Japan Trip Installment III

  “What?  We have to have the exact change?”

     Our trip to Kyoto was off to a not-so-good start.  It began with our hotel accommodations.  We thought we had two nights arranged for, but not the first night. 

     After three visits to the information room at the railroad station and after losing 100 yen to the phone company who took her money without providing any service, the Goodwife managed to raise the hotel on the phone.  No, they had no vacancies for that night.

     A fourth visit got us registered in a very nice hotel across the street from the bus and train station.  We had time enough to do a little rubber necking.  There was a full moon ceremony going on at one of the many shrines.  We could ride the bus.  It wouldn’t pay to buy a bus pass so late in the day, the young lady at the desk explained.  Just pay the bus fare for this trip.

      So we got on the bus.  Then we heard in Japanese and English that the driver had no change.  We must have the correct fare, 230 yen apiece.  We had about 300 yen and some 10,000-yen notes.  Not get change for that?  What to do?

    The Goodwife turned to some girls in the seats behind us.  Did they have change for 10,000 yen.  They both looked, but they didn’t have near enough.  Ask the bus driver, they both said.  So the Good wife worked her way to the front of the bus.

     The driver told her to get change when she got off the bus and put in double on the return trip.  (You pay when you get off.)  We began to discuss where we could find a place to get a bill changed.

     This man came up from behind us with a hand full of bills.  He had change he said.  The Good wife dug in her purse and pulled out the 10,000.  He waved her off.  Wait until he counted.  So he counted out nine 1000-yen notes and a hand full of change.  That done, he took her bill.

     We still didn’t have the correct change.  She did have a 500-yen coin.  That would be 40 more yen than necessary, but that didn’t amount to much, not compared to 10,000.  She put the 500 coin in the slot and we got off, but the driver yelled at us, called us back, insisted we take the 40 yen.  He had that much change, anyway.

      People went out of their way to help us wherever we went.  We teamed up with a couple from France and a girl from Korea when we got off the bus.  With English and Japanese, we were able to communicate and find our way from bus stop to temple.

     It was a beautiful night.  The full moon took its time coming up over a mountain and some trees.  The ceremony was all Greek to me, not understanding the language of the ceremony and the songs.  After a couple hours of ancient string and flute music, we grew weary and had to leave before the dancing, what the Goodwife wanted to see, began.

     The next day, we loaded up on the bus and found our way to our hotel.  When we checked in, we found out we had been scheduled to be there the night before.  Why didn’t they tell us that when we called from the train station?  Oh well.

             Kyoto gave us rain, so we bought umbrellas and a five-hour bus tour that took us to three shrines or temples.  Looking for a place to eat that night produced a highlight of our trip.  We got to know the neighborhood as we wandered around looking for the laundromat the hotel manager sent us to.  We passed a place advertising itself as a pub, with pub food.

       After a long day of touring, I was ready for a beer and something to eat.  How disappointed I was to discover that the pub served only pizza and steak.  We had eaten at a sushi place the night before.  Next to the sushi place was a place called the Colorado Café.  We wandered wearily back to that area.

     All these places were small, seating maybe a dozen customers.  The Colorado Café was closed.  There was another bar next door.  We decided to try it. 

     The menu listed such delicacies as Cod entrails.  We opted for rice balls while we perused the menu further.  One tempting dish was Kim Chee chicken breast.  If it has Kim Chee (fermented cabbage or other vegetables such as radish or cucumbers) in it, it can’t be all that bad.

    It was delicious.  We got the recipe.  Grilled chicken breast with a sauce of Kim Chee, mayonnaise, soy sauce, and grated cheese.  Maybe you had to be there.  Maybe I was really hungry.  We’re going to try the recipe ourselves .       

     From Kyoto we went to Takayama where we were supposed to see a traditional festival with a big parade of shrines on wheels or “floats”.  It’s a bit like the rose parade, folks spending a lot of time getting floats ready for the parade. 

     Unfortunately, the tour director got the dates wrong.  We left on the day the festival began.  We missed the parade.

     We did get to see some of the “floats”.  A museum housed four old ones.  We teamed up with a Japanese couple who provide commodities to school lunchrooms.  They had a day off and came to see the festival.

     Together we found the museum, watched a movie with subtitles about the festival and the wheeled shrines.  A sideshow at the museum featured the puppets and puppeteers who appear on the floats.

     The puppets dance and do acrobatics.  A behind-the-scenes look at puppet and puppeteer was really interesting.  They rolled out a portable stage with the puppet on top of it.  They rolled back the curtain and we could see the puppeteer at work.  The puppet was an artist that started with a blank slate of poster board-like material.

 

      A Frenchman sitting beside us in the front row was awarded the puppet’s work of art.  (I got to drink a cup of tea served by a windup robot doll on wheels.)   Impressive that the gal could do what she did using rods to run the puppet.

 

     Our partners insisted we eat lunch with them.  Tooru wanted beef.  We ate where we grilled thinly-sliced beef and vegetables at our table.  After our lunch together, we went on a wild goose chase.  Tooru had bought an antique chest of some kind.  He couldn’t remember where he bought it.

     We trailed in his wake as he searched for the antique shop.  We finally found it.  There we said our goodbyes, but we were still looking at the antique shop wares when Tooru reappeared and insisted we come have a sort of dessert with them.  It was a rice cake, mochi, toasted in a waffle iron to make it a bit crunchy. 

      It was good, but we were scheduled for a Japanese dinner at our hotel at 6 p.m.  We weren’t terribly hungry at 6 p.m.

     Our supper was served in our room at the low table.  We sat on the floor.  Aching joints took some of the pleasure out of our meal. 

     Outside our window at the traditional ancient hotel was a lean-to roof about a foot below the window.  A cat appeared.  The hotel workers said it was a homeless cat that had adopted the hotel.  The cat was fat.

    Not being terribly hungry, the sashimi, raw fish, didn’t appeal to me.  I didn’t want to insult the chef.  The cat sat patiently on the roof.  He knew what was coming.  He had obviously done this before.  Imagine, a gourmet homeless cat.

Japan Trip Installment II

     Having drunk a lot of tea, it seems only natural to visit the bathroom.  The typical bathroom consists of three rooms, rather than one.

     The toilet has its own closet.  A second room has lavatory, mirror, and medicine chest.  The third room is really the bathroom, with tub and shower.  Quite a sensible arrangement-- no sense in the person using the toilet for his personal reading room standing in the way of someone needing the lavatory to primp.

     The unusual part is the heated toilet seat, the height of decadence!  Most have bidet features as well.    One good thing is the little hand-washing faucet above the tank lid.  It comes on automatically when you flush the toilet.  The water drains into the toilet tank to be used for the next flush.  That makes sense, too.

     (Sorry, no picture of the hand-washing tank lid.  What kind of tourist takes pictures of toilet stools?)

     A few public restrooms have the heated seats, but every home and every hotel we have visited has them.  The puritanical stingy Yankee in me rises up.  True, it does save some water, but think how much Japan could cut its electrical bill by the one prudent step of banning heated toilet seats.

      A few public restrooms still have the old squatter.  Given the choice, I guess I would opt for the heated toilet seat.

     Footwear is another custom foreign to the Yankee.  When you visit someone’s house, you always remove your shoes and don slippers.   Each resident will have his/her own slippers.  There will be guest slippers, too, because as host, you provide slippers for your guests.  The two group homes we visited had slippers for visitors, as did the traditional Japanese inn where we stayed in Takayama.

     As you come into the house, there will be an entranceway, usually tiled, usually a step below the level of the main floor.  There may be a bench or chair to sit on while you change footwear.  Slip off and on shoes are quite popular.  The young and dexterous can slip in and out of the house, changing footwear appropriately, nearly without pause if their street shoes don’t have to be laced.

     You wear your slippers about the house.  If you go out the patio door, there will be a set of grunge slippers to wear into the yard and garden area.  Simple!  Except there’s more.

     In the toilet room, there will be a set of slippers waiting at the door.  You should remove your slippers and put on the toilet slippers while using the WC.

     I thought I had it all down pat.  The bedroom of a traditional home has a straw mat called a tatami covering the bedroom floor.  The bed consists of a futon or duvet on the floor.

After I had made quite a few trips carefully treading between the two futons spread out for sleeping, not folded up as in the picture, the Goodwife informed me that I really shouldn’t be walking on the tatami with my slippers on.  Bare feet or socks in the bedroom.

   Well, there you have it. Just when you think you have something mastered, life throws you a curve ball.

     At least you have to admit, that the footwear custom keeps the slipper-makers hoofing it.

Ignorants Abroad--Japan Trip Installment I

     Travel broadens, they say.  It certainly changes things.  It forces a person to adapt, if only temporarily. 

     I won’t pretend to explain Japanese culture in one (or even several) blog(s) especially when some have spent a lifetime trying to understand (think Arnold Toynbee).  Here are a few customs I had to adapt to.

     We called upon the Goodwife’s  elderly aunt at her “group” home (we would probably refer to it as assisted living).  We were ushered to her room.  Barely had we said our hello’s before a table with folding chairs appeared along with a shallow bowl of rice crackers and three cups of tea.

      Eventually, Auntie’s stepdaughter ferried us the two or three blocks to Auntie’s home where we were housed during our stay.  Our hostess entered the house before us, and put the teakettle to the fire the first thing.  While she opened windows and showed us around, the kettle heated up and soon, we had a cup of tea.

      Okay, we were guests.  Now the next morning, we were to wend our way back to Auntie’s group home, two or three blocks away.  I can forgive myself for what happened, because as a country bumpkin, I rely on the sun and moon and horizon to navigate.  No trick at all to lose me among streets and houses and traffic.

     Still, I thought I could find my way.  We had a debate right outside the door.  We came down the hill to get to the house.  No, we came uphill, I insisted.  I led her downhill, to the left, down further to the gas station.  Then I got confused and lost my resolve.  Maybe this was the way we had gone to the market place before we went to the house.

     The Goodwife prevailed.  Back up the hill we went.  We turned here, we turned there, we continued to climb, and soon, we really were lost.  There was an advantage, for me.  We were high enough to look out over the “village”.  We were standing near a lot, maybe half of a city block, full of tea plants.  I surmised the tea plantations, which we could now see, are what enable the Japanese to refer to this as “country”, meaning rural.

      The buildings are a mainly one or two stories with only an occasional high rise.   There are city lots planted to vegetables.  Country.

     We were lost for the second time in two days.  Yesterday’s ambling was forgivable.  Our instructions were to leave the train station and turn left.  In all fairness  to out instructor, it would have been difficult to give detailed instructions from memory.  

     The Goodwife had the address on a slip of paper, but there were no street signs.  “We don’t put street signs up in the smaller places.  Everybody knows the streets and where they are,” one of our Good Samaritans explained.   Okay.

    It was approaching one p.m. when we arrived at the train station and made reservations with the ticket agent for our next leg of our journey.  We made some initial inquiries from a few people with vague results.

     I was hungry.  It would not do to show up at Auntie’s hungry.  Upon the recommendation of some businessmen the Goodwife approached, we drug our suitcases into a little pub run by a couple probably in their 60’s.   The proprietress knew the place we wanted to find.  A smart young man (she referred to him as “doctor” or ‘teacher”) sitting at the counter two feet away couldn’t help overhearing the conversation.  He dug out his smart phone and showed us a route to take.

     After the young man left, the proprietress came to our table with a hand-drawn map.  She didn’t trust the smart phone.  Besides, she said, there was an easier way to get there.  Maybe we couldn’t follow her map, so she would go part of the way with us.  In the end, she took us right to the door of the group home.

     Getting lost on that first day was forgivable, if not having smart phone or GPS is forgivable in this day and age.   But how was it possible not to be able to find do our way two or three blocks in broad daylight?

    As we gazed stupidly out over streets, fields, and rooftops, a delivery truck approached the intersection.  When it stopped, the Goodwife asked the driver how to get to Auntie’s group home.  He apologized, saying he wasn’t from this vicinity and didn’t really know much about this town.

    He turned right and headed downhill.  After discussing it for a moment or two, we followed him down the same street.  Before we got very far, here came the driver uphill toward us, afoot, with a young lady in tow.

     He had parked his truck, gone into another assisted living facility, and procured the help of one of the employees.  He probably told her there were two crazy Americans wandering around hopelessly lost, could she help us?  Anyway, he turned us over to the young lady and got on with his business.

     The young lady took us back up the hill, made a couple of turns, and took us to a facility she was sure we were looking for.  But it wasn’t.

     She got out her smart phone and had a confab with an associate from her workplace.  Together they thought of another place that met the Goodwife’s description.  Back down the hill we went to where the truck driver had parked, to the young lady’s place of employment. 

Nothing would do but we must step inside and have a seat in the foyer of her workplace while she went and brought a car around.  We were parked on a bench in the entryway.  Almost simultaneous with us hitting the bench, two cups of tea, iced this time, appeared on a tray before us.  Our entire stay at the facility couldn’t have been four or five minutes, ending when our hostess parked just outside the door and came to get us.

      We had had our obligatory cup of tea. 

The young lady took us on a five-minute drive.  We started down the hill and I said, “Ah, route 30.  

I  recognize this street.”   She and the Goodwife had a short exchange, the result of which was 

the Goodwife snickering.

          “She says that 30 is the speed limit sign.”         

       We came to the same gas station to where we had walked earlier, the place where I let self-doubt rule.  I recognized it, too.  She turned the corner and right next door was Auntie’s group home.

      We thanked the young lady profusely and went in to see Auntie, and have some more tea.  It seems that anyone who sets foot in your house must be treated to a cup of tea.

Our Hosts

 Mount Fuji from the countryside.