twenty minutes at most. That was fine by us.

As we gazed around the restaurant, it appeared we had entered an ultra-chic tapas bar and cocktail lounge. The walls were dark granite, the floors a finely polished hardwood. Shoes were stacked neatly in the foyer and slippers place conveniently for patrons to use. It was noｔ the sort of place I usually found myself. I got a little nervous. But I was not about to hop back in the elevator and lose my spot in line for dinner. Aside from which, they had pizzas.

When we were seated, my suspicions were confirmed. The menu was full of fancy appetizers and dishes I could only wonder at. The waitress asked us for our drink orders.

In other restaurants, ordering drinks has been easy. For breakfast or lunch, I am content with orange juice (orenji juusu) or iced tea (tsumetai ocha). At dinner, most restaurants stock only one particular kind of beer or sake. If there are several available, a sly osusume sake wa nan desu ka (what sake do you recommend) usually gets me off the hook without appearing an illiterate fool.

Suffice to say, I was not prepared to select from ten pages of drinks.

Jenn was wide-eyed and giving me her I trust you to get us out of this or else look. Fantastic. As I cursed the Pimsleur lessons for not covering the finer points of ordering cocktails, my mind raced for a drink that might coexist in America and Japan. I suddenly hit upon a stroke of genius.

`Osusume cocktail wa nan desu ka?` I ventured plaintively to the waitress. I hoped she would recognize the word. After all, this was a very trendy restaurant. And in Japan, trendy means borrowing English words when a Japanese word would suffice. Hai! was the delighted response. But success was short-lived.

She excitedly pulled out the Wacom touch tablet that had been sitting inconspicuously at the end of our table. Fingers dancing, she quickly navigated through the menus…and showed Jenn how to order. She then put the tablet on the table and waited expectently.

So much for that. I shrugged at Jenn. She shrugged back. I shrugged again and pointed at two random drinks. I was mindful enough to ask for a pizza, as well.

The drinks arrived, glowing neon blue and red. But tasty! The pizza arrived, too, and it was clear it would not be enough food. We would have to order more.

Only, it did not appear that the waitress was going to come to our table again. We would have to order ourselves. Through the tablet. In a written language I could not comprehend.

While we sipped drinks and nibbled on the appetizer pizza, I played with the device. After clicking through a few menus, I felt I was getting the hang of things. Eventually I figured I knew enough that we could place an order.

But what should we order? How would we know what we would get?

After a brief discussion, Jennifer and I decided that cocktails are usually designed to be tasty. Ergo, any cocktail we ordered should be alright. We selected more drinks at random, punched in the order, and waited. A few minutes later, the waiter showed up bearing a tray with glowing green and orange drinks. Success! We had uncovered the means to acquire sustenance!

We had a great time ordering random items and guessing at what might arrive. And we were rewarded with some very tasty drinks and appetizers. Not a single item that arrived that we did not enjoy, and we tried some dishes that might have been discouraging otherwise. All in all, a worthwhile experience.

And I quite enjoyed watching the tipsy Japanese patrons trip over the slippers in the hall.