Last days

My last couple days in Japan were pretty much exclusively devoted to travel.

I woke up my last day in Osaka, checked out, and hopped on a train back to Tokyo. The trip back was pretty uneventful. I napped for most of it, then read for the rest. Once back in Tokyo I made a beeline for Asakusa, where my hostel was. Asakusa is home to a large market, a popular temple (Senso-ji), and the Tokyo Skytree, none of which I had visited while I was previously in Tokyo. It's also home to Khao-san Kabuki, the flagship hostel of the Khao-san hostel empire. This hostel is also EXACTLY what a hostel should be. Cheap, well-located, comfy beds, clean showers, and a common area with a thriving social life. The staff are friendly and knowledgeable, there are tips and tidbits posted on the walls, and a corner where the hostels schedule of daytrips, tours, and services are all listed out. If I'd had my druthers, this (or someplace like it) would've been where I stayed all ten days in Tokyo.

My plan for my last day was basically cram as many souvenirs and sweets into my luggage as was humanly possible before heading back to the States. Once I checked in, I wandered through the market, cramming cookies, cakes, and jellies (and a NICE bottle of sake) into my luggage like there was no tomorrow. I spent a little over an hour wandering the shops and dodging the rick-shaw tour carts in the area.

Once done with that, I swung by the hostel and dropped off several bags of goodies before heading back out again, this time back to Tokyo Station, where I got completely and utterly lost, in the best sense of the word. I was shopping there for about two to three hours, and I swear shops kept shuffling around me. I filled what little space for snacks I had with some ramen-flavored pretzel sticks and rainbow colored Pocky, and, lo and behold, stumbled across something I'd failed to locate on earlier trips: Hasegawa liquor store, a shop that specializes in Japanese whisky. I had several folks online recommend stopping there to see all the interesting things that Japanese whisky had to offer, so I grabbed a couple of things that just are NOT available in the states (namely a couple of weird wine-finished whiskies), then started trying to find dinner. Here, I wandered into something ELSE I hadn't found on earlier trips to Tokyo Station: Ramen Street! See my previous post on Tokyo station to see why I was so excited about this. It's literally just a stretch of like 6 or 7 ramen shops, all of which have their specialties. I picked the punk rock looking place and, unfortunately, didn't really like it. They had a weird...chunky miso ramen that had a beef stew type broth. Interesting, but not what I was hoping for. If it weren't for the fact I was trying to stretch my last $30 worth of yen until my flight then next day, I would've tried another one.

I headed back to the hostel and played luggage tetris to make sure everything would fit. It did...barely. I still carried a couple things in my hands onto the plane. Thankfully no one said anything the next day! One of my roommates, Ray, was a student from Singapore who had just finished studying accounting in Perth (I swear, for a small, nowhere city on the west coast of Australia, like 60% of the people I meet abroad are from Perth). I went downstairs to chat with him, and ended up watching him and an Argentinian guy play a game of drunken Jenga that was honestly awe-inspiring. Isn't alcohol supposed to inhibit fine motor control? Not for these two, apparently. While watching, I was talking with a woman from the middle of nowhere Canada (can't remember the town's name) about what was worth seeing in Tokyo. She'd just landed the day before and was still jet-lagged as all get out. She'd apparently stood in line at a sushi restaurant from 5-7am that morning and wasn't really sure why aside from the fact other people were as well. I also got pulled into a conversation about Microsoft's engineering practices with yet ANOTHER Perth Australian, which was entertaining, then headed up to bed.

The next day, I basically just got up and went straight to the airport. Before I left, Ray made the universal-to-Asia gesture for 'hangover' (squint your eyes, furrow your brow, and hold a balled fist to the side of your head; I'd seen this SEVERAL times from people by the end of the trip) when I asked how he slept. After being pulled into a quick costume photo by the hostel's front desk, I caught the 'express' to Narita airport from Asakusa, which took about an hour and a half, and began the (surprisingly smooth) process of getting back home. Security was a breeze, emigration was as well (basically just got a second stamp in my passport on top of my original visa), and my gate was easy to get to (despite me reading my gate number incorrectly originally). I spent the rest of my yen on an udon soup lunch, an ice cream bar, and some more candy, bought some books for my kindle, then boarded.

The flight home was as uneventful as the flight to Japan. I napped, read, and watched movies, then twiddled my thumbs for the other 5 hours of the flight. Once we landed, I breezed through customs, remembered why black luggage was a bad idea at baggage claim, then caught the light rail home. It was WEIRD walking back into my apartment. It took me a few minutes to remember which switches went with which lights (seriously, leave home for a month; you forget stuff like that). I showered, changed, then went out for some basic groceries. When I got back, I took a 'nap.' I fell asleep at 1 pm. I woke up at midnight. Giving into the fact that it would take a couple of days to get back into the swing of things, I stayed up and read until 5 am (with a brief interlude at 3 when my floor's power went out) before taking a quick nap before church.

Osaka!

Getting close to wrapping thing up: a quick description of my time in Osaka. I was particularly lazy my last couple of days, so apologies for the lack of photos!

Day 1

Day one, I got all checked in and read through my guidebook to figure out what I wanted to see. To quote a girl at my hostel in Kyoto: "There's nothing to do in Osaka except shopping and eating." To quote me, "And who says that's a bad thing?"

Osaka is a little light on shrines, castles, and gardens, but it more than makes up for it in restaurants, food stalls, and shops. The epicenter of all this is the Minami area, who's epicenter is the stretch of road called Dotonburi. It's a group of pretty much nothing but restaurants and food stalls that runs for several blocks along the river. My hotel was just a few blocks from one end of Dotoburi, so my first night I decided to go and stuff myself full of street food. I got a big bowl of ramen, some grilled crab, coffee, and (my favorite) takoyaki. In my meandering, I also stumbled on a tiny little shrine, surrounded on all sides by restaurants and bars, and full of little buddhas, fuzzy with moss. I also found a tiny little bar just called 'Jon's Whisky Bar,' which sounded right up my alley, but when I walked in, the owner stood up and spouted a ton of Japanese at me. I wasn't quite sure what it meant, but it started with 'Excuse me, sorry sir...' so I figured it boiled down to 'We're closed.' A little disappointed, but more full and sleepy, I went home to bed.

Day 2

I woke up to...a conference call? I'm going on a road trip this summer with some college roommates, and had to sort out some details with them. Afterwards, I went to meet up with Eli, a friend from my second internship. He's travelling the world with a friend while they do startups, and happened to land in Osaka for one of the same days as me. We met up underneath 'the big, moving crab statue in Dotonburi' at 11 for lunch. Thankfully we both picked the same one, as we found out there are 3 or 4 big, moving crab statues on the street >__<

We went for conveyor belt sushi, and unfortunately got seated at the end of the belt farthest from the chefs, so a lot of stuff got picked over before we got a grab at it. Thankfully, they took orders as well, so we were able to eat a good meal. Afterwards, we went for dessert at ChocoCron and got some weird pastries topped with soft-serve. We wandered a bit after that, then split up.

After, I went to wander Kita, the area around Osaka-Umeda station (where I arrived). It's a huge block of department stores (which, in Japan, are 10-15 story behemoths with everything from electronics to groceries). Lonely Planet recommended I check out one in particular for its kitchen gadgets and food stuff, but I had trouble finding it. Three of those enormous department stores are all connected to the station, along with 2 metro lines and 2 different rail companies, so I got completely and utterly lost. I stopped off at a super swanky coffee shop (leather, granite, and hardwoods everywhere) to figure out where I wanted to be. While flipping through the book I also got to watch a Japanese business card exchange, which is a weirdly formal ceremony. The exchange of cards is a super-duper ritualized thing, where everyone has a place in the hierarchy and swaps cards accordingly. I snooped on that (hopefully not too obviously), then found where I wanted to go. Dinner was at a kushikaya (everything is deep-fried and on a stick) place in Dotonburi, where I finally got a taste of normal American bar/restaurant service: polite and friendly-ish, but not super deferential. It was nice!

Day 3

Day 3 in Osaka was pleasantly uneventful. I woke up late, grabbed a big bowl of ramen for breakfast/lunch, then went shopping. My primary target was the big underground mall that forms a cross shape smack in the middle of the city with Shinsaibashi, the FREAKING MASSIVE covered shopping street that starts at Dotonburi and goes way too far North. Seriously, stand in the middle of Shinsaibashi. Look one way, then the next, and you can't see the end of the street in either direction. It's a weird mix of duty-free shopping for tourists, hip and edgy clothing for kids, cheap kimonos for more tourists, and $15,000 kimonos for super formal occasions. The cross-street mall was much less interesting, but there were a few shops near the intersection of the two that were interesting. I really liked one in particular that seemed to be aimed at folks in the hipster demographic, particularly newly-weds or soon-to-be-parents. Everything from the china to the baby bibs to the chotzkies were local, artisanal, and hand-made.

Later, I wandered through the area just south of Dotonburi and accidentally stumbled into the restaurant supply district. This was probably one of the highlights of my trip to Osaka. If you've ever been to Japan, you'll understand why. There was one shop that sold nothing but the cloth hangings restaurants put over their doors. Another sold lacquerware. I passed three shops that specialized in the plastic food that Japanese restaurants put in their window to advertise what they sell.

The highlight, though, was undoubtedly the knife shops. These were absolutely incredible to wander around. Everything from a 2-inch long paring knife, all the way up to a three foot long, foot-and-a-half wide tuna axe, used to hack the car-size blue-fin tuna into manageable chunks

Dinner that night was real Kobe beef at a teppanyaki restaurant my concierge recommended, called 'Ken.' Tiny little hole in the wall place. It was good! The owners were adorable, and (I think) married. They had that vibe about them, at least. They swapped out cooking and house-keeping duties pretty fluidly, though the man spent most of the time cooking. He also had a very strange and awkward smile. Odd detail to remember, I know, but ask me to mimic it next time you see me and you'll see what I mean.

One-offs, pt. 5

Live from Seattle, it's the last one of these!

I have a quick, loopy signature (just a C and and R), and folks in Japan loved it. Both the front desks at my last two hostels and at least one waiter giggled when they saw it.

Japanese grills cook things lower and slower than American grills. Takoyaki (octopus dumplings that are my favorite Japanese street food) take FOREVER to cook, and they're basically just little balls of pancake batter.

Teppanyaki in Japan is much less showy and more formal than in America, but is still very much a thing. I went to a Kobe beef restaurant my last night in Osaka, and that's how they cooked it. It was more like grilling than stir-frying: not a lot of fat, and things weren't chopped up until right before it was put on my plate. The fried rice was really simple, too: oil, garlic, salt, beef, and rice.

There's an urban clothing chain in Japan called "Womb." Sounds kinda metal to me, but it's more skinny jeans and slim-fit shirts.

I love how vertical Japan is. Everything is built on top of each other, and not necessarily in any particular order. In Osaka, I saw a restaurant, built above a night club, built on top of...a dentist?

It's really, really hard to eat crab legs out of the shell with chopsticks. Just sayin'.

Joys of visiting a country where folks don't speak your language: touts for restaurants and clubs leave you the hell alone.

Side note: if they DO try to get you into a place, it's generally a bad idea. Talked to several folks who have stories of getting stuck with three and four-figure bills after getting lured into a place by a woman in a short dress.

I was standing on a bridge over the river in Osaka when a tour boat went under it. The guide on the boat was waving to people as they passed, and kept yelling 'Konnichiwa! Konnichiwa!' to them. When they went under my bridge, she went 'Konnich-oh! Hello! Hi!' and a boatload of Japanese people (literally) followed suit. 'Twas fun ^__^

There' a big Starbucks in Dotonburi in Osaka that has a HUGE seating area upstairs that looks like a library.

Last days in Kyoto

Merging the last three days in Kyoto into one post, since they were all pretty short.

Day 5 (Nara)

I woke up a little late on Easter Sunday and tried to figure out what I wanted to do. I’d initially been planning on taking a train to Ise, which is where Japan’s largest and holiest shrine is. I figured it’d be a fitting place to see on Easter (particularly since it’s a shrine to Amaterasu, the god of the rising sun, and I like puns), but when I looked it up, it was significantly harder to get to than I thought. It was a 2-3 hour, two-train trip on a train that wasn’t run by JR, so my pass didn’t cover it.

I didn’t feel like spending 6 hours on trains that day, so I gave it a pass and bumped my plans up by a day. I went to Nara instead, which is home to a herd of deer that were considered holy by the Buddhist temples in the area, so they weren’t ever harmed. After decades of this, the deer just stopped being afraid of us, and would wander around pretty much like they owned the place. The deer became a tourist attraction, and so vendors in the area started selling rice cakes you could feed them. If the deer weren’t afraid of people before, the CERTAINLY weren’t afraid of us now. Walk around with a stack of crackers in your hand and you’ll get swamped by a pack of hungry beggars.

When I got to Nara, I was starving, and given that the night before had been the funky Japanese meal, I was craving comfort food. Lo and behold, when I stepped off the train I saw Colonel Sanders face smiling down at me from across the street. I sunk my teeth into a two-piece meal and felt much closer to home (despite the biscuit, which tasted strongly of disappointment).

I started following the signs to the deer park, but didn’t really need to worry: like Kamakura, the road from the train station to the tourist attractions was impossible to miss. I decided to put off souvenir shopping until later (glad I did, I’ll get to that in a second), and just headed straight to the park, stopping just long enough to buy some crackers. The deer were as adorable as promised, and much less stressful to feed than the monkeys. Trained by years of living with Japanese folks, the deer would bow when begging from you, which was hilarious and adorable all at once. They didn't like my camera at first because of the clicking noise it makes, but I wanted a closeup, so I started holding crackers right underneath the lens. Worked like a charm ^__^

Hullo.

My rail pass was just a little too big to fit in my pocket, so Nara was the only time I’ve really had to worry about pickpockets here. Not that I was worried someone would snatch it and sell it, I was worried someone would snatch it and EAT it. The deer have an insatiable love of paper, and the guidebooks and concierges in the area all tell stories of folks who had their maps, tickets, and passports snatched out of their hands. It was funny to pull out a receipt, crumple it, and watch all the deer in the vicinity perk up and turn to stare at you. This was also why I was happy I put off souvenir shopping. Some girl at the park hadn’t, and one of the deer grabbed ahold of her paper bag, yanked it out of her hand, and ran off with it, scattering its contents all over the place. She was laughing too hard to be mad, and the deer looked just absolutely tickled with his trophy.

The bamboo is something called a 'sweet pick.' I have no idea what
I was supposed to do with it.

After the deer, I didn’t really want to do the rest of the sights in the area (more temples, which I was kinda burned out on), so I wandered through what appeared to be some sort of county fair, then went back to the shopping street. I grabbed a couple of souvenirs (a washi paper journal and some Japanese wall hangings, as well as some local plum wine and sake), watched a shop make some fresh green tea mochi, and headed home. I made a pit stop at Kyoto station to get some traditional matcha green tea, which is tea that's been ground into a powder then whisked into hot water. This is the way it's done in traditional tea ceremonies, but since I wasn't staying at a ryokan, it was harder to find a place that'd do one. There was a shop in Kyoto station that did traditional tea service with wagashi sweets, though, and I did that. I was reminded yet again that it's apparently not dessert in Japan unless it involves red bean paste, as EVERY sweet there looked radically different, but was just a different preparation of mochi and bean paste. Dinner that night was soba and tempura, which was excellent. It came with buckwheat shochu and buckwheat tea, so not a meal for the gluten intolerant.

When I got back to the hostel, the Germans in the hostel were having a beer tasting of several Japanese beers and invited me to join them. The verdict was that Asahi was the worst, and Sapporo Gold and Kirin Best Malt tied for first.

Day 6 (Toji market and shopping)

On the 21^st of every month, Toji temple (a Buddhist temple just south of the station) holds an antiques bazaar on the temple grounds, so Easter Monday I spent most of the day shopping there. I didn’t grab much (a few teacups and a sakura blossom painting by a very nice Japanese man who threw in a small one of a good luck cat), but it was fun to wander the stalls. They had everything from junk that wasn’t worth the plastic it was wrapped in all the way up to crossguards from old samurai swords. I met up with the Germans guys from my hostel and we wandered together a bit before splitting up. It started drizzling, so I grabbed some chicken on a stick (yes they really have it here) and waited the rain out in a tent.

Okonomiyaki on the grill

From there, I went back to Gion to do a little bit more souvenir shopping, and ended up stumbling into an arts and crafts store that specialized in Japanese rice paper. If you know me, you know I have a deep and abiding love of art supply stores, so it won’t surprise you that I ended up buying waaaaay more than I should have. Oops. I kept lying to myself while shopping, just saying 'Oh, I'm not buying THAT much,' but that illusion was shattered when the shopkeeper handed me a shopping basket and I realized I was, in fact, carrying that much in my hands.

I spent a long time wandering Gion, and the day was coming to a close, so I went home after that. I stopped by 7/11 on the way to grab a few sandwiches for dinner, which everyone recommends doing at least once. Strange, but not too weird if you know anything about convenience stores in this country. 7/11, Family Mart, and Lawson’s are the holy trinity of corner stores here, and they stock EVERYTHING. Need a snack? Of course. How about a pack of local sweets for a gift? Got it. Spill something on your tie? They’ve got spares. Want to mail something? They sell stamps and boxes. The sandwiches are as good as advertised, too.

Day 7 (Travel to Osaka)

My last day ‘in’ Kyoto was just a travel day. I mailed some souvenirs home again (which ended with the post master chasing me down the street when he realized he forgot to charge me for the box I bought), then hopped on the Express train to Osaka. The trip was only about 20 minutes, since Osaka and Kyoto share the same metropolitan area. When I got to Osaka-Umeda station, I was lost for a bit, as the station is HUGE, and the metro trains I needed are nowhere near the express trains. That's a problem with some of the largest stations here: things are so far apart that a lot of signs don't even mention all the trains that stop there. I ran into the same thing at Shibuya Station; I found out my last day that there were two metro lines that I didn't know stopped there. 

I eventually figured it out, though, and managed to find my hotel pretty easily once I got to the metro stop. The staff was very nice! They all spoke english, too, which was a nice surprise. The hotel was called Yamatoya Honten, and had traditional Japanese-style rooms, which means tatami mat floors, rice paper windows, and, instead of a bed, futons that you rolled up and stuffed in a closet during the day. It was nice enough, though the hotel really just needed a good tune-up and scrubbing. I spent a couple hours planning, then went out to explore, which I'll cover in posts about Osaka.

♬♬Leaving on jet plane. Don't know when I'll be back again.♬♬

(I swear this song gets stuck in my head every time I fly.)

It's been an amazing vacation, with tons of tasty things, many cool people, and a lot of pretty stuff, but it's time to wander on home. I'm sitting at Narita airport, waiting on my flight to board. I've got my last meal in Japan (a big bowl of shrimp tempura udon), and got all my souvenirs and snacks and sweets for people back home, so all that's left to do is wait for the cabin door to open.

I'm obviously a few days behind on posts (though not as bad as I expected!), so finish those up state side. Hopefully I can knock a few out on the flight. Lord knows I'll have time. I'm also well behind on photos (which I did expect) so I'll get those up in the coming days.

Ten things I am looking forward to when I get home

1. A mattress more than 2 inches thick (my dear, sweet bed: I'll see you in 48ish hours).
2. Being able to walk into a store without having three people yell at me. At every shop here, every shop employee is pretty much required to yell 'Irashaimase! (Welcome!)' at you, with some rehearsed statement that they don't even look at you for. Today, an employee at Uniqlo kept yelling this shpiel at me while I was standing next to him; he was restocking shelves, I was looking at T-shirts. It really wasn't necessary. Yesterday I went to a restaurant and the waiter only paid a minimal amount of attention to me and it was glorious.
3. Coffee that is less that $3.50 a cup.
4. Interacting with people on the street, in any capacity other than 'Sumimasen (Excuse me)'.
5. Ordering something and knowing EXACTLY what I'll be getting. I can't remember the last time I ordered a full meal without some sort of surprise waiting for me, be it a plate of pickles, a topping or sauce I wasn't expecting, or an extra course I didn't know was coming.
6. Filling awkward silences at meals. I'm looking forward to not having to re-read books on my phone to make up for the fact that I'm eating alone at a counter with no one else that speaks my language.
7. Cooked fish.
8. Forks. 
9. Desserts that are not French pastries and do not involve bean paste.
10. Milk. For some reason, milk here has a funky twang here. I'm chalking this up to pasteurization/homogenization differences between countries (Europe had a twang as well, though a different one). This includes everything from milk in coffee and coffee drinks to ice cream (which almost invariably has a twang, or is icy, or both).

Abalone

Just watched a chef drop a $40 shellfish on the ground, look around like "Nobody saw that, right?", pick it up, dust if off, and keep cooking it.

Can't compete

Met up with my friend Eli for lunch today. The day before, I was idly wandering Osaka and eating tasty things. He, on the other hand, was conquering the internet with pictures of himself playing with wild baby bunnies near Hiroshima.

Check it out, it's criminally adorable.

Pickles

Alright, so pickles.

I like pickles! Not necessarily on sandwiches, but sweet pickles, dill pickles, pickled ginger, pickled pepperocinos, and especially pickled okra. That said:

I do not like Japanese pickles.

Japanese pickles (except for the ginger, I think) are all fermented instead of hot pickles (meaning they don't use hot vinegar to provide acid; they use bacteria). I've fermented beer, tried kombucha, eaten other mold-cured foods before, so I don't mind the gaminess that comes from it.

To me, Japanese pickles don't taste gamey. They taste spoiled.

They've got that kinda funky earthy smell that mold does. It's a penetrating smell, too. Walking through Japanese grocery stores is even unpleasant sometimes because of them, as a lot of times the pickles are just out in barrels, so you can smell them across the floor.

In small batches though (like a single serving at dinner), the smell is manageable. You're not through the woods yet, though. You now have to get by the texture, which is just different enough from plain raw veggie for you to know that somethings not right. Especially when its a pickled root veggie, like a radish or a turnip, things are just crunchy and slimy and chewy.

The weird dinner at Chihana that I just posted about? The fish eggs weren't what got to me. Nor the sperm sacs.

It was the pickles.

Kyoto day 3: Foxes, Monkeys, and Fish Genitals

Pleasant title, no? I'll get that last part at the end.

At the start of the day, I decided to see two more of Kyoto's highlights. First was the Fushimi Inari Shrine, a shrine to Inari, the god of rice and agriculture. This shrine is famous for the long path of torii (the red Shinto purification gates) that lead from the main shrine to the peak of the mountain. There are literally HUNDREDS of them along the path. The idea is that when you walk through a torii, you become ritually cleansed, so that when you reached the top of the mountain, you were about as cleansed as you could be. The torii were funny in that they varied DRASTICALLY in age. Some were two termites shy of falling apart, others looked like they'd just been painted yesterday. Oddly enough, they were all different sizes, too. Oh, and a sidenote: stay on the main torii path. I saw a smaller path branch off and decided to follow it a bit and came across a hive of bees. I squwaked, jumped back down to the main path, and tried to pretend nothing happened as a bunch of chinese tourists looked funny at me.

The reference to 'foxes' in the title comes from the fact that in Shintoism, foxes are regarded as semi-mystical
messengers from the gods, and are closely tied to Inari. As a result, fox statues are scattered all over the mountain. They weren't exactly hidden, as most of them were around the shrines and altars along the path, and ALL of them had bright red scarves tied around them.

Anyway, I wandered around some backroads and branch paths from the main shrine on the way to the torii path. Soon after I came up with an alternative title for this post: "Let's not tell Chris how big this mountain is." Everyone recommends going to see this shrine, no one tells you it's a two-hour climb to the top. I got halfway up before I came across a sign telling me how big it was. I realized it was another hour up and hour down, and decided I felt plenty pure as it was, thank you very much, and headed back down. I swung through the little market and bought a couple little souvenirs on the way back to the station, and grabbed some just truly terrible takoyaki from a street vendor. What's more, Japan's apparent fear of public trashcans meant that I had to carry the stuff all the way back to the station before I could find a trashcan to get rid of it.

Anyway, back in Kyoto, I grabbed some ramen at the station (much tastier), then hopped on another train bound for Saga Arashayama, an area famous for two things: a buddhist temple sporting a supposedly gorgeous bamboo forest, and a park full of wild monkeys you could feed. Guess which one I went for? I started walking from the temple following signs for the monkey park, crossed a river, saw another sign, looked up and WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THE MONKEYS WERE ON TOP OF ANOTHER MOUNTAIN?!? -__-

A little (okay, not so little) hill wasn't going to keep me from my monkeys, though, so I grabbed a 'monkey-proof' bag from the ticket office to put my stuff in (it was just a sky blue cloth grocery tote) and started hoofing it up. It wasn't a long hike (took me maybe thirty minutes) but it was a steep one. I was thoroughly out of breath by the time I got to the top. The monkeys were as funny as expected, and there was a shed we could stand in and feed them from. We'd pass apples and peanuts through the fence. The young monkeys would argue and jostle for positions nearest the people with food, while older monkeys just kinda stared, knowing they'd get fed. The visit ended on an amusing note. Some kid took a peanut out of the shed, and a monkey noticed, ran up, and scared the kid. One of the rangers/monkey-wranglers scared the monkey nearly off a cliff and made threatening monkey noises and hand motions at it. I cracked up, then headed home to change (the trip home was exceptionally ordinary).

This chill fella was just waiting for his peanut.

Now: the fish genitals. I had a dinner reservation at Chihana, a kaiseki restaurant in Gion. A kaiseki is a traditional Japanese multi-course meal that everyone recommends trying. Chihana was highly rated, so I got a reservation there. It was another case of 'fancy Japanese places behing hard to find,' so it took me a bit. It was down a shaded alley off the main drag through Gion, and the door was behind a curtain. Thankfully the doormat had 'chihana' written on it in latin characters, else I'd not have made it.

Now I'll say this: the chef and cooks were obviously top of the line, the food was excellent quality, and the waiters and hostess were very welcoming of this stranger in a strange land (I was both the only non-Japanese customer and the only customer under 40). That said, this was the most difficult meal I've ever had. I was COMPLETELY out of my depth. About half of the courses were right at the edge of my comfort zone, and half of those were on the wrong side of it. A lot of the ingredients were things you'd just never see in an American restaurant (even the most cool or edgy). I didn't take photos (I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself), but the courses I remember are below (I forgot quite a few):

• A plate of Aji (mackerel) sashimi, served with grapefruit (This was very tasty)
• A small plate of a white paste they didn't know the English name of (I think it was whipped taro root in a soy-gravy; it was tasty as well!)
• Scallop sashimi in miso-sesame sauce (Om nom nom, this is going great so far!)
• Stewed soft roe. Basically it was stewed fish sperm sacs. It didn't taste bad, but the 'ick' factor was really hard to suppress.  (Okay...I might be in trouble).
• Salmon (or some other fatty fish) in a jelly of some sort (believe it or not, also tasty, if difficult to eat; the spoon they gave me wasn't very adept at scooping)
• A big bowl of miso-ish soup. This was the first really difficult one, oddly enough. It was a HUGE bowl of soup, which wasn't bad, but it was full of this weird vegetable that looked like gills and had the consistency of a slimy raw potato. It took me 5 minutes of constant eating to finish off those nasty things. Please imagine sitting and eating an entire (warm) raw potato, while not having anyone or anything to distract you, and you'll get where I'm coming from.
• A bowl of dried 'tiny fish.' I think it was baby eels. It also didn't taste bad (surprisingly bland, actually), but they were quite chewy, and at this point, I was full and having trouble keeping the 'ick' factor at bay.
• Flounder and fatty tuna sashimi. A welcome reprieve.
• An assortment of Japanese pickles and different preparations of fish roe. Oddly enough the roe was not bad, though the ick factor/fullness problem reached its limit. The pickles weren't helping, which I'll comment more on later.
• Whole sardines. I like sardines and I like whole fish, so this was pretty good also. Still full, so hard to keep going.
• Stewed veggies. Take a big bowl of spinach and mushrooms and boil them. Serve it up in a bowl with the boiling water. I made it through about a third of mine.
• Jellied eels, seaweed, green peppers, and glass noodles. This one broke me. The eels were whole, eyes and all and staring at me. They were also stiff with rigor mortis still. The peppers tasted like green bell peppers, which I hate. I was full to the point of not being able to force things down anymore. Thankfully there were some pine nuts at the bottom, so I looked like I was picking at it before giving up.
• Rice. Easy, right? Nope. Half of it was topped with chopped chiso leaf (a kinda minty, kinda grassy leaf they use here), and that was the half I ate. The other half was covered in Japanese pickles. I left that part alone. Another post to follow about that.

Anyway, the chef noticed I was leaving half my stuff on each plate and laughed and made the 'feeling full' gesture. Grateful for the out, I smiled and said yes. I drank the tea and orange juice that ended the meal, and the hostess in her kimono and the chef showed me out. The hostess walked me to the street making small talk in the little english she knew and the littler japanese that I did.

When I got home I tore into some of my kit kat store to get a familiar taste in my mouth.

Made it to Osaka

Mailed some souvenirs home before heading to the station, the caught an express train to Osaka. The train trip only took like 30 minutes; was awesome ^__^

My new place is located really well, and is a traditional Japanese-style room. It's got a tatami mat floor, and instead of a bed, 'turndown' service comes and sets up a Japanese futon. Pretty cool, especially since I like firm beds (my hostel bed was NOT).

Kyoto, day 2: Daitakuji and the Golden Pavilion

I decided Friday would be a Buddhist day, so I hopped on the metro headed north to a couple of temples I wanted to see. I only had a vague clue as to where they were, so I stopped at a Starbucks outside the metro station to orient myself. The directions were basically 'follow the big road 'til you see it,' so that's what I did.

I found the branching road that led to my first goal, Daitokuji temple, and stopped to grab lunch before heading in at a sushi place. The place served Kansai style sushi (which is slightly different that what we're used to), and I was the only customer at the time. My phone was dying, so I sniped an empty wall socket I saw while the chefs made sushi, which cracked the waitress up. After that, I watched them prep ingredients for the day (it was a little early for lunch), which was entertaining. One guy was trimming fish down to size, while the other was chopping omelette into super duper fine strips. After that he started cutting those weird green plastic 'grass' decorations you see in sushi sets you get at the grocery store, except these were actually cut out of banana leaves.

Thoroughly be-sushi'd, I walked out the door to see...a Cafe du Mon (note the mispelling). I thought it was hilarious to see the knock off here. I later found out that Cafe du Monde actually DOES have a shop in Kyoto Station. I went for breakfast one day, but was thoroughly disappointed when I found out they didn't sell beignets. They sold...hotdogs? Wat?

Anyway, giggling done, I went inside Daitokuji, which is a compound made of several buddhist temples that share an outer wall. I didn't have time (or the attention span) to see them all, so I decided on the two that aren't usually open, but were for a special exhibition, plus one of the usual ones. Neither of the special exhibitions allowed photos, unfortunately, which was a shame. The buildings were cool enough, but the gardens were AMAZING. These were exactly what you'd expect from Zen gardens. Some were just giant beds of gray pebbles, raked into patterns of lines around large boulders, others were moss gardens, with mosses and lichens growing over rocks and trees. The biggest moss garden even had a cat wandering about in it, just lazily chewing on the plants.

I headed up the street once I felt Zen enough (though that had been difficult to obtain; I lost my combination ticket between the two special temples and had to buy another) and went to visit Kyoto's famous Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji temple. The pavilion allegedly houses some of Buddha's ashes, hence the importance. The area across the pond from the pavilion was PACKED with people getting photos. I managed to squeeze
up to the railing and grab a few though. I meandered up the path through the compound, passing a group of kids playing 'get the coin in the donation cup from ten feet away,' and got to the top, which had a little tea house and some shops. I got a bowl of matcha tea (made from ground green tea powder instead of the whole leaves) and a sweet at the tea shop's garden, then some souvenirs from the shop before heading back.

Kinkakuji

The trip home was a little tricky. I meant to catch a bus back to the station, but it was right as the temple was starting to close, so the bus was too full. Instead, I just walked back to the metro station the way I'd come. I grabbed dinner at a full-service tempura place that had some surprisingly tasty miso soup (it had little clams in it) and would fry each order piece by piece, so it didn't sit around getting soggy.

One-offs, pt. 5

When you get something out of a vending machine here, the flap swings out, not in.

I swear, Kirin and Suntory (big beer and whisky companies, respectively) control everything in this country. Take Coke and Budweiser, then multiply by like five.

All temples and shrines here require you to remove your shoes before coming in, but some require them to be off even if you're just on the porch. Let me tell you, there are few things more satisfying than walking around outside on sun-warmed wood in your socks.

The voltage on the wall sockets here is higher. For some reason this makes my phone screen more sensitive when it's plugged in, so I make WAAAAY more typos than if it's running on battery.

Metro station entrances in Kyoto beep. All. The. Time. It's like someone ringing a doorbell every 10 seconds.

Every train in Japan plays a jingle right before the doors close. Kyoto's metro jingle sounds like the Reverse Song of Time from Legend of Zelda.

Speaking of jingles, the mall in Utsunomiya had the same jingle as Delta's airport gates. Not a similar one. The SAME one.

There are three shrines/temples nearby in northern Kyoto. Their names are Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji, and Kenkakashin. Say them out loud. Now you know why I almost got on the wrong bus.

Day 1 in Kyoto

Not counting the travel day, as I pretty much got on the train, got off the train, and planned at the hostel. :) I will say that the trip from the station was difficult; I now remember why I didn't like having a roller suitcase in my last travels. I just about killed my ankles whenever I'd climb the stairs, with my bag bouncing off the back of my feet. I got to the hostel a half-hour before they opened for checkin, so I sat outside, edited photos, and talked to Suki (Korean girl who's living in Perth, Australia at the moment) while we waited. When check-in time opened up, I met one of the two front desk girls who was just a bundle of adorable, cheerful energy that didn't quite speak English. She asked for my name, and when I responded, she went "Chrisrussu, okay. Wait, Christmassu? Like Santa?" and made the 'big belly' gesture, looking quite confused. It was a fun check-in ^__^

Founder's Hall. The photo doesn't do it justice; it was HUGE!

The next day, I wanted to go back and see some things I passed on the way from the station, particularly a HUGE Buddhist temple called Higashi-Honganji. Its Founder's Hall is the largest wooden structure in the world, and was one of the first temples I'd been in in Japan that really felt like a place of worship. Monks were walking about cleaning relics, people were bowing to the altar whenever they passed in front of it, and people were kneeling in prayer or reading on the huge open tatami mat floor. Photos weren't allowed inside any of the buildings, so I don't have any photos of the things I liked, sadly =/

Next I decided to see some of Kyoto's famed gardens, so I went down the street to Shosei-en garden. The walk over was interesting. Both the temple and garden are within easy walking distance of my hostel, and the neighborhood is like Kyoto's epicenter of religious paraphernalia. There are TONS of shops selling prayer beads, incense, and supplies for building at home shrines (including cabinets made of special woods, statues of different buddhas and spirits, and scrolls and talismans with prayers written on them). It looks like when you want to start a shrine or prayer corner in your home, you come to this neighborhood to get started. I saw several couples sitting inside the various shops, seated on tatami mats and talking with the shop owners.

Anyway, the garden. It was nice! It didn't have any raked pebbles or moss gardens (that would come later),

but was still very pretty. I was actually able to have space to myself, which was nice, and is definitely not something I can say about gardens in Tokyo. There were a few lingering cherry blossoms in the garden (particularly a few weeping sakuras; picture willow trees, except pink), along with a few cool Japanese buildings and bridges. Nothing groundbreaking, but still nice!

Oh yeah, and bees. Really, really big bees. They'd just kinda hover about eight feet above the walking paths buzzing threateningly. It was weird, 'cause they buzz much more loudly and at a lower pitch than American bees, which makes it sound like they're RIGHT in your ear. I kept ducking, then realizing the bee was still like ten feet away.

Street in Gion.

Once I'd had my fill of gardens, I went up to Gion, which is the traditional quarter here. The buildings are mostly the dark, unpainted wood you think of when you think of Japanese buildings, which makes you feel like you're stepping back in time just a little bit. The folks walking about in kimonos adds to the feeling. I grabbed some photos, gawked at some geisha look-alikes, REALLY gawked at an actual geisha (who had an entourage of about 30 people snapping photos), then grabbed a seat at Tully's and people-watched for a bit while I charged my phone (I keep forgetting to plug it in at night). Oh and Ponnie: I know you worry about my safety, but just to prove how safe this country is: two people came in and were afraid someone would grab their seats by the door, so they LEFT their purses and DSLR cameras in seats about 2 feet off the street while they went to order drinks.

Properly caffeinated, I went home and threw on a sport coat for dinner at Sushi Matsumoto, which I posted about earlier. What I didn't post about was the ride over, which was its own adventure. I wasn't quite sure where it was, so I decided to take a cab. Taxis here don't normally speak much english, so I saved the restaurant's address, phone number, a map, and a google map with a route drawn on it to my phone. I handed that to the cabbie, who stared at it for about twenty seconds before saying, "Wakarimasen (I don't understand)." I pointed at the address and said "Koko kudasai (Here please.)" He still didn't get it, but saw the restaurant's phone number. He called them to get the address (which I saw him write down and was the same as the one I had just given him), then started driving. He wanted to make sure I understood they weren't open until 5:30 (it was 5 already), so he kept repeating it in Japanese. He then parked next to the alley my restaurant was in (too small for the cab) and jogged down the street to point out which door I needed (I could read the sign since I knew Hiragana, but wouldn't have known otherwise, so it was a very considerate gesture). I wandered til they opened, had dinner, wandered home (it was actually closer than I'd thought to where I'd been earlier that day in Gion, so I just took the metro home), and went to sleep.
 

No kidding.

Kamakura

My second Monday in Japan, I went to Kamakura, a (supposedly) beach town outside of Tokyo (I never saw the water).

Before leaving, though, I had to drop some packages off at the post office. Even with the suitcase I bought, there's just no way that I'm going to be able carry all my souvenirs home, so I'm packing up the bulkier ones as I go and mailing them home. Thankfully, it wasn't too difficult. I walked in, said "EMS kudasai!" (their express international package shipping), and they handed me a form. I filled it out, showed that I wasn't mailing anything explosive or taxable, weighed it, and paid.

I caught a train directly from Shibuya station this time, which was nice, as I got to cut out a half-hour of metro travel to Tokyo Station. Once there, I tried to get oriented to which way the tourist map was facing (again, maps here aren't necessarily oriented with north at the top), then went off to find lunch. Ended up getting a chirashi bowl (a bowl of rice topped with stuff, seared tuna in this case) at a place called the @round cafe. The place was kinda strange; it was australian themed!

Made a friend outside of the Shinto shrine.

After lunch, I wandered back to the main station plaza and started walking up the obligatory souvenir/shopping street that connects the train station to the town's main tourist attraction (they exist in any tourist town on earth, be it in Europe, Japan, or elsewhere). In this case, it was the Shinto shrine Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu, which was built by the first shogun of the Kamakura era*. It was a gorgeous day out, so I took my time getting there. On the way I bought a few sweets, then got one of the city's specialties: purple sweet potato soft-serve ice cream. It was good! It tasted kinda...potato-y. Didn't get any souvenirs, though.

Once at the shrine, I mostly just wandered about outside. I was heading to Kyoto the next day, the land of temples and shrines, and didn't want to get burned out too quickly. I grabbed some candied grapes on a stick (which were exceedingly crunchy and absurdly purple) and tried to avoid the swarms of school children gawking at me. Seriously! There were So. Many. Children. And the little ones were just shamelessly staring at me. While wandering, I almost stumbled through some sort of religious ceremony going on. I was walking through some trees when I came across a pavilion in a clearing with a few priests in the cream-colored robes and black bouncy hats from Nikko. They were praying, with some police blocking the other path into the clearing. I'm not sure why mine wasn't blocked, but I just turned around. Later I saw the priests walking back to another shrine, with the police clearing a path through the schoolkids.

750 year old juniper trees. The had crutches and stands
propping up a bunch of the branches.

I walked past the main shrine building to get onto the rode headed to Kenchoji, the first Zen Buddhist monastery founded in Japan. It was yet another of those experiences where "Americans think 100 years is a long time; no one else does." There was a grove of juniper trees that was something like 750 years old, right next to a brass bell cast in 1255. They also had a nice garden out back that I sat and watched for a bit (seemed the Zen thing to do).

I started back down the hill to the main drag and intended to walk down to the beach, but then quickly realized that it was close to 5, when a lot of temples and shrines close for the day, so I instead hopped on a bus for the Kamakura Daibutsu, the great Buddha statue. It's around 40 feet tall, made of bronze. There's not a whole lot else to see up there, but it was worth the 130 yen or whatever it was to get up there. Also had a conversation with a friendly Japanese guy while sitting on the wall there. We didn't talk about anything in particular, it was just nice to chat ^__^

The Daibutsu!

The bus ride home was a little more complicated. The first stop I went to was headed the wrong way, so I grabbed a fried sweet potato to much while I looked. The one I actually needed was outside a cheap souvenir shop across from the entrance. I hopped on, rode back to the station, and headed home. Since that was my last night in Tokyo, I decided to end my stay in the city with a sushi dinner. My concierge recommended Midori Sushi, the place with the line out the door and around the corner, which I just wasn't feeling up to. He then said they had a branch that was a conveyor belt sushi place on the top floor of a department store next door to Shibuya Crossing. I went, made small talk with a couple visiting from LA, and proceeded to spend the meal making sure they didn't overcharge me. The place was PACKED and our waiter was waaaaay overworked, so I don't think it was anything shady, just a bunch of mixups.

*'Eras' and 'Periods' in feudal Japan are pretty easy: they're just named after where the shogun was based at the time. For example, the 'Edo' period was when Edo (Tokyo's former name) was the shogun's capital.

I see what we're famous for

I've lost track of the number of times I've had this conversation:

"Where are you from?"
"The States! I live in Seattle."
"Seattle! Ichiro, number one!"

I think I'm at something like seven.

Tea

I don't know why, but the equipment for a traditional Japanese tea ceremony is crazy expensive:

Bamboo spoon for scooping tea powder: $9
Whisk for stirring tea: $8-$30
Bowl-cup for serving tea :$80ish

And no, this is not me going to some expensive shop. The first place I went to had bowls ranging from $80 to $900, and I thought that was ridiculous, but everyone else wasn't much better!

O__o

No ma'am, I do not want a paper bag to put my iced coffee in.

I intend to drink it now, not when I get home.

Sushi Matsumoto

So!

I checked a big box off my to-do list last night and got Michelin-starred sushi in Japan. The places in Tokyo were all pretty much impossible to get into, so I went for it in Kyoto. I checked a list of starred sushi restaurants in Japan and found two in Kyoto. I picked Sushi Matsumoto, which has two stars and is supposedly the best sushi in the city.

Getting there was a little interesting, but that's another post. Once there, I was amazed at how low key it was. It was on a back alley off a back alley and while it looked nice, there was nothing to distinguish it from the other buildings. Literally:

Sushi Matsumoto

The only distinguishing feature was the little white box between the door and window, which had the hiragana characters for 'Matsumoto' on it.

Ma-tsu-mo-to

If you've ever seen "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," you know how intense top-tier sushi is in Japan. If you haven't, go watch it. Seriously, it's on Netflix. Go. Or watch the trailer to get a taste.

Sushi Matsumoto was no exception. The chef made and served each piece one by one on a slab in front of me, saying what it was. This was a lot like at Sushi Bar Yasuda, but the difference was that here, there weren't any pauses. The other guys at the restaurant started off with sashimi, which Matsumoto's assistant was serving. So for the first half of the meal, Matsumoto was literally just making sushi for me. Really cool, but because of this there just weren't any pauses. Here's a new piece. Let me grab a photo, pop it in, chew, swallow, and the next piece is already on my slab, with him waiting for me to eat it so he can start assembling the next piece.

The sushi itself was excellent. The rice was a little al dente and just tasted...ricey. Hard to explain, but it actually had flavor rather than just being a chewy starch. It was made with a special vinegar that's more sour than normal and is reddish-brown, which made the rice look a little off-white. The rice was EXCELLENT, but I would've liked it more if he'd gone more slowly. I liked the sour taste, but the acid was tiring me out around two-thirds of the way through. While Matsumoto was assembling the first pieces for me, his assistant (on top of slicing the sashimi) was cooking the ingredients for later in the meal (the shrimp, the bonito, and the eel), so they were still warm from the grill when I got them.

Bottom line, this was the best sushi I've ever had. The only piece I didn't like was the red clam, and there's no helping that. These guys know their stuff and know it well. That said, this was also one of the most expensive meals I've ever had, and it lasted 20 minutes. Seriously. Walked in the restaurant at just after 5:30, and I got my last piece of sushi at 5:55. It was over so fast that I sat around for ten minutes after so I could finish the sake I hadn't had time to drink while eating.

Oh, interesting detail: after I paid up, Matsumoto walked me out and stood next to the restaurant as I walked away down the street. Dramatic end to the meal.

Pics and descriptions are below!

The appetizer. Baby octopus in egg sauce. I ate this as I ordered.

Snapper.

Ika (squid) with salt. He sliced cross-hatches into it so I didn't have
to chew it as long as usual, which is why I normally skip the squid.

Cohada, a type of sardine.

Toro (tuna).

O-toro (fatty tuna belly). Chewier than I expected.

Cooked surf clam. I liked it actually, which is unusual, as I can't stand shellfish
on sushi; it's normally way too chewy. That's a slightly sweet sauce on top, not soy.

Pickled baby mackerel. Quite tasty! Tasted raw, but had a cooked consistency.

Aji (horse mackerel) with ginger.

Tiger prawn. Was cut so that the fat, roe, and tastiness of the head was still in it.
Was on track to be 'best piece of sushi I'd ever had,' but was quickly usurped by
a later piece. Still the prettiest though! Shrimp here look amazing. They're bright red
and orange instead of pink.

Raw shrimp with sweet sauce.

Another slice of snapper, this time with salt instead of soy.

Smoked bonito with a dab of mustard. Very tasty. Didn't taste the mustard until the
very end.

Scallop. Another one that I liked but normally don't. It's normally too fatty and
squishy, but this had a consistency more like normal fish.

Red clam. Not my favorite, had the typical gristly consistency of raw shellfish.

Uni from Kyushu (southern Japan). Quite tasty! Uni is much better without the seaweed.

The single best piece of sushi I've ever had. Charred eel. Totally deboned, which
is unusual for eel (usually there's a few left that poke you in the throat). Smokey and
a bit of charcoal goodness, on top of the eel tastiness and consistency. The sauce was soy,
salt, sugar, and sake. 

Tamago, sweet egg omelette.The traditional omakase sushi 'dessert.'

Nikko

Day trip two was much more of a success than the Fuji one. I went to Nikko, a small town that’s a world heritage site chock full of temples and shrines. It’s also about two hours outside outside of Tokyo, depending on what trains you take. Time to get my money’s worth out of that rail pass. As it turns out, this trip is PERFECT for the pass. I took a bullet train to Utsunomiya, then a local line from there to Nikko. Without the pass, that trip costs $50 one way, but it’s free with it J

Once I got to Nikko, my first order of business was lunch. Everyone else was taking the buses up to Nikko National Park, but it was only a mile walk up the main drag, so I decided to hoof it and grab a bite on the way. About halfway there I saw a restaurant I read about that supposedly puts Japanese twists on Italian food. I decided to give it a go, and the results were quite tasty, if somewhat odd. No English menu, so I just pointed at a picture of some spaghetti dish on the counter. It turns out it was spaghetti in tomato, onion, and shrimp sauce. Normal Italian…except not quite. The shrimp were those teeny tiny dried shrimp I posted

photos of in Tsukiji. Once they were in the sauce they rehydrated…then kinda dissolved. It was good, but INTENSELY fishy. I also got a nasty surprise when I realized the ‘cheese’ on top of the pasta was actually yuba, the protein skin that forms on top of tofu as it’s solidifying. It’s a staple of the vegetarian Buddhist diet in the area, and actually not bad if you know what to expect.

After that, I continued meandering up to the heritage site. Not much to report about the trip up, other than that I was a little disappointed at the Shinkyo Bridge. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty, but photoshop was apparently liberally used on the photos I’d seen of it.

One buddhist shrine, some assembly required. The entire structure
had been wrapped in a warehouse, then pretty much
entirely disassembled

Once there I tried to figure out what I wanted to see. That’s the weird thing about going to religious spaces for religions you have absolutely no common history with: a lot of it looks cool, but I just don’t know what’s important and why. For example, the first place I checked out was the Rinno-ji temple, which has basically been torn down and is being rebuilt due to rotting wood. We could still go inside to see their relics and treasures, and they had a collection of three giant buddhas, as well as dozens of smaller carvings and statues and relics. All of it was quite pretty, but I really just didn’t understand enough of what it was to know if it was significant or not.

I decided to save the piece de la resistance of Nikko—the Toshogu shrine—for last, so I hoofed it past the shrine to a smaller one, called Futarasan-jinja. I was REALLY glad I did, ‘cause when I got up to the shrine, there was some sort of ceremony going on at the main temple. It was really cool, even though I had NO idea

what was going on. I arrived halfway through, and on one side there was a group of older Japanese men in suits, on the othere there were the priests and nuns of the shrine, sitting in front of a wall of gifts and donations that I assume had been given over earlier in the ceremony. Lower priests would bring a wrapped prayer to the high priest who would bring it to the altar, say a prayer, have a moment of silence, then place it with an offering. A minute of silence would pass, then a crier would yell three times, and the process would repeat. This went on for a bit, then everyone stood up and proceeded to march out of the temple. Some priests grabbed a dragon costume, some grabbed staves with wooden with symbols on the end, others grabbed some incense burners, and others still grabbed…the altar? Didn’t realize that thing was mobile. Then everyone started marching out of them temple, bearing everything towards Toshogu, so I fell back.

Monkehs!

I wandered around the gardens, then up the hill to a Buddhist temple, where there were I saw a bunch of statues of Buddha’s different forms, along with several of Shinto gods. After that, I went back to see Tosho-gu. The Shinto shrine was founded to honor Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s first shogun. The shrine was WAAAAAAY over the top, which I suppose is what happens when your family have absolute control over the country. As with everything else in Nikko, parts of it were under repair, but it was still quite cool to see. Pretty much everything in the shrine had been independently declared a national treasure of some sort, and I could see why. One of the buildings here is also the origin of the ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’ monkeys, which was cool to see.

After a few minutes there I was very much shrined out, so I started walking back to town, even though I had a ways to go before my train home. I got about halfway to the station and found a coffee shop that had free wifi as well as a patio, so I set up there to enjoy some sun, coffee, and sake. I killed time there and chatted a bit with one of the owners about our travels (and sports, oddly enough. Whenever I mention I’m from Seattle, people always get excited and ask about the Mariners. One of their top players for years, Ichiro, was Japanese, and last year he moved to the Yankees). I meandered the rest of the way back to the station, grabbed a train back to Utsunomiya, and had dinner at the station there. I got soba again, and had another confusing moment where the waitress brought something over, explained what it was in Japanese, and I just smiled and nodded and acted like I understood what was going on. I then caught my train back to Tokyo, then the metro back to my hotel.