A couple days after my parents returned to the US, I went to Okinawa with a couple of friends. Okinawa is the southernmost series of islands in Japan. The islands are famous for their shiisa—pairs of guardian dog statues. We stayed one day in Naha, a big city on the main island of Okinawa that gave the impression of a tropical version of Tokyo.
To get more of an island experience, we went to Miyakojima, a smaller island with beautiful beaches. Over four days we saw all of the sites on the little island. Oddly enough, the island has close ties with Germany, since more than a century ago when German sailors shipwrecked near the island. They were rescued by people from the island and invited to stay until they could get safe passage home. All over the island, there are memorials of this event, hence Ueno German Culture Village. The only low point of the trip was the botanical garden, which were under construction and not well-kept. There was a large rooster wandering around the garden that didn’t take too kindly to our visit and tried to attack my friend. She managed to fend it off, but her scream was blood-curdling.
What I remember from Kyoto is that the people did indeed seem friendlier than Tokyo residents. Since it was during spring break for most of the high schools, most of the popular temples were packed. My parents and I skipped the “must-see” temples. We went to Fushimi-inari jinja instead on the first day, a fox-themed temple with hundreds or possibly thousands of torii. Torii are the gates to sacred spaces.
The most memorable day of the trip, it was pouring rain, and we didn’t visit any temples at all. We went to see a very nice botanical garden, which was very beautiful despite the fact that we were too early for cherry blossoms. We found (after much searching) an organic, vegetarian-friendly Japanese restaurant for lunch and then went to the Nishiki market to buy plenty of souvenirs. There was a cat-themed shop we particularly liked, and since the market was covered, it was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon.
We also spent a day in Osaka to see the impressive aquarium and take a look at the castle. There was a lovely Mexican restaurant on one of the upper floors of Osaka station. We headed back to Saitama the next day on the shinkansen, which was much smoother and more spacious than an airplane. I’m really going to miss the shinkansen.
My parents’ visit was great fun. I got to show off all my favorite places and restaurants so we started off with the okonomiyaki (very thick savory pancakes with all your favorite ingredients in them, originating in Hiroshima I believe) restaurant in Omiya station. My personal favorite is the mochi-cheese combination, although the kim-chi-cheese combo is also delicious. I have yet to try the monjayaki, which is the Tokyo-style liquid-version of okonomiyaki. My parents were exhausted by the time we made it back to my apartment and of course it was raining by then. The walk from my local train station is very short, but it always seems miles longer when hauling heavy luggage.
The next day I thought we’d explore my small town of Ina in the morning, so we waited until 10am, when everything opens, and then walked down to Unicus, the local shopping mall. Unicus has a Tully’s, a Baskin Robbins, and a huge grocery store with a large cheese and dessert section. We also visited “ze Daiso”—the hundred yen shop—and my favorite shop, Passport, which always plays nice French music and sells all sorts of cute pillows, shelves and kitchen stuff. Then we headed back to the apartment with our grocery store finds for lunch. We caught the New Shuttle and headed to Omiya to look around my other favorite stores, Tokyu Hands and Loft. For dinner we went to a ramen shop that also sells delectable fried rice and had annen-dofu for dessert, a slightly sweet dessert with the texture of tofu.
On Sunday we went to Odaiba to get some Indian food at the restaurant that overlooks the Rainbow Bridge. We did some shopping and took some pictures in front of the Statue of Liberty with the Rainbow Bridge in the background. For some reason, a heart frame had been put up in front of the Statue of Liberty in Odaiba so I got a great picture of my parents in front of a Tokyo landmark. My dad and I took a spin the huge ferris wheel, and we all had a quick look around Venus Fort before heading back. We went to an izakaya, a Japanese bar for which there is no simple English equivalent, in Ina. Izakaya are usually attached to people’s homes and the size of a living room maybe. They sell beer and sake of course, and usually serve snacks as well. Anyway, the people at this izakaya were incredibly nice—they kept bringing us food and beer, and even some vegetarian food (which is hard to find in izakaya) since they heard I was vegetarian. In the end they wouldn’t let us pay for any of it. I’ve been back to the izakaya since then and I always try to bring a gift now.
I had to work the next day, but after that, my parents came to see my schools, which was an interesting experience. That evening we ate at my favorite cheap Italian chain restaurant, Saizeriya, in Omiya. On the very first train, at 5:42 the next morning, we left for Kyoto.
I’ve been traveling and getting visits from people so I’ve fallen woefully behind on updating the blog, so I’ll be posting a series of short entries to let everyone know what I’ve been up to since yuki matsuri. A week after the big snow festival in Hokkaido, I left on a 3-hour train ride into Minakami in Gunma prefecture for a Reggae snow festival. It was a winter wonderland in a way that Sapporo wasn’t, being a big city. In Minakami the snow was piled at least three feet high, blocking windows in many cases, and the city had a sprinkler system on the roads to keep the water from freezing. The music was nice, and lots of people were skiing but I went for the onsen which were delightful. There was even a nice onsen in the ryokan (traditional inn) we stayed at, although the ryokan was notably lacking in western-style toilets (as many ryokan are). I found a lovely rotemburo (outdoor hot spring pool) in another hotel overlooking the mountainside and had the novel experience of building a snowman (well, snowcat) in the altogether. The next day I took a 45-minute bus ride to a famous onsen nearby. The rotemburo there were the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, with snow drifts and a river flowing by just beyond the pool. There was also an extremely hot indoor pool. I managed to inch my way in, but it did take an effort not to leap out again. I also encountered my first mixed-bathing rotemburo, which required some discussion about the etiquette of mixed bathing pools with my friend (“towels? No Towels? Towels.”) who was more knowledgeable about Japanese culture but, alas, had also never been to a mixed-bathing pool. I almost didn’t make it back from the onsen, since there was a snow storm moving in and the bus I was going to take couldn’t make it that far into the mountains, but I finally got out safe and sound, and even caught the train I’d been hoping to take (also running late because of the storm).
Unfortunately, since that wonderful onsen, I’ve been falling way short of my one onsen/weekend goal. I haven’t made it to any onsen since Minakami, but I intend to see many more before I leave Japan. Next up: my parents’ visit and trip to Kyoto in mid-March.
I went to yuki matsuri this weekend, the snow festival in Sapporo (as in Sapporo beer, on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido). The flight up to New Chitose airport was a little unsettling, because not one person at the airport checked IDs, not even at the security checkpoint. I stayed in a hotel in the red light district of Sapporo, which was probably why it was so cheap, but it was actually quite nice. Unlike Saitama, Hokkaido is serious about central heating and insulation, so the hotel room was much warmer than my apartment on an average night. The first day, I went with some friends to Sapporo brewery. It was a fair walk from Sapporo station but it was interesting to see how local shops and convenience stores use the large amount of snow to advertise. At a park the snow that had been plowed off roads and sidewalks had been heaped up into a very nice sledding hill, complete with steps, and I had to slide down a couple of times. The brewery itself was covered in snow and it started snowing when we got there—very pretty even if the snow did keep melting on my camera. We found a good restaurant in the brewery with grill-it-yourself fare, including lamb and veggies. The grill itself was in the shape of Hokkaido which was a nice touch. I ate too much and tried the beer (although I opted not to do nomihodai—all you can drink).
In the evening we found a large Ferris wheel on top of a tall building, and I had to go for a ride to look out over the city even though I’m not too keen on heights. After that we finally made it to the festival, and considering how all the snow and ice sculptures were lit up, I think evening’s probably the best time to go. There were a lot of small snow sculptures, and when I say small I actually mean about seven feet tall on a base of five square feet. My favorite small sculptures were Al Gore and The Scream, and there were a number of beautiful ones in what appeared to be a special section for the sculptures more geared towards the art of snow sculpting rather than advertising. There were also about eight stage-sized snow sculptures, one advertising the new Narnia movie complete with dramatic music and a light show and an impressive Egyptian-themed sculpture. And then there were the delicate ice sculptures, a few blocks of which were on a street near our hotel instead of in Odori Park where the rest of the festival took place. I got my fill of souvenirs from the festival, including a small danpa, a panda with the colors reversed that appeared to be the mascot and marketing gimmick for this year’s festival. Afterwards we went to find ramen alley and ate some delicious miso ramen at a very tiny but very popular ramen joint. It was quite a change to have fresh ramen with a more complicated assortment of ingredients than I find in the instant ramen lunches.
The next day I took a bus to onsen in Jozankei, a beautiful spot in the mountains about an hour from Sapporo. I got a ticket that included the bus fare both ways and a ticket to any of the onsen in the area. However, not realizing I had many options, I naturally chose the onsen with the scenic view of the highway. It was still relaxing. Soaking in hot springs with the steam rising up around me while I take in the frozen winter landscape will never lose its charm, highway or no highway.
I took another trip to Odaiba yesterday. I think the Yurikamome trains are my favorite so far in Japan—they run through a beautiful raised track along Tokyo Bay, past some amazing architecture, the huge Odaiba Ferris wheel and the Rainbow Bridge before looping around and crossing the bridge. I went back to the wonderful Indian restaurant along the bay, and accumulated an embarrassing amount of Hello Kitty paraphernalia (I guess any amount is embarrassing, really) in the fake Samurai village one floor below the restaurants.
After lunch and shopping, I finally made it to Oedo Onsen Monogatari, the onsen in Odaiba along Tokyo Bay. The onsen was huge but way too crowded—I had to wait in line to take a shower before I could get into the baths. There were about eight different kinds of baths in the onsen, including one with real onsen water, supposedly extracted from far beneath Tokyo Bay, a gold bath, a silk bath, a Jacuzzi with jets extremely well-placed to massage the arches of your feet, a couple outdoor pools and a few outdoor barrel-baths, as well as two different kinds of saunas. The entrance fee includes rental of a yukata (like a kimono but light-weight) so I wandered around a mock Edo-period village inside the onsen building before and after soaking in the baths. The village was a little hokey, not that I didn’t pick up plenty of souvenirs. Actually the locker key attached to a bracelet also had a barcode on it, so instead of having to carry money around, they scan your barcode whenever you buy food or souvenirs. It’s quite an ingenious idea really, because it makes it very easy to buy things and near impossible to keep track of how much you’re spending until you have to pay up at the very end. Also you can’t get to the locker area where your shoes are being held hostage until you’ve paid up. I was happy to find a manja toy (manja are ubiquitous onsen food from what I understand, a kind of dumpling with vegetables inside), and some delicious mochi balls with cocoa powder and cream on the inside. After wandering around the village barefoot for awhile (like I said, my shoes were being held in a locker out front), I went to the foot baths. They provided a happi coat to put over my yukata but it was still freezing. The water was warm, and the bottoms of the footbaths were covered with small stones designed to hit pressure points in the bottom of your foot but they were actually quite painful (and I wasn’t the only one who thought so—some of the Japanese were also complaining). Unfortunately it was too dark to see where the stones were and avoid them, although some of the stones were placed in rows across the pool so I was able to grapevine my way forward and without tumbling into the footbath with my camera.
I was just about ready to give up on the footbath and make a run for the building across the freezing footpaths when one of my friends spotted the building with the “doctor fish”—the cleaning fish. You pay an extra fee for a set amount of time with the doctor fish and a person leads you into the footbath area and directs you to sit down on a mat and stick your feet into the footbath. As soon as I stuck my feet in, dozens of doctor fish swam up to feast on the apparently large quantity of dead skin cells on my feet. It didn’t hurt at all, but it tickled a lot. I noticed there were only a few doctor fish tending to the feet of the Japanese woman near me. I suspect she must take better care of her feet, because the fish were all over my feet and my friends’ feet. And when my time with the doctor fish was over, I could tell they weren’t anywhere near done with me. My feet definitely felt softer afterwards, although there are still plenty of calluses (well the doctor fish aren’t miracle workers after all). I got some great video of the doctor fish, but I don’t know how to post it here, so I’ll just put a picture in the photo section. Anyway, it’s not every day you see a symbiotic relationship happening on your feet, so the doctor fish alone were well worth the trip.
It snowed today and accumulated for the first time. We didn’t get much snow before it turned to rain and washed away most of the accumulation. Today was maybe the coldest yet—I could definitely see my breath in the bathrooms and of course there’s only ice-cold water to wash up so I can’t ever feel my fingers on the way back to my relatively-warm desk.
I’ve been trying to go somewhere different every weekend, so this past weekend I went to Shinjuku and Ikebukuro. Shinjuku’s Kabuki-chō is mostly a red-light district from what I can gather, but there’s a pretty nice spa right in the middle of it. There are three indoor pools, a hot pool, a cold pool and a Jacuzzi style pool with bubbles, as well as three saunas (only one of which was cool enough for me to stay inside for any length of time) and massages. The really cool part is that the spa is on the ninth floor of the building and there’s one hot outdoor pool that’s shockingly serene considering it’s in the middle of Shinjuku. The pool is screened off so people in neighboring high-rises don’t get an eyeful, but I could still see some skyscrapers while I soaked. It was cool because it felt like an onsen, but with a cityscape instead of the usual tranquil landscape view. And, since the spa is open 24 hours and is much cheaper than a hotel room, now I know where to go when I miss the last train home.
After the spa, I went to a pretty shrine, Hanazono-jinja, also in the heart of Kabuki-chō. The shrine was all lit up at night and weirdly quiet considering it sits in the shadow of skyscrapers on all sides. I left a single yen offering and rang the big ceremonial bells—you’re supposed to leave the offering and pull the big ropes attached to the bells while you pray. After the shrine, I went to a hole-in-the-wall French restaurant for a very-pricey meal that was still worth every yen. I had French-onion soup, the most amazing potatoes gratin, zucchini in a wonderful cream sauce, and topped it off with crème brûlée.
The next day I went to Ikebukuro, which isn’t quite as fashionable and shiny as Shinjuku (but close). There’s a sort of city-within-a-city, called Sunshine City, where I found a neat planetarium, a zoo and an aquarium. I always feel funny visiting zoos because I worry about how the animals are treated. There were a couple of sea lions in a tank that looked a little small, but then again, the Japanese have very different standards for judging a space too small to be livable. My apartment seemed inhumanely small on those first few nights too. On the plus side, I got a great video of a seal doing math. The trainer would put numbers on a board (like 5+4=) and the seal would look at each symbol very carefully then bounce down a row of numbers, pick out the right one and take it back to the trainer in exchange for fish. I was pretty impressed. Unfortunately, the show didn’t seem that popular, except with a few very small children, either because it didn’t seem to be a scheduled show or because it’s so cold outside. But luckily the seal still gets fish for doing math whether there’s a big audience or not. The aquarium was nice (although not as nice as the Chicago aquarium), but very crowded of course. After the aquarium, I went to a kind of food amusement park, where I was able to find vegetarian gyoza (like potstickers) filled with kimchi and topped with melted cheese. Undoubtedly not traditional, but delicious nonetheless. I’ve been disappointed over the last few months that I rarely eat Japanese food because it’s so hard to find vegetarian versions. I’ve been surprised at how pervasive meat is in Japanese restaurants when historically Japanese considered eating animals like cows to be exotic and not a little strange. But even the vegetable gyoza at the grocery store turned out to contain a little bit of meat when I asked. Anyway, I was overjoyed to find a vegetarian Japanese dish, no matter how untraditional the interpretation. I think I just need to search more for vegetarian Japanese food, and after all, if I can’t find it in Tokyo, I probably can’t find it in Japan.
