The New Normal

Winter in the Bamboo Forest

2012-02-10T18:42:00.001+09:00

We've been getting up early to put on our backpacks and walk up into the mountains on a road through the bamboo forest behind our apartment. We're trying to ramp up the mileage and weight to gain some sensible level of preparedness for the distinctly non-zero chance that we're going to have a go at the Appalachian Trail when we head back to the US at the beginning of April. Recently, it has been cold enough to snow instead of rain (always welcome, much drier to walk through and we don't have to shovel anything ourselves) and our route was transformed into a real winter experience. We try to always carry a camera now in case we encounter some of Ishikawa's goat-deer-pig creatures (kamoshika) which we haven't seen since we started carrying the camera, so I took some pictures of the bamboo forest with snow on it. The full (though small) set is on Flickr.

It has been a little dark at the beginning of these walks - had to use the headlamps a couple of times.

Turns out that bamboo is quite flexible, and snow brings the tops right down to head level.

Around this curve they all bent down together in a half-circle.

Some days we are definitely the first humans to traverse the road, though we've seen the tracks of a number of different creatures.

Quite a thing to see before breakfast.

Blogging may be a bit thin on the ground from here to the end - planning one last Japan adventure but those posts won't be up for at least six weeks. We'll post if anything cool comes up.

Anamizu Oyster Festival 2012

2012-02-07T13:33:00.000+09:00

We visited the Anamizu Oyster Festival last year and had a lot of fun, so when this year's event rolled around we headed back up to do it again. The Anamizu Oyster Festival is way up on the Noto Peninsula, and as one might expect oysters are prominently featured in the cuisine available from vendors. The primary form of consumption, however, is buying bags of raw oysters and grilling them yourself on one of the hundreds of wood-fired grills set up in the festival area for just that purpose. The full picture set is on Flickr.

One of the teachers with a driver's license borrowed a school van and drove a bunch of us up to the festival, again leaving quite early in order to get the good seats. The festival was the same place but it seemed to have a few more vendors than the previous year, because oyster pizza and fried custard doughnuts were newly available.

Our early schedule paid off and we got prime seats, under cover and near the stage. We set to work grilling oysters like seasoned veterans.

I recommend only putting 2-3 per person on at the same time, or some of them will be overcooked by the time you've eaten the other ones. The festival provides the gloves for grabbing oysters with, along with implements. Different people in the group brought different condiments like lemon and ponzu, but my favorite was probably just a little extra salt.

The local schoolchildren did taiko, but the stage was pretty bare for most of the day, which was better than the bad karaoke we'd been subjected to last time. We did miss the "Mountain Song" guy (see previous blog entry) - we asked and he didn't take the stage until the second day of the festival.

We discovered a new and excellent form of rice ball - wrapped in pork strips and fried in sauce and juices. The rice soaks up juices and the crispy pork holds it together somewhat during consumption.

Some visitors to the school from New Zealand came along, and one of them took good care of his fish while it was grilling. I particularly enjoy the skepticism on the face of the Japanese guy watching.

Ana got mango cotton candy. We also ate about four of the fried custard-filled doughnut-like pastries, which were about as delicious and addictive as food gets.

After we'd eaten all we cared to, the driver of the minivan wanted to hit a coffee roasting place that also happened to be on the Noto peninsula, so we headed up there. The best part for us, being non-coffee drinkers, was the scenery. The Noto was covered in snow and looked very different than during our bike trips around it.

The roasting place was tiny, but cheerful. Some of their blends exceeded $50/lb, though most were in the $15-20 range. It sounds like they sell to restaurants and cafes across the prefecture and beyond, which must be the only way to stay in business when you're a tiny roaster located hours from civilization.

After the roasting place, we drove across the Noto again to a cafe that serves coffee made with the roasting place's beans. We crossed over some hills and mountains that seemed a lot tougher on a bike than they did in a car. They had pretty good bagels and cakes, so we got a bit more dessert on top of the oyster breakfast / lunch.

This Oyster Festival is probably the penultimate travel experience for us in Japan; we leave at the very end of March. We're planning to do one last time out into Japan in March, and there may be a few entries relating to moving and emptying out the apartment, but no promises. There is a lot to take care of before we head home!

Edible Fractal

2012-02-05T21:41:00.000+09:00

I don't know if these things have started showing up in the US while we've been away, but I hadn't seen one until quite recently here in Japan.

Wikipedia says it is called Romanesco Broccoli but we found it here labeled cauliflower and called it simply 'fractal' because it so clearly is a fractal and is not cauliflower. We had to try one and found it very nice - they seem to be about halfway between cauliflower and broccoli, with a firm but very biteable texture and flavor that is mild but more pronounced than cauliflower.

If these are everywhere at home I apologize for the old news, but we thought these were pretty nifty and some people might be interested to see them. Who knows, we may even blog something about Japan again before we leave the country.

Sunday

2012-02-03T21:39:00.000+09:00

This is the second half of the post from way back in November here, which you should probably review so that this one makes sense. I'll leave this post here for a bit, then put it back in chronological order.

We still had another day of fun on Sunday before taking the train back home. We wanted to go to the Lupicia tea room for breakfast, but they weren't open yet, so got breakfast from another small shop before shopping at Lupicia for delicious teas. I got a giant M&M's covered cookie and a Chai, which I proceeded to combine:

There were unforeseen difficulties

After my somewhat decadent breakfast, we went to Minoh, a place famous for its fall foliage and its consumption of said foliage, fried. Apparently Americans were not the first to deep-fry everything, we just choose the most fat-laden things to dunk. Here, they go with maple leaves:

To enjoy the foliage, you walk down a path from the station that is lined with touristy shops and stalls selling anything from venison to those deep fried leaves to candy and beer. We purchased most of the above and enjoyed our day in the crisp fall air. I even got some nice pictures of a sweater I'd recently finished knitting:

Another draw for this area is the waterfall, the goal at the end of the stall-lined walkway. The waterfall is pretty nice, but as you can see, THE place to be in the fall, at least around here:

A picturesque place, for sure. We were a couple of weeks early for the real fall colors around the waterfall, but it was a nice side trip. There are also signs saying to watch out for the monkeys, who apparently populate the area. Sadly, we didn't get to see any along the path, but I got a lollipop with a monkey on it anyway:

We finished up the day with a trip to a brewery near Minoh, very tasty beers:

There was some Weitzner on tap, and it was delicious. This place is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but is a really cool little brewery that seems to be family run and sells its product to local liquor stores. I would enjoy going back there, if I were in Osaka with some free time again.

This was followed by a dinner where no pictures were allowed. Seriously. I'd've taken a picture of the sign, but, well, obviously. Thus ends my excellent trip with my friends to see some Japanese women in drag.

Kanazawa With My Sisters

2012-02-01T16:57:00.000+09:00

Welcome to Kanazawa, in Japanese

I spent the last days of winter vacation sightseeing in Kanazawa with my sisters, while Lee got things straightened up at home. We saw all the typical sights, like Kenroku-en, Omicho market, and the gold leaf place, but we also did a couple of things that are not typically seen as major Kanazawa tourist attractions, such as going to Mister Donut for a New Year's Special Snoopy set, which was a very good value - 16 donuts plus a whole lot of Snoopy merchandise for the low low price of 2000 yen, or roughly US$26.

Certain Snoopy-centric sisters were very excited about this.

Of course, we visited a rotating sushi bar and had other Japanese foods, but since my sisters were almost more interested in visiting us than the rest of Japan, we also spent a lot of time at home making desserts and foods, including a kabocha squash stew I created, toffee, and pudding. I also served them homemade matcha (traditional green tea) with some sweets picked up from downtown :

Yum, matcha!

We also got our pictures taken at a Purikura machine, a very Japanese thing to do. These machines are fun - you jump in, pay up, and take a few pictures that are automatically kind of glamour-shot photoshopped, smoothing your hair and skin and widening your eyes, then spend some time adding stamps, makeup, backgrounds, and other features to the finished photos, which print out as stickers which you can share with others. Ours turned out very cute:

After I had to go back to work, the girls took two day trips, the first to Hiroshima and Miyajima (mom's trip) to see Hiroshima's bomb museum (past trip):

And Miyajima's famous red torii (past trip):

As well as their demon deer*:

*substantially less demonic in daylight

They managed to navigate the train systems and made it home late but not too late that night. The next day they went to Osaka to visit the aquarium (past trip), a fairly large and famous place that has some animals that are not likely to be seen in aquariums in the US.

They didn't have to deal with a 90-minute line to get in.

As usual, you can check out Flickr for the full set of pictures. I was very happy to be able to spend some time with my sisters here in Japan, and hope they enjoyed it too! This wraps up their visit, and we have a few minor posts that have been waiting their turn queued up next.

Hakone

2012-01-30T17:47:00.000+09:00

Hakone is a mountainous region southwest of Tokyo, famous for fall foliage and for views of Mount Fuji. We've sent many people to visit based on what we've heard about it, but never been ourselves. With Ana's visiting sisters in tow, we headed out for a night in a traditional ryokan in the Hakone region and to (hopefully) see Fuji with snow on it. Photographic results available on Flickr.

To get to Hakone, we first bought Hakone Free Passes, which offers unlimited access to most forms of transportation to and in the Hakone area at a fixed and discounted price, then took a train to Odawara, switched trains, took a train up into the mountains to Gora, and then took a cable car up to our hotel's stop. We had originally thought to take the cable car to the ropeway and find out if we could see the sun setting behind Fuji that night, but they close the ropeway at 4PM so that is impossible and we headed right to the hotel.

We'd picked a less-expensive ryokan but it still pretty nice, and it was quite close to the cable car stop as well. The point was to introduce the sisters to the traditional Japanese hot spring hotel experience without being too rough about it, so the hotel was a little more foreigner-friendly than some and they even had a vegetarian dinner option for our vegetarian guest.

I requested and we got a Japanese-style room.

Ana got them all in their yukata and I took a whole bunch of pictures to make sure we had some good ones, before she lead them off to experience the hot springs and being naked in front of strangers. I went to the men's side afterward and was momentarily convinced I had entered the wrong facility as another guest had his two very young daughters in the bathing area with him and one ran by naked before stopping to inspect the foreigner, also naked. I was immensely relieved to find out I had not misread the sign and I was clearly more shaken than her.

The reviews for the ryokan had emphasized the excellence of the food, but as the English-language ones were being written by foreigners, most of whom had little experience with Japanese food, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. As formal Japanese dinners go, I thought it was pretty good. There have been two posts in the recent past doing dish-by-dish coverage of such dinners so I'm going to skip it this time, though the pictures of all the courses are all available on Flickr.

The main dish was shabu shabu, or basically cook-your-own-stew. After dinner we headed back to the room and they watched movies on Ana's laptop while I ignored their regrettable cinematic selections and played games on my own laptop.

Breakfast was quite Japanese, which was expected, but I had never encountered this dish before and found its inclusion in a breakfast menu so arresting that I wish to share it here. Note that the small white pieces are not noodles or shredded cabbage, but very small fish. The paste is daikon, and we were instructed to mix soy sauce in to create a semi-liquid mixture before consuming it. I had to try it - tasted like soy sauce. I don't think anyone else bothered with this one.

The roasted fish was freshly grilled and therefore warm instead of cold. I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of fresh and warm roasted fish instead of cold in a Japanese breakfast, and it was a large improvement.

I bribed one of Ana's sisters with my strawberry to try the fish.

It really wasn't that bad - it was the for breakfast part that brought on the disgust, but I got enough drama on camera to justify the expenditure of the strawberry, and she had a real Japanese experience as roasted fish for breakfast is par for the course.

The weather was looking outstanding, so we had high hopes for the views when getting back on the cable car.

From the cable car we got on the ropeway, which is more like a ski-lift gondola than anything else.

Started getting pretty good views almost immediately. It should be mentioned that of the four people / groups we've sent to Hakone, none have had good weather. Looks like we saved that for ourselves.

Even Fuji was mostly clear for us.

The ropeway has a stop in an area that is still venting fumes from a volcanic eruption 3000 years ago - we disembarked to investigate.

The warning sign uses three exclamation points.

Fairly impressive quantities of volcanic gas were in evidence. We stayed on the paths.

One of Ana's sisters employed unique photographic postures trying to get Ana and I into frame with some of the scenery behind us.

A normal person might think, sulfuric water boiling with all kinds of questionable substances - better stay away. However, the Japanese set up a stand selling eggs cooked in the water, known in English as Black Eggs.

For obvious reasons. We didn't buy any, I just grabbed a picture when someone else held theirs up for their group's camera.

Re-embarking on the ropeway, we got more views of Fuji and the Hakone region.

The leg of the trip beyond the ropeway can only be accomplished by pirate ship, it would seem.

The pirate ship moved pretty fast for not having the sails up, and there was some decent scenery on the sides of the lake.

The other end of the lake would be our last really good chance to take pictures of Fuji, so we loitered a while and I messed around with the camera settings. We also checked out a preserved section of the old Tokaido Highway (dating back 400+ years) but unfortunately they built the new highway right next to it so it wasn't very atmospheric.

Looking carefully, you can see some of the trails zig-zagging up it.

After that, we took a bus to a train to Odawara, and had waffles for lunch.

After waffles, we walked to Odawara Castle, which is only a few minutes from their train station. Odawara castle was fairly well restored and most of the moats had water in them, so the sisters saw a pretty good example of a Japanese castle. As is pretty common, the interior is now a museum so we went in to inspect their cultural artifacts. I found it amusing that the most famous things about Odawara Castle were almost all to do with the fact that the local ruling family, who built it, totally got their butts kicked by the guy they built the castle to defend against.

Nice views from the top of the keep, too.

After the castle I dragged them all to Helmsdale because I might not get a chance to go again, and we ate the excellent fish and chips (the non-vegetarian sister commented "This is how fish was meant to be eaten") and they had hard cider and I had whiskey. Ana won at cards. Was a long day, but we had a lot of fun and great luck with the weather. Ana will be blogging the rest of the sister's trip, so there should be another entry or few entries soon.

Tokyo: Narisawa

2012-01-28T18:44:00.000+09:00

Warning: High levels of food snobbery ahead. Minimal anything to do with Japan. Feel free to skip this entry if that doesn't float your boat.

When we went out for fancy dinner in Tokyo with some friends a few months ago, we went to a place called Yamada Chikara, which turned out to be fantastic. What I didn't mention in that entry was that Yamada Chikara was the second place we selected, after we couldn't get reservations at Creations of Narisawa. Yamada Chikara avoids the press and tries to stay undercover, but Narisawa does not and has regularly made it close to the top on a lot of "Best in Asia" type lists. Since we were in Tokyo again and Ana's sisters were at Disney until closing that night, we said "Hang the expense!" and made reservations.

Short version: We recommend Yamada Chikara for top-tier Tokyo dining.

Slightly longer version: Narisawa has a much showier building, a large and attentive staff, and some dishes were excellent. Presentation on some of the dishes was probably better than we've ever seen. But fewer dishes really wowed us on taste compared to Yamada Chikara, and I had a sense that they were trying too hard to be cool and to theme the meal and not hard enough to offer uncompromising excellence in the flavors of each dish. The staff at times seemed nervous or twitchy, which should be absolutely absent at this price point. Of the three highest-end molecular gastronomy places we've been (the other being FiftyThree in Singapore) we'd rank Narisawa firmly in third. It was also the most expensive by a considerable margin. We're OK with having gone once, but I'd go back to either of the others skipping all the way, and would not go back to Narisawa unless someone else was paying.

One thing they win over Yamada Chikara at is how easy it is to find the restaurant. They're set back from a major road, next to a Bentley dealership. They even have a sign!

The dining room was plenty elegant, and well-lit / well-appointed. As engineers, we especially enjoyed some of the hidden shelves and cupboards built into the walls around the room. I'd call this one a tie, though they have different styles. Virtually everybody there had a camera, so I didn't feel crass when snapping pictures.

Fried oysters were good, but not the kind of good that haunts dreams. I might have preferred a nice raw oyster myself - felt like their batter overpowered it a bit.

The fish in this raw fish and raw radish salad is called buri, and it came from Ishikawa (where we live) but I'm pretty sure this was the best example of that particular fish we've ever had. Excellent ingredients, simple dish, very tasty.

This dish had some of the best presentation I've ever seen. They grilled a squid, then turned the sauce into an ash/sand looking dry particulate matter with liquid nitrogen. They spooned it over the hot squid and it smoked dramatically as it became liquid, which I admit is thematically genius. However, there was a lot of it, which cooled the squid quite a bit, and I'd prefer my squid warm. The squid also didn't have a whole lot of flavor - were I in charge I would have stuffed it with something and tried to punch up the sauce's taste a bit. 10/10 for presentation, 5/10 for taste.

This bread they fermented and then cooked over a candle at the table. It was very tasty. The presentation on the butter there was fun as well.

Crab and daikon soup - simple flavors, very good, enjoyed it thoroughly. Not particularly surprised and delighted by it, which is really what you're looking for at this level.

Excellent langoustine, tender and delicious. Broth was not that exciting.

Fluke and mushrooms steamed together in a bag - again with the tasty but not necessarily special.

The beef was the best dish of the night. It was crusted with charred leek powder but mostly the fact that it was amazing beef, perfectly prepared, made it great.

I thought the dessert dishes were mostly pretty forgettable, though Ana ate the macaroons and raved about them.

Looking back through, there isn't a single dish that I could call bad. It might go something like good, very good, OK, very good, good, good, good, awesome, meh, OK. The wine selections were quite appropriate and in a few cases excellent. If this sounds like damning with faint praise, it absolutely is. Creations of Narisawa was, for us, merely professional. When you're charging what they're charging, you are competing with the highest tier of restaurants around the world. Service must be unimpeachable, and the food has to blow minds, or it isn't worth it. If you're in Tokyo looking for a world-class culinary experience, our experience suggests Creations of Narisawa is not quite playing in that league. We had fun and a lovely evening, but we'll not be going back.

/End food snobbery (you were warned - I'm looking at you Nunu)

There will be more blog entries coming soon and they won't be restaurant reviews, we promise.

DISNEY!!!

2012-01-26T16:46:00.000+09:00

Yes, all-caps and three exclamation points. It IS that exciting. If you're not a fan of Disney, feel free to skip this one, as it covers my sisters and I visiting Tokyo Disney!

In my family, Disney is kind of a big thing and my two visiting sisters were very excited about the chance to visit the Tokyo Disney parks. This was also my last chance to visit the parks while living in Japan. I went with them to visit Tokyo Disney Sea, a really amazing park I visited once with my mother and once with Lee for quite a few enjoyable days. Same park, still love it, but didn't quite love the crowds or the temperature this time. It was cold! We started the day with a non-working alarm. This didn't delay us too much because the anticipation of the parks and jet lag had my sisters up and moving since about 5 AM anyway. This being Disney, there's always a reason for extra special thematic decorations, and the beginning of 2012 is no exception. There were quite a few displays to celebrate the New Year and the coming Year of the Dragon. Mushu, the "dragon" from Mulan, was the character of the hour, decorating all kinds of souvenirs and displays including the monorail tickets and a stand to get your picture taken that had long, long lines the whole day (hence the night-time picture):

Disney Sea was still celebrating its tenth year, as it was when I visited with my mother in July, and there were quite a few reminders of this fact:

I'd like to think we were, in fact, magical.

Each of the areas had their own thematically decorated wizard hat to celebrate. I took pictures of every one I saw.

Obligatory carousel shot

We spent the day seeing the the park, eating strawberry popcorn (the only one without a huge line that wasn't curry or black pepper flavored) and Duffy taiyaki (seen in the last post). Aside from waiting far too long for a few rides, we had a very enjoyable time. We had pancakes for dinner, the hallmark of any successful day:

The next day I bowed out, now that my sisters knew where to go and what to do, and they visited Tokyo Disney Land on their own. Luckily, they showed up back at the apartment on time as expected, no late-night calls trying to figure out where they went wrong or anything. They got to see the Haunted Mansion in a Nightmare Before Christmas revamp:

They also got some pretty striking pictures of the Electrical Parade:

There are a whole bunch more pictures that you can see over at Flickr, if you want. Next up, what Lee and I did while my sisters were at Disney for the second day.

New Year's Eve in Tokyo

2012-01-24T16:43:00.002+09:00

After our trip to Okinawa, we flew to Tokyo to meet up with my (Ana's) sisters, who had decided to visit Japan while they still knew people here. We met up in Tokyo Station on the 30th, found dinner at a local Indian place, and started to see some (fairly random) sights on the 31st. First up, we went to Shibuya to see the statue of the famous dog, Hachiko. Hachiko waited for his master to come home from work at the station every day, and when one day the master stopped showing up, the dog kept waiting. This dog was so well-known for his loyalty that one of the exits of Shibuya station is now named after him, a movie with Richard Gere was released in the US in 2009, and there is both a statue:

and a mural:

We'd be going to Meiji Shrine for midnight, so we decided to stop there during the day to check it out before it was all dark and crowded. We happened upon the practice procession, which we didn't realize at the time was what we'd be seeing later that night as well, only from much, much further away:

Meiji Shrine is one of The Places To Be in Tokyo for New Year's Eve. It's such a big thing that they have a special temporary subway stop for getting to the shrine, set up with temporary ticket machines and everything, so that the roughly three million people who come to pray at the shrine in the first three days of the New Year are able to easily get in and out:

Of course, street vendors take advantage of the crowds lining up hours early to wait to be some of the first to pray at Meiji Shrine after the clock strikes 12. We in no way were going to line up for hours waiting in the freezing cold, but we arrived early enough to enjoy some pitas, sweet potato fries, taiyaki, and chocolate bananas, choosing carefully from the long line of vendors hawking many of the same goods:

After getting our late-night snacks to power us through the cold time spent waiting for the drum to beat for New Year's, we headed back through the torii (gate), down the paths, through the forest to the shrine, where everyone was waiting. We were a bit further back than the middle in the sea of people waiting to get up to the front of the shrine's courtyard to pay our respects (and money) to ensure our good fortune in the coming year. There were a LOT of people, including a group of drunken young men behind us who worried us somewhat when hoisting each other up to get a better view. We were able to see the drum on the big screen, being hit 108 times for the 108 sins of Buddhism at midnight, but were so far back we couldn't get a good picture out of the extremes of light and darkness:

We headed back soon after New Year's struck, rather than wait for ages to enter the courtyard of the shrine proper. We slept in the next day before wandering out to Roppongi for dinner, eventually finding an open branch of a hamburger place we wanted to try that was also famous for veggie burgers. My vegetarian sister joked that she came to Japan and had Indian food, vendor food, and now sandwiches and baked goods, but minimal Japanese food - it's difficult to find any open restaurants from about the 29th - 3rd of January, due to nearly everything being closed for traditional family celebrations in Japan, but we did have taiyaki:

Multiple times:

Taiyaki is basically pancake batter cooked in a shape of some sort traditionally containing a bean paste center but commonly served with chocolate or cream flavors too. It's usually in the shape of a fish, but comes in the shape of Duffy, a teddy bear, at Tokyo Disney Resort.

In walking around for dinner, we caught a glimpse of Tokyo Tower, where Lee and I rang in 2010. It was all lit up for 2012, something I honestly wasn't sure they'd do anymore now that the Sky Tree is the major tourist tower in Tokyo:

That's pretty much it for our New Year's festivities in Tokyo. We of course did a bit of walking around and gawking at the crowds and the buildings, checking out interesting shops, and seeing areas lit up at night, but the most important thing was still to come. Stay tuned for Tokyo Disney Resort, with the sisters! Check out Flickr for additional pictures of the food vendors, crazy crowds at Meiji Shrine, and other Tokyo adventures.

Okinawa: Hiking

2012-01-20T14:58:00.000+09:00

For our last full day in Okinawa we headed off to "the biggest waterfall in Okinawa" which, since Okinawa is not a very large area, is unsurprisingly less than heroically proportioned. It was, however, a nice walk into into the woods to get there, and the pictures are available on Flickr.

First though, we had to take a bus up onto Cape Hedo, which is the northern point of Okinawa, get off at what appeared on the map to be one of the last towns worthy of the the name, and walk a mile or two inland on roads to find the trailhead. The trailhead featured a fairly large campsite, several buildings, and an unexpected ~$6 entry fee each. After seeing the trail they're maintaining with that money, my complaints about the fee evaporated.

It even has a railing, for crying out loud.

Large portions of the trail were on raised walkways, and the trail must be more than two miles long. That's a lot of walkway through the woods to build.

We encountered some ferocious and exotic wildlife.

As you can see, we went heavily equipped on this trying and dangerous expedition.

The trail mostly followed the river up the valley to the waterfall, crossing it once.

The easy trail did have some rather nice surroundings.

The fact that this ruin was placed on the trail map may tell you something about how many items of interest beside the scenery the trail possessed.

Not the main waterfall.

The waterfall does have a nice little lagoon. I can see why there were so many signs that said no diving / swimming / climbing, because were it hot summer it would have been most tempting. There was even a separate sign posted for US servicemembers on Okinawa, saying basically 'The other signs apply to YOU, jarhead. Command is sick of losing personnel, however stupid, to accidents at this site'.

We ate the lunch we'd brought with us at this little hut on the way back.

I thought the ginormous fern trees were interesting. Seem prehistoric in style and scale, some of them had giant fiddleheads at the top. There were quite a few of them on some sections of the trail.

A hawk or eagle let me get my lens changed about 85% to the big telephoto before flying away. I left it on and vengefully photographed other birds on the walk back out to the town.

OK this one was pretty easy to capture. The local area's tourist mascot bird is a quail-like thing called the yonbaru and this is supposed to be one of those. They're endangered, so the conservation center is a main tourist attraction here too. Why it is lifting weights, I do not know.

Not a yonbaru.

The local bus / rest stop had a restaurant serving dishes with meat from locally-grown boar / pig hybrids they were cleverly calling inobuta, which I'm 99% sure is the equivalent of "boarpig". That was interesting enough to get our attention and we had a second lunch / early dinner there.

The meals turned out to be pretty good for the price and location, and I've certainly had pork that was less flavorful and less tender. I don't think you'll be seeing Okinawan inobuta in your local stores anytime soon, though, as I get the feeling that they sell it in about a two-mile radius of where it is produced. That dinner and the subsequent bus trip back to the campsite pretty much wrapped up our six-day stay on Okinawa - the days that our blogging hasn't accounted for were largely spent lounging around reading and taking leisurely naps.

Waiting for the bus to the bus to the plane to the subway to the other subway to Tokyo.

I'd left my razor with the electronics in storage at the airport - was quite scruffy by this point. We were headed to Tokyo to meet up with two of Ana's sisters, who would be visiting Japan and us for a few weeks, which is where the blogging will continue soon.

Okinawa: Scuba Diving (and tacos!)

2012-01-18T15:37:00.000+09:00

One of the major draws of Okinawa for us was scuba diving. We got certified in Bali more than two years ago, and we wanted to go again before we forgot everything we learned. Okinawa is half-wetsuit territory in summertime, but very dive-able with full wetsuits in winter. As the aquarium taught us, it is also home to a majority of coral species in the Pacific (or South China Sea, as it were) and has no shortage of legitimately exciting dives around it. Being somewhat out of practice and not that experienced to begin with, we opted for a few non-technical shore dives with a dive shop recommended by some of our colleagues. We had the best weather of the whole trip on our dive day, which probably did wonders for the underwater visibility, and got picked up bright and early by our dive guide, who was impressed and confused that we'd found such a remote and unheralded campsite, which he had not known was there. We have a whole bunch of pictures on Flickr.

The dive guide brought us to a beach on the far side of the Motobu apparently known to the divers of Okinawa as "Gorilla Chop" because of this rock formation. It looks like a gorilla making a karate chop action, if you can't see it.

Walk right on into that - all the good stuff is right out there.

Nice broad clean beach and the only people there were a few groups of divers. The guide said that this off-season seemed particularly dead. Fine with us! There isn't anything wrong with the coral just because people usually visit in the summertime.

We were definitely slow getting our gear assembled and put together. I think the guide had doubts about us (probably rightly so) but at least for me I felt I clearly remembered all the really really important stuff like how to get emergency air, dealing with a blown regulator, and not getting the bends, along with the mechanics of diving like clearing the mask and controlling buoyancy but not so much the exact process for tightening tank straps.

In Bali our underwater camera case put our camera decidedly more underwater than we liked, costing us a camera and the ability to take pictures for most of the rest of that trip - this was attempt #2 for the casing with a replacement camera, a new o-ring, insurance, and a threat to sell the case on Ebay for 10 bucks if it failed. It is uncertain which element was decisive, but the casing worked fine this time. Our dive guide cleverly bought a waterproof camera in the first place, then bought a case to extend the safe depth. If his leaks, he'd still have a camera. If we melt the camera again at some point, I think we'd do that for the replacement. This picture is one of the first ones taken by the cased camera before diving. Though photography is principally my responsibility at this point due to my fascination with all the shiny buttons the fancy camera has, underwater photography is Ana's job because she championed the idea and bought all the technology involved. One of the few points during our vacation where there are a lot more pictures of me than her!

Jeez, maybe we should switch back to pictures of her for being easier on the eyes.

With shore diving, you obviously start off pretty shallow, but these reefs off Okinawa were quite close to the surface and I think we never went deeper than 10m at any point. At shallow depths, you use less air (deeper = higher pressure = more air vented per breath) and less nitrogen gets forced into your blood (more time = still safe) so we could stay down a fairly long time.

The dive guide took the camera when a sea snake came by and went in for close-range pictures. He'd told us earlier if we saw one not to worry because they're not aggressive. That's nice and all but I wasn't going to get too close because aggressive or not, my understanding is that if they bite you you're dead where you stand / swim. Pretty cool to see from a distance, or up closer in a picture though, and it did indeed prove a civil acquaintance.

We did encounter some pretty cool stuff. I'd love to see what the big camera could do, but cases for that one cost about as much as the camera itself plus all the cases and accessories I own for it. We don't, at this time, dive enough to justify that. The elderly one that fits our casing did a pretty good job sometimes.

This school of fish was very friendly and hung out for a few minutes. Wiggling fingers would sometimes get nibbled on.

We did two dives and Ana responsibly filled in our dive logs after each one.

Much happier with the underwater case this time.

Ana apparently put a knee onto a sea urchin at some point, and then stopped to take a picture of the offending organisms. She finished the dive, the break, and the next dive before peeling off the wetsuit and pulling the spines out of her knee. Said she wasn't really sure if she'd just knocked it or actually been stuck. Show her a spider and she'll probably "Eeek!" like a four-year-old, but put her underwater and impale her on spines, and she gives it a "Whatever" and the first I hear of it I'm being called over to take pictures of the blood. Seriously. Her knee was fine, if a bit more hole-y than pre-dive.

After the dives were over and the gear was cleaned up, we talked to the guide and got a recommendation and transport for our late lunch / early dinner. Worked out well for everybody because we got a ride to town and he didn't have to detour back out to our campsite on the way back to his shop. We got dropped at a sort of roadside strip mall with a bunch of small stores and restaurants he said were good. We found a タコ (taco) place and were sold. Tacos and taco rice (pretty close to a taco without a shell) count as Okinawa cuisine at this point because the Okinawans adopted and adapted them from US service members after WW2, and they are now counted among things distinctively Okinawan by the rest of Japan and the tourist literature. Plus we like tacos, and would have picked the place anyway. We pretty much ordered one of everything on the menu.

The tacos themselves were quite good, the taco rice was as one would expect, and Ana especially liked the enchiladas, but was quite wary of the taco balls. This picture series shows her investigating the nature of the taco ball.

Despite the skepticism, it turns out that when you deep fry balls of meat and cheese the results are pleasing. We went back for seconds of some things - very satisfying lunch.

We walked a couple of miles back from outside of the main town area of Nago to the bus terminal, to catch a bus back to our campsite. The day remained nice and the view past the highway was pleasing.

After making it back into town, we did catch that bus, but not before encountering an actual honest-to-goodness drive-in restaurant. There can't be many left in the US and I doubt this would fly in mainland Japan, but apparently in Okinawa there exists at least one of them, branded with the A&W logo. Who knew? I don't think I've ever seen one outside of a movie.

One post left to go in Okinawa, where we explore the wild interior of the island and feast upon wild boar. That probably sounds more dramatic than it actually was, but we have some nice pictures of a waterfall and I used my big telephoto lens to get close-up pictures of some birds so it may be worth tuning in anyway. After that the updates will be activities in Tokyo and Hakone, so the string of publications will continue for a while yet.

Okinawa: Aquarium

2012-01-16T13:23:00.000+09:00

This post is one of several from our winter break in Okinawa, and covers our trip to the Okinawa Aquarium. The Okinawa Aquarium is famous, at least in Japan, for being the aquarium that everybody else tries to copy. Okinawa got a whale shark, and then everybody had to have a whale shark, and there was a whale shark arms race as to who could have the most, which Okinawa is currently on top of with three in the same tank. It is the preeminent tourist attraction on Okinawa, to the extent that you could fly in, get on a bus across the entire island directly to the aquarium from the airport, and then bus back and fly out again without ever stepping foot outside of the airport or aquarium. The aquarium is on the Motobu peninsula, not entirely coincidentally where our campsite was located, and as we wanted to see the countryside and log some walking miles we headed out one morning to the aquarium on foot. As usual, all pictures available via Flickr.

Nice sunny weather and reasonable temperatures were appreciated, as the walk is about 15 miles.

We were noticing these enormous tufted grasses on the side of the road which we later figured out were wild-growing sugar cane.

We were taking fairly rural roads and then got detoured onto some extremely rural roads (passing through farms rather than next to them) and passed a lot of commercial sugar cane.

Better scenery than most interstates, and the clouds kept the lighting dramatic.

We thought the spiky plants were pineapples but we had to pass one actually growing a pineapple to be sure.

Yeah, the aquarium is on the far side of those mountains. We had some walking to do.

Walking was leavened with no small amount of picture-taking.

Ana was a yarn-trooper again.

We were glad to find that bridge, because it connected the island we were on with the main peninsula. The detour ended up being quite pleasant.

Very blue water.

Quite a view from the center of the bridge in my book - we passed a number of Japanese families with cameras out on it at the same time.

We picked a lunch place named Hibis (a Japanese truncation for Hibiscus) pretty much at random which turned out to be a lot better than the fact that is a tiny place on the wrong side of the Motobu in the off-season, with no other customers, might have lead us to believe. The pasta was forgettable but the seafood pizza was really good, even the squid, which was tender. Doubt any of our readers will be going, but if you do, order two pizzas and skip the pasta.

Nice clean little place in the middle of nowhere, with an extensive collection of British and American 60's and 70's vinyl, some of it mounted on the walls. Only in Japan, at least when the squid pizza is factored in.

After lunch we walked for another couple of hours and then we needed to speed up the process to ensure we made the aquarium with enough time before closing to see it and clipped three or four miles off by taking a bus. The aquarium is the hub of a touristy area, including several other attractions in the same compound. This is looking down one of the major walkways running through the large aquarium park / complex across the East China Sea towards Ie island.

I mandated that Ana pose on the whale shark because it was purple and made of flowers and she gets all gooey for such things.

She retaliated by mandating that I pose on the manta ray. I tried to supply what dignity I could to the situation.

Finally made it to the aquarium at maybe 3PM.

They had some very nice and English-translated tanks and exhibits focusing on the seas around Japan to start off the tour.

It looks delicious so the Japanese probably pass on eating it to focus on sea cucumbers and offal.

The big draw for the aquarium is their main tank - this picture shows some of the standing and seating areas facing the main tank...

...and this one the main tank itself. It was big, but not as overwhelming as we'd expected based on the hype for the Okinawa aquarium as the pinnacle of Japanese aquariums and a contender for best in the world. I feel like Osaka had a comparable main tank.

Not a small fish tank, nonetheless.

Serious materials science at work here kids - the plastic wall of the tank is about two feet thick.

Only clear against the grain, it appears, with interesting effects becoming visible when examining the material edgewise.

After the aquarium we took the bus to Nago, the closest thing that counted as real civilization, judged by us in this case to mean that we could be sure that they'd have a lot of different restaurants to choose from. We walked one of the main streets looking for a place to get dinner, until encountering this sign which literally advertises "Meat's Station". We were pretty much sold going on that alone. Examining it now, it may be that that's the name of the butcher shop the restaurant is based over, but a meat restaurant over a butcher shop is still a pretty good sign.

We headed on up and ordered a big pre-made set of various meats so we could get cooking right away.

We ignored the organ meats, even though they, like most of the rest of this set, were local Okinawa product. I honestly think we prefer some of the cheaper items just because the Japanese have come to associate being really fatty with being really good and sometimes the leaner pieces actually have, you know, meat in them.

I guess that makes our day surf and turf.

We still have two more entries for Okinawa coming up, which will be followed directly with more stuff in Tokyo, including two of Ana's sisters joining us, as well as a visit to Hakone. Next entry will be scuba diving, so look for that in the next few days.

Okinawa: Camping on the Beach

2012-01-14T14:48:00.000+09:00

For our last Christmas break (incidentally, our last real break of any sort that doesn't involve heading to the US directly afterward) we listed up a whole bunch of different options, finding that Okinawa was cheap and everything else was expensive. Okinawa is fairly tropical (it's way off the southern coast of Japan), there could be scuba diving, and we'd see a part of Japan that we probably never would otherwise - so Okinawa it was.

Okinawa is really many different islands but because the ferries between them are long and expensive, we did our week entirely on the main island. The southern half of the main island (~60 miles long, oriented North-South, only a few miles wide) is mostly fairly developed, but the northern half is sparsely populated. We looked up the local attractions and found that we were mostly interested in natural beauty - skipping the pineapple theme parks. Yes, there are at least two. To save money we pulled out our camping supplies and picked a campsite in the middle of nowhere, based mostly on how nice I thought the scenery outside the tent would be.

In that, we were not disappointed. To see all the pictures, check Flickr.

We flew direct from our local airport, which was convenient, then took buses to Yagaji Beach, on the Motobu peninsula, which is not particularly close to anything. All the tourist literature for Okinawa and the people we talked to recommended renting a car for getting around on Okinawa but we've never paid the thousands of dollars required for Japanese licenses and our US ones are no good here, so we can report from firsthand experience that you should rent a car if you go, or at least rent bikes. The buses do work, but are almost more expensive than taxis. It took us several hours to get to the campsite, but we made it before 5PM, when the owner had threatened to close up shop even though she lives on the premises and the ~$100 we paid for our six days was the biggest piece of business she got that week. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves, and between that and the views the cantankerous owner was more of an amusement than a problem.

The ocean is also directly behind this picture.

The first night was a little sketchy, because we were relatively far from major outposts of civilization and in the off-season for tourism. There were three small (very small) towns within walking distance of the campsite but restaurants were few in number and short in hours. We did some walking around and settled for dinner supplies from a local corner store. The wind seemed to be picking up so we staked the tent down fully and were glad we did because it howled and tore all night long, changing directions and introducing new and alarming sounds from the tent on on a regular basis. I had mental images of chasing the rain fly across the beach naked in the dark.

In the morning, we checked the tent and pegs and found them unaffected. Our tent is apparently rated for alarming levels of wind. The island seemed to think we'd passed the test and the weather didn't come after us so strongly again. When it was nice out, we went walking near the campsite and got some pictures.

The area near the campsite had a bit of a post-apocalyptic vibe since a lot of stuff was closed or vacant for the off-season and there weren't so many people around.

We found that Okinawa has a whole bunch of mausoleums - they're everywhere.

Found some pretty spectacular views - this can be seen a few minutes' walk from the campsite.

The different colors of the water were kind of amazing.

Ana put her toes in, but the water is more of a wetsuit affair than not in December.

We got lunch at a very small local restaurant that basically only sold ramen and beer. We ordered the crab ramen and found that the crab came in an omelet, so we had crab omelet over noodles in broth, which was actually darn good, if strange.

Home base for the Okinawa trip

We stayed on Okinawa, based out of our tent, for about six days and had various other adventures that we'll detail in upcoming blog posts Stay tuned!

Merry Christmas, and 100 Days Left in Japan!

2011-12-23T23:20:00.000+09:00

We're celebrating 100 days left in Japan (maybe give or take one or two, we don't have plane tickets yet!) and also Christmas tonight before heading out to Okinawa to spend calendar-Christmas on the beach! See you in two weeks!

Bonenkai 2011

2011-12-18T16:08:00.000+09:00

Our fourth and final bonenkai was not particularly epic (#1, #2, #3), but we did get a lot of good pictures of the overall happenings and the food, to show you the kinds of things the Japanese eat when they really want to spend a lot of money and enjoy themselves. We're knew what we were getting into and I rather enjoyed most of the food - perhaps sense has been slowly driven from me over the years here. You'll have to judge for yourselves, perhaps by looking at the full set of pictures and videos on Flickr.

For those who may not remember the Bonenkai posts of previous years, this is an event where the staff of the school all goes off to a ryokan, or hotel with hot spring baths.

The front entrance to the ryokan - as usual, the building was a maze and I definitely got lost in it a number of times. First everybody hangs out in their assigned bedroom for a bit and eats mikan (Clementine oranges, basically), then dresses in the traditional yukata (robe) before heading down to the baths.

After that, it was time to wait in line for dinner - you want to sit with your friends, and it's usually a mad rush to get tables. We completely filled the main hall of the hotel - I think our crowd was a little big much for the facility, so some things were a bit strained, especially the baths.

As usual for this kind of thing, dinner is served on a little table about six inches off the tatami mats. This year they didn't cover dinner with a piece of paper so we had to look longingly at it (or some parts of it) until we were allowed to begin.

I was not alone in my photographic endeavors. The gaps between the tables were for easy access by the serving staff, but also made conversation more difficult by putting everybody a lot further apart.

The speeches were riveting, as you can see by the demeanor of some of the other foreign staff. There were three speakers before the actual toast, so we had to stare at dinner for about half an hour before being allowed to eat.

Finally they got to the toast and it was time to begin.

Crab is good, but I've had better than what was served here. The guy next to me was giving his away on the thought that he's visiting the Philippines next week and would prefer his crab fresh and on the beach there, so I got an extra claw, which was welcome.

I wasn't sure what most of this was, ate it anyway to get rid of the plate. The back center was definitely sushi, and I think the white/orange thing on the right was smoked salmon between two milder fish cakes. The black things are large beans, and I really don't know at all about the other two.

Pickled radishes

Well, I figured out what some of this was. There is a glutinous rice cake flower, some greenery, and a cooked daikon slice on top. The brown is pretty much gravy and this whole thing was cold. I don't know what the bottom cake was.

I have a feeling it involves internal organs, possibly of seafood. Didn't taste like much.

Nice block of tofu with some toppings

This kind of event will always have a sashimi plate

This pork, various mushrooms, and vegetables are just on the plate for show.

They need to be cooked in the soy milk before they can be eaten, which means the diner waits on the pleasure of the staff, who won't light the Sterno under the main course until much later.

During the first 30-45 minutes of dinner (before everybody is drunk enough to be social) we were entertained by alleged professionals. There were a few minutes of taiko drumming, which was not very good, and some "professional" Japanese singers did a few numbers. Definitely the weakest Bonenkai entertainment line up of the four we've seen. I have heard they're trying to bring the price of the event down (rumored to be more than $150,000 one year, and largely out of our paychecks) and this may have been one place they skimped.

Not outstanding.

Clear broth with dumplings, unmemorable.

Consensus has this as a potato. Seeing the interior, I wonder if they hid something non-potato inside of it.

Not convincingly all potato.

All new dishes that are officially part of the menu are brought by the army of servers, but it is not uncommon for there to be "extra" dishes available from tables to the side of the room. This time, they were serving waygu beef tartare as an extra dish. I asked some people from my table who were heading that way to bring me one, and before they got back a waitress wandering around with some gave me one, and Ana brought me one because she knew I would want one and was not sure I knew about the table. Thus, I had three and it was good, though I could have used a knife for the thick one.

After the "professional" entertainers, they opened the stage for karaoke. Matters in the entertainment department did not improve.

Conversation > Bad karaoke

Unspectacular roast fish - I enjoyed the bell peppers though

Standard issue Japanese things in egg custard/pana cotta, and I guess I forgot to take pictures of dessert, which was a sweet custard with strawberries unfortunately swimming in tea.

The worst in karaoke was yet to come though, as a group of foreigners including Ana took the stage to show the drunk Japanese folks how to really torture a song. Please don't watch all four minutes of this, it is clinically unsafe.

I was more than happy to be done with everything karaoke related at this point, and went and enjoyably talked mostly about history with a new KIT English teacher who I had not met yet, but Ana went with the bulk of the foreigners for more karaoke, featuring this Saturday Night Fever floor/ceiling combination. I suspect she did not get much sleep. I got the better part of a full night's sleep, which was exactly how I wanted it.

Breakfast was quite Japanese. On the bottom left, shredded uncooked cabbage with mayo for dressing, along with some ham, a tomato, and a cucumber. Above that, a tofu chunk, some broth to dip it in, and some green onions and shredded dried fish to top it. That was actually pretty good. The white dish in the front left is more pickles. I skipped the almost raw egg in broth - you're supposed to put it on the rice, I think. Above that is sliced raw squid with soy sauce and I regret to say I ate that with gusto - like I said, probably going bonkers. Above that a small piece of cold roasted salmon and some various small dishes of mostly fermented things that I tasted and generally did not decide to finish. At the top right is a small fish for roasting on a grill, and I don't actually remember what was in the colorful dish with a cover (Ana - it was vegetables, a kabocha (squash) cut to look like a leaf, a single green bean, and a pressed fish cake of some sort). The strange three-petaled gray-green dish held shredded pickled vegetables that were not to my taste, and the covered bowl is miso soup. There was, of course, rice.

After breakfast, we were straight away to the buses and home. This year's ryokan was considerably closer than the previous year's, which was nice because you get a much longer Sunday after getting back - a Sunday used in part to write this blog entry. I suspect the next entry will be two plus weeks away, after we visit Okinawa and Tokyo and do a lot more things to write about. See you in January?

Nik's Travels in Japan

2011-12-14T14:32:00.000+09:00

Some good friends from college (yes, more) came to visit us in the last few weeks. One of them also had the chance to travel around Japan for a week or so. I might not have blogged this particular visit, as not too much that was too special went down in Kanazawa, but he also got some pretty cool pictures of his travels around the country and I thought some people would want to have a look. For one, he took some pictures of just regular Japan, which we generally don't, since regular Japan looks regular to us. Two, he got some cool pictures of things we haven't seen yet and some very nice ones of some things we have. There are more pictures on Flickr, as well.

Our friends (they're brothers) met up in Tokyo and took the train to Kanazawa, where we met them at the station.

It was about lunchtime so we went to the fish market for some sushi. Here he wants to buy a stick of something unidentified, which turned out to be eel.

Probably the little end bits they trimmed off fillets or something - tastes like eel, which tastes good.

Sea snails however, generally do not taste good in my experience. This is from just walking through the market.

In front of the sushi place.

I believe the menu called it arkfish...I think it was maybe some kind of large clam. Tasty but expensive.

Ana having a roe roll.

One of the brothers especially wanted to eat the things foreigners usually take a pass on.

Half crab, half crab guts. Edible, but just the crab would be better.

He likes it all anyway.

They both do. Bastards.

After lunch we went to Kenroku-en, which we haven't been to that often with the big camera. The light was tricky but we got some interesting pictures. The ropes to hold the branches against the snow were already up.

Fall foliage was somewhat in evidence.

After Kenroku'en they checked out some of the nearby shops and then we stopped for green tea and bean paste sweets.

Ana explained that one of the earlier steps in matcha drinking is appreciating the mug it comes in.

After the first Saturday, one of the brothers needed to be at a conference halfway across the country, so the two of them headed out that way to see Hiroshima and Miyajima. One went on to the conference, and the other slept at our place and adventured in Japan for a while. He usually came back for dinner time, so we went out for grilled meat on a stick one night and ramen another night, as here.

He took some pictures of ordinary Japan stuff. This is the highway up behind our apartment.

We probably wouldn't have taken a picture of a post box either

The river between us and downtown Kanazawa

One of the bigger intersections downtown

After being stalled by a derailed train (he wasn't on it) one day, the next he made it down to Osaka where he took this awesome picture on the Osaka Castle ground.

Osaka Castle from across one of the moats

View of Osaka from the top of the castle

Closer view of the castle

He also visited Kyoto, site of the Golden Pavilion

For one dinner when we were here, we gathered up some more Japanese language and food friends of ours to guide us and went out to a restaurant specializing in local delicacies. Here is another rendition of crab on crab guts. Apparently, some crab guts have a more delicate flavor than others because these weren't bad.

These are pressed and fermented fish and radish cakes, which should be awful but were actually quite good.

Fried buckwheat noodle balls - tasted fried, not like noodles

For the end of his trip, our friend headed out to Hakone, where he stayed at an extremely old and old-fashioned hot springs resort, which was the style he asked for. Apparently the old ones have good views, as this is the view from his room.

The Hakone ropeway has views of Fuji in clear weather but he had a more mysterious, closed in vibe going on

The pictures look pretty cool, and we are planning to actually go to Hakone ourselves in a few weeks, so maybe we'll be able to get Fuji pictures then.

After the ropeway, they have "pirate ships" to take you across a lake.

The clouds coming off the mountains definitely gave this a creepy, mysterious look

He specifically wanted fish for breakfast, so I'm glad my selection of hotel came through in that respect

He wrapped it up with some more time in Tokyo, including a stop at our favorite whiskey bar. He failed to get lost, in defiance of my instructions to have carefully planned directions. I have no idea how he actually managed this.

Hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures, and we'll have more stuff that we ourselves actually did soon. Have to make the most of the remaining time here.

Machine Shop Blessing Ceremony and Enkai

2011-12-11T13:21:00.001+09:00

We've mentioned this particular annual ceremony a few times before (year 1, year 2) but this year we got more and better pictures so we're going to cover it again. See the whole set on Flickr.

For the ceremony itself, mostly quoted from the year 1 link:

The Mechanical Engineering staffs of both KIT and KTC have an annual ceremony where the machine shop is blessed by Shinto priests - praying for the safety of the shop and its occupants in the coming year. It was interesting, despite the fact that the audience spent a lot of time in long bows, and were therefore more able to observe their shoes than what was going on. Not necessarily optimal for our first Shinto ceremony.

First, an enormous bottle of Sake was opened to entice the protective deities to come down to hear our request that they protect the machine shop. A tree branch with white papers or something tied to it was waved over some machines and a representative from each group (KIT students, KTC students, lab workers, KIT teachers, KTC teachers, etc.) placed a small branch similar to the large one on the altar as an offering from each group to keep us safe while working on the machines in the coming year. There were also fruits and vegetables and other bottles of alcohol as offerings on the altars. A lot of clapping and wailing chanting was also involved at various points - I think the kami might have ADD or something and need loud noises to keep their attention. After the ceremony we there was a party at a restaurant serving formal Japanese food for the professors and staff.

They set up chairs and an altar in the middle of the shop floor, with a cloth with the school logo behind it

There is a lot of standing up and sitting down and looking solemnly at the floor

The elder priest with the blessing tree cutting

He doesn't bless all the machines, just a couple to represent the rest

The younger priest seemed to be doing more this year and earlier, they might be getting ready to pass the torch

The presidents of the schools, various staff, and some students all come to the front representing groups making pleas to be safe in the new year

The yellow jacket of a student machine shop worker

The actual altar with rice, fruits, and alcohol

Afterward the students get most of the goods, but I don't think they get the booze. Not sure who does.

The dinner portion will always be opened with some speeches, mercifully fairly short this time.

Then the waitresses teleport in with the beer

Everybody has to pour for everybody else, and then there is a toast to officially start the meal

On the left we have slimy seaweed and octopus salad, and in the middle some vegetables in a paste of indeterminate origin

The next offering was a big step up, pretty good sashimi

Roast fish with some lotus, potato, uzu, and ground daikon - not bad

Thick broth with chicken, mushroom, and various pressed-bean products - OK but not great

Seafood custard-y stuff, pretty tasty

Tempura plate (I forgot to take the picture before eating half of it) - well done and delicious

Once the meal is about half over people start getting up and going around to socialize with the whole room - the method is to carry beer and inject yourself into whatever conversation is ongoing by offering to pour. This is a good time for expressing things that can't be said by sober people (most anything important) and for sucking up to those above you.

And that will be the last time we do this particular engagement. No more machine shop blessings for us! We'll have at least one more big formal dinner out for our last end-of-year onsen trip, which is coming up soon, but this is one of the last enkai (dinner/party with your coworkers) we'll be going to.

Last Thanksgiving in Japan

2011-12-06T18:40:00.000+09:00

Quick post to mention that we had a good Thanksgiving and to show off the foodstuffs, which probably look entirely normal and not-impressive to those not living in Japan. It should be noted I borrowed most of these pictures from our hosts, who took more and better photographs than I. We had potluck Thanksgiving across town with a whole bunch of gaijin and some Japanese excited to experience Thanksgiving for the first time.

Ana made her usual two pies, one chocolate pudding and one lemon meringue, as well as some rolls. I made some creamed onions and bought some wine, figuring that her contribution largely covered us.

Ana spent hours making pies. I spent an hour making a system to transport those pies across the city in a bus, intact. I checked pretty much every box in the house for appropriate size. The one on the bottom is the lemon meringue, and the height was increased by putting paper cups at the corners so the meringue would have clearance. Bubble wrap provided a tight fit around both pie trays. The whole thing was taped together to make it a unit. I was quite pleased with myself and the pies arrived whole.

The hosts procured and managed to fit in their oven a real turkey, which I think you'll agree looked good.

They put me to work carving the bird, which I did happily, and apparently took pictures while I did. No memory of that occurring, guess this was serious business.

All put together, the various contributions added up to quite a Thanksgiving meal.

I needed a picture with Ana in it, so here you go. She had orange socks matching in color and pattern for that sweater, self-knit, naturally.

Had a good, friendly, fun, tasty time. Look forward to being in the US and maybe even at home for next year's though. It's been at least four years since we've actually had a Thanksgiving with our families - this was nice but let's not make it five!

Concertgoing in Japan: Aerosmith and Clapton/Winwood

2011-12-03T16:24:00.001+09:00

Apparently, Kanazawa is big enough that serious touring bands sometimes pass through. We only learned this after some other local foreigners found the website selling tickets for events a couple of months ago. Would have been nice to know earlier, but we were at least in time to catch concerts from Aerosmith and Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood in the last couple of weeks - they were actually only six days apart.

Both shows took place in the Ishikawa Prefecture Sports Center's fairly large arena (probably 5-6 thousand people, by comparing to the size of RIT's 7-8 thousand person Field House), which was a pretty decent venue. About half an hour from our place by car, free parking, new-feeling, and clean on the inside even for Japan. We ate dinner with another concert-going colleague at a gyodza (fried dumplings) place near school before catching a ride over with same, both times, and for the Clapton/Winwood concert a visiting friend from RIT also came along.

There isn't a whole ton of cultural content here to discuss, but as one piece of cultural information we did come up with is that they do not search you when you enter the venue, we have pictures from both concerts. Obviously I couldn't bring the DSLR and telephoto lens, but our tiny pocket camera easily passed the unwary guards. It was so pleasant to just go into a concert without getting checked for contraband, and this being Japan everybody kept the contraband mild and the band and venue safe. Everybody wins. Add concerts to the list of things that are actually better in Japan, totally removing the sense of having to go through airline security and/or being perceived by the staff as a potential threat before enjoying your show.

Gate for the first show - Aerosmith

We were very, very close to the stage. The security at the stage was very light - small men and women in suits every 8-10 feet. Would not stop a moshing American crowd, but they didn't even seem to be necessary at all in Japan.

They definitely sold out, also the seats were wooden and comfortable, though everybody stood up the second the band appeared and stayed that way the whole time

The entire crowd stood exactly where their seat was the whole time - to the point where the rows and columns of seats were clearly visible in the crowd through the concert. This was a bit strange to actually see, but another win-win, you can dance in place without bothering anyone or anyone bothering you.

Aerosmith may not be exactly a new band, but they came on stage and starting cranking out their best-known songs (most of which I knew but did not know were theirs) with plenty of passion and showmanship. They were not here just for the money, by the look and sound of it. The band was on stage for the better part of two and a half hours, and they had camera people all around putting high-definition close-ups of the band playing on large overhead screens, so we could for instance get close ups of the guitarist shredding during solos. In this picture, the drummer and Steven Tyler are doing a two-person drum solo. At one point, the drummer threw his sticks into the audience and began drumming with his hands and face, for the honor of rock and roll.

My feeling is you don't bring a reinforced piano and stairs to Japan unless you intend to rock.

The line for merchandise was enormous, and we thought we were going to be there for hours. Nope. We hit the front of the line less than fifteen minutes after the concert ended. Japan again for the win. T-shirts were still $50, but it was a good show.

Ana's new shirt.

For the second concert Ana found wine juice boxes in the grocery store and brought some. She reports it would be better if you didn't have to drink them through the straw, as that means you can't just down it and stop tasting the "flavor". So there you have it: Japanese wine juice boxes - not recommended. There are plenty of flask-sized and shaped bottles of cheap whiskey and shochu ready-made for this kind of work available.

Their setup was not quite as flamboyant as Aerosmith's, and we were not as close despite paying more for tickets - not a cheap concert. Totally worth it, at least for me, the blues fan, though.

I didn't know who Steve Winwood was when we got the tickets, but after I looked up the stuff he's done my excitement rose - he's played with absolutely everybody in blues and played both guitar and organ for this show with aplomb. Clapton would solo on the guitar and Winwood would solo on the organ, and they also had a great keyboard player as well, so they would all just jam in a blues-soaked wave of awesomeness.

Clapton did some acoustic work in the middle of the concert and I guess I didn't know you could do some of the things he did. His control of the volume of each note was very impressive - he can change the volume on each note while still going a mile a minute. This show was about being really, really good at playing your instrument rather than dancing on top of a piano. Also had several classic blues tunes originally by other bands thrown in, executed well. I wish I could find a live version of Crossroads as good as the one I heard at this concert.

Did a ~15 minute cover of Voodoo Child before breaking for the encore, then ended with Cocaine. Again, was definitely a solid 2+ hours of playing time. Clapton had the volume down a bit lower, which was easier on the ears and made the sound clearer, plus our seats were in front of the speakers rather than to the side.

These concerts were not cheap, but for the fun that was had and the experience of going to them in Japan we were not disappointed. I would recommend live shows by either of these acts to anyone who may be interested. I also recommend concert-going in Japan for enhanced civility and a nicer experience - may require some travel for those not already here.

New Telephoto Zoom Lens

2011-11-28T20:14:00.000+09:00

If you don't care about the fact that I got a new telephoto zoom lens for my camera, at least I can say that this post features a giant spider. Aside from those, probably nothing that special in this entry. Anyway, there have been several instances where more lens would have been of benefit to us in chronicling out travels - sumo and yabusame come to mind as recent examples, and we've talked about getting a telephoto lens for a while. Ana went ahead and got a really fairly spiffy one for my birthday, which is enormous and features about six times as much magnification as the standard lens. I look forward to employing it under circumstances that actually demand its use, but some of the trial shots I took are a bit interesting and they're all in Kanazawa so I figured I'd just go ahead and post them.

The camera used to seem big. Now I laugh at that notion.

Minimum magnification (~2x)

Maximum magnification (~9x)

From the hill behind our apartment at minimum...

...and at maximum. That stadium is probably six or seven miles away

Crow on top of the telephone pole

I was apparently too close to this wildlife - I was noticed and natural behavior was disrupted.

Minimum zoom (remember, this looks twice as close as it actually is)

Zoomed in. I was standing at least 20 feet away.

This spider's web was between a power line and a phone pole. It shows up about life-size on my monitor. These things are everywhere.

A Few Nice Pictures From a Bike Ride

2011-11-25T16:35:00.000+09:00

While Ana was off watching Takarazuka there was some really amazingly nice weather and I got around to mapping a local road into the mountains. We do a lot of miles on it preparing for the very real possibility of attempting the Appalachian Trail next spring/summer, but we didn't really know what our pace was while on it because we had no distance information. I went up there with my bike (and distance-tracking bike computer) and made a lot of notes about mileage and landmarks. I had one of the older cameras because 1) Ana had the good compact camera with her in Osaka and 2) I had no intention of taking the big camera out of the bag, removing the lens cap, taking a picture, and reversing the process a couple of dozen times to map the route. Then, up beyond where we usually go, I found some nice overlooks and views and wished I had the big camera anyway. Perhaps we'll be up there this winter after a snow with the big camera and can get some better shots. In the meantime, here are some pictures from the mountains up behind the apartment:

I also found a sign for the "Kanazawa City Intellectual Center", located waaaay out in the boonies. I was unable to find an affiliated website.

Takarazuka Revue

2011-11-15T16:10:00.001+09:00

Last weekend I traveled to Osaka with some friends to watch the Takarazuka Revue put on an all-female musical version of Ocean's 11, in Japanese. Yes, you read that correctly. As you may have guessed, Lee decided to stay home rather than accompany the all-girl crowd to the all-girl show.

Friday night we took the train to Osaka and watched the movie (it's based on the Clooney version, not Sinatra's) to prepare ourselves for the show and hopefully to follow the plot a little bit better. This was especially a good idea for me because my Japanese is the worst in the group (most of them were Japanese majors in college). We went out for scones the next morning:

Then headed on over to the theater itself:

The show had just opened the day before. Ocean's 11 in honor of 11/11/11 I do believe, and we went to the 11 am showing of it. The theater itself is pretty small, and our seats weren't particularly close. We rented opera glasses in order to get a better look, and wow do they ever work! You could see every expression, which was great when one character was being highlighted but not so good when you were trying to follow two characters at opposite ends of the stage.

The show had singing, dancing, sequins, and some very odd plotlines, so much so that watching the movie wasn't really a great help! Of course, it was still about a Las Vegas casino heist, but the similarities ended soon after. No pictures during the show, though there were one or two things I wish I'd taken a picture of anyway to show off. During one of the Vegas numbers, the supporting showgirls were all in costumes that looked suspiciously like these guys, but with capes, for no discernible reason. We certainly weren't expecting the Spanish Inquisition during a Japanese version of Ocean's 11!

After the show, we still had most of Saturday left. We went out for frozen yogurt (Lee's note - she created this dish, not the staff, it was a create-your-own-and-they-weigh-it place):

And Mexican food with Yuzu (Japanese citrus) margaritas:

Yes, in that order. We ended the night with two hours of karaoke and a Mister Donut (chain doughnut store like Dunkin' Donuts) run. An excellent time was had by all!

Fall Milk

2011-11-05T20:42:00.000+09:00

Japan has four seasons, as any long-term resident here will invariably be reminded. It is also common to be asked whether your country also has four seasons. Respond in the affirmative, and you may be met with shock. The fact that most non-desert places between the tropics and the Arctic / Antarctic circles have four reasonably distinct seasons can come as a surprise to many Japanese.

In Japan, the four seasons are not only a thing of nature, but a cultural phenomenon. The emphasis on what is in-season or not-in-season can be extreme. The cherry blossoms, symbol of spring, mean that it is time for Hanami, or cherry blossom viewing picnics, where the grass next to cherry-blossom-lined rivers will be covered with tarps full of of-age people who will be full of beer. Summer is the time to wear "cool biz" to work (short sleeves and no ties), summer festivals of all kinds, and beer gardens. In winter, there are hot foods that you can't get any other time of year and snow festivals. In Kanazawa specifically, winter is also the time to tie up your topiary so that the heavy wet snow doesn't snap branches off your great-great-grandfather's tree. New Year's calls for a large number of all-you-can-drink end-of-the-year parties.

Now, being fall, people will making trips to see the leaves change color, and "cool biz" is no longer allowed at work, which is OK because the AC and heat get turned off and on according to the calendar instead of the temperature and it can get a bit chilly inside.

Also, in a display of seasonality hitherto unknown to us, you can apparently get special "Fall" milk from Hokkaido. We had to get some and put it to the test. Our verdict: tastes like regular Japanese milk. The color caused us to confuse the container with orange juice, so we recommend sticking with the regular non-seasonal milk of your choice, as we'll be doing.

Guess which is the special one!

Okonomiyaki

2011-11-02T22:31:00.000+09:00

Readers of the previous entry may recall that this particular okonomiyaki dinner was enjoyed after completing a trip to a famous Japanese mountain, Tateyama. The only really meaningful connection that has to this post is that it explains why Ana and I are wearing our outdoor adventuring shirts in the pictures. Speaking of pictures, they're all on Flickr. Moving on! OK, okonomiyaki is a form of Japanese cuisine that is sort of like giant cabbage-egg fritters, usually with some meat or seafood added in. They're sizzled on a grill, often by the customer at their own table. The characters read to me as something like "grilled things that like each other" or "favorite grilled thing", and I'm not sure if I like that or am creeped out by it. The restaurant we like going to was back open after completing the renovations that had previously thwarted us, so obviously we went there.

Celebrating a good visit to Japan and some old friends, as well as a distinct lack of death or dismemberment during the recent alpine activities.

We all ordered extra larges, and what they bring to the table for each person looks like this. In this bowl, cabbage, green onion, ginger, eggs, and beef. I personally like the shrimp variety.

Everybody needs to stir it up into an evenly distributed mixture.

Sometimes people need help with this process.

Sometimes people don't actually need or want help with this process, thank you very much.

After greasing the griddle, the mixture is spread out onto it like so. Four extra-large okonomiyaki are a tight fit. We'd have liked to make them a bit thinner, but then they'd have merged and been impossible to flip. There is an hourglass-type timer on the side of the table that runs out when it is time to flip the okonomiyaki. This is always the most exciting part.

Flipping can be a little tricky, especially with extra large okonomiyaki.

I demonstrate the exact technique I intended to...

After they're safely flipped it is time to do toppings. The Japanese tend to put everything on the top, which is sauce (sweet or hot), seaweed flakes, dried shaved bonito, pickled ginger, and lots of mayonnaise. I prefer just hot sauce and shaved bonito myself.

After flipping, the real challenge is not to burn your mouth when it is actually time to eat.

And apparently to not make funny faces while dining in front of a man with a camera.

So I guess that just about covers the essential facts of okonomiyaki, and wraps up the series of entries related to our friends from college visiting us (and Japan). The next morning they were out on an early flight and to my knowledge made it back to Arizona. Fear not, though, our long-running streak of actually having content on the blog will extend at least one entry further, as next up Ana will comment on an odd and not-particularly-delicious seasonal offering from the Japanese supermarkets.

Tateyama

2011-10-30T15:15:00.000+09:00

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

2011-10-27T21:19:00.000+09:00

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

2011-10-24T20:40:00.000+09:00

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.

Yamada Chikara (was Awesome)

2011-10-21T20:35:00.000+09:00

In the planning stages of our friends' visit to Japan, we decided that we would like to have one cost-is-no-object world-class culinary experience at some point in the trip. It's a lot easier to find such things in Tokyo than Kanazawa, so I began to identify candidate restaurants there. I spent a lot of time on the internet poking around various Best-Of lists, considering which cuisine was of greatest interest to us, reading reviews, and discussing my findings with the potential diners. The result was the selection of a restaurant called Yamada Chikara.

A short summary: Yamada Chikara was F------ Amazing.

OK, now with slightly more detail, and pictures.

Yamada Chikara is a tiny restaurant operated by a veteran chef of El Bulli, which is a restaurant in Spain that won a mountain of "Best Restaurant in the World" type awards. That place is noted for being in the vanguard of molecular gastronomy (Wikipedia entry) and for being completely impossible to get a seat at. However, Yamada-san worked there for a number of years, and then decided he wanted to return to Japan and start a restaurant in Tokyo. Yamada Chikara focuses on Japanese cuisine and tones down the molecular gastronomy a bit. It is fairly obscure, and I get the feeling they like it that way as I've read that they turned down the opportunity to be reviewed by Michelin and their restaurant is very well-hidden. Their deliberate obscurity probably contributed to being able to get reservations for half their available seating, otherwise known as "party of four".

After the museum we dressed up, grabbed our zoomed-in printed out maps of how to reach the restaurant, and headed across Tokyo. We were a little tight for time, and as we got close it became obvious that the traffic lights shown on the map as landmarks were in fact not all of the traffic lights existing on that street. We walked up and down a number of streets, looking intently for our destination, before being rescued by a passing foreigner who happened to know where it was. We had to joke that the restaurant hired him to come find us, because we could easily have walked past it a half-dozen times and not noticed it. The front of the restaurant is a blank white wall with an unmarked metal door, and a tiny (maybe 6") window with the name of the restaurant etched in small letters on the glass. As I said, they're not big on publicity. From here on, I'll mostly narrate the pictures.

One room, jet black bar that seats eight, very little by way of decoration. Simple and severe, low lighting. One chef, one server, both highly skilled.

We were issued the course menus in English and Japanese. I think it is safe to assume they don't bother with the English menu for everybody, but it was noted that we reserved in a combination of Japanese and English and the English menus were ready when we arrived. The menu was more for our edification than selection - whatever he cooks is what you eat. We ordered the accompanying wine course, putting our choices completely in their hands. This was not a mistake, and they started us off with an uncommonly interesting champagne.

The top is a crab and seaweed salad, which was notable primarily for the excellence of the crab. The soup is a miso soup with melt-in-your-mouth tofu, but the twist was they added horseradish to it, which you would never expect but worked extremely well with the sweet miso and creamy tofu. I was surprised and delighted, a combination which will arise consistently throughout the evening.

Our server had a lot more English than the chef (who answered the phone when I made reservations) and was cheerful, funny, and exceptionally diligent throughout the evening. My friend was very impressed that she noticed he was left-handed before the first course even started, and set up his tray accordingly to be the reverse of ours. Here she is preparing the rose martinis, which tasted exactly like roses smell, even though they were mostly made of olives.

The sashimi tray clearly relied more on the excellence of the ingredients than funny business, except for the soy sauce, which they rendered somehow into a soft foam, which was fun. By this time we'd finished the champagne and they'd poured us a chardonnay. Chardonnay is not normally my favorite, but this one was quite different than you'd normally expect and was interesting in its own right in addition to being an expert pairing with the food.

This one is a fairly traditional egg custard / soup, a style served often in Japan. They just served it better. Ana does not normally like these, but probably would have licked the bowl here if we hadn't been in polite company. I concur completely.

This one was so good that it was in fact proposed in some seriousness that we end the evening after consuming it, and simply meditate on the experience. Either that, or kidnap the chef and make him prepare more. What it is, however, is less easy to describe. It says "Spanish Omelet" on the menu, and it had layers of egg and potato and cheese foam and caramelized onion and it all blended together and went absolutely bonkers when you had some of the bread with it.

This dish is probably their most famous, and also quite showy. First they bring you a bowl with frozen foie gras powder in it.

Note the condensation on the underside of the bowl.

Then they pour hot broth into the bowl, and you scoop up some frozen foie gras and some hot broth in each spoonful. If timed correctly, you get both temperatures in your mouth at the same time, and the foie gras melts, in luscious buttery extravagance, into the already rich broth. We basically went one at a time for the first spoonful so that we could watch each person's face in turn as they tried it. It was surprising, delicious, and extravagant. The Spanish red wine they'd poured for us cut the richness between bites.

Roasted smoke-infused sea eel. When the top was removed, smoke billowed out of the container and then dissipated, making for a showy presentation. Simple and richly flavored. The eel part of it managed to make a few members of the group a bit less than pleased at the beginning, but by the end they'd come around. At this point they'd poured for us a powerful cabernet, so we were equipped for the heavier dishes.

Braised beef smothered in truffle sauce, with an enormous quantity of actual truffle on top. Tender, rich, unctuous...I'm pretty much salivating here at the keyboard. I don't think I've ever seen that much truffle in person, let alone on one person's plate. Rice and some vegetables were there to combine into the experience as desired. Once again, we were slain by food.

And most happy that it was so. Also note that tiny window over Ana's head - that's their sign.

Coming into the end of our visit, they served caramel ice cream made with caramel taken just past caramelized, to give a bitter flavor designed to offset the sweetness of ice cream. They also served various teas in handmade Japanese tea mugs that may have been worth more than our entire dinner.

All this prepared by one man in a kitchen roughly the size of our shoe closet. The kitchen seems to have one half where he cooks, and one half where she can go in and pick up the things that are ready. Three people could not work in that space at the same time, for sure.

So, to summarize, this was unequivocally one of the greatest food experiences we've ever had, and we'll remember it with great fondness for a very long time.

Not quite willing to let the evening end there, we took a taxi to Helmsdale (one of the greatest whiskey bars in the world, located in a random suburb of Tokyo) in search of a whiskey good enough to be a worthy finish to the evening. The whiskey drinkers in the group had a 43-year-old Speyside single malt taken down off the shelf, which I think proved suitably world-class.

Finally and utterly sated, we retired to the apartment. We'll pick up the narrative the next morning in a blog entry to follow soon.

National Museum (of Japan)

2011-10-18T20:27:00.000+09:00

The National Museum has been on our list to go see for some time. Like the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, the National Museum (of Japan) is the official repository of cultural artifacts and art in Japan. It seemed like if we were going to take our friends to one museum of Japanese culture, this might be the place to go. Plus, it is right in downtown Tokyo and the entrance fee is low. We got a number of pictures, which can be seen on Flickr.

We took a bit of a leisurely morning, sleeping in and then letting everybody have some recovery time, so when we finally went out into the world it was time for lunch. To speed the process, we decided to have lunch in Ueno Station, which is right next to Ueno Park, where the museum is located. We were there right smack in the middle of lunchtime and the place was overrun, with most restaurants having enormous lines. We gambled on a Vietnamese / Thai place that turned out to be pretty good and had very large portions.

Some parts may have been a little spicy, too.

The National Museum is housed in several separate buildings, but the main building seems to house the bulk of things actually on display - I suspect some of the others may be mostly for storage.

And wonder of wonders, cameras were allowed inside as long as you didn't use the flash. Some items have signs saying that no pictures at all were to be taken of them, but they were few and far between.

The museum was very austere and stylish - I felt that they were missing the chance to cram a whole lot more of their collection into places where it could actually be seen, but the style of the museum was to have a limited but representative set of priceless items of each type, then rotate them every few months.

Handwritten antique Japanese characters - virtually impossible to read.

Original samurai armor - he'd be plenty scary even if he was only about five feet tall, tops.

One thing that can be said is that the glass was REALLY clean, which was very helpful for photography.

The lighting conditions in some places had me playing with camera settings to try to get worthwhile pictures. I definitely learned a few new (but very basic to real photographers) tricks, with assistance from my old roommate, who has a lot more experience with such things.

Since all four of us are mechanical engineers, we enjoyed the posters explaining the techniques used to cast or forge various items, along with the materials science behind it. Ana is actually teaching some of this to students right now.

Some guy made this from rusty sand, with a fire and a hammer. Eight hundred years ago. That guy knew what he was doing.

In the broader Asian exhibit, they had some of the almost-prehistoric Chinese bronze castings that I enjoyed so much in Taiwan. This time, I could get pictures. I really find these interesting to look at, and that is a heck of a casting to have been done two or three thousand years ago, with basically fire and sand to work with.

More Chinese bronzes

These bits of pottery are from Iraq...seven thousand years ago.

Overall, the museum was perhaps smaller than I was expecting (hoping) for, but they did have some cool stuff and did cover most of the areas of traditional Japanese crafts, along with having some really nifty stuff from other cultures. It was a fun couple of hours, and afterward we headed back to the apartment to get dressed up for a fancy night out, which we will bring to you in mouthwatering detail in the next blog entry.

Sumo

2011-10-15T20:18:00.000+09:00

We pick up whee the previous entry left off, having just finished watching yabusame (Japanese horse archery) and getting some lunch at various festival-food stalls and a Freshness Burger. With our morning activity complete and sans hunger, we were finally able to go get the luggage we'd all left at Shinjuku Station and lug it across the city to the condo, where we could get clean and change clothes after the whole unexpectedly-riding-the-night-train thing. Refreshed and much more lightly equipped, we were ready for the second major event of the day: watching sumo wrestling at Tokyo's dedicated sumo coliseum. As always, the full picture set is available on Flickr.

Just outside the gates to the stadium

The home of sumo in Tokyo

Top-level sumo tournaments last fifteen days, and there are six tournaments per year, three of which take place in Tokyo while the other three are each in a different location. Eachhigher-level wrestler has one match per day (the lower ranks every other day), and whoever has the best win-loss record at the end is the winner for that division. In the morning and early afternoon the lower-ranking professionals have their matches, giving way to the top classes at the end of the day. We arrived early enough to catch several bouts of the lower-ranks, before watching the whole set of high-ranking matches.

The rules for the matches are probably more complicated than this, but the basics of who wins and loses we picked up pretty quickly. To win, push the other guy out of the ring, or make any part of his body that isn't his feet touch the ground. Avoid having the same done to you. You can hit the other guy, grab his special belt, or pick him up entirely if he'll let you.

Note the closer wrestler's skin rippling under the impact of the other guy's hand

At the beginning of the top-level matches, the wrestlers paraded into the ring wearing colorful and fancy apron-like garments which I believe are have the marks and colors of their training dojos. Two groups of wrestlers come to the ring one after the other, such that no wrestlers who will later face each other are in the same opening parade.

After the opening parade ceremony, further rituals needed to be performed before the pros could get down to business.

One thing that should be mentioned about sumo is that it, like yabusame, is supposed to be a Shinto ritual at heart. Unlike yabusame, the ratio of ritual to action is far less favorable. The matches themselves can be over in five seconds, or stretch out for perhaps a minute, but you are pretty much guaranteed five to ten minutes of the fighters stomping the ground, slapping their legs or arms to make sound, getting into position to fight, then standing up, rinsing their mouths with water, washing their faces, and throwing salt into the ring between each match. The referee wears Shinto priest robes and the whole thing goes down under a shrine that hangs from the ceiling. The ring has about 15 people who sweep it constantly, though this is partly to keep the sand outside the ring very smooth - so that if a fighter steps outside of it the imprint will be clear. There were a few times we almost missed seeing a match, just because it can be difficult to tell when they're pretending to get ready to go and when they're actually on the cusp.We eventually caught on to the fact that when they use the towels handed to them by their assistants, they're about to fight, but it took awhile.

So you get a lot of this...

...between short bursts of this.

However, you the reader are in luck because we filmed a number of the matches we watched in 1080p high definition using our snazzy camera, and made a montage of sumo matches that you can watch without any of the pesky Shinto ritual getting in the way:

At the end of the day's matches, the yokozuna, or really high ranking grand champion dude, got a bow to swing around, possibly to celebrate his 12 and 1 record for this tournament, possibly for some other reason. I'm not sure if this is tradition or what, and an English Google search is not terribly enlightening.

After sumo finished up, all of the many thousands of people there streamed out into Tokyo. The nearest train station was simply overrun, so we walked past it to the next one down the line, which was empty. From there we did a quick jaunt to Akihabara to see some neon and some very nerdy places indeed, before moving on towards dinner...

...which we didn't actually take any pictures of because we were too busy stuffing our faces. I'd made reservations at a dedicated tempura place that was reasonably priced, conveniently located, and was known to offer some level of service in English. It did happen to be named Tempura Fukushima, a name probably not quite so fortunate as it was before nuclear disaster struck that city, but we had no complaints. We ordered a set menu that had prawns, delicious little white fish morsels, scallop kakiage (deep fried seafood and vegetable cakes), and assorted vegetables. In addition to that, I convinced everybody to order sea eel, for which skepticism abounded until they actually tried it, after which everybody agreed it was excellent. We were all sitting at the bar, while the master stood behind it with his cauldron of oil - within arm's reach of our plates. From that vantage point he regularly bestowed fried goodness upon us. Very fresh ingredients, expertly deep fried and delivered within seconds for consumption. We all probably burned our mouths a few times, but it was mighty good, and the master and the woman who I presume was his wife were very friendly - between our Japanese and their English we got along fine.

We did remember to take pictures outside of the restaurant.

After dinner everybody was beat - them from the jet lag and us from not sleeping particularly well on the train, so we called it an early night and got about twelve or thirteen hours of sleep, which put us in a good position to enjoy the second day of tourism, which we'll document in the next two blog entries. Dinner on the second day definitely deserves its own entry, and we took plenty of pictures of that one, to be sure. Tune in next time (and the time after) for those!

Yabusame

2011-10-12T11:57:00.000+09:00

In late September we were visited by one of Lee's college roommates and his wife, who are good friends of ours and actually the couple that set us up together (thanks guys!). The trip was excellent and we did all kinds of cool Japan stuff with them, which means our record-breaking string of actually publishing blog entries will continue for at least another three weeks. The pictures are all on Flickr, in four different sets - Yabusame, Sumo, Tateyama, and Sept. 2011 Other Trip Pictures - so take a look if you're so inclined.

Our friends flew into Tokyo to meet us there at the beginning of a long weekend created by some Japanese holiday whose characters directly translate as "Filial Piety Day" by my reading but are more traditionally rendered as "Respect for the Aged Day". The plan was for Ana and I to take an evening train from Kanazawa to Tokyo, sleep at the school's condo, and meet them at the airport when they arrived at the crack of dawn. The first hint we had that this plan was not going to work was when we arrived at the station and saw...

... enormously long lines going into the ticketing and customer service area. A typhoon had rolled through the day before, and though it hadn't hardly rained any more than usual here, apparently the damage was severe enough in some places to cut the Shinkansen (bullet train) service we had tickets for. Or there was some other problem which we were unaware of. Either way, we were not able to take our scheduled train. We had good reason to be in Tokyo the next morning earlier rather than later, aside from simply meeting our friends at the airport, and so we were quite concerned while waiting in line for a ticket agent to give us a verdict. It turned out that the only way for us to get to Tokyo early enough to work for our schedule was the night train, which was a heck of a lot better than nothing, but for one thing didn't leave for most of four hours and for another meant we would not have time to sleep anywhere but on the train before launching into the first real day of the trip.

So we waited in their silly little waiting room, and got a lot of knitting of yarn and reading of books done...

...and then basically had our own car on the night train. We had to be in Tokyo early, so we were glad to achieve that even if it meant sleeping sitting up in a well-lit train car. We got some sleep, at least.

When we arrived in Tokyo at about 6AM, we split up and Ana went to go get in line while I went to Haneda Airport to meet our jet-lagged friends and bring them directly to the venue where Ana was waiting for us. We stashed their bags in Shinjuku Station (where Ana had stashed ours earlier - there was no time to take them to the condo) and hurried onward. I may have done some navigation that was not, strictly speaking, on the route I'd planned, and as time was getting short, I accidentally left my umbrella against a lamppost after examining my map. We arrived with less than five minutes before the start of what we'd come to see, just before 10AM.

The thing that made this mad dashing about worthwhile was the rare opportunity to see yabusame performed, which is a Shinto ceremony based around a display of skills in horse archery. It is performed for viewers probably fewer than ten times a year, and we had been very excited to find a chance to see it that we were actually able to take. Heck of a way to start off a trip to Japan, no? The yabusame we went to see was actually a starter event for a large all-day festival dedicated to horses, and we'd only found out about it a few weeks beforehand.

Ana had arrived hours earlier in the vanguard, and so we had a blanket laid out in prime territory instead of being exiled to the far end of the course with those without the determination to get up and show up so early. The sides of the course had a number of tiers, so once things started all we had to do was stand up and we could see the action quite well. In the meantime, we had brought along some breakfast items.

In a yabusame ceremony, there are three targets like the one above spaced down a track, and the idea is to gallop along the track and try to hit the three targets with arrows. Our sources indicate that this is not easy to do. There were a number of Shinto priests around, and some ceremonial aspects performed by them at the start, but mostly we were there for the horse archery part of it and I think that could be said of most of the crowd.

After some ceremonializing, the various yabusame practitioners passed in review and did a few warmup runs down the track to get a feel for it, before the arrows started flying.

Yabusame is traditionally done in the garb of the Heian period, which I believe was around 1100-1200AD. It certainly adds to the pageantry. Soon enough, they got down to business. Riders go one at a time and the three judges at each station are there to judge if the arrow hits or not and must be mildly uncomfortable as men with enormous bows fire arrows right past them.

We enjoyed watching the different riders test their luck, and since I'm pretty sure there were fewer than ten total runs the event ran as scheduled for a mere half an hour. Being late would have been a real problem, and we were very glad to have made things work out to be able to see it.

After the ceremony was finished, we patronized some of the many food stalls that had been set up nearby. I got an honestly barbequed chicken quarter from a stall named "Texas" which was delicious and well worth the five bucks, while our friends tried steamed pork buns and the ever-popular meat-on-a-stick. This left us fairly well fortified to pursue our day of adventure, but we ran into a Freshness Burger on the way back and got some of that too, just to be sure.

And wouldn't you know it, my umbrella was right were I left it, an hour or so later.

Next up, in the afternoon of the very same day, SUMO. The hits just keep on coming! Tune in next time for that as well as our visit to Fukushima*.

*OK, we didn't actually go to the Fukushima, for those who can't handle the suspense.

KIT Lantern Art

2011-10-09T21:47:00.000+09:00

The KIT architecture department does an annual display of nifty lanterns in a park downtown. We'd heard about it the first year we were here but didn't go, and were thereafter told that the grant had run out and it wouldn't be happening anymore, but they either got more funding or kept doing it anyway, because we basically ran into a current iteration of it by accident. We were en route to a Kenroku-en light-up that was scheduled for the holiday (Respect for the Aged Day) weekend. Apparently, however, it started on the Friday that nobody has off instead of extending through to the Monday that everybody does, so we missed that; it was OK because we've seen Kenroku-en before and the lanterns were new to us. We had the big camera with us and got some decent pictures, more of which can be seen at Flickr.

There was also a small stage area next to the park where various performances were being given. This guy danced to Latin dance tunes in traditional Japanese garb, with a sword.

Hokkaido JSEE Trip 3: Nikka's Yoichi Distillery Tour

2011-10-06T09:10:00.000+09:00

Ana opted for us to visit a zoo on her day of tourism, but my aim was for something a bit rarer and with rather fewer motorized stuffed animal carts. Nikka Whiskey is the more serious of the two Japanese companies that make whiskey in Japan. The other is Suntory, a huge conglomerate, while Nikka only makes whiskey. Nikka has two distilleries in Japan, with one near the tsunami disaster area around Sendai, and the other being an hour or so outside of Sapporo in the very small town of Yoichi. For my day of tourism we visited this distillery. More pictures can be found on Flickr.

Getting train tickets to Yoichi wasn't a problem since the station, the town, and the distillery all share the same name. The trains start getting pretty small and locally-based a while before getting out there, but it wasn't that long a trip and the weather was very nice. When we arrived at Yoichi Station, we had two problems. One, the coin lockers at the station were not big enough to accommodate our main luggage bag, which was the "medium" of my set of three. We were not looking forward to having to roll the bag around for the entire visit. Two, the brochure did not say how to get from the train station to the distillery! We had limited time to blunder about, and were considering hiring a taxi when we looked out the windows of the station and realized the distillery was, in fact, right in front of us.

No taxi required. Taken from the front steps of the station.

We walked the grueling ~350 feet of sidewalk to the entrance, and found that they had full-sized coin lockers with prices so low as to be pretty much nominal. With both problems solved and an English-language tour map in hand (free admission too) we set off.

It turned out that they had videos discussing each step of the whiskey production process in little kiosks around the grounds, one for each main step, and these videos were available in four languages, including English. We were in pretty good shape for understanding what we were seeing, which is not always the case in Japanese tourist destinations. We saw the fires under the distillation columns being fed here - I'm pretty sure that this could be done with suitable precision with gas instead of coal since only the heat reaches the product, but this is probably a traditional aspect of the production that has been retained.

Being mechanical engineers, we noted that each still was shaped differently and speculated on the methods of construction for large copper pressure vessels. Current thinking is that some of these were made of plates shaped and hammered together until no seam could be seen.

I checked - the warehouses they let people into contain only empty casks. The real warehouses with the actual whiskey are not shown on the tours, hindering my plot to roll a barrel out the back when nobody was looking.

They had a Nikka Whiskey Museum with all manner of rare and prizewinning examples of their craft, most of which are not for sale in the bar in the back of the museum at any price.

After completing the tour, we headed up to the free tasting room, where they had their standard single-malt and a fancier blended whiskey available for tasting, along with some kind of apple brandy they apparently produce from time to time. These aren't particularly special spirits, but the price was right and we'd just spent an hour or so watching videos and seeing things related to whiskey so we were certainly not going to complain, especially with the great views out the windows.

I went by the shop on the way out and picked up a few things that can't be had in stores. They don't let people taste these before buying, but they had glasses out that you were allowed to smell. Being single-cask examples, they could be better / worse / different than the moderated single-malts achieved by mixing together many barrels and targeting a consistent expression of a brand. Each of the single-barrels by year must also change considerably every few weeks, when they run out of one barrel and bring out another. The smells coming off of these two were very interesting and pleasant and I look forward to enjoying them in very small quantities over a long period of time. By volume, they ranged between considerably to exceptionally more expensive than I usually prefer to pay for whiskey, but since both bottles are undersized it didn't break the bank.

The train back towards Sapporo was one car. Yoichi is in the sticks. We went directly from Yoichi to the airport on the far side of Sapporo, where we surveyed their many dining options for a late lunch / early dinner meal.

Once again guys, this is NOT an American-style diner.

We ended up deciding that dessert sounded better than either lunch or dinner and got crepes instead.

After that, we made the trip back to Kanazawa without incident, and it may be noted without ever once being asked for ID before boarding the plane, having to take our shoes off, or any scan more advanced than a metal detector, which was a pleasant way to do it.

This post concludes the JSEE/Hokkaido series of posts - next up will be those related to the visit of some friends of ours from the states. We had quite a schedule of fun things to do worked out, including our first trip to see sumo live, so look forward to those posts coming up in soon.

Hokkaido JSEE Trip 2: Not Meh-Meh Land, and Crabs

2011-10-03T23:09:00.000+09:00

As mentioned in the previous entry, the international (English-language) part of the engineering education conference in Hokkaido ended on Friday. We'd bought plane tickets before having the schedule of the conference available, and wouldn't be flying out until Sunday night. Tourism was in order. As we found out, there isn't really that much to do in Hokkaido if you're not equipped to hike or ski - but we found a few interesting ideas through the internet and brochures at the train station, and made it happen. As usual, the complete picture set is available through Flickr.

After checking the options for things to do in Sapporo, and in the rest of Hokkaido, and not coming up with too much that was really special, we basically each picked the one thing we'd like to do the most, and did one main thing each day. Ana's pick was further out and would take longer to do, so we chose to do that on Saturday when we had the whole day and didn't need to worry about making a flight.

And thankfully it was not Meh-Meh Land, if for no other reason than the fact that she did not find the brochure until too late to go there. Examination of the other side of the pamphlet showed that Meh-Meh Land is one not-terribly-large building full of not-very-compelling-for-Lee things, like various sheep with various wools. I am very grateful not to have experienced it firsthand, though she did mutter "Meh Meh Land..." in a Cartman/Casa Bonita* kind of way for days after reading about it.

*For the unfamiliar, Casa Bonita is "the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants" according to South Park, and Cartman is a character who fantasizes about how to get there. The muttering was very similar to "Casa Bonita" at the end of the dream sequence in the clip below.

Casa Bonita
Get More: SOUTH
PARK more...

Instead, we went someplace where we could...

...ride around small motorized animal caricatures!

No, not quite. She picked the Asahiyama Zoo, which would in most places count as a pretty solid small regional zoo, except that many Japanese believe it is the best zoo in Japan and it therefore has about equal traffic with the Ueno Park Zoo in downtown Tokyo. For comparison, something like 30 or 40 million people live within 90 minutes travel time of the Ueno Park Zoo. There are about 5 million people in all of Hokkaido and it is a heck of a lot more than 90 minutes across. The rest fly in specifically to see this zoo, at least according to the internet. It was busy when we went but most schools are back in session and with no major holidays about things were sane, except maybe the motorized animal caricature things. The zoo was a couple hours' train ride out of Sapporo into the countryside, which wasn't so bad. Hokkaido seems wider than most of Japan - the fields go out a lot further before they hit mountains. It doesn't feel like home, but it seems not-exactly Japan-like either.

This zoo is the most famous thing about the city it resides in, and has special trains that run there from surrounding cities. I would be stunned if there weren't special buses from the airport and would not be surprised if there were special flights in for the zoo as well.

Not the best corndog

It was lunchtime and a bit past when we got there, and we discovered that both the gate fee and the refreshments were very reasonably priced. We decided to eat before heading in. I optimistically ordered a corn dog and found that it did not live up to childhood memories, though the fries were top-tier for fast food.

The best part about the corndog was the clever ketchup and mustard dispensing packet. This packet had a hard plastic top and soft plastic pouches containing the condiments - snapping the plastic back and pressing the pouches together in a V-shape caused neat lines of each condiment to be dispensed. I'm not sure I've ever encountered this technology before and I rather liked it, though the main accomplishment was probably to distract me from the corndog itself.

The Asahiyama Zoo got famous for two things: outstanding enclosures and the penguin march. The penguin march seems to be more of a winter thing where the let the penguins out of the cage and they go on a walk around the park while thousands of Japanese people take pictures, and it was not on the schedule for a hot, sunny day in September. That leaves the enclosures, several of which are notably pretty cool.

This penguin tank has underwater passages running through it with water on three sides

It is possible to get quite close to the penguins, but they have a guy there to stop those who lean too much over the fence.

The pens are sometimes quite vertical, where the animals might be right above and to the side of you. Mom - they had some signs having to do with deer and gardens, look for them in the Flickr set.

In another example of the plexiglass tubes running through parts of some enclosures, this young chimp sat on top of the tube (30 feet in the air) in order to get a good look at the inhabitants therein.

This other monkey told the capybara to get off his lawn.

As we were walking out Ana decided she needed to get a candy sculpture from this guy, who was pretty chill. I think the sugar starts hot, which allows him to mold and sculpt it, and then as it cools it becomes harder and holds the shape. He made her a pegasus in about 90 seconds.

Fairly impressive for some hot sugar and 90 seconds

After returning to Sapporo from the zoo, we found our appetite for local Hokkaido crab only whetted by that served during Thursday night's reception. We went to the train station and got all the brochures for crab-centric restaurants (and Meh-Meh Land) to figure out what we were looking for. There were several restaurants that would have been happy to serve us tasty-looking 10-20 course formal Japanese dinners with crab in every course, and the prices weren't even that bad, but we found we were looking for an experience with rather more crab and rather less fussing about. We went to the Kirin Beer Garden, an imitator of the Sapporo Beer Garden, for their tabehodai (all-you-can-eat) steamed crab dinner.

Step 1: Make the waiter bring a lot of crab and no extra vegetables - they were gracious about our gluttony and never brought a skimpy plateful, even on the fifth order of additional crab. As you can see, there are some fairly serious chunks of fairly large crabs here, and every now and then a really big piece would show up. They had English menus and English-competent staff, so we could tell we were in a tourist spot, which was fine with us.

When we arrived we got a table right away without any reservations, which was apparently only the situation for the crab-specific tables. The Genghis Khan tables were backed up for an hour, which affected us not at all, thankfully, because we'd come ready to eat. They started us off with a salad and some various sushi (unlimited sushi of 15-ish kinds was available to anybody with an all-you-can-eat dinner plan) and a soup and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting because the important part was the crab. Their obvious plan was to try to cut down on the amount of crab we could actually eat, but I'd say it pretty much failed because after eating those items we ate crab at speed for 100 minutes, alongside orders of additional no-extra-cost sushi.

Step 2: Put the cover on and cook it until you can't stand it anymore while drinking limited-release house beer (the Kirin special beers tasted a lot like Kirin regular beers, I switched to sake after we'd completed our sampling of the list of specials). It is probably safe to say that we got less conservative with how long we let it cook as the night went on, and that it got tenderer and juicier the less conservative with cooking time we got. There must be a limit there, but we didn't find it, and this was really very good crab. Flavor was a bit stronger than crab sometimes is, similar to lobster.

Step 3: Consume the crab by any means necessary - we weren't wallflowers here, they do the preliminary splitting for you, and from there between the scissors, various probes, bare hands and face we went through the shells faster than you might think, trying to keep our mouths full of tasty crabmeat. This whole dinner was more expensive than the Genghis Khan one, since crab commands a premium to lamb, but I'd say fairly priced and quite worth it. The atmosphere was not as good as the other beer garden, which was more lively. It was another good time for sure though, and probably more messy fun than the multi-course formal cuisine meals, though I wouldn't mind giving those a whirl sometime also if we ever return to Hokkaido.

There's one more day of Hokkaido tourism to blog, and that will be coming up next.

Hokkaido JSEE Trip 1: of Conferences and Genghis Khan

2011-09-30T18:52:00.000+09:00

The Japan Society for Engineering Education holds one of the bigger educational conferences in Japan, which we've attended in the past. This year, we both had papers to present, and so got free trips to the conference location to present them. The conference this year was in Sapporo, on the northern island of Hokkaido, which was a bonus because we hadn't been there before. If you'd rather skip the wordy bits and go right to the pictures they are as always on Flickr.

There is only one flight per day from Kanazawa to Sapporo, which is an early morning flight, so we got up early and pretty much slept through the various buses, flight, and train rides required to get from here to there. Also traveling with us was Ana's paper collaborator, another gaijin, from the computer department of the school where they teach. After arriving (but before the hotels would let us check in) the three of us went looking for lunch. We managed to find a fun buffet serving pretty good pastas, pizzas, and etceteras. Being fed, we checked into our hotel, napped a bit, then put on formal wear and went to the conference reception. The few speeches were short, which was good, and there were platters of local Hokkaido crab claws and legs as well as scallop carpaccio to eat along with good local sake, which was even better. We were still pretty full from lunch, so we concentrated on the good stuff. We also met a number of engineering education folks, mostly from Japan.

The next morning we had to get down to more serious business. We attended the international session of the conference and presented our respective papers without major problems arising. We were not very impressed with most of the papers presented - the JSEE international session is not a prestigious place to present and they'll take most anything that looks sort of like a paper for it. Our stuff had to be in the top English 5 papers for the day, for sure. Well, this conference was really more about practice and resume-building for us, anyway.

The international session of the conference ended in the late afternoon and thoughts turned to dinner. Ana's collaborator had been to Hokkaido before and knew just the place, but reservations weren't available until 8:30 at night, so we napped until the appointed hour was near.

This is not where we ate dinner. This is on the way to where we ate dinner, and based on the sign we had to take a closer look in case returning later was called for. There have been some good American "diners" we've been to in Japan.

We determined that this is Not-An-American-Diner. Unless you know of American diners serving omlet-rice? Sigh.

This is where we actually ate dinner: the immense and venerable Sapporo Beer Garden, the famous home of Genghis Khan. But we arrived a bit early, and had to kill some time in the reception area / gift shop before we could dine.

Which was OK because in the gift shop we found such treasures as this frightening Beer Chocolate...

...and this skillet shaped like the island of Hokkaido.

The Sapporo Beer Garden (owned by Sapporo Beer) is possibly the biggest restaurant I have ever been to. There are at least three large buildings housing many different halls - they have a single reception area and then the staff whisks you off to wherever in their empire the free table exists.

At this point in the narrative, the references to Genghis Khan should probably be explained. First, the Japanese are prone to giving interesting non-Japanese names for things and then acting like those names are understood by anyone who speaks English when only the Japanese actually know what they mean. For instance, buffet-style places are usually labeled "Viking", as in smorgasbord, instead of buffet. Innumerable other words are mutilated instead of changed outright, like "convenience store" becoming "conbini" and "air conditioner" becoming "aircon". Genghis Khan is the Japanese name for Mongolian barbeque, and Hokkaido has a lot of Mongolian barbeque, and it could pretty much be said that we went out for Genghis Khan for dinner and everybody would understand (but only if you pronounced it in the Japanese way, "jingisukan").

The location being the Sapporo Beer Garden, there were specialty beers from Sapporo, and the night being about all-you-can-eat sizzled lamb, there was plenty of that. The idea is that they give you the huge skillet-on-a-grill and as much lamb and vegetable matter as you like, and after coating the skillet with lamb-lard you sizzle it all up and start eating. When you run out of things to grill, they bring more. The lamb had good lamb flavor and was tender and juicy and good with the sauce so we ran through quite a bit of it. At the end we tried a slice of Hokkaido cantaloupe, which you see selling in stores for absurd amounts of money ($25-35 would be pretty common per melon) and determined that they are in fact really good, though perhaps not good enough to justify the price tag in our minds.

We mostly even waited for things to cook before eating them. Mostly.

As part of our amazing streak of having regular blog entries, expect the rest of the Hokkaido trip posts to go up in regular three-day increments. The international session of the conference took place on Friday, so we had the rest of the weekend to be tourists. Here's a spoiler - we don't go to a place called Meh-Meh Land...and I swear to you that is the true, exact, and real name of an actual tourist attraction in Hokkaido.

Noto Bike Trip 2

2011-09-27T19:04:00.000+09:00

We biked around the Noto peninsula in the spring of 2011 and had a pretty good time [Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5] but there was some debate over whether we had really finished the job when we took the bus back the final leg instead of biking door-to-door. Another foreign teacher here / friend of ours decided he wanted to do the Noto 400 course (race that does pretty much what we did, but faster) and asked if we'd be willing to do it all again early in September, before classes started up again. Ana would already be back at work and didn't exactly feel a burning need to settle matters between us and a landmass anyway, which is probably fair, but I took up the gauntlet. This time, the target was a door-to-door bike ride and ideally to accomplish the whole thing in four days instead of five. To that end, we spent a lot of time riding rather than taking pictures, but those we have can be seen on Flickr.

Stopping to put on waterproof shells ~45 minutes after leaving home

Remembering that the wind was a major factor the first time around the Noto, I resolved to create a more aerodynamic touring configuration for my bicycle. My hiking bag is big enough to hold the tent, sleeping bag, and crash pad and comes with the bonus of already having a waterproof covering available. I kludged a better support for it out of plywood, nails, and zip ties and fastened said abomination to the panniers' frame. It was ugly when visible, but the bag pretty much covered it and in that configuration I thought it looked pretty good, plus the bulk of the bag was almost entirely behind me. I didn't exactly wind tunnel test the effects, but I think it reduced drag substantially, and only tried to fall off the bicycle once, when I went over a big bump and two zip ties snapped (I had spares). Bungee cords also played a prominent role. Overall, I was quite pleased with it despite (or perhaps partly because of) its Frankensteinian nature. Everything for quick access I kept in the smaller bag on my back.

Anyway, after the maniacal cackling subsided, it was time to hit the road. The weather report was generally pretty positive, with no more than a 30% chance of precipitation on any day of the trip. Weather reports in Japan are really more of a prediction of what won't happen than what will, in my experience, and it started raining before we'd even left the city limits on the first day, but this was a prepared-for experience and as we kept going on day 1 it started and stopped raining several times.

We accomplished the previous Day 1's efforts in about 3.5 hours, arriving the "campsite" around 10:30AM.

Our plan to make the trip take four days instead of five consisted of basically doing two days' worth of riding on the first day, and getting close to or reaching Wajima. Those reading the previous blog entries and doing some arithmetic will note that when Ana and I did it Wajima took us more than 90 miles of riding to get there. This time, through gallantly not getting lost very often and taking a better route out of the city we made it to Wajima after about 80 miles at something like 7:30 at night, after twelve and a half hours on the road. We ate at the same yakuniku place as before and I got recognized by the staff despite only having visited once, four months earlier (I guess they don't get many gaijin). That was apparently enough to get a free round of pretty decent steak bits, which was nice. We hit the same onsen afterward and camped in pretty much the same place as before, but on a closed-off area of pavement instead of on top of the pricker bushes. Total mileage was 82.2 for the day and I suspect that will stand as my record for some time.

We were more than a little hungry at this point and dinner tasted really, really satisfying. I honestly didn't think we'd really make Wajima in one day - it is quite a ride.

The night was rain on and off for a while and then the tap got stuck "on" and it stayed raining for the next ~24 hours without much respite. Day 2 was going to be damp. We soldiered into it somewhat gingerly, feeling a little beat up from the day before. We made more stops for breaks and didn't push too hard, which was OK because we didn't have to make nearly as many miles.

We made a few tourist-type stops, but didn't spend nearly as much time seeing things and taking pictures as the previous trip in May. Here are the famous stepped rice paddies we photographed being planted in May, now full of rice.

We ate lunch in Otani, a very, very small town. I'm not sure I've ever been happier to see a bowl of soba in front of me - after several hours of biking while being rained on hot lunch was divine.

The way through the mountains was pretty primeval in the mist, and the turbines hummed in the background.

After lunch and with no sign of the rain letting up we decided to take an interior road across the Noto from Otani to Suzu instead of rounding the point as Ana and I had done in the spring. It cut about ten miles off the day's riding, a good idea, and showed me a part of the peninsula I'd not seen before. It could also not be called less than exciting, as the road went pretty much vertically up for an hour or so, then descended rapidly and with curves. Between the enormous downhills and the rain I was really flogging my brakes and had to adjust them two or three times as large percentages of my pads got worn away by the abrasive brake-dust slurry that formed on my wheels. There were also some pretty amazing bridges across very deep valleys that we crossed on the way down, but I'm not sure I could have stopped for a picture if I'd tried, so there aren't any pictures from that part.

Ineffective brakes not having proved fatal, we arrived at a positively civilized 2:30 or so at the Nihonkai Club and proceeded to eat a lot more than they expected us to, while sampling their fine home-brewed beverages. Having arrived and sated our hunger so early and extensively, we felt able to continue riding onward afterward. It was still raining, and I got talked into sleeping in a hotel in a nice dry air-conditioned room with modern plumbing instead of pitching the tent in some weeds on the side of the road. At about $70, the hotel was the single most costly part of the trip and was completely worth it. They had a pretty nice outdoor onsen, and since we were literally 40% of the guests at the hotel (we counted breakfast trays - there were 5), there was not much competition for space.

The included breakfast was about as Japanese as they come. Cold roast fish, cold tofu with ginger, cold chopped daikon salad, cold pickles, and a cold raw egg yolk (Ana's note - this was most likely onsen tamago, an egg cooked in the hot spring which is just warm enough to soft-cook the white of the egg while leaving the yolk untouched) in cold broth. The miso soup and rice, at least, were warm. To be fair, I ate everything on this plate and thought most of it was pretty good.

When we first woke up, the sun had been shining, but by the time we hit the road it was raining again, and rained on and off all day, with decreasing frequency. The weather was actually kind of nuts on day 3, with multiple instances of getting rained on while the sun was also shining on us. The sunscreen could not stand up to this and I picked up some mild burns.

The wind was once again not very kind while headed south along the coastlines, but either it was weaker than before or my streamlining efforts worked well, because it was not nearly as bad as it had been in the spring. Perhaps a combination of both? This portion of the trip is fairly scenic and the hills are rolling rather than sheer, so it was a pretty nice ride in any respect. We took an extra coastal road that Ana and I had skipped, adding back in most of the mileage we had subtracted the day before, and seeing additional nice scenery.

We made Nanao while it was still light out (picture from following morning) and got fish and chips from the Fish and Chips restaurant mentioned in the previous Noto blog series. It had stopped raining in the late afternoon, so we had some time to air out the tent and sleeping bags, and this made for pleasant camping.

Helmet on to protect the unwary from gnarly helmet hair

The fourth and final day we biked the leg that Ana and I had previously skipped, and found that it was by far the easiest part of doing the Noto, with lots of really flat terrain and only gentle, rolling hills. The weather was nice and we tore through the miles at high speed to arrive home shortly after lunchtime, after total overall travel of 217.7 miles. Ana made me tacos for dinner, and I'm pretty sure it can now be said that I've biked the Noto in full. Good times. Stay tuned for even more blog entries because we are on a ROLL and keep adding more things to the schedule.

Ninjadera

2011-09-24T15:27:00.000+09:00

There is a temple in Kanazawa colloquially known as "ninjadera" or "ninja temple" which has absolutely nothing to do with ninjas, and never did. However, it is still supposed to be worth a visit, and since it is all of a fifteen minute bus ride from our apartment, we went to check it out.

For all of their protestations of being not-ninja-related, the temple proved well camouflaged, hiding down a side street with no sign on the main road. That's the back of it at the end of the alleyway.

The back door didn't look attended, so we went around to the front rather than ending up someplace we weren't supposed to be.

From the main entrance we could see that it was open and there were people inside.

The exterior is pretty standard for Japanese temples.

We passed this on the way in and Ana mentioned that on the ghost tour in Tokyo she took with her mother the guide explained that this type of sticker has one's name, and the goal is to get it as high on the shrine as possible - the higher it is, the better the gods can theoretically hear you.

All the really cool stuff was inside. Unfortunately, photography is not permitted inside, so we couldn't document that stuff for you visually. The temple can't be explored on your own, because it is both quite old and very complicated inside, so the only method is by one of the tours offered by temple staff. The tours are in Japanese but they have guidebooks that they give foreigners with basically a word-by-word breakdown of what is being said, which means that we got a lot more information than usual about what we were seeing.

The temple was built after the Tokugawa Shogunate had assumed total power in Japan and begun making strict laws to make sure that nobody could challenge that power. One set of laws with that intention involved, basically, building codes. The Shogun wanted to limit the types of defensive structures that could be constructed by forces not under his control. One thing you weren't supposed to do was build structures with more than three stories, exactly why I'm not sure. There were probably other limits, but we didn't get a lot of information on Shogun-era building codes.

Anyway, the local lords of Kanazawa, the Maedas, wanted to have some strongpoints outside of Kanazawa Castle to watch the landscape for evildoers and provide havens for soldiers and spies on the move. Ninjadera is a temple, but was constructed to be an extremely defensible temple that doubled as a lookout post and military strongpoint, and they built a number of fairly fiendish defensive mechanisms into it that the tour told us about and sometimes demonstrated.

For instance, some of the stairs leading into the main temple from the outside have rice-paper risers. From a secret chamber under the stairs, one could see the feet of the enemy approaching through the rice paper without being seen oneself, and do violence upon said feet with spears or other weapons if appropriate. The rest of the stairs being solid, it was possible to retreat from this attack position without the enemy being able to pursue.

If they made it past the stairs, just inside the main doors to the temple is what is normally a very large in-floor offering box covered by a wooden grating. Remove the wooden grating, and suddenly you have a deep pit trap in which could be covered by something thin to snare the unwary, or just left uncovered for people running inside on the attack to fall into. There are several pit traps in key doorways and connecting hallways throughout the temple.

Past the pit traps the main temple area can be found. Several of what appear to be walls are actually mesh doors to dark alcoves, where the guards inside can see out through the bamboo mesh, ready to leap out and do bad things to people.

Past those guards, the structure of the temple itself starts to get really tricky. The outside of the building appears to have three (perhaps slightly larger than normal) floors, but inside there are actually seven levels. An interconnecting maze of full-height and half-height rooms and tunnels offers easy transit in any direction to someone who knows the temple well, while being a complete mess for the ignorant. Lots of one-way doors, secret tunnels with locking doors, hidden staircases in closets, and the like, along with an escape passage that is supposed to lead outside the temple grounds to the castle that is actually located inside the temple's well. There are also hidden rooms and compartments if simply hiding seems a better choice than fighting or running, though one of the hidden rooms was intended for use by a lord or commanding officer who needed a good place to commit suicide. That room's door can't be opened from the inside once closed. There was at least one room that, standing in it, there was no obvious way out - all the doors connecting to that room were concealed in some way. The whole thing was pretty cool and we understood everything that was being said on the tour from the book, which was a real treat. The Japanese website has some pictures of the various traps and hidden stairs here, but again it is in Japanese and the pictures are fairly small.

All in all, a pleasant little visit to a place intended to be unpleasant for uninvited guests. I guess when you pay for the tour they don't feel the need to spear your feet through the front stairs.

Gold Leaf Museum and Souvenir Shopping

2011-09-21T13:08:00.008+09:00

Here's the thing. We didn't actually take any pictures of the gold-leaf process or goods in the actual building. We were getting shown the process by this older gentleman in about 1/2 English and 1/2 Japanese and we just didn't think to get the camera out. Sorry. I'll describe the gist of it: they hammer the heck out of the gold with machine hammers, which causes it to spread out. Then they cut the spread out pieces into smaller squares and hammer them until they're once again inconveniently large. This repeats for days. The small chunks are put between leaves of paper that are bound into a book-like thing made for hitting, so that they can hammer hundreds of the ultra-thin squares of gold at once. At the tail end of this process, the gold leaf is exceptionally thin - he mentioned one ten thousandth of a millimeter, which is about 0.000004 inches if I did the unit conversions correctly. At this point the metal doesn't act like you expect, but folds and flows like cloth, which was really cool to see. The place we were at also had a store with quite reasonable prices (compared to places further from the source) and we did a lot of souvenir shopping there.

We did take a picture of green tea being milled in a tea / tea-ceramics shop we passed.

We've intended from the beginning of our time here to come back with a certain quantity of cool Japanese stuff. We've generally held off on purchases so that we'd get to know what was out there and what it cost before laying down real money on things that might later be eclipsed in excellence and undercut in price. However, we're now approaching the end and decided that this month would be a good time to get into the hunt in earnest. We've been out a few times looking for particularly nice items that also happen to be in our price range. I saw a $25,000 plate in one store; it was freakin' gorgeous and I probably would have bought it were it say, only $500 or so and therefore merely very expensive instead of simply beyond any semblance of reason. Another vase for a mere $12,000 caught my eye at another point, but I had to let it go.

We discovered one of the major craft-stall areas at the top of a shopping complex temporarily displaced by a children's fun center, which stopped us from shopping there on this occasion.

Fortunately, there are a lot of things out there that aren't quite that expensive, and occasionally they're even nice, and worth what's being asked for them. Over a few different instances we went to probably a few dozen different stores and only made purchases at maybe five or six of them.

We grabbed dinner at a Vietnamese/Thai place near the station that we hadn't tried before. Pretty good for the price - it was cheap and solid but not outstanding.

They did have some pretty interesting plating and presentation going on, very showy.

This is the current and mostly final haul of goods - I'm still looking for a vase of a particular style and Ana may buy more tea mugs if she encounters the right one(s) at the right price(s). There are some nice serving plates, some Japanese tea (matcha) mugs, a couple of interesting vases, and some additional pretties that we can display that are very Japanese. There really aren't more pictures that are relevant to this post, so I'll sign off by saying that the next post will probably be our tour of the local "ninja" temple, which never had anything to do with ninjas but is supposed to be chock-full of interesting hidden defenses and cunning escape routes.