Tsumago and the End of Our Holiday

The last few days of our holiday Jeremy came up from Hiratsuka. We decided to drive to an old town in Nagano Prefecture called Tsumago. This town is one of many old towns that were on the Nakasendo road. This was one of the two ways to travel from Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto in the past. All along the route little towns provided lodging, food and rest to travelers. Tsumago has been so well preserved that it is virtually a living museum now. Rows and rows of wooden Edo period buildings, shops selling local handicrafts and restaurants.

I had a great bowl of homemade soba noodles with tempura mushrooms. We also tried two local sweets. One was served in a little shop around an irori. It was almost like a hot donut with no hole. We all got the walnut filled one. Then we tried gohei-mochi which was sticky rice grilled on a stick with a thick nut paste on it. Both sweets were delicious and warming on a cold, cloudy autumn day.

We hiked for a short bit on the old Nakasendo path where we passed through forests, small villages and waterfalls. A lot of houses had persimmons hanging out to dry.

The next day we took Jeremy to a sake brewery in Youtsu Town, near Kani. The owner is one of my students. He is a 5th generation sake brewer with a 140 year old building. We all bought some sake and had a good time talking to the owner about how sake is made. Damien and I ended up going to an Okinawan restaurant later that night. The food was definitely different from Japanese style food. More tropical and centered around pork. Very delicious!!! We weren’t really sure what we were ordering but it was hard to go wrong. I think our dessert was taro root pie.

Uji

Our final day before going back to Kani was dedicated to the small town of Uji outside of Kyoto city. The main attraction is Byodoin Temple. This temple is so beloved by Japan that its image in on the 10 yen coin and the roof top phoenix decorations are pictured on the 10,000 yen note. The main building is called the Phoenix hall and was built in the Heian period, about 1000 years ago. The building is completely made of wood and one of the few remaining buildings remaining in Japan from the Heian period.

The big golden Buddha inside was made by a famous sculptor and is his only surviving work. The garden setting complete with temple reflection and beautiful trees was stunning. I took a corny picture of a 10 yen coin with the temple in the background.

The original rooftop phoenixes are still in almost perfect condition and can be seen in the museum. The current ones on the roof are replicas. Many birds land up on that roof and we saw a giant heron poop up there!

After Byodoin we went to an old Shinto shrine (Ujigami Shrine). The Lonely Planet said that there was nothing interesting about the shrine even though it is an UNESCO World Heritage site (as was Byodoin). We went anyway and were pleasantly surprised to find a small beautiful shrine back a cute lane surrounded by bamboo and old trees. The two wooden buildings that make up the shrine are the oldest shrine buildings in Japan.

Their thatched roofs were thick with moss and their austerity and simplicity were very different from other more colorful shrines I have seen. And the leaves on the roof tiles was beautiful. It was again amazing to be looking at small wooden buildings that were over a thousand years old.

I wish we had had more time to spend in Uji. It had a beautiful river and the surrounding hills were wonderful. Uji was also famous for tea (there were tons of tea shops there and the smell of tea was everywhere) and for the famous Japanese book The Tale of Genji. The last 10 chapters of this thousand year old epic novel were set in the town of Uji and many of the streets, buildings and places mentioned in the book are still extant.

Overall our trip was an incredibly interesting Japanese experience. We learned a lot, ate great food, met some interesting people, and got to forget about all our worries if just for a little while. We returned to Kani on a Friday and were looking forward to meeting our friend Jeremy Eades at the station for a weekend visit before going back to work.

Dinner in Kyoto

At the end of our trip we spent 1 night in Kyoto. We wanted to have a nice meal in Kyoto and so went to Pontocho where we had eaten with Heather and Jeremy in the summer. It didn’t seem like as many restaurants were open and it wasn’t very bustling so we opted to go to the geisha district of Gion. We actually got to see a couple of geisha again this time. During the summer we were lucky enough to see a geiko and a maiko waiting on a taxi outside of one of the restaurants and we saw a geisha go into the same place this time. We decided to go in too and see if we could eat there. We were seated at the counter and ordered the seasonal course dinner.

It ended up being quite an entertaining dinner. A drunk salaryman in his 60s who was obviously a bit of a regular there was seated next to us and was eager to practice his English. Due to his inebriated state he couldn’t remember a single thing we said from minute to minute and we ended up being from Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and the US during the course of the meal. Not long after the salaryman sat down, a guy on holiday from Hong Kong came in and then a young Japanese guy sightseeing in Kyoto. It was a strange mix of English dialects, Japanese and cultures.

The food was beautiful and delicious. The most interesting dish was served in a special kind of teapot but it was actually soup. They had to show us what to do with it. Squeeze a lime into the soup. Turn the lid over and use as a cup to drink the broth. Eat the vegetables and seafood out of the pot with chopsticks after drinking the broth.

There were several tofu dishes, wonderful sashimi and sushi. Rice with autumn wild mushrooms called matsutake. And a delicious jelly type dessert with nut powder. The mama-san of the restaurant I think felt sorry for us having to deal with the drunk gentlemen and didn’t charge us for one of our sakes. It was a very interesting evening.

Horyuji Temple

I was very excited to finally visit this famous temple. It is a little out of the way (about 15 minutes by train and then 30 minutes on foot from Nara City). It is one of the oldest temples in all of Japan, being founded not long after Buddhism came from China via Korea. Besides housing a huge collection of Japan’s national treasures, it also boasts the world’s oldest and second oldest wooden buildings.

The huge pagoda and main temple building were both built in the mid-600s by Prince Shotoku. This prince was one of the most important reasons why Japan even has Buddhism. The buildings are in amazing shape and are quite impressive. I guess usually you can go into the main temple building but it is closed for repairs until next year. The other buildings and wooden colonnades were built in different time periods but none earlier that 500 years ago. It is amazing that those wooden structures have managed to evade fires, earthquakes, decay and war.

We were luckily enough to see a very special statue. Housed in an octagonal wooden building built in the 700s, it is a wooden gilded likeness of Prince Shotoku carved in the 600s. It is Japan’s oldest wooden statue and it is in a pristine state of preservation. The reason for its good condition is that over a thousand years ago it was considered dangerous and was wrapped up in layers and layers of white cloth and hidden away from human eyes. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that an American anthropologist was allowed to unwrap the statue for study. It is only on display twice a year and we happened to be there for one of those. It was hard to see since the light was dim but it was kind of creepy.

There weren’t many tourists at the temple but there were hundreds and hundreds of Japanese students there on school trips. Sometimes it was like a sea of student uniforms and yellow hats! At one point I saw a large praying mantis on the ground and was taking its picture. Well, this attracted the attention of a huge group of high school boys. They came over and as we left they started kicking stones at the mantis and being very mean to it. We couldn’t watch and went to the other side of the courtyard. When we came back a few minutes later there was another group poking at it and harassing it. I couldn’t stand it any longer and I marched over there and quickly cupped the 7-8 inch insect in my hands to take it somewhere for safety. The boys stared and then started yelling, ‘No! Poison! Poison!’. I ignored them and took the mantis to a safe place under a tree. The crowd dispersed and we were happy to see the mantis still alive and kicking a little later on our way out. It seemed especially ironic that that stupid group of boys were being mean to another living creature in one of the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan!

Okunoin Cemetery

One the most famous things about Koyasan is Okunoin cemetery. This is the largest cemetery in Japan and historically the most prestigious. Kobo Daishi supposedly went into ‘eternal meditation’ in a cave at the far end of this cemetery 1200 years ago. This is the site of his current mausoleum where some believe he is still alive meditating. Since the time of Kobo Daishi, anyone who is anyone has had a tomb here. I learned recently that it is not uncommon for prominent people or families to have more than one tomb in Japan. For example, they might have one in their home village and one at Koyasan. I am not sure if there are actual remains in each tomb but most likely there are.

This cemetery has half a million family tombs. The tombs are nestled among a thick forest of centuries old cedar trees. The trees were so crazy that you would almost swear some of them had to have been made by Disney!

In Japan, it is up to the family to take care of their ancestor’s tombs. Hundreds and hundreds of the tombs in Okunoin have been forgotten and neglected over the centuries. They are falling down, thick with moss and some have been almost completely engulfed inside the giant trees.



In addition to tombs of Japan’s most famous historical figures (Kobo Daishi, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa shoguns) there are also family tombs of current famous names such as Nissan and Komatsu (see my pictures on Flickr).


I felt transported to another world walking through such history. You could feel it in the air. I have never seen anything like this cemetery and probably never will. Well worth the time to visit if you ever come to Japan!

Koya-san Experience

The highlight of our trip was a two night stay in a thousand year old Buddhist temple. The actual building was 100 years old but the temple itself was founded more than a thousand years ago. Koya-san is the home base for Shingon Buddhism, a sect established in the 800s by Kobo Daishi. Kobo Daishi is famous throughout Japan as being the father to many aspects of Japanese culture including the kana writing system. His mausoleum is in the big cemetery on Koya-san (I will write a separate blog about the cemetery).

When we arrived at the temple (Ekoin) there was a monk outside sweeping up leaves. We were shown to our beautiful tatami mat room by meandering through old wooden hallways and up stairs. We had to really pay attention so we could find our way out again and then find our room again!

We had a beautiful view of the temple garden and had hot tea and cakes waiting for us. Dinner wasn’t served until 5:30 so we went out walking in the small town.

There was just one main street lined with temple after temple, most of which have been places of lodging for tourists and pilgrims for centuries. There were lots of shops and some restaurants too. The weather was clear and sunny but much colder than Kani. Koya-san is high up on a mountain so we had to take a cable car up at a very vertical angle!

The autumn leaves were amazing. We did a little hiking and toured the inside of the main temple complex and headed back for dinner.

The food was typical temple food. Being Buddhist they don’t eat meat. But this food also had no fish, eggs, dairy, onions or garlic. Believe it or not it was absolutely delicious. It was like magic what those monks could make without all those ingredients. I don’t think I would have even noticed the lack of those things if I hadn’t known. Koya-san is famous for what’s called gomadofu.

It is a soft pudding like thing made from tofu and ground sesame. Very nice! We also had noodles, tempura, various vegetable dishes, rice, soup, and fruit.

We also had a local brand of sake that Buddhist temples serve that tasted nice and peppery. After dinner, we went down to the public bathing area in the temple, had a nice hot soak (gender separated of course) with the other guests and then went back up to our room to huddle in front of the kerosene heater and go to bed. The next day was reserved for the cemetery.

Osaka

The first place we went on our recent holiday was Osaka, primarily to see the huge aquarium there that has two whale sharks. The aquarium tank was indeed huge. The sharks were big but not as big as I expected. Apparently they are not adults yet and probably they won’t grow to full size in a tank like they would in the wild. I was surprised by the size of the sea otters. It made realize that I may have never seen a sea otter in person. They are HUGE compared to river otters!!! Like small bears!



We stayed in an area of Osaka close to Shin Sekai (interesting information at Wikipedia here). This area was the big entertainment area back in the first half of the 1900s. There is a big tower that you can still go up in. We went to this area with Heather and Jeremy back in July, but I guess we didn’t take the time to really explore because the one street we saw before is not the main area. The main area was bustling with restaurants, manzai (a style of Japanese comedy) theaters, shops, retro movie theaters and game arcades, and shogi (Japanese chess) and go (like Othello) parlors full of old Japanese men playing. It was quite exciting and we spent both evenings wandering around. There was a special dish in this area that seemed very popular. I just found out on the internet that it is called kushi-yaki. You order from a menu of food-on-a-stick. Like yakitori but more choices of vegetables, meat, and seafood. Then it is battered in a light, sweet batter and deep fried. I had never had anything like that batter. It was delicious (thought I am sure far from healthy)!! At lunch the lines were so long for the restaurants that some of the lines had security guards!!
Luckily dinner was less crowded. (Chad, have you ever had this food?)


We also were able to see an interesting temple. We were just taking a walk and came upon a temple complex that had a building with 12 grey Buddha statues in it. Turns out that the statues are made of human ashes. The reasoning behind it is that once people are cremated, their ashes get put in the ground and cannot be seen and are separated from the living. The temple decided long ago to reconnect the dead to the living and allow the dead to be seen and not forgotten. Each statue is made from the ashes of 200,000 people! Very interesting!

Our hotel was in a very seedy area of Osaka. I would go so far as to say it was the seediest place I have ever been in Japan. Lots and Lots of homeless men wandering around. I guess men from all over Japan come to this area of Osaka. Wikipedia says that this area of Osaka has a reputation as being the most dangerous area in all of Japan!! Didn't know that. But keep that in perspective. The most dangerous area in Japan is probably less dangerous than my own neighborhood in Indianapolis. There were lots of old run-down shop fronts and dirty sidewalks. But the hostel was cheap and catered to budget travelers. It was definitely fun for us to walk around a big city. Being stuck in Kani all the time gets a little boring. We were reminded of our old days near Yokohama. I guess that is the last we will see of Osaka for a while!