Tateyama

The last big adventure of our friends' visit was heading out to the Japanese North Alps to hike up one of Japan's Three Holy Peaks, Tateyama.  Our friends had asked us to find them some Japanese nature and as Ana and I have previously climbed the other two Holy Peaks, this one completed the set for us.  Tateyama is an all-day affair from Kanazawa, mostly because to get there, and I'm not kidding, we had to take a bus to a train to a train to a cable car to a bus, before actually walking the last ninety minutes of the mountain proper.  It took about five hours to get there, though I'm pretty sure it would have been less than two hours by car, if we had one.  Anyhow, given the five-hour-each-way-transit we started out bright and early.

 After taking a bus to a train, we had some time in the station before the second train left.  We went to a "German Bakery" and bought some snacks, including these little produced-on-premises deep-fried apple pies, which were as tasty as one would expect.

 The second train was on a private (non-Japan Rail) line, and we had a whole car (half the train) to ourselves.

 The cable car went up some very steep slopes and the seats were extremely small.

 After the cable car, there was a bus ride of most of an hour through some forest and then across alpine meadows, which were quite colorful when not being blocked by clouds.

 We managed to get a few pretty decent pictures from the bus.

 There is an enormous lodge / hotel at the end of the bus route.  Several other hotels and hot springs seemed to be in the area / served by the bus up here.  Tateyama is either part of an old supervolcano caldera, or near one, the map didn't seem quite clear to me.  At any rate, sulfurous fumes and hot springs issue forth nearby, making the whole area aromatic.  It confused the heck out of us until we figured out what the smell was.  We got some steamed buns at the lodge for lunch before heading out.

  Adventuring hats: check.

 The base of the trail heading up.  With the sun out it was pretty warm.

There are two huts on the mountain in the direction that we were climbing it from.  One is at the top, and the other is about halfway up, where the trail changes from "Pleasant Walk" to "They Obviously Don't Have to Worry About Liability in this Country".  Ana and my roommate, examining the vertical nature and broken terrain of the trail ahead, opted to stay at the halfway hut rather than potentially injure knees and cause us serious problems with getting to the last bus on time.  My roomate's wife was giddy with enthusiasm to reach the top and I hadn't ridden on public transportation for five hours to engage in half-measures, so we continued upwards.

The ascent was one of the more frightening things I've done of late, but ultimately successful.

 Large portions of the trail are steep fields of broken rocks and loose dirt.  Normally, that wouldn't be a problem for me, but when I start getting up really high and the slope is so steep that when I look over my shoulder and see empty space, I must admit that I start taking a deep interest in proper handholds and reliable footing.

 The view got steadily more spectacular as we went up.

 Meanwhile, she's unconcerned.

 Somewhere along the trail, we're pretty sure that we actually missed a turn.  That would explain the exceptionally steep and rocky parts without any guide arrows.  We picked it up later on.  Previous to diverging from the trail, there had been several instances where two options presented themselves and met up further on - I'm pretty sure we took an option that wasn't actually supposed to be an option, leading to pictures like the one above.  Consider - if it is that steep above, how steep might it be below?

 Tenaciously clinging to rockfaces until we rejoined the trail, we achieved the top, adorned by a hut and a shrine.

 Picture by a guy passing by who managed to cut the shrine right out of it.

 The peak of Tateyama is definitely above the clouds.

 Not the view from an airliner, but rather standing on a rock at the peak.

Going down we actually used the trail, which was positively soothing by comparison.  We met up with the rest of our party and headed back down toward the lodge and the bus to a train to a train to a bus that would return us home. 

After the several hours it took to make it back to Kanazawa, we needed some dinner.  Normally, I might put dinner in the same post, but we've mentioned okonomiyaki a lot in this blog but never properly documented it, so I'm giving it a separate entry.  We have a lot of pictures this time and some hysterical videos, so tune in next time for those in the final entry in this series. Until then, there is a large set of really awesome pictures of the mountains on Flickr, be sure to check them out!

Kanazawa Tourism

The next Monday through Friday of our friends' visit, Ana and I had work, and so our friends ventured out into Kanazawa and beyond on their own.  In some cases, they remembered to take pictures in places where we forgot to, so I'll post some of their pictures and try to link to our descriptions of those places and activities rather than putting it all down here.  We also ate out with them at several different Japanese restaurants in a bid to sample a nice wide range of different Japanese foods.  Some of these may not have been blogged before, so I'll include those dinners as well.  As usual, more pictures can be found on Flickr.

 Lovely weather during pretty much the whole trip, very fortunate.

On Monday, our guests took a recovery day and stayed close to the apartment.  For dinner, we went to a rotating sushi bar.  At a rotating sushi bar, the chef(s) prepare the sushi and then put it on color-coded plates that go onto a conveyor belt that usually circles the entire restaurant.  The color of the plate tells you the cost, and if you like what you see, you simply snag the plate and enjoy.  If the chef isn't putting what you want on the belt, or someone up the line is eating it all, requests can be made more directly.  As with a lot of casual Japanese cuisine, it's relatively inexpensive and good fun for a group.

The conveyor belt conveys little plates of happiness, except when it doesn't.  I'm pretty sure that plate is sticky fermented soybean paste called natto.

 We ordered some trays to get more food quickly.  They made me eat the salmon with mayo and onions, ruling that anything with that much mayo couldn't be "real" Japanese food.  How wrong they are.  Wasn't bad though, the onions kept it from being unctuous.

 At the end you have a pile or piles of the color-coded plates.  At this restaurant they were also RFID tagged, so that they could just sort of wave a little handheld monitor over the stack and it tallied them automatically.

On Tuesday our friends went to see Kenrokuen (Links 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and the 21st Century Art Museum, which Ana has been to but we've never blogged.  Apparently quality varies a lot with which exhibits are currently in-house, because they liked it a lot more than she did.

 

 View from the teahouse in Kenroku'en.

After work, Ana and I met them downtown to go to a good ramen shop that we know.  They do not (nor does any restaurant in Japan that I've been to except maybe that place on Fuji) serve anything like Top Ramen.   For about ten bucks, they'll give you a rich and flavorful bowl of ramen big enough to get lost kayaking in.  I ordered the spicy ramen and picked the fourth most spicy configuration out of five - it nearly melted my face off.  I had to cool my mouth by eating some of Ana's ramen before continuing.

 On Tuesday, they went to Omicho Market, Higashi Chaya (the tea district), and the Gold Leaf Museum / Store.  They actually remembered to take some pictures in the Golf Leaf Museum (we didn't), so we can show those now. 

 This gentleman has a book full of tiny, thin pieces of gold, and is using that machine hammer to pound them even thinner. This process is repeated several times - after they're pounded flat, they're recut into smaller squares and put through again.

 That process is I believe illustrated here.  She's trimming hammered squares into smaller ones, possibly to send through again.  The box on the right is scraps.

 Notice how the gold ripples as she blows on it gently. 

 The walls of this room are covered entirely in gold.

 Nice picture from the Tea District.

After work, we met them back at the apartment and went for okonomiyaki (which we've mentioned a number of times before but never documented well) but as it turned out the okonomiyaki place we like was closed for renovations, so we went for yakitori instead.  There was a new yakitori place close by and it had always smelled really good walking by, so we went there.  Yakitori translates very precisely to "roasted bird" but it really means "meat-on-a-stick bar".  This place had smoke billowing out from the kitchen but also an enormously powerful ventilation system, so everything smelled good without setting off any fire alarms.  I assume they were disabled inside the kitchen, or something.  Anyway, yakitori places sell mostly grilled chicken, beef, and pork on skewers with various sauces and preparations.  It's a hard cuisine not to like, at least for non-vegetarians which was all of us.  We ordered a mess of chicken and pork (we stuck mostly to things on the menu we had pretty clear ideas about to avoid being served grilled cartilage or chicken livers, which were undoubtedly also on there somewhere) and got some sake and beer to accompany it.  Good casual eats.

Definitely not a place going for interior decoration awards.

 Roasted garlic skewers

 This is the only correct way to eat a yakitori skewer.  I promise!

We took a picture through the window to the kitchen on the way out.  This grill is one source of the aromatic smoke that suffused the place, but there were several others as well.

On Thursday we bid them good luck and put them on a bus for the station.  They visited Osaka, went to a baseball game, went to some big famous electronics department stores, and probably some other things that I've forgotten.  They also got some pretty cool pictures from their fancy hotel room .

 View from the hotel of the baseball stadium

 Hotel room view of a highway going through what appears to be the fourth floor of a building.

 Wicked cool picture from the hotel room at night, looking out over Osaka.

Friday during the day they did some more tourism down in the Osaka area, then took the train back to Kanazawa where I greeted them with grilled jerk chicken (found habaneros at a farmer's market and so was able to make this dish - not usual) for dinner.  The next day, we had one final big adventure planned before they flew home.  That'll be up next time.

Nezu Museum and Shabu Shabu Dinner

After the epic dining of the night before, the next day would be a bit less exciting, especially considering that it would be about half occupied by the train transit back to Kanazawa.  Before that though, we went to the Nezu Museum, which is a museum in Tokyo that is sort of like the National Museum but private, smaller, and more expensive.  The pictures relating to this day are all on Flickr, though in a set including other things.

 The entryway to the Nezu Museum is pretty cool.

The Nezu Museum was hosting an exhibit of rare and culturally important Japanese swords, and featured works gathered from all over Japan.  It might even be possible to say that a more distinguished collection of Japanese swords has not been assembled and shown since the Tokugawa Shogunate started buying up all the nice ones several hundred years ago.  Blades from the most famous swordsmiths in Japanese history were well represented, as were ones owned and conceivably wielded by some of the most famous figured in Japanese medieval history.  Often, these were the same ones.  There were dozens of designated National Treasures of Japan on display, and the only really unhappy thing about it is that we were not allow to take any pictures whatsoever.  As mechanical engineers all, we can probably stare at expertly worked metal somewhat longer than the average individual, though by the end it was becoming harder to get excited about yet another eight-hundred-year-old masterpiece sword.  There were some styles, patterns and inlays that we had not necessarily expected to see either, which was nifty.

The Nezu Museum also has a fairly nice garden behind it, so we walked through there before heading out.  We were pretty sure it was safe to take pictures there.




After the museum, we went to lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Tokyo, to the unbridled amusement of our guests who live in Arizona and apparently have access to Mexican cuisine of unparalleled excellence.  They humored us, and were also a bit interested to see just what kind of stuff was being passed off as Mexican cuisine in Japan.  I think Salsita avoided embarrassing us because as usual it was tasty and reasonably priced, if perhaps not entirely authentic.  We also stopped into the international supermarket next door to get peanut butter and snacks for the train.

 One of the better Mexican places in Japan.  I mean, there can't be more than a few dozen, and we've only been to three.  Of the three, this one is the best.

 The rice is Japanese sticky rice, but overall it works.

The train trip was of course not so new for us, and Ana and I read, knitted, and slept through most of it.  We arrived in Kanazawa at just about dinner time, and took our guests to the restaurant floor of a nearby department store so that they could choose between the fifteen-odd restaurants there for a place to eat.  We walked around the whole floor and ended up going to an all-you-can-eat shabu shabu place.  Ana and I have had shabu shabu before, but that was at a far more upscale restaurant. Aside from the tables being a bit too small, it turned out pretty well. 

 For shabu shabu, they bring you a pot filled with a broth or broths, and a burner to make it bubble.  This being an all-you-can eat place, there was also a buffet which had some pretty decent sides, and was where you went to pick up more meat and vegetables to cook in the pot.

 The noodles proved fiendishly difficult to get out of the broth, even for veteran chopsticks users like ourselves.  We felt better to see a nearby table experiencing the same difficulties.  Once in your bowl though, the noodles were very tasty after being cooked in the beef broth.

 Beef, pork, and chicken were available in unlimited quantities on small trays - the beef and pork in very thin slices and the chicken in small chunks.

 We attacked with vigor for I believe the whole ninety minutes we were allowed, and then some since they didn't kick us out.

 Between the bubbling broth, the constant influx of new food from the buffet, and fighting the noodles with chopsticks the table ended up a bit messy at the end, but I don't think it was anything out of the ordinary for a place like this.  I thought the restaurant was a solid value for about $25 each.

After dinner, tired and stuffed, we lugged our luggage onto a bus and back to our apartment, before  gratefully getting some sleep.