Unfamiliar Japan Summer 2009:
Personal Accounts and Diary
Tyler Casey Callich
Dr. Tatsuya Fukushima
JAPN 3983 / FLAN 3923
Friday, July 17, 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Section I: Personal accounts
Tokyo 1.1
Matsue 1.2
Tokyo 1.3
Yokohama 1.4
Section II: Diary
Tokyo 1.1
Matsue 1.2
Tokyo 1.3
Yokohama 1.4
Section I: Personal Accounts
Tokyo
May 21st
Our 14 hour flight to Japan began at 12:50 from the O’Hare airport. I sat by a Korean woman named Soojin who slept most of the flight. I tried my best to stay awake the whole flight in a preemptive move against jet lag. When we arrived on Japanese soil my eyes were bloodshot and red. We rode a bus for a very long time and passed through a tunnel which went under a bay. The tunnel was so long I wondered if we would ever resurface. After got to the Toyoko Inn and unpacked out luggage, we sought dinner. We found a place called Nagomitei, only after much walking around. It was loud and smoky on the inside. When we were done eating, I was completely exhausted so I went to bed very easily.
Matsue
May 22nd
Today we made another flight, but this time it was very brief and domestic. Two Shimane Daigaku students met us at the airport and helped make us feel welcome. We checked into the New Urban Hotel, where we would be staying for six nights. This hotel is larger than the Toyoko Inn, but it is older. It is situated very close to Lake Shinji, which is in the middle of the city of Matsue. There is also a public park across the street. That night Shimane students threw us a welcome party. It was very overwhelming and I had many new names to memorize. We played some games to take the pressure off of socialization, which helped me relax from the stress of travel and so many people. After such a busy day I slept well.
May 23rd
We made our way to three attractions today, Lafcadio Hearn’s house, an old samurai residence, and Matsue Castle. At each we got a feel for how Matsue used to be as a city, in feudal times and the late 19th Century. We got to see many of Hearn’s personal belongings in his house and in a museum next door. Matsue Castle was very tall and almost completely made of wood. For lunch that day I had ramen and dango, or rice dumplings. We were shown around the local department store, Saty, which is very many levels tall. I got to see my first arcade here. Following our trip to Saty, we went bowling, which was very similar to bowling in Arkansas. Right before our evening meeting we went to so-called “American style” bar and ordered some food. I am still not sure what made the bar “American style,” apart from its décor. After ordering supper we rushed to the hotel for our meeting, which ended up being delayed.
May 24th
Today we got to see Horan En’ya, which is a festival that occurs once in every twelve years. It commemorates the movement of kami, or gods, from one shrine to another by boat. This festival consists of many, medium-sized boats being rowed by men in circles, while they chant “horan en’ya.” On the boats are also men and women dancers, who act out slow, traditional dances. We were allowed to stand next to one of the boats up close and eventually obtained a very good view from a parking garage. The boats were covered in many different, vibrant colors. After we had watched the procession of boats for a while, we went to lunch at a buffet called Pomodoro. During out free time we went to a nearby arcade and then to Saty again. This evening was spent at karaoke, which was another first for me. I sang “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles, with the help of Pate.
May 25th
We formally visited the Shimane campus today, so we accordingly wore a suit and tie. We sat at a large table with the administration of the university and discussed Horan En’ya and what our visit to Matsue means. We had lunch at the cafeteria on campus. During this time I got to speak with some of the students about literature and their favorite books. After this we received a wonderful lecture about Lafcadio Hearn by his grandson Bon Koizumi. Following the lecture we were shown a process of lacquer which Matsue is famous for, Yakumonori. We were gifted with a visit to the artisan’s workshop where we saw lacquer products at various stages of completion. For dinner we went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. This kind of menu is constantly moving and you only eat what you pick up off of the belt. Later that night we went to a Japanese style bar. This is a low-lying table in a private room. It really helped to become acquainted with the Shimane students by not being in an open, loud bar setting like an American style bar. It was very close to our hotel, so we walked back in a large group.
May 26th
Today we saw a sake factory, made our own wagashi, or Japanese sweets, and went to a maccha factory and tea house. The Rihaku sake factory was a very large building, and we were walked through every step of the process. It was impressive to see the large vats of sake, which were twice as tall as me. We were even given the chance to taste some sake after the tour. The sweets making at the Karakoro Art Studios was very hands on. A professional showed us how to make two kinds of sweets out of anko, or bean paste. Later, at the tea house, we ate some of our sweets, which canceled out the bitterness of the maccha. After we made our sweets we went to a restaurant as a group, both the Shimane students and Arkansas students. Here we shared Japanese and English tongue twisters with one another. Later that night Minako Hiroe began helping us with our honors translation project. For supper we went to a local, small restaurant that serves okonomiyaki, or a cabbage and egg pancake. I ordered mine with octopus inside.
May 27th
We learned a lot about Izumo today at the Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo and the Izumo Shrine. The museum housed a remnant of a large pillar from the Izumo Shrine, which was at least 1.5 meters at its diameter. Inside the museum were some possible reconstructions of the shrine that attempted to conceptualize its original size from artifacts such as the pillar. Following the museum we visited the current Izumo Shrine. It was a very dense shrine with many buildings, so I could not determine where the original shrine had been located. Directly after the shrine we went to a soba restaurant for lunch.
Next, we made our way to the Hinomisaki Lighthouse. I was too afraid to go out on the top. I was informed that Korea is visible on a very clear day from the lighthouse. On our ride to one more shrine before heading back to Matsue, I was able to see a torii, or gate that is placed at a Shinto shrine, on an island. Following the shrine we boarded a very old train and rode back to Matsue. In Matsue we were dismissed from a natural spring footbath. It was a very relaxing end to my day. For supper I had fried horse mackerel. After supper we went to another Japanese bar, where I got to know more of the Shimane students.
May 28th
Today we visited a paper artisan’s workshop, the Izumo Yaegaki Shrine, the Izumo tombs, and the Shimane University library, as a large group. Later with Ryokyo Shishido, Minako Hiroe, and Matthew Midgett, I went to the beach. We made paper out of taro root in a very calming building, after we had watched a film explaining the history and significance of the craft. Afterwards we visited a Shinto shrine named Izumo Yaegaki. We gave our prayers and even participated in a little fun. We placed ten yen on a piece of paper with a love fortune written on it. Then we placed the paper in a pool. If it sunk near you then you would have close love. If it did not, then it would be distant.
Before we visited the tombs we had a bento lunch at a museum about the tombs. Then, we visited the Izumo tombs, which was the subject of our honors translation project. The tombs were a hillside covered in many yellow flowers. Following the tombs we went back to the Shimane campus and looked at the library’s collection of Lafcadio Hearn books and manuscripts. Following this, we looked at the Shimane University’s calligraphy and flower arrangement displays. One of them was Nozomi Hasegawa’s, with whom we have been spending a lot of time. Afterwards a few of us went to the beach and waded in the water. For supper we went to a buffet in Saty, which was very affordable and delicious. That night, after our meeting, we played with sparklers by Lake Shinji, which is close to our hotel.
May 29th
We returned to the Shimane campus today and received a lecture. The lecture was good practice for putting our personal experience into Japanese. Ms. Nakasono helped us remember the steps involved in our sweets making experience at the Karakoro Studios. At the end of her multimedia presentation, we composed a short speech in Japanese. Afterwards we went with Shimane students to the Adachi art museum. For lunch we stopped at a restaurant and ate chawanmushi, miso soup, tempura vegetables, and fish. The museum had a beautiful garden surrounding it and a lot of contemporary Japanese art.
After the museum we visited the Gesshoji Temple, which was created by the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. It was named after his mother, whose ashes are on the temple grounds. Tonight there was no group meeting, so we went to Hiroki Fujimoto’s house for a party. I helped the women make takoyaki. We made the fried balls in a specific kind of pan, one filled with half spheres. When they were half done we stuffed them with octopus and flipped them with a stick. Much later in the night we went to the hotel by taxi.
May 30th
Today the Shimane students took us to Daisen, a mountain in the area. We rented a Shimane bus and hired a driver for an inexpensive fee. Near Daisen we visited a milk farm, which sold many different milk-based products. We all had soft cream, which was very sweet. Next we visited a department store twice the size of Matsue’s Saty. It did not have as many floors, but it was very spread out. It even had a supermarket on its bottommost floor. I somehow came out of there without buying anything. For lunch we ate at the food court. Before heading back to Matsue we went to the beach, even though the weather was rainy. We had a meeting tonight, but we went to karaoke anyway, towards which I am growing very fond. I do not like to hear myself sing but it is very nice to hear others.
May 31st
We went very far today to see an UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Ginzan silver mine. Our schedule was very tight at first, so we had to hurry. The mining town was very small and charming. Part of the mine was open to tourists and we went down pretty far into the ground. The men working there had terrible conditions, considering the humidity I felt and chances of flooding of which our tour guides spoke. For lunch we had a bento lunch from a local restaurant. As I finished eating early, I departed to look at some of the local shops for souvenirs. For supper we went to a Korean style restaurant that served a lot of meat. For the second time we shot off sparklers near the hotel, which is a lot more fun than loud American fireworks.
June 1st
Today we visited caves in an area called Kaka, the Sakai fish market, and a street in Sakaiminato. Each of these places was in the prefecture next to Shimane, Tottori Prefecture. The caves were dedicated to children and infants who had died. It was a very somber and moving spectacle. Many of the shrines or sections of the caves were very personal. After the boat ride to the caves, which was rather rough at times, we visited the Sakai fish market. Here I tasted some obscure ice cream flavors, tuna and seaweed.
We had lunch near a street dedicated to the creator of the manga GeGeGe no Kitaro. Nozomi Tanaka and Nozomi Ishihara walked with me down the street, where many shops dedicated to the manga were located. As tonight was our final night in Matsue, the Shimane students threw us a farewell party very similar to the welcome party. They offered us many gifts in parting and gave us kind goodbyes. Some even wrote us endearing letters. After the party we went to our last bar, where a lot of the students became drunker than usual. I left early so I could pack and rest up.
Tokyo
June 2nd
We arrived in the Kamata area of Tokyo today, which is vastly different from Mastue. Before boarding our plane to Tokyo, though, we went to one last temple named Gaku’enji. It was at the top of very many steps and gave a great view of the surrounding area. Some Shimane students accompanied us on this final trip and even went with us to the airport. We ate lunch together at the airport.
From our plane we were able to see the students and faculty still waving goodbye to us. In order to show them that we could see them, I started opening and closing my window shade and the other students followed suit. I later found out that they did in fact take this as my intended message. We stayed at another Toyoko Inn near the Keikyu-Kamata Station in Tokyo. For supper tonight we went to a ramen shop as a group, since none of us knew the area.
June 3rd
Today we first went to a sumo museum next to the large stadium named Ryougoku Kokugikan. For lunch we went to a sumo wrestler restaurant, which served a large hot pot filled with various meats and vegetables. After we had eaten most of the meat and vegetables, the server put udon noodles in the broth and then we had udon.
Next, we visited the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which attempts to illustrate the historical changes that accompanied the change from Edo to Tokyo. Many artifacts from the periods before the Meiji Restoration helped show how Japan was under the shogun. Upon returning to Kamata we enjoyed free time. During this time we went to a grocery store, where I bought some figs. For dinner several of us went with Dr. Fukushima to curry. Later that night, after our meeting we went to Shibuya to meet one of Nick’s friends, Shino Happo. With her we went to an odd bar called The Lock-Up, which is dungeon-themed. Even though it was dungeon-themed, it was still very Japanese. It had low-lying tables and semi-private rooms. When we returned later that night I was glad to be inside and not in the neon-lit Shibuya.
June 4th
We saw a variety of places today, including a return visit to Shibuya. We saw two governmental buildings, the Diet Building and the Imperial Palace. The Diet Building houses the legislative branch of Japan’s government. There we saw the House of Councilors, the actual place where they vote. Next, we saw the Imperial Palace, which was formerly the residence of the shogun in Tokyo. The fact that the Emperor wanted the shogun’s castle helps illustrate the power that was reclaimed by the imperial family with the Meiji Restoration.
For lunch we ate at Tokyo Station, which was very dense with stores and restaurants. Following this we went to the NHK building, which is where Japan’s public broadcasting is taped. We returned to Shibuya, this time in the early evening. It was very packed and when the lights indicated pedestrians could cross, the streets immediately filled with them. Later that night, after our review meeting, we walked around Kamata to look for a bar. While we did not find any like the ones in Matsue, we found a safe one, at least.
June 5th
We went to the Studio Ghibli Museum today. For an early lunch we grabbed some snacks at Mitaka Station, on our way to the museum. Studio Ghibli is responsible for a lot of anime films that are popular in the United States, though I have not seen many of them yet. It was a very kid-friendly and visually pleasing museum. Next we walked around Yoyogi Park for street performers, but it was raining so none were out. Afterwards we went to the Hard Rock Café, where some of the others bought souvenirs. In this are we ate supper. After supper we went to the Tokyo Tower. The height of this structure was difficult to ascertain from a distance due to the cityscape. However, it is very, very tall. There are two levels for observers to go. I only went up to the first because that was tall enough for me. After this scare, which was a lot worse than my fear of the Hinomisaki Lighthouse, I was glad to return to the Toyoko Inn.
June 6th
Today we visited the electronics district of Tokyo called Akihabara. One store, Yodobashi Camera, was seven or more floors. The floor I spent the most time on was the toy floor. For lunch I ate eel in the building’s basement. After Akihabara, we went to Ginza, which is a very expensive shopping district. Matthew and I went to a fine stationary store and then only window shopped after that because of the exorbitant prices. In Ginza was also a Sony showroom, where we saw a lot of the latest technology, such as smile-recognition cameras and panoramic digital cameras. For supper Matthew and I went to CoCoCurry, which was near our hotel.
Yokohama
June 7th
We left Tokyo today for Yokohama. Luckily it is a both a Sunday and we are departing Tokyo, otherwise it would be hectic. The train ride was about 20 minutes, which was surprisingly swift. We put our luggage in one of the rooms at our new hotel, the Hotel Central Inn Yokohama. This was because the other rooms were not yet ready to check into.
Dr. Fukushima had planned for this and we went to a Yokohama Bay Stars baseball game. The Bay Stars’ motto is “Move on.” This is very funny considering they are not a top-notch team. After the game we explored near the hotel on the Isezaki Mall, a very long walk filled with shops and restaurants.
June 8th
Today we woke up really early to see the Misaki fish market and tuna auctioning. We saw literally tons of tunas. They were auctioned off in an anonymous, silent auction. The requirements and credentials to become a bidder in the auction are very strict. Next, we visited a fish market, where we saw many of the same things as in Tottori’s fish market. Here I bought some pickled sea urchin to take home with me.
Dr. Fukushima paid for our lunch today, which was curry in Yokosuka. Yokosuka is where a U.S. military base is located. This area helps bring into context a lot of the cultural exchange that has happened in Yokohama due to its status as a port. Many of the gift shops catered directly to American tastes and the area was a little run-down. Back on the Isezaki Mall we went shopping and ate dinner at a place named Ootoya.
June 9th
We went to a Kanto Gakuin University campus today. We dressed formally because we met with the president of the university. Some of the students gave us a tour of the school, including the library, the church on campus, and some of the sports fields. For lunch we had sandwiches with the president, some representatives from the international center, and several Kanto Gakuin students. It was a very relaxed interaction and not stressful for me at all compared to the formal meeting at Shimane University. Afterwards we returned to Isezaki Mall for some free time. I ate at another conveyor belt sushi place and even saw some durian fruit at a local grocery store.
June 10th
Today we spent a long time in Kamakura, one of the shogun’s historical capitals. We saw the Daibutsu bronze statue, the wooden Juuichimen Kan’non statue, and the Tsurugaoka Hachimanguu Shrine. We first went to the shrine, which, amongst other features, had a very ancient ginkgo tree. At the shrine we went to a museum, which had articles of clothing and wooden artifacts from the Hein period.
Next, we ate lunch near the train station and did some shopping. Following this we saw the bronze statue of Amide Buddha. The Daibutsu statue is very many times life size and at least two stories tall. It is completely made of bronze and must be unimaginably heavy. After walking around the statue and even going inside, we went to a temple dedicated to a Kan’non statue. This statue too was very tall, but it was made of wood. Hearn told the story in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan of sailors finding the statue glowing in the sea during the Nara Period.
At this temple there were also very ornate gardens and a great view of the ocean. This temple helped illustrate the strategic qualities of Kamakura which the shogun factored into choosing it as his capital. From the temple’s position we could tell that the shore was very shallow and we also got a great view of the insulating mountains.
June 11th
Our goal today was to visit some Yokohama attractions and get a better idea of its recent history as a port. We first went to Harbor View Park on Yamate Hill, which is where foreign diplomats have historically lived in Yokohama. The Italian Garden in this area was exquisite and had very many different varieties of roses. Next we went to the nearby shopping district called Motomachi. This was an upscale area and it was priced accordingly.
We looked for a place to eat here, but Dr. Fukushima decided that Chinatown would be less expensive. He was correct and we ate lunch there. Afterwards we walked around Chinatown, but there was no cohesive shopping district, just a smattering of restaurants and a few stores. Next we went to Yamashita Park and Osanbashi Pier. Both places really gave us a great view of the bay and the boats traversing it. Landmark Tower, which is an essentially Yokohama sight, was plainly visible from Osanbashi Pier. It has been visible at a lot of different times all over the city. Later that night I went to a sushi place for supper. I went again to eat with the group for our meeting at CoCoCurry. After that we had our meeting and Matthew and I got coffee on the mall.
June 12th
Today we went to another campus of Kanto Gakuin, the Kanazawa Bunko campus. We ate lunch at the school cafeteria and then attended a lecture by Dr. Fukushima, entitled “Simpler Words Aren’t That Simple.” He discussed some political discourse and how it utilizes simple words to great effect by manipulating their extended meanings.
He went on to explain extended meanings by elucidating the differences between the English word “drinks” and the Japanese word “nomu,” which are supposed to mean the same thing. However, his survey of our responses proved that in English the substance ingested must contribute toward a body, whereas in the Japanese the substance is just ingested by mouth. In the same way that “drink” and “nomu” have complex, extended meanings, so do many of the words used in political speeches.
Afterward we had a discussion with the Kanto Gakuin students about the environment, employment, and other topics about our lives. We later went out to a bar with the Kanto Gakuin students for supper.
June 13th
We spent a lot of time shopping around Yokohama Station today. Dr. Fukushima spoke about the possibilities of a light rail system in Northwest Arkansas and that Yokohama Station is an example of how a rail station can affect development. The station itself was very nebulously attached to several department stores, such to the point that I did not know where it began and the others began. While Tokyo Station had been similar, this was amplified in the Yokohama Station because it was much larger and populated. I think that if such a system was implemented in our area, it would change our shopping is done. Many stores would be built around the stations to cater to its passengers.
Matthew and I went to the Tokyu Hands department store and that is where we spent most of our time. For lunch we went to an okonomiyaki restaurant. We went with the others to a Tower Records store, where I found a lot of my favorite Japanese artists. For lunch that evening I had a few takoyaki, like I made in Matsue, and a maccha latte. Matthew and I spent the evening at the St-Marc Café, which had a nice, calm atmosphere.
June 14th
Today we were lucky to have a tour led by Dr. Fukushima’s brother. We followed the footsteps of Lafcadio Hearn on his first day in Japan. However, Hearn did not name his temples, so it was unknown until Mr. Fukushima’s recent research determined which they actually were. On his first day, Hearn visited one Shinto shrine and three Buddhist temples. The first temple we went to was atop a rather tall hill in a residential area. Its name was Narita Yokohama Betsuin. It had been destroyed mostly in World War II, so it was difficult to match to Hearn’s text. Next we went to Shirotaki-Fudouka, where we happened to meet some Kanto Gakuin students, none of whom we knew. This temple was easy to match to Hearn’s because of a waterfall which was still present today.
Next we went back to the area of Motomachi to see the area where the one Shinto shrine had existed. Today in its place there is a park, which we did not visit. After this we returned to the same Chinese food restaurant where we ate the other day and had lunch together. In Chinatown we were also shown the place where Hearn’s hotel had been, where there a parking lot is now. Finally we visited a temple called Akaman, known as such because of its red gate. This red gate and its red guardians helped greatly to match it to Hearn’s own. The others went out tonight, but I stayed in the hotel for once and read a book. For supper I went to a cheaper conveyor belt sushi restaurant.
June 15th
We sought today to complete our tour of Yokohama’s main sites. We visited some themed parks that sought to both entertain and educate us, but they were mostly confused, flashy exhibits that did not teach much. For example, in the center of one was a giant mechanical spider, and in another was a huge theater that showed a futuristic science fiction anime. Neither of these really taught the viewers more about Yokohama as a port today or its history as 150 years as a port. We also visited a pair of red brick warehouses called Aka Renga. However, no information in the pamphlets for these buildings, nor exhibits in the buildings themselves, discussed their historical significance. For lunch we went to World Porters, which had a lot of nicer restaurants in a food court. After the amusements we attempted to go to the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History, but it was closed for some reason. Instead we went down Bashamichi, which was a street that commemorated a lot of Yokohama’s firsts, such as ice cream, horse-drawn carts, and gas lamps.
Supper was a very daring exercise. I had very spicy ramen at Rairaiken, a restaurant known for its intolerably hot ramen. Afterwards I went shopping and tried to go to sleep, but could not get the taste of the ramen out of my throat.
June 16th
Today was a free day. Michael and I went to the Yokohama Museum of Art with three Kanto Gakuin students, Natsumi Hyogo, Yuka Kimura, and Masahiro Kaneko. Michael and I were a bit late, but they luckily waited for us. We saw numerous French paintings from the 19th century, because that was the featured display. The permanent exhibition included a lot of surrealist works by Dali and Man Ray. For lunch we went to a spaghetti restaurant, which was sort of ironic, because it was a Western meal for one of our last real meals in Japan. We went shopping around Yokohama Station afterwards and then parted ways with the Japanese students. For supper that night I went with Matthew to the okonomiyaki restaurant on the Isezaki Mall we went to once before.
June 17th
We departed for Arkansas today. We left Yokohama by the Narita Express, which is a train that goes directly to the international airport. We waited at the Yokohama Station on our train for quite a while. During this time I drank a lot of tea and coffee. On the train I savored my last taste of maccha ice cream. I usually eat very quickly but today I ate it very slowly. The Narita Airport’s entrance area was very large. Its ceiling rose many feet in the air. We ate lunch at the airport and waited more time there for our flight. I experienced a mixture of sadness and happiness upon our departure.
Section II: Dairy
XNA to Tokyo
May 20th
I stayed the previous night at my parents’ house, which is pretty distant from Fayetteville. However, it is rather close to the airport. A combination of a foreign bed and anxiousness disallowed me from sleeping much last night. I believe I got about 4 hours of sleep in total.
This day was rather short, because of the flight in the opposite direction of the sun. Arriving at the XNA airport was an odd experience because I saw and met the families of strangers. Some of these people, Michael, Hutch, Nathan, and Pate, I have never met before. The others, Nick and Matthew, I have had class with before. It is helpful to obtain brief impressions of their friends or parents prior to spending a month with them. It’s a little crash-course in how they interact with others. Boarding the plane was stress-free and the flight was forgettable and short. I purchased an orange before departing and ate it during the brief flight to O’Hare.
O’Hare airport was rather large. Here I bought tapioca pearl tea from a store named Argo Tea in Terminal 3. I had resolved to not sleep until we arrive in Tokyo and I was already a little sleepy in Chicago because I slept little the night before. We wandered about O’Hare until it was time for us to depart. I had a window seat and sat beside a woman who just received her master’s degree from an Illinois college with a complicated mathematics/economics degree. Her name was Soojin, but she said she tells people her name is Susan, or they default to pronouncing her name that way. She did not warm up to my fidgeting nervous conversation until she had slept for about 10 hours. She was on her way to Korea where her parents live. Eventually we discussed my trip to Japan. Based on a brief stay in Japan to take a test of some sort, Soojin said that to a certain extent the politeness of Japanese attendants and service personnel is artificial. While it impresses a visitor initially, it becomes background noise later on, she said. I ended up not sleeping but 30 minutes on the 12 hour flight.
My eyes were very frightening when I laid my head down this evening in Tokyo. The pilot, at one point when they were requesting donations for a charity, misspoke and said "Malaria kills 1 African-American, I mean, African child, every [increment of time]." I was not sure what to make of this mistake or even if it counts as a mistake. Also, as I was reading by natural light in my window seat, one of the male attendants reached into my seat and turned the reading light on and exclaimed, "Ah," which was rather odd because he invaded me and my neighbor’s personal space to do so. I took pictures of Hokkaido and the Siberian wastes from my airplane window. All in all, I enjoyed the plane trip, if it were not for the cramped conditions and lack of physical exercise. I only learned how to recline my seat once we landed. The transition to May 20th was not a very marked one, we passed the date line without my noticing.
May 21st
When we landed at the Narita Airport everyone was scanned with a camera on the plane by Japanese health officials for the flu. My lack of sleep made the whole deplaning and bus-riding process rather a blur. After obtaining our luggage and organizing ourselves, I exchanged some American currency for Japanese Yen. I also split the rental of a cellular phone with Matthew. We chose the Japanese language interface because we thought it would be more fun, but we haven’t really figured out how to use it fully yet.
In departing from the airport we took several buses. One ended up going under a very long tunnel. It lasted long enough that I nervously wondered how deep below the water we were. Sometimes the enormity of spaces is overwhelming for me. This was one of those times, because I was imagining the weight of all that water above. Eventually we arrived at the Toyoko Inn in Haneda. I split a room with Matthew. After we got settled in, we walked through the area surrounding the hotel as a group in search of supper. A restaurant Dr. Fukushima had intended for us to visit was closed, so we wandered some more in search of a suitable place. Eventually we ate at a placed called Nagomitei. It was loud and sort of smokey on the inside. I wanted to eat something nice for my first meal in Japan, so I had nattou, egg, and sashimi with a side of pickled eggplant. It was pretty delicious. I didn't really enjoy walking on the street in the dark. We fly again tomorrow to Shimane in Matsue Prefecture, which is rather rural. I am going to like it, I hope.
On the flight to Tokyo, I read a nice passage in our textbook Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Sometimes Hearn’s archaic style, which is similar to more Eurocentric travelogues, makes me cringe. It’s as though he’s writing as much about European history, like ancient Greece for instance, which doesn’t represent Japan as a culture contemporary with the American culture from which he departed. I am not sure how this opinion will affect my rendition of Hearn’s personal account. As for the passage, it described a painting of the Buddha that had nice shadows. In fact, the shadows were actually a sutra written in a very tiny script. One final piece of information is that the word "punch" comes from Sanskrit and refers to a combination of five varieties of orange. Dr. Fukushima taught us this. He shares little informational bits like that that I feel I ought to remember.
The room at the Toyoko Inn, while pressed for space, has utilized the space allotted very well. Small nooks are hidden in many of the walls and the wall-mounted shower soap dispenser is rather convenient. I am not sure what the hotel in Matsue will be like, but if it resembles this in dimensions, I would not mind. One funny detail of the hotel is the room key. It is a normal key attached to a long, slender fob with the room number. In order to use the electricity in the room, one must insert the fob into a slot. Tonight we had our first group meeting in the Toyoko Inn lobby, where we went over tomorrow’s schedule. My picture of the day is the fisherman’s breakfast I had for supper, it is a fresh, new taste that I want to see more of.
Purchases:
¥12,804 from $140 exchanged at Narita Airport
¥731 on nattou and pickled eggplant at restaurant called Nagomitei
Tokyo to Matsue
May 22nd
Today we had another flight, this time from Haneda to Izumo Airport. The Toyoko Inn had two free breakfasts available, one Japanese and the other Western. The Western one consisted of doughnuts or something filling. The Japanese breakfast was rice, ume plums, pickles and miso soup. I arrived at breakfast pretty early, around 7:45. We left the hotel around 8:45. When we got into the Haneda Airport, we had time to kill, so I took some pictures of Michael next to a pool and a statue. During this flight I sat next to Michael, who I did not know before our trip. Small talk was nice. The flight was very brief, about the same length as the one from XNA to O’Hare. Unfortunately, I ended up forgetting a book in my plane seat’s pocket.
When we arrived at the Izumo Airport, we were greeted by Shimane Daigaku faculty and two students, named Kanae Ishida and Kaoru Onishi. We would end up seeing a lot of Kaoru, who drove her bike to hang out with us. Luckily she did not have many classes this semester, so we were not interfering with her studies.
The New Urban Hotel in Matsue is a large older hotel. As with the Toyoko Inn, the room key has a long fob attached to it. However, here the room’s electricity is always on. The fob is translucent, plastic, and purple. The rooms are singles, so they feel more spacious than the ones in Tokyo, though I think they are not half of the rooms in the Toyoko Inn. We had been given time to settle into the rooms until we attended the welcome party that Shimane University threw for us at the top floor of the hotel.
Earlier, when we came to the hotel, the Shimane faculty handed each of us a flu mask and a bottle of some ruddy liquid. These are precautions taken in light of the swine flu prevention in Japan. In addition to iodine solution, each time we reenter the hotel, we have been advised to wash our hands with the alcohol provided at the desk. However, as soon as I had unpacked my belongings and went to the welcome party with the flu mask on my face, of course, I realized that these measures were largely empty gestures. This was because out of the thirty or so students at the party, only Matthew and I were wearing the masks. So, by force of conformity, I took mine off and enjoyed the easily-breathable air.
At the party I sat next to Natsumi Fuzihara and Nozomi Ishihara. Both of them speak English very well. For the majority of our interactions tonight we used English. They were to be my conversation partners. In addition to many maps of Matsue and Shimane, we also received a guidebook, which was made and bound by the students themselves. It is made of very soft paper and illustrated in pretty pastel colors. It is a treasure to me. After we had eaten at the buffet, which had some delicious fresh water eel, or unagi, we played bingo. Hiroki Fujimoto, who hosted the event, called out the numbers in his distinct voice. His English is very pleasing to my ears. It has an intonation, or some quality that I can’t identify, that is out of place, but welcome. After we played bingo and I lost, we went back to our rooms and had our group meeting for the next day’s events. My image for the day is the bottle of iodine with its funny illustrated directions for use. Am I really going to use this regularly?
May 23rd
Today was a very full day! I began it by doing some stretches by Lake Shinji with Matthew. Lake Shinji is right across the street from our hotel. After a filling breakfast buffet at the hotel, which will be offered every day we’re in Shimane, we began the activities for the day. First we visited Lafcadio Hearn’s residence, then an old samurai residence, and after that we went around and inside Matsue Castle. Hearn’s residence is a Japanese-style house that has a pretty garden. It has many of his personal belongings, even a replica of his writing desk in its original position.
Dr. Fukushima helped us understand the significance of Hearn for Japan a little better here. He discussed his use of a Japanese-specific vocabulary rather than translating words, such as typhoon and tsunami. Annexed to his house, in the old samurai residence, was a museum of sorts that held some of his and his family’s personal belongings, such as Hearn’s pipe and handwritten correspondence. While Hearn changed his name and many aspects of his lifestyle, he did not give up his meat-oriented diet. This made Hearn drop slightly in my newly-raised opinion of him.
Afterwards we trekked to Matsue Castle, which is in the middle of the city, though you would not know it. The moat surrounding the castle is relatively large for such a small castle. On the opposite bank, cut stones have been fit together to make a very compact, tall wall. Before entering the castle, we took a fun boat ride around the moat. The roof of the boat was made to be raised and lowered according to the height of the bridges surrounding the castle, so we had to occasionally crouch to the ground, as space became less and less. The driver sang a beautiful song when we were beneath one of the longer tunnels. It concerned a crane and a turtle and was a fable-like story where the animals conversed very much like people.
Following the boat ride, we ascended the castle. The steps were very irregular at times and the height of the floors was very variable. Each of these qualities was used to disorient intruders. Numerous implements of war and pieces of armor were on display here. One of my favorites was the Bijomenbou, or the beautiful woman faceguard. I enjoyed this piece in particular because I was not sure if it was meant to be worn by a woman or a man impersonating a woman. In either case it is an interesting man or woman behind the mask.
After we climbed the castle, which was a bit tall for my tastes, we went to lunch. Since we were such a large group, we had to split up. I went with Natsumi Fuzihara and others to a ramen shop. While we waited for our ramen Natsumi showed me how to make a paper crane. It was very small, about one and a half inches at its widest. She hurried the process and I was not able to keep up. We were interrupted by the arrival of our food. I am not sure if I like ramen in Japan any more than I like ramen in Arkansas. The taste is dull and salty and the noodles have no texture. Luckily, for desert we had dango, or rice flour dumplings on a stick. They were gooey and covered in a sweet soy sauce, a taste that was unfamiliar to me.
Following our meal, we went to a large department store. Its name is Saty. It was much like a mall in Arkansas, except on many of the floors there are no walls dividing individual stores. I think this helps the consumer shop much more simply. Here I bought a yukata, or bath robe, and a crossword puzzle book for Japanese children. It is very difficult for me to understand, but I hope that it will help me get better at Japanese.
In Saty, of course, there was an arcade. I attempted to play pachinko, because the game has always fascinated me. It consists of turning a knob slightly to send tiny metal balls into a maze of pins, through which they fall. As the balls fall, you try to control the knob exactly to make the balls land in a small funnel. When they land as intended, you receive more balls and the cycle starts over. Meanwhile, the computer shouts random jubilant things at you and lights flash to hypnotic music. This being my first time playing, I did not apprehend the rules and therefore lost. I did not play again because it was just as much fun to watch other people play it. At this arcade they had a bank where you could deposit your tokens. This bank was more advanced than my own for money in Arkansas. It recognized the account by the user’s finger print and password. This really blew my mind.
After Saty, we went bowling. The bowling alley was like any other, except you received your shoes from a vending machine of sorts. I played one round and sat out the next, as I had done very poorly, scoring a measly 47. When everyone was done with the second game, we went to a bar. It was an “American style” bar, whatever that means. Here it meant that the walls were covered in license plates. Tonight I had my first ume-flavored alcoholic drink. Ume is called a plum, but I don’t think this is because of its taste, but its shape and size. In any case, the plums are put into Japanese-style distilled alcohol, or shochu, and let sit for a while. Eventually the sweet and sour flavor of the plum seeps into the alcohol and makes it very palatable. This is how umeshuu is made.
For supper I had Japanese style curry at the bar. We waited a very long time for Pate and Matthew’s meals. Eventually the meals arrived. However, by this time we had to return to the hotel for our evening review meeting. So, they had to rush back without having eaten. When we did arrive at the hotel, we were a little early. While we waited I overheard an older gentleman shout “stupid!” in Japanese to the front desk attendant. I do not know if the old man was drunk or not, but his behavior was very aggressive and loud. And then we had our meeting. My image for today is the crane that Natsumi made, which I still have. It both symbolizes my slowness with my hands and a new friend.
Purchases:
¥750 ramen and dango
¥999 on Crossword Mate puzzle book and Abe Koubou novel (in Saty)
¥3,980 on yukata (in Saty)
¥250 on maccha soft cream
¥750 curry at American style bar
May 24th
We’re very lucky to be in Matsue today. Horan En’ya, an event that only occurs once every twelve years, is to be held in Lake Shinji. We began by going to a Shinto shrine by bus. Here we washed our hands upon arrival, as is the custom before entering a shrine. Eventually a procession began to exit the shrine. It consisted of many people in colorful, flowing dress. Many held portable shrines or staves representing kami, such as Amaterasu.
Everyone in the procession wore traditional Japanese dress. Eventually the group of people fully exited the shrine and we went to view the main spectacle, the circling boats. Many people crowded our view, but we were still able to see the many colored boats. Aboard each boat were men and sometimes women in colorful make-up. They chanted repeatedly in unison, “Horan En’ya,” making the seven syllable word very long and labored. Each ship was a distinctive, vibrant, unnaturally saturated color.
After some time of angling to get good views over people’s heads, we entered an electronics store’s parking garage. This location afforded a good, unobstructed view and we were able to see the procession down in the water with ease. Each ship circled an area until all of the ships were following along. Eventually, the ships would lower their masts and proceed under the next bridge. This method was very similar to the small boat we took around Matsue Castle, where the vessel changes size to accommodate bridges. They travelled about in this manner for about one hour. The sound of the chanting truly captures the unity and beauty that this event celebrated.
When the ships ended their show, we went to a buffet. It was located in a building called Viking, which I believe was due to its rocket-like shape. The name of the restaurant was Pomodoro and it ended up costing about ¥1,000. This buffet was OK, except for its lack of very many vegetarian dishes. After lunch, we went as a group to a nearby arcade, where I tried pachinko again. Dr. Fukushima came along; although I’m not sure he had much fun. We played numerous games that I was already familiar with, such as Mario Kart and table air hockey.
Eventually we got bored of the arcade and went to Saty again for supper and did some shopping. Luckily, I restrained myself in Saty and didn’t buy anything like I did yesterday. I did however find a store that I liked a lot. It had very minimalistic house wares, ranging from furniture to small trinkets, but none of it was too flashy or colorful. They also sold some higher-quality food of the store’s brand, as in the practice of Target in the United States. In Saty’s food court I bought udon at a vendor called Hanamaru. It had good flavor and the texture of udon noodles is greatly superior to those of ramen.
Following the venture to Saty, we went to my first karaoke experience. The karaoke environment is very private, as one only sings in a small room of friends. I sang the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life.” One of the Japanese students sang the Hikaru Utada song “Automatic,” which I had heard in my Japanese conversation class last semester. Although I was not able to sing along, I was able to follow it a little bit. Songs like this with one English word are often detrimental to my Japanese. I can hum the Japanese and on the English refrain, “It’s automatic,” I enthusiastically join in, just to quiet to a murmur immediately afterwards. After karaoke, we returned to the hotel for our evening meeting. Luckily Dr. Fukushima came along with us to Saty and karaoke, so we had no worries about being late for our meeting. My image for today is a hat that one of the men wore during the Horan En’ya festival. It was black and molded plastic, as far as I could tell.
Purchases:
¥1,150 on Pomodoro buffet
¥294 on sesame and onion udon (in Saty)
¥15,000 withdrew
May 25th
Today we have our official visit to the Shimane campus. It was the most stressful event so far, because we dressed in formal attire and met with the president, whose name is Hiroki Yamamoto and other officials of the university. I woke up this morning to find that I did not have a tie to go with my suit and accordingly went a little crazy. I went to Matthew to see if he had a spare, but he did not. Having no idea what to do, I went to the small convenience store attached to the lobby of the hotel. It had not opened yet, but I motioned to the clerk who was setting things up. I asked if they had neckties and, luckily, they did. All of them were kitsch in some way or another. The colors were too vibrant or they were covered in animals. I found one with small leopards on a black background. This tie is actually very nice and I will wear it once I get home.
Next we went to the Shimane University campus and attended the meeting, which was held at a large table. It was held largely in Japanese, but I was able to understand most of the proceedings with Dr. Fukushima’s frequent English explanations. During the meeting the president asked each of us what we thought of the Horan En’ya festival yesterday. Being put on the spot, I am not sure how genuine my answer was, but I said I was touched by the collaboration and community spirit which the event commemorates.
This question highlighted a misunderstanding amongst the other students and me as to the origin and historical significance of Horan En’ya. Some cited pirates, drought, or plague as the source of the festival. However, later I found out it was to commemorate the transfer of kami which put a stop to a drought in Matsue.
For lunch we ate at the Shimane cafeteria, where I had soba noodles. It was very tasty and pretty inexpensive. While I ate I sat next to a student name Chiharu Nakai, who also liked to read. We talked about Kobo Abe and Yukio Mishima books and I was very pleased by our conversation. Following lunch, we attended a lecture by Professor Bon Koizumi, who is the great grandson of Lafcadio Hearn. He discussed the significance that Hearn has in Japanese folklore studies.
Dr. Koizumi also shared very many photographs that he had taken. They depicted many of the places Hearn had lived that deeply affected his life, such as Lafkada, a Greek island, New Orleans, and the West Indies. Each of these locations Professor Koizumi had visited at different points in his life. After the lecture, Dr. Koizumi kindly autographed our copies of Hearn’s Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.
When we went outside I developed a very bad headache and complained offhandedly to Ryokyo Shishido, who had joined us after the formal meeting. She suggested we go to the nurse, because they did not sell headache medicine, such as Advil or Tylenol, at the union co-op. It was a rather confusing process, and I don’t believe it was due to a language barrier. They asked me numerous questions, took my temperature, and other things unnecessary for a headache. I was almost paranoid enough to think I might enter an examination room and some endless bureaucratic medical process. However, the doctor came eventually and just gave me two “Bufferin,” which I found out once I returned to Arkansas are just a brand of aspirin in Japan.
After the lecture we went as a group to the lacquer-making studio named Yakumo-Nori Studio. The process of making the lacquered vessels, utensils, and other wood works, was shown to us firsthand by the artisan. The process, which is called Yakumo-Nori, is unique to Shimane prefecture. The result is a very smooth, shiny surface that has rich colors. After we saw the store’s goods and watched the process, we returned to the hotel to change out of our formal attire.
When we had done so and freshened up, we went to a rotating sushi restaurant for dinner. The food here was very cheap and delicious. I had given Nozomi Ishihara my cell phone number so that she could meet us later that day. Eventually she called me, but I was even worse using my Japanese on the telephone than in person, so I handed the phone to a Shimane student for some assistance. Eventually everyone arrived at the sushi place and we began eating. The plates rotated around the shop and were color-coded according to price. When we were done with the plates, we inserted them into a slot and they were automatically counted and disposed of. A small screen above the table counted the plates and when we had reached a certain number of plates the screen displayed a short game. Our table won the game twice and received two small buttons. By good fortune I got one of the buttons that depicted a piece of sea urchin sushi, which is my favorite. I was very happy.
Later that night we went to a Japanese-style bar as a group. Here we sat on the floor without chairs, surrounding a large rectangular table. It was very fun and was a great way to get to know the other students in a less busy atmosphere. On the way back to the hotel, I rode Kaori’s bicycle, which was a lot of fun. The thing I will recall most is the bufferin I took for my headache. They illustrate to me how my imagination can cause me to worry, but also how worrying is fun to do sometimes when life isn’t exciting.
Purchases:
¥441 on lunch at Shimane cafeteria, squash and soba
¥198 spent on ume candy at Jusco grocery store
¥850 at rotating sushi restaurant
¥850 bar tab
May 26th
Today we visited three different Japanese cultural practices, sake making, Japanese sweet making, and the tea ceremony. The sake brewery makes a brand called Rihaku, whose eponymous Tang Dynasty poet wrote his poetry while intoxicated. It was a rather large building with very many vats for milling and cooking the large amounts of rice necessary for sake brewing. We were introduced to every step in the process of brewing and even saw the rooms that held rice koji, which is the ingredient specific to sake. Koji carries out the change of the rice’s starch to sugars for alcohol production, which is somewhat similar to the malting process used for making beer. After the tour was completed, we were given a chance to taste several different varieties of sake that they produce at the brewery.
Next on the agenda was the Karakoro Art Studio where we made Japanese sweets ourselves. Outside the studio were several nice gift shops. Here I purchased a novelty candy called “Gorira-no-hanakuso,” which means “Gorilla snot.” It is called this because of its gooey texture. The materials we worked with were several different kinds of bean paste, some cinnamon, a damp towel, and a chopstick. We watched a professional make two varieties of sweets several times. With his assistance we were able to make a set of sweets which we would consume later at the tea ceremony demonstration.
After we made our sweets, we went to a restaurant that served us a small lunch for ¥892. It had a lot of fish, some delicious potato salad, and macaroni and cheese. During lunch Ryokyo, Minako, Matthew, and I shared some tongue twisters with each other. We taught them “Suzy sells seashells by the seashore.” My favorite Japanese one to learn was “Kono take o kono takegaki ni tatekaketa no wa, take o tatekaketakattakara tatekaketa no desu,” which means, roughly, “I leaned on a bamboo fence because I wanted to lean on a bamboo fence.” The trick with Japanese tongue twisters for me is the proper intonation and eliminating my tendency to stress syllables. When we were done eating we visited a tea house to see how maccha is made and intended to be drank. The factory for maccha and the tea house were attached to one another.
Maccha is ground up into a very, very fine powder and is the texture of baby powder. We were shown the proper way to hold the tea vessel, to which there is a distinct front and back. When the tea vessel is presented to a guest the front is offered to the guest. After receiving the cup the guest rotates the front away from them. When we were done at the tea house, the guided section of the day was over.
Minako Hiroe and I started translating the Japanese brochure that is the requirement for honors credit in my course. Eventually everyone joined us in the lobby to translate our sections of the pamphlet. Minako was a very big help to our group and we spent around three hours hashing out a rough translation of the very difficult text. It dealt with the Izumo tombs and the historical records concerning it. When our meeting was over, I was very exhausted and ready for bed. For supper tonight I had okonomiyaki, which is called a Japanese pancake, but it in no way resembles a pancake. It is made of cabbage, some sort of batter, egg, and meat and is fried on a grill that is in the middle of each table. At the restaurant we went to, a single woman took our order and made the meal right in front of us. I chose the octopus as my meat and it was a very delicious ending to my day. My favorite memory of today is of Minako posing in front of the advertisement for gorilla snot candy. Her sense of humor is really refreshing.
¥350 gorilla snot candy
¥892 lunch
¥650 okonomiyaki
May 27th
Early today my camera batteries died, so I was a little disappointed. We visited three very interesting locations, the Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo, the Izumo Shrine, and the Hino-Misaki Lighthouse. While we rode a bus to the museum, shrine, and lighthouse, we rode an older train back to Matsue.
The museum was very enlightening and had a large assortment of exhibits. At the entrance to the museum one of the remnants of a pillar from Izumo Shrine is on display. It was enormous and gives some indication of the great scale upon which that structure was erected. The first exhibits of the museum showed many postulated models for the original Izumo Shrine, which vary greatly in their projected size.
One model was particularly large and had a very imaginative display. A voice recording created the experience very well for us. It first stated something to the effect of, “One need only look up to the clouds to imagine the ambience surrounding the shrine.” And of course, I followed its directions to find out that the ceiling of this room was designed to simulate clouds passing overhead, both in texture and light. Next the recording stated that, “One need only listen to the sounds of the birds to imagine what it was like,” whereupon the appropriate sound effects came out of a tiny concealed speaker. This exhibit, though not interactive, had a very positive effect on me. It engaged all of my senses in a very subtle, pleasing manner. It both engaged my imagination and indulged my wish for imagery. It was not the passive experience of a video, but it was not inert either.
Their collection of ancient, green bronze bells was also particularly moving. They ranged from very small specimens to one’s two and a half feet tall. The patina that they had acquired over time was spectacular. It was distinctly bronze; the greens would range from a light peppermint to a darker, mossy hue. Although my camera had no power, we were unable to take pictures inside the museum. One particular case had an excavated bell that was still filled with the soil and other matter. Beside it was a glass replica of the bell also filled with debris, which helped me grasp the shape of the bell through its soil mold. Additionally, it was visually impressive to see a replica made of glass.
Also on display were very many magatama, or comma shaped beads. Often they resemble one half of a yin yang, but the more ancient examples look less symmetrical. Several of these beads had back lighting, which really showed off their iridescent colors and subtle shading. There were some interactive exhibits, too. One that I used was a billows, where the user had to stand atop a platform, with each foot on a pedal. I had to alternate weight on each foot in rapid, smooth succession to thrust out air. A cloth flame was supplied to show the user how efficiently they pumped out the air.
After our visit to the museum we made our way to Izumo Taisha, or Izumo Shrine. The complex which is the shrine is difficult to make out, because it is today several buildings. However, the promenade of sorts that leads up to the shrine, which consisted of many well-kept trees and raked gravel, was very impressive. At the shrine we attempted to toss coins into large twisted bundles of straw, which were suspended above an entry way. It was very difficult to perform this because as soon as you had lodged your coin in the bundle another was likely to fall out. Also, with several people doing this simultaneously I had a hard time recognizing my own coin. After the shrine and this fun exercise, we ate soba at a local restaurant, which was very good. Apparently Izumo is known for its good quality soba noodles. The restaurant offered the low kind of seating, which I have come to prefer.
Following lunch we rode to the lighthouse. On a very clear day it is possible to see Korea from the top of this structure. At first I did not believe I would have much trouble coping with the height of the lighthouse, but today I learned my limits. As we made our way up the very tall building, I gradually became more and more apprehensive. After I ran down the stairs of the lighthouse for my life, I was fine. When everyone was on the ground, we walked over toward the shore where there were many large rocks. There were also trees which had grown at a sharp angle due to a constant wind in the region.
As we drove along the ocean, away from the lighthouse, I saw a very interesting sight. It was a shrine on a small island. The torii was very small and one could almost miss the sight from a moving vehicle. The island was barely big enough to even be called one and was only accessible by boat. I fancy very much the thought of someone having to ride a boat there to worship at the shrine, because such an act would help signify a break from regular life and worship. This setup causes the boat ride to act like the torii in marking off a sacred space. Before returning to Matsue we visited another shrine, whose name I have forgotten. It was a very bright orange and dedicated to the Amaterasu.
To return to Matsue we rode an old train for about an hour. It was a rickety and rough ride. Somehow Matthew slept on the train, but I enjoyed myself looking out the window at the passing countryside. When we got back to Matsue we visited a footbath that is filled with natural spring water. It was very warm and helped relax my feet. We found out that the footbath used the same water that our hotel’s onsen, or spa, used. This pleasurable experience has made me wish to visit the onsen.
We were dismissed by Dr. Fukushima at the footbath. That night I had fried horse mackerel for supper, which was called “aji fry” in Japanese. The variety of fish in Matsue has really been impressive and eliminates the category of “white fish,” which seems to be ingrained in my assessment of kinds of fish and their respective flavors. Later in the night we also went to another Japanese bar, where we had a few drinks and some of the small appetizers, such as pickled fish. Saki Nagata and Yu Imaoka showed me a very nice trick involving the wet towels they give you at bars and some restaurants. It involves folding and rolling the towel into the shape of a small duck, which is really adorable. Today, the remnant of the Izumo Shrine’s pillar made a big impact on me. Its size, in conjunction with its age, really raises my conceptions of what people were able to accomplish so long ago.
Also, at the lighthouse, I really learned my limits. Perhaps my favorite memory is the picture Matthew took of me holding on for my life. He was apprehensive about the height at first, but I was the one that ended up immobilized with fear.
Purchases:
¥550 on soba
¥790 on fried horse mackerel
¥850 split bar tab
May 28th
Today was very fun. I did a lot of things of my own accord. We visited a place where high-quality taro root paper is made, the Izumo Yaegaki Shrine, the Izumo tombs, the Shimane University library, and the beach. During the early part of the day the weather was very cool and calm. The workshop, called Yakumo Mura, is located amongst many rice fields and pleasant hills.
The calming atmosphere followed us inside the museum and shop, which are part of the paper workshop. Many of the lamps inside gave off pleasing light, because their shades were made of the taro root paper. Before we were to try our own hand at making this paper, we watched an old video, probably dating from the 1980’s, about the history and importance of this specific technique for making paper. The video called for the preservation of this traditional Japanese art.
After the video we were given the chance to make a sheet of paper for ourselves. To do so we took a square frame with mesh on one side. We dipped the frame evenly in a tub filled with a mixture of ground-up taro root and water. It was very slimy and had a queer texture. I messed up on my first batch and had to scrap and remove the taro stuck to my frame. Mr. Yamaoka, the head of the international student section, helped me to do this. Eventually I started again. Once the frame has enough of the mixture in it, you slowly drained the water off. Afterwards, I removed one side of the frame and place the paper on a towel, which dries off the taro more. Finally the paper was stuck to a board with our name to dry.
While we waited for the paper to dry we visited the shop and museum of Yakumo Mura. When our paper was dry, we left to the Yaegaki Shrine. It was a Shinto shrine. It also had a modern stone tablet inscribed with the first recognized Japanese waka, a poem called “Yakumo tatsu.” The trees in this shrine were very, very tall. They towered over us. Through these trees we walked to a pool, beside of which were numerous thin papers with some writing on them. These were used to determine how your love life would turn out. We put a ten yen coin on the paper and placed them in the pool. The sooner it sank the more near the relationship would be. If I recall mine sank pretty nearby.
When we left the shrine we headed for lunch at a museum concerning the Izumo Tombs. The tombs themselves are actually kofun, which is a specific key-hole shaped tomb. Lunch was a bento at the museum. It consisted of rice, pickled burdock root, fish cake, konnyaku, and fish. The konnyaku, which is a dessert made of taro root, pleased me because we had made paper of this same substance this morning. In the museum there were models of what the tombs look like on the inside. After a little while we visited the actual tombs, which were not far from the museum. The hills surrounding the mounds were covered in innumerable yellow flowers. The inside of the tomb was impressive, because it was a large wall of sediment, which showed the great age of the structure with its many colored strata. It was like a tangible illustration of time.
After the tomb we returned to the Shimane University campus to look at some of Lafcadio Hearn’s personal letters and some exhibits about him. In the university library there was a comprehensive collection of Hearn’s works and works concerning Hearn. These exhibits helped to show Hearn’s biography in historical context and they really contributed to my readings of his text for class.
Having looked at the many displays about Hearn, we departed from the library and went to the Shimane University’s union. Nozomi Hasegawa had invited us to view some of the work that the Ikebana Club had made. The flowers on display were very elegant and they often used very simple techniques in complicated ways. In addition to the flower arrangements, works of calligraphy, or “shodo,” were also on display.
Ryokyo, Matthew, Minako, and I decided to go for a car ride after we had been dismissed. We rode in Minako’s car to the beach, which was about 25 minutes away. I sat back and did not pay attention to where we ended up, but the scenery was very green and pleasing. The beach to which Minako drove was pretty clean and we all walked barefoot in the water. Off in the distance I could see the small islands that are often on the coast of this area. I could also just barely make out a torii made of rough wood farther down the shoreline. This minor detail really stuck out to me. I cherish small things that are unnoticeable at first. It also seemed like a very private shrine, not frequented by many.
When we got back to Matsue, we went to Saty yet again, but this time it was for a meal. The buffet at Saty was the best buffet I have been to in a long time. It had a chocolate fountain to dip fruit in, dried mangos, and black coffee gelatin. After our meal, Minako had drove Ryokyo to her job, and then to the gym to drop something off for her friend. I enjoyed this part of the trip a lot because I got to tag along with Minako on some mundane task. At the entrance to the gym there was a sea of shoes such that each shoe was indiscernible, which gave the floor a beautiful texture. Minako briefly introduced Matthew and I to her friend and then she returned us to the hotel for our meeting. Before and after the group review meeting, Minako, the others, and I worked on our translation project in the lobby. When we became bored and made little progress, we went to the shore of the lake near the hotel to shoot off fireworks. I lit a traditional Japanese firework called senkou-hanabi, which is a tiny toy sparkler. However, this particular sparkler works very slowly and is meant to be played as a game. Each person lights theirs simultaneously and holds the hanabi very still, trying not to move. At the bottom of the stick a small ball of flame slowly works its way up, creating many tree-like sparks along the way. The user must be careful though, because the flame is very sensitive and the slightest jerky movement can force it off of the stick. The fireworks made a perfect ending to an already perfect day.
Purchases
¥1,572 on maccha whisk and ume throat drops at Shimane Diagaku co-op store
¥273 on snacks at Family Mart on the way to the seashore
¥850 Saty buffet
May 29th
We began today’s activities by making another trip to the Shimane campus, where we attended a lecture by Ms. Nakasono. The subject was the okashi, or Japanese sweets, which we had made at Karakoro Art Studio on the 26th. Ms. Nakasono reviewed the process by which we had made the bean paste sweets. We also learned some information about the studio’s building, which was a bank in 1926. The presentation incorporated pictures and video of the Shimane students and us at Karakoro. When the presentation was over Ms. Nakasono asked each of us to compose a short speech in Japanese about sweet making. This was helpful because, although I had been using my Japanese daily, I had not attempted to compose anything of length in a while.
Following the trip to Shimane University, we took a trip to the Adachi Museum, a place nationally recognized for the gardens which surround it. On the bus I sat by Minako, who taught me a Japanese word game called “shiri-tori.” The basis of the game is to pick a non-verb, non-adjective word. The following player must choose a word that begins with the final syllable of the first word. The way a person loses is by choosing a word which ends in the consonantal “n” sound. It was very fun, even though my vocabulary is really small.
Minako Hiroe also taught me the word yawarakai, an adjective. I was immensely pleased by its versatility. It can mean “soft,” “flexible,” and “smart,” depending on its context. I did not enjoy the word merely because it was used in reference to my own flexibility, but because the word itself was flexible. It is something magical to be able to touch fleece, bend my knees, and point to Minako’s head and say, “Yawarakai-ne.” And verbal flexibility was something that I came to appreciate even more throughout the trip. It wasn’t just isolated in certain sounds like yawarakai, it was also in the written language.
Another instance of how Minako helped me understand how words sounds and meanings can be changed was through both of our names. Her name has combination of three kanji, “beautiful,” “plant,” and “child.” While Minako construes her name to literally mean “beautiful flower child,” Ryokyo pointed out that it more closely means “beautiful vegetable child.” Before I could decide which was better, Minako translated the literal meaning of my name, tiler, “one who lays tiles for a living,” into Japanese. She came up with “kawarashokunin,” or “roof tile craftsman.” While it is one thing to make my name in English closer to its origin by writing “Tiler,” it is yet another and more ingenious thing to translate it then into Japanese.
Halfway through the trip we stopped at a restaurant that served us lunch. It was about ¥1,000 and consisted of chawanmushi, tempura vegetables, fish, pickles, and miso soup. Chawanmushi was very delicious. It is a custard of sorts, but has a savory flavor and is filled with small pieces of meat or mushroom. This particular restaurant put ginnan inside their chawanmushi.
Ginnan is the seed of the ginkgo tree and has a somewhat bitter flavor. Minako stated that she absolutely hated ginnan’s flavor. During the meal the waitresses shouted “Irashaimase” or “Welcome.” One of them mistook another for a customer and shouted this phrase at her. She became very embarrassed and this amused Matthew. After finishing our meal we headed to the museum.
This art museum had ceramics, older art, and many Japanese paintings from the early 20th century. One aspect of the museum I enjoyed in particular was a voting system they had set up to determine the prettiest painting there. Ryokyo helped me fill out a ballot, which was very difficult because of the artist’s kanji for their name. Furthermore, my reason for choosing the picture was very elementary, “It has beautiful color.” I ended up purchasing three postcards from the Adachi Museum gift shop. Two are of a Japanese landscape, one a beach with a completely red sun, as on the Japanese flag, another of Mt. Fuji, where the mountain itself is completely blue. Both are of paintings by Yokoyama Taikan. The third postcard was of a blue-green painting of an old man in a turban. It was entitled “Old Man of Pushkar” and was painted by Nishida Shunei.
Following the visit to the museum we went to the Gesshoji Temple, which was built by the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was the first shogun. Part of the temple has the grandson’s ashes. The funerary sections of the temple were platforms of stone elevated about three feet from the ground. At the center of these monuments were stone shapes, a sphere of solid stone. The small stone pillars that surrounded these spheres were covered in kanji characters. A particular one that I recognized was the character “shin,” which can mean “truth.” After the temple we returned to Matsue.
Tomorrow will be our free day, so we had no meeting tonight. Hiroki Fujimoto invited us to his apartment to make takoyaki, or fried octopus balls. The batter used was very similar to okonomiyaki batter. Before going to Hiroki’s house we went to the super market called Jusco to get food and drinks. I don’t recall how much was spent at Jusco, but it was much cheaper per person than our visits to the bars in the past week or so. Hiroki’s apartment was very nice. It had a wood floor and two rooms.
I decided that night to help make takoyaki, which was a rather simple process. After mixing the batter and cabbage, it is poured into a specific device. This device is like a grate, but it has numerous half-spherical depressions into which you pour the batter. You oil the takoyaki maker and pour in the batter. After the ball was half done, we inserted shrimp, wiener, or octopus into the ball. When the middle was inserted, we used a long toothpick to rotate the ball and cook the other half. Sometimes I was fast enough in flipping the takoyaki to make them into perfect balls. Other times they came out lopsided. In any case, it was a very fun process, as I got to help out the other girls.
Around midnight almost everyone had left, so we left also. We had to herd everyone into a taxi, which took some effort. However, we made it home without a hitch. I left the taxi driver a tip, which I think was not customary, based on his irritated reaction, but I felt bad on account of his boisterous passengers. I got back into my room and felt very pleased to have made food, because I miss my kitchen. I will always remember Nozomi and Minako showing me how to make takoyaki.
Purchases:
¥360 on maccha soft cream
¥1000 lunch
¥400 postcards
¥217 on shaky grape drink and Meishi chocolate at Jusco super market
May 30th
Today, though it was our free day, was very structured. As a group, the Shimane students and we Arkansan students rented a Shimane University bus and hired a driver for the day. It was largely organized and planned by Sanae Morita. The plan was to visit Daisen, which is one of the largest mountains in Shimane Prefecture. We also went to the beach, a milk farm, and a shopping mall.
Upon our arrival to Daisen we were greeted with very thick fog. During our ascent, I saw many Jizo statues along the road. I wanted to stop, but they were spaced so to reward the pedestrian going along the road. Our destination ended up being a nature museum with many stuffed mammals that live in the area. There was a specimen of tanuki, or raccoon dog, and kitsune, or fox, which are two of my favorite animals native to Japan.
After the museum we went to a dairy farm right below Daisen, which is named “Daisen-Makiba.” The farm also had a store where we bought soft cream. The taste of the soft cream excelled any I had had so far in Japan. Its richness and full-fat flavor were very impressive. The prevalence of ice cream and other dairy products in Japan has called into check my assumption that such foods were not popular here. This was based on second hand knowledge that, in China, cheese and other dairy products are generally thought of as unappetizing, but in Japan I guess this distaste is not as intense or even present. It was also something to be able to see the very cows from which my ice cream was made. It really put the infrastructure into focus.
Following the dairy farm, we visited a group of stores that specialized in gourmet foods. There we snacked because lunch was going to be a little later. After additional time on the bus, we made it to a large shopping mall which was larger than Saty, the only other Japanese mall we had been to so far. As we exited Daisen’s fog it became rather drizzly and rainy. At the bottom floor of this mall there was a grocery and house wares store, but above this there was much merchandise you would find in an American mall, such as clothing, toys, games, and an arcade.
Hiroki, Matthew, Nick, Mochi, and I went in search of jeans and other clothes. I tried on a pair of jeans, but decided to not purchase them even though they fit. In the dressing room I forgot a small stone I carried in my pocket, one that I had bought in Tulsa, Oklahoma at a flea market. I hope someone picked it up and held onto it better than I did. For lunch we all ate at the mall’s food court. I had udon at the Hanamaru store, from which I also ate at Saty. The variety I purchased was called “kitsune,” because it had fried tofu on top, and fried tofu is a purported favorite of foxes, which are called kitsune. On the side I ordered a hunk of fried squid. After lunch we dispersed again and looked at more clothing stores oriented toward men.
We met everyone once again in the food court and boarded the bus once more. To end our day’s journey we visited the beach around Miho Bay. The water was very cold, so we couldn’t swim. We just enjoyed the cool weather and the feeling of sand between our toes. There was a long pier into the ocean, so we were able to walk along it and feel the waves on both sides. The time spent returning to Matsue was rather long, but there was a karaoke screen and microphone inside the bus, so that made our ride very entertaining. Kaoru sang the Japanese theme to Dragon Ball Z, which has the very memorable chorus “Cha-la, head, cha-la.”
That night we went out to karaoke, which was planned by Nozomi Hasegawa. Before karaoke, we worked on our group translations to a greater extent. The price at the karaoke place was very reasonable, about ¥1,000, when it is taken into account that it was all you can eat and drink, alcohol included. I have grown very accustomed to this restaurant environment, which is very private and enjoyable. It is a big difference from home, where an affordable, private room at a restaurant is rather rare. After karaoke we had to scurry back to the hotel for the evening’s review meeting.
Today, I lost my second belonging, my favorite stone. Although I saw this often, I ought to learn how to hold on to my things better.
Purchases:
¥1,000 bus fee
¥350 Daisen soft cream
¥431 on kitsune udon and fried squid
¥1,000 karaoke
May 31st
The Iwami Ginzan, a silver mine, which is now an UNESCO World Heritage Site, was our destination today. We rode a bus for approximately one hour. During this time I sat next to Misako Suzuki and Amiko Yokoi. It seemed everyone was very tired, or the bus ride was hypnotic, because they were soon sleeping. However, we three remained awake and playing shiri-tori and other games. They are a very funny pair and kept me laughing the whole bus ride.
For a very brief span of time we visited a museum about the Iwami mine, but we were in such a hurry I only got a few glimpses at the collection of historical reconstructions of worker habitations and silver coins produced in the mine. We reentered the bus quickly so that we could reach the actual area where the mines are located. When we arrived at the mining town, its older architecture and small size charmed me. We were lucky enough to have tour guides for this occasion, which helped bring a lot of the area’s information to us.
We made our way up the hills toward a branch of the sprawling mines. On our way we passed numerous shrines and houses. I was very hungry already today, so I bought a cucumber on a stick on the path up to the mines. It was very delicious, even though it was just a lightly salted cucumber on a stick. It also hit the spot and I was sated until lunch.
Next to many of the houses were medium-sized gardens. In one of the gardens I recognized the pinkish purple flowers of eggplant. The trees in this area are very tall and often evergreens. The group was able to enter a portion of the mine and see the cramped, damp conditions in which the miners worked. Moisture must have been a very big problem for them, because it was everywhere in the tunnel. It became very cramped feeling deep inside the mine, so I was glad to resurface.
After entering the tunnel, we headed back to the mine town. Lunch was held at a local restaurant, where we were served bento lunch. It consisted of fish, a small amount of spaghetti noodles, sesame rice, potato salad, and pickles. When we were finished eating, we meandered in small groups back to the bus. However, there were numerous shops along this road, so most of us became lingerers instead of meanderers. I ended up buying a handmade handkerchief that is blue in the fabric and pink and green in the thread. It was only ¥500 yen, which I felt was too little for its level of craft. The shop had very many textiles to choose from and I regret not having had more time to spend browsing its selection.
Back near the bus there was a large stone monument which I could, of course, not read. We had been taking many pictures of ourselves, so it was natural to do so in front of this monument. However, Dr. Fukushima later informed me it was a monument to all of those who died in the Iwami mines. I felt sort of bad for smiling and giving the v-sign, having been oblivious to the monument’s content. On our trip back to Matsue we stopped at a place known for its fig ice cream.
For supper we and the Shimane students went to a Korean style restaurant. It was a multi-course meal of meat. This sort of thing is completely against my eating habits, so I sat it out and had spicy soup instead. However, the meal was interesting to watch because the meat was cooked on a charcoal grill in the center of the tables.
When choosing my own meal, I had to inconvenience Hiroki by constantly asking him if a certain dish contained meat or not. He even ordered for me, which was very kind of him. During the meal I sat next to Yu Imaoka. She shared with me a Mother Goose rhyme she had memorized in elementary school to help with English pronunciation. However, when I listened I misheard her say “Josie Posie” instead of “Georgie Porgie.” This mistake ended up making the nursery rhyme much more interesting for me, because it sounded like an alternate version to the one I knew. The meal ended pleasantly with Yu sharing her ice cream with me.
We then returned to the hotel, but saw a few of the Shimane students again after our meeting. Going to the park across the street from the hotel, we proceeded to light off more fireworks. Luckily, I got to play senkou-hanabi once again. The sparks on this sparkler are mesmerizing. They appear to be constant, like a flame. However, they are shot out at just the right speed to seem constant. The image would always burn into my brain, a constant spark that doesn’t flicker. How odd! As far as fireworks go, I greatly prefer sparklers over loud or projectile ones. In Arkansas, with an absence of senkou-hanabi, I will be very sad on the Fourth of July. Needless to say, I was contented after the fireworks and slept well.
Purchases:
¥500 handkerchief
¥1,000 lunch
¥850 spicy soup at Korean style restaurant
¥350 fig soft cream
June 1st
As usual, I ate at the breakfast buffet at the top floor of the New Urban Hotel. Today we visited three attractions, the cave at Kaka, a fish market, and an area devoted to Mizuki Shigero, who was the creator of the manga, GeGeGe no Kitaro. The bus ride to the Kaka cave was not very long. We arrived at a pier from which we would take a boat to the cave, which we had read about in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. We boarded the medium-sized boat on relatively calm waters. The hills around the shore were very impressive. There were also numerous islands with trees and other foliage in the area. When the boat reached the other side of the bay, we debarked and passed through a long tunnel in the rock. We reached a very quiet section of the cliff face on the other side of the tunnel. This was the cave we came to see.
The first section was littered with stones stacked in a semi-pyramidal shape. These were little monuments to lost children, whether they were miscarriages or early deaths. Deeper into the cave were more personal monuments, such as favorite toys. It was a very moving scene and I felt I was intruding. The toys were all covered in dirt, which comes with being this close to the sea water. By the time we left, I was sad.
When we returned to the boat, instead of go back to the bus, we road the boat around to see the cave from another angle. Going this direction entailed passing through a large stone passageway filled with sea water. The walls of the passage were rather close together, but the driver was very skilled. When we passed through, the waves became rougher, so we went back to the pier. However, the rough waters did not prevent us from seeing the cave, which was our intention.
Afterwards we visited the Sakai Bay fish center, which was a very big market for seafood. Here I bought some obscure ice cream. It was wakame, a variety of seaweed, and maguro, or tuna, flavored. The maguro had chunks of meat in it and was rather salty. The flavor was not bad, but the mixture of a cold temperature and a fishy flavor was a new experience for me. I also tasted kani-miso, which is not actual miso, but a substance from the crab’s intestines that has the texture of miso paste.
Following the fish center, we went to a street in Sakaiminato dedicated to Mizuki Shigeru, who created GeGeGe no Kitaro. The van was not large enough to take us all at once, so we had to go in several groups. The sun was the hottest it has been in a while and I noticed this when we were waiting. As soon as we arrived to the area around the themed street, I wanted to get lunch. I went with a few others to a local restaurant. I ate curry with fried shrimp while most of the others ate a bowl filled with various sashimi.
The area around the street had very many gift shops completely dedicated to GeGeGe no Kitaro. Along the street were many statues with stamps next to them. We were given a booklet filled with pictures of the statues. The goal was to fill the booklet with stamps to verify that we had found all of the statues. I didn’t complete this task; instead, I just walked around with Nozomi and Nozomi.
At one point we all bought sweets. I bought the second round of odd-flavored ice cream for the day, squid ink and black sesame. The flavor was noticeably sesame and the coloring made my teeth black for a short while. Chika bought warabi, which is a gooey, sweet candy that is covered in soy bean powder. I found out when I got home that warabi is made from bracken starch, which is a kind of fern that is carcinogenic to humans.
We also went to a stationary store. As I had learned an appropriate kanji character to represent my name in Japanese, I decided to look for a seal that I could use. Nozomi and Nozmi helped me find the character “平.” They bought me a carrying case for the seal, for which I felt very grateful. After we returned to Matsue, Matthew and I went to the post office, where he mailed several postcards.
In the evening we had our farewell party, which was very similar to the welcome party, because it was in the same place, the top of the New Urban Hotel. It was a buffet again and the eel was still delicious. We were lucky enough to have Dr. Fukushima play something on an acoustic guitar, which was entertaining for everyone, I think. Near the end of the party the Shimane students and staff gave us many presents and heartfelt remarks. Some of the gifts were photo albums with photos from the previous day, which was very impressive. They must have worked on them very soon before the party.
After the party and our review meeting we went to our final bar in Matsue. We had to walk a very long ways to get to this bar, because most of them were closed by the time we got there, or they were too small for our larger than usual group. Along the way I got to borrow Misako’s bike and tried to give Ryokyo a ride, but I wasn’t skilled enough to keep the bike balanced. At the bar we had some sweets and fried food.
As it got later, I decided it would be best if I went back and finished my packing for tomorrow. When Minako started to leave, I decided to join her. As we left Misako and Amiko began to cry, which made me cry too. Someone said while this happened, “Man, the sound of women crying is a buzz kill,” which was the first time I was deeply offended on the trip. After I had said my final farewells to Amiko and Misako, we left the bar. I wanted to stay, but I also felt I needed to go.
Yu and Hiroshi also walked with us, so it was not too intimidating to walk the long distance back to the hotel. At several turns I was not sure of our location, but we were headed in the right direction. When we got back to the hotel, I was very sad to be leaving Matsue. From today, I will always recall the faces of Amiko and Misako and how they expressed themselves upon our leaving. They, along with Hiromi, made me a very nice farewell card. Amiko used her scrapbooking skills to commemorate our time together.
Purchases
¥350 ice cream at Sakai Fish Center
¥650 curry near GeGeGe no Kitaro street
¥350 squid ink and black sesame ice cream
¥900 wooden “平” seal
June 2nd
Today we went from Matsue to Tokyo, which was a big transition. To start the day, though, we went to a Buddhist temple with some Shimane students. Before we left the New Urban Hotel for good, we learned that Nozomi Ishihara and Nozomi Tanaka would not be able to join us on our brief trip to the temple. They showed much emotion and I was very sad that we wouldn’t be able to see them anymore.
The Gaku’enji Temple had very tall stairs and the road to the temple was lined with wide-trunked trees. Dr. Fukushima said it was built in the Kamakura period and was sort of a doomsday sect at the time.
At the top of the stairs was the temple, though I barely recall the temple itself. Instead, I was fascinated by the surroundings. To the right of the temple was a small box with vertical wooden bars. I had to approach the box closer to see its contents, which was a blue wooden statue of an oni, or devil. It was a very curious, partially decayed figure, with arched eyebrows and crossed arms.
In addition to this oni was a stone statue of a turtle. The most peculiar thing about this statue was that in its mouth was a small iridescent marble. I didn’t seek an explanation or anything about significance, but just thought it was a very small, delightful detail. After we had looked at the temple a short time it was nearing the time of our departure from Izumo Airport, so we had to get to the bus.
When we arrived at the airport, we and the Shimane students began taking pictures of each other until it got boring. We ate lunch as a group at the airport. Here I had soba and the noodles were very filling. I also received soba-cha here. It is an infusion made from the soba grain, which is called buckwheat in English. It had a very hearty flavor, almost like barley tea. Before we went through security, we took a group photo outside, where our plane was visible.
Finally we went through security in a very big rush, because we had spent too much time eating lunch and saying our farewells. The flight was very brief and I did not sleep because of this. For most of the flight I doodled or tried to read. Luckily I lost nothing on this plane.
Purchases
¥850 soba at Izumo Airport
Tokyo
June 2nd
When we arrived at the Haneda Airport, we had some time to walk around. From the Haneda Airport we had to take two or three taxis, which separated us from Dr. Fukushima for a short period of time. One of our taxis got misdirected, but eventually they made it to us.
We are staying in another Toyoko Inn, this time in Kamata Higashiguchi. We are very close to a train station, which is called the Keikyu Kamata Station. The hotel room is very similar to the one from our first night in Japan. After Matthew and I unpacked, we walked around for a while. We ended up finding a grocery store named Maruetsu, which made me very happy, because I like to look at the new and exciting fruits and vegetables. However, I did not want to split off from the others, so I saved the grocery store for another day. For supper tonight, we went as a group to a ramen restaurant near the hotel. I had spicy ramen with a side of nira, which was a pickled leaf vegetable. It tasted very similar to kimchi, because of its spicy and sour flavor. Tonight I slept with the window open, since I could never open the windows to our hotel rooms in Matsue and had wished to dearly. The sound of the city, the cars, birds, random people shouting, is very comforting to me. It is a kind of oceanic whir that puts me to sleep.
Purchases
Approximately ¥850 taxi from airport
¥750 dinner at ramen restaurant
June 3rd
This morning, and by morning I mean five or 6 o’clock, a loud bird woke me up. They squawked and squawked until I crawled to the window to shut it. And then I went back to sleep.
For breakfast, this Toyoko Inn, as with the previous one, offers a breakfast buffet. This buffet is much smaller than the New Urban Hotel’s buffet and the selection is sparse. First in the day we walked to Kamata Station around 9:40. We were heading for the Sumo Museum and a sumo lunch. The museum had many pictures and it was interesting to see recent, as in the 1980’s, history of the sport. The place was located adjacent to a large stadium for sumo, which is called Ryougoku Kokugikan.
As we left the museum, Dr. Fukushima bought a rankings sheet, which has all the current rankings for sumo wrestlers. The sheet is arranged in a very intuitive way. All of the highest ranking sumo have their names in large and legible kanji and all of the lower ranking sumo have tiny, illegible names. After the museum, we went to lunch. This restaurant feeds sumo, but today they also fed us. We were the only patrons in the place, but it was still fun.
The meal consisted of a hot pot filled with vegetables, seafood, and meat. After the items in the broth had been mostly eaten, the server brought udon noodles and then made udon out of the old broth and new noodles. The flavor of the broth was delicious because it had so many ingredients contributing to it.
When we were done with our meal we went for a walk. I forgot where we were headed, but we ended up at a Buddhist temple. The purpose behind the location was to remember lost pets and fire victims. I thought this mixture was very peculiar, but certain historical incidents, like a large fire in the area, precipitated this combination.
Finally, we made it to our last destination of the day, the Edo-Tokyo Museum. This building was enormous. It was a large rectangular prism held up by four giant square pillars. It looked like it was about to fall on us or blast off into space, not remain inert like it did. The inside of the museum consisted of two floors and attempted to illustrate the historical changes that occurred in the area of modern-day Tokyo, formerly Edo. The upper floor was not exactly on top of the lower floor, as they both shared a very tall ceiling, which made the museum feel like a stadium. Inside the museum were many exhibits of old Tokyo, such as pottery fragments and ukiyo-e paintings. Also, the treaty signed at the end of World War II was in the 20th century section of the museum.
My favorite piece of them all was a wooden statue of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun. This statue was visible though a sculpture on the other side of a wall. The sculpture was a white, smooth slab with a circle in the center, which allowed one to view Tokugawa. The circle in the center was the focal point to a hollowed-out section of a sphere, so that the slab, as a whole, looked like it had the negative space of an eyeball carved out of it. I angled my camera so as to capture Tokugawa in this eyeball.
Also of note was a display with each step involved in the creation of an ukiyo-e woodblock print. It both showed each block and each layer as it was made on the paper. There were also black and white stones from the board game go. One in particular, though my photograph did not turn out very focused, had a detailed carving of a face on it. Details like this one really helped me see how people lived and played in the Edo period. Finally, I also saw a cooking implement that I recognized was a taiyaki mold. Taiyaki are fish-shaped cakes made from a batter similar to waffle batter. They are filled with anko, or red bean paste.
Upon returning to Kamata, I went with Matthew to the grocery store I saw yesterday. We ended up getting separated because we shop at vastly different speeds. I bought some ume plum candy and fresh figs. After having had fig ice cream in Matsue, I was very lucky to find fresh figs in Tokyo. I had never seen fresh figs before. Their size, in comparison to a dried fig, is very large. This is because they are very soft, porous, and juicy, so they reduce a lot under the effects of dehydration. I also purchased some of the fish-shaped cakes at a store next to the grocery. One even had a maccha-flavored filling.
For supper a few of us and Dr. Fukushima went to a curry place. This restaurant had a vending machine ordering system. You chose your dish and paid the machine, receiving a ticket with your order. You then handed the ticket to the cook and they made your meal. I bought vegetable curry. After my supper, I went back to the hotel room where I had left Matthew, asleep. I woke him up and went to supper with him. I bought chawanmushi from a conveyor belt sushi place, which finished filling me up.
Tonight, after the meeting, we went out to Shibuya, a very large district, to meet a friend of Nick’s, whose name is Shino Happo. We wandered around Shibuya Station, not sure where we were supposed to meet her. Finally, after walking around the whole station we found our meeting place, which was Hachiko, a statue of a dog. This statue commemorated the faithful companion, who waited for his owner even after his owner had died, returning to the same spot each day. However, we didn’t have to wait for Shino, because she was already there.
Shino was not very familiar with the area of Shibuya either, but she directed us to a very interestingly themed bar, called The Lock-Up. When we arrived and were seated, the employee, dressed in some pseudo-police uniform, asked which one of us had been bad and thereupon put Matthew in handcuffs. She led us to a small private room, which had bar windows and other small details. The whole bar was very dark and mostly lit by black lights. The entire place seemed like a fire hazard, because its layout was like a dark maze.
This interior was much preferable to the actual maze outside. The lights were all neon, making the night in Shibuya brighter than the day. I know this is hyperbolic, but I hope this illustrates the discomfort that such a distortion can cause. The Lock-Up offered very many quirky, unnaturally colored drinks, often served in flasks or beakers with tapioca pearls on the bottom. As a group we also ordered tiny gel caps filled with alcohol. The presentation and atmosphere were very entertaining. However, we did not stay long and soon after returned to the hotel in Kamata.
The most impressive thing I saw today was the black go stone with the etching of a face upon it. It was a very human, idiosyncratic thing for the go player to do in a fit of boredom.
Purchases:
¥950 figs and ume candy at grocery store
¥450 taiyaki fish-shaped cakes
¥500 vegetable curry
¥350 chawanmushi
¥1,050 my portion of the tab at The Lock-Up
June 4th
Today we visited the Japanese parliament building, which is called the Diet Building, the imperial palace, the NHK studio building, and Shibuya. In the Diet Building we participated in a tour of the very large and well-decorated interior. The carpets were very thick and marble was used extensively in the walls and pillars. We got to see the chamber of the House of Councilors, the place where the representatives convene and vote on bills and so forth. What is interesting is that while the government of Japan is a democracy, it is technically a diet. Due to this, the Emperor or royal family takes the final step in approving legislation and declares the bill as law. In the chamber we visited there was a reserved seat specifically for the Emperor to occupy.
Within the central hall of the Diet Building were three statues of recognized citizens of Japan. There was a fourth pedestal for a statue, but it was purposely left unoccupied, to signify the room for additional outstanding citizens. As we departed from the building, I noticed very many propped-up trees, similar to the ones I saw in Matsue. One in particular stood out. It was a palm with numerous branches, each of which was fully supported with a T-shaped post. This made me realize the meticulous care that can be taken toward the rearing of a living thing and the effects that seemingly small things, such as posts, can have on long-term growth.
After we took our obligatory group photograph in front of the Diet Building, we visited the Imperial Palace, which was formerly Edo Castle. The transfer of power from the shogun to the Emperor, which is known as the Meiji Restoration, brought about, amongst other things, a change in ownership of the castle. It was surrounded by a very large moat and on the other bank was a stone wall of pieced-together angular stones. This wall and moat resembled exactly the moat of Matsue Castle, with the exception of its greater scale. Although we could not enter the Palace itself because it is currently occupied, the grounds around it were very well-kept, with pretty trees and wide open areas of multicolored gravel.
Next we went to Tokyo Station for lunch. Matthew and I went to a soba shop, where I ate nattou and soba. While it was filling, the amount of buckwheat in these soba noodles was a lot less than the ones I ate in Shimane. Rather than having a dark color, the noodles were very light in color, which means there is more wheat in the flour, I believe.
When we were done eating lunch, we met with the group once more and headed to the NHK Studios building. NHK is the public television channel in Japan. It is well-funded and has a wider audience than public television in the United States. We spent quite a while in the building, which was part informative and part interactive. In the gift shop there was a lot of Domo-kun merchandise. Domo-kun is widely known in American as part of an internet meme.
After we had our fill of the television studio we headed to Shibuya, the shopping district we had visited last night. It was much different during the day and much more tolerable for me. While we were still assaulted by flashing lights from every angle, natural light cancelled out some of the negative effects. In Shibuya we went to a clothing store called Uniqlo. It was a pretty affordable place and most of its clothing was brightly colored. Here I bought some light green jeans and some tabi socks, or to use Lafcadio Hearn’s explanation, some “digitated” socks.
We ate supper in Shibuya at a western-style restaurant as a small group. I ordered seafood curry for the main dish and a melon soda float for desert. The curry almost had a Creole-style spice to it. After we ate it, was about time to meet Dr. Fukushima at the Hachiko statue we saw last night.
Later that night, after our meeting, we went to a bar with Dr. Fukushima’s guidance. We were not sure how to distinguish between shady and not-so-shady venues, so he helped us scope out a good place. After such a busy day I was very exhausted and slept soundly.
Purchases:
¥650 on nattou soba in Tokyo Station
¥4,980 on socks and jeans at Uniqlo
¥1,150 on seafood curry and melon soda float in Shibuya
June 5th
The first place we visited today was the Studio Ghibli Museum, which was very interactive and visually pleasing. It was a ways away from Kamata, so after riding the train for a while, we had an early lunch at Mitaka Station. As I had had a filling breakfast at the Toyoko Inn’s buffet, I only bought a very creative maccha pastry.
It combined three distinctly Japanese tastes, ume, maccha, and anko. The sour taste of the ume plum offset the sweetness of both the anko filling and green tea dough. I was very satisfied that I ran into this treat. Additionally, the texture of each was preserved in the sweet. The mushy pulpiness of the ume was not lost in the dough. Finally, it was visually appealing. This is what first attracted me. The ume was bright shiso-colored pink and the dough itself was a pale green. Its contrast was intense.
No photographs were allowed in the Ghibli Museum. I wish I had been able to take some pictures, because the displays were amazing. One room used strobe lights to great effect to make animations of clouds, girls playing with jump ropes, and cats walking, amongst other things. Although I have only seen a handful of films from Studio Ghibli, I was very entertained.
We also viewed a movie at the museum, which was made for display at the museum. It lacked any real dialogue and consisted mostly of onomatopoeic expressions, which were accessible to me. It told the story of a girl’s pilgrimage through various places and her interactions with the residents. One resident in particular was a giant catfish. At each stop she offered the animals or environment a piece of food and respect.
After the museum, and, of course, the museum store, we went to Harajuku and Yoyogi Park, to see if anyone was performing in the street. As it was a muggy, rainy day, no one was there except us.
Following that disappointment, we went to the Hard Rock Café near Ebisu Station, because some of the students wanted souvenirs from here for their family members. We were going to eat at the restaurant after which the store was named, but it was too expensive for most of us. Instead, Matthew and I went to a ramen shop near the Café. Although my initial reason for not going to Hard Rock Café was because it was a restaurant based on hamburgers, this ramen shop was pretty meat-oriented also.
When we met back up we next headed to Tokyo Tower, which is a large broadcasting needle. This structure was very tall and has two levels. The second is twice as high as the first. Based on this fact, I only went up to the first level. The others went up to the second while I waited for them. I didn’t enjoy the view at all. I have really noticed my fear of heights intensify on this trip, which is something I’ll have to work on.
Purchases:
¥180 Dorayaki at Café la Tour
¥378 on maccha pastries at Lonlon Kinokuniya in Mitaka
¥1,260 socks from Studio Ghibli Museum
¥650 on ramen near Hard Rock Café in Ebisu
June 6th
Today we made our way to Akihabara, which is widely known for its offerings of electronics and anime merchandise. Although I did not end up buying any electronics, I did make a few very cool purchases. The main store we went to was called Yodobashi Camera. It was many, about seven, stories tall. On the toys level I was most at home. They had numerous puzzles. There were even a couple of aisles completely devoted to Gacha Vending Machines, where I bought some key chain charms. I also purchased a small three dimensional puzzle of ume plums. They are oddly shaped and plastic. The goal is to arrange them exactly so that they fit into a cup perfectly. It is very difficult to do.
For lunch Matthew and I met up with the others. We ate in the basement of Yodobashi Camera. I did not eat with them, though, and went to an unagi, or freshwater eel, restaurant by myself. Their menu was very appealing. It had no English and was printed in a font that made it look handwritten. Although I ordered the eel without rice, it was still very delicious and was even better than the unagi I had had in Matsue.
After Akihabara, we made our way to Ginza, which is a very expensive district of Tokyo. The first place we went to was the Sony building, which shows off many of Sony’s newest technological innovations. There were several that blew my mind. One was a camera with smile recognition. It was very entertaining to test this camera out, by seeing the threshold for “smiling.” When you did smile enough, it would take a picture.
Another interesting Sony gadget was the Rolly. It acted like an MP3 player, except it danced, lit up, and twirled on the floor to the music. Surprisingly the employee for this level of the showroom allowed us to take pictures and video of the Rolly, even though I was under the impression it was not allowed. When we were done with the Sony showroom, we had some free time to wander Ginza. Matthew and I walked around until we found a very refined stationary store. They offered a variety of notebooks, postcards, envelopes, and things made of paper which I normally would not expect, such as wallets or coin purses. It was a very bustling store and I navigated it very carefully, for fear of breaking any of its delicate merchandise.
Once we had had our fill of the stationary store, we went back on to the street and wandered. At one point we visited an Astroturf park, which almost fooled us into thinking the grass was real. Eventually we became bored of walking around aimlessly, so we returned to the Sony building and waited for the others to come back.
That night Matthew and I went to a curry restaurant named CoCoCurry. It was very close to our hotel, about a 2 minute walk away. I had nattou and egg curry. Sadly, each curry was actually based on pork curry if it was not explicitly another meat. However, even with this setback it was a very delicious, filling meal. After supper, Matthew and I went to the grocery store and bought a little umeshuu and took it back to the hotel room.
Purchases:
¥263 on anko buns at Vie de France Café (snack)
¥1,380 unagi in Yodobashi Camera
¥1,200 random toys at Yodobashi Camera
¥945 Souvenir from a nice stationary store in Ginza
¥850 nattou and egg curry at CoCoCurry
¥1,274 on umeshuu at the Maruetsu grocery store
Yokohama
June 7th
Since we’re leaving Tokyo for Yokohama, I had the last of my fresh figs for breakfast. I was very excited about leaving Tokyo to see a new place. We had to pack all of our belongings up once more. The worst part of this exercise was lugging our luggage through the train stations. Luckily we had two factors in our favor. The first was that we were departing from Tokyo and the second was that it was a Sunday.
The train ride to the Hinodechou Station, which is the closest station to the Isezaki Mall where our hotel is located, was about 20 minutes. The hotel’s name was the Hotel Central Inn Yokohama. We will be staying at this hotel until the end of our trip. Not all of our rooms were prepared when we arrived at the hotel, so we put them all into the rooms that were ready. I shared a room with Matthew again. As planned, we went to a Yokohama Bay Stars baseball game.
I had only been to a couple baseball games in Kansas City before this time in Japan. The game started out with the away team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, scoring 6 points on the Bay Stars, which set up a pretty big lead. This lead helped the Marines win the game 9-7.
After the game was finished, our hotel rooms were completely ready to move into. We spent most of the night wandering Isezaki mall, trying to take everything in. For dinner we went to a soba place, which was a vending machine restaurant, like the curry place in Kamata.
Purchases:
Approx. ¥750 taxi fare
¥263 at Vie de France on five color bean bread and maccha daifuku cake
¥650 soba for supper
June 8th
Today we rose really early and had to get our breakfast at 7/11. It was not the best start for my day. We left around 6:30. Our destination was the Misaki fish market, where we watched tuna auctioning. The tuna were large, up to 120 kilograms, and frozen solid. They were lined up according to their quality and size and buyers participated in an anonymous, silent auction for the slabs of fish. Many school children had the same idea as we did, so we were pretty soon surrounded by a lot of kids.
Next, we went to a fish market. It was very similar to the fish market in Tottori, but I was able to find pickled sea urchin at this one. Since sea urchin is so expensive at home, I figured this would be an inexpensive way to take some back with me. After the market we went to the Yokosuka area, which has an American military base in it.
To make up for our lack of paid breakfast, Dr. Fukushima took us to a curry house. Although I did not have the curry that everyone else had because it had meat, I had a spinach or mustard greens dish. The server said that it had cottage cheese in it, but it would be more aptly described as paneer, which is a dense cheese with very little moisture in it.
After lunch we went to a shopping area of Yokosuka, which was a little run down. Here I bought a chawan, or tea vessel for the tea ceremony. It was a little expensive, but I was glad to finally find one of the main items on my shopping list. When we returned to Isezaki Mall we went as a large group to restaurant called Ootoya, where I had a dish of okra, nattou, sashimi, and egg, over rice. It was very sticky and slimy.
Purchases:
¥450 breakfast at 7/11
¥3,000 chawan in Yokosuka
¥358 for peanut butter at grocery store next to Hinodechou Station
¥730 on okra, nattou, sashimi, egg, and rice at Ootoya restaurant on Isezaki Mall for dinner
¥15,000 withdrew
June 9th
Today was our first visit to a Kanto Gakuin University campus. The one we went to today is called the Kanazawa Hakkei Campus. We had lunch with the president of the university, Dr. Kazunori Matsui. Kanto Gakuin is a private university that was founded by Christian missionaries. It is a Japanese Baptist university today. Dr. Fukushima graduated from Kanto Gakuin. The campus was very pretty and we were given a tour of it by some of the students who met us there. We saw the church on campus and got ice cream at one of the university cafeterias.
For lunch we were given a box lunch with sandwiches, which were the first ones I had had in a while. During lunch we engaged in some discussion with the president and he was very laidback. As a gift of greeting Kanto Gakuin gave us some very well-made pens and mechanical pencils made by the ceramics company Kyocera.
One of the women in the international students department of the university asked me, on a whim, how to pronounce a difficult word, “vermicelli.” I was glad I actually knew how to say that, because it looked very difficult at first glance.
On the way to and from the campus I saw a lot of apartment complexes. I had not really seen where a lot of the people must live in Yokohama, so it gave me a good perspective on how residences are organized, apart from suburban situations. While some complexes were the plain, menacing sort of apartment buildings, others were more visually pleasing. These others were mostly terraced apartments that afforded a good view of the sky and had some greenery and trees on the terrace.
Today was a very easy day, aside from having to dress in formal clothes. When we returned to Isezaki Mall, we wandered around for a long time. At one point we passed a grocery store a good distance from our hotel. Oddly enough this place was selling Durians, a really smelly South Asian fruit for ¥3,000 each. I was almost tempted to buy one, even with the bad taste and high price.
Purchases:
¥84 on mugwort muffin at Vie de France
¥717 at Piago grocery store on peanut cream, umeshuu, ume fruit juice, and ume candy
¥714 at conveyor belt sushi place below hotel
June 10th
Today we visited a fascinating attraction, the Daibutsu statue in Kamakura. After our lunch at Gust’s, where I had nattou and egg, we took some trains to Kamakura. One train in particular was an older model, and Dr. Fukushima said that many people wished to keep these old trains for sentimental reasons. Kamakura is an area where there were a lot of Japanese tourists. This fact made me feel less out of place, because I was not invading on a lot of people’s home, I was just invading someone else’s space with domestic tourists.
The road we took to the Tsurugaoka Hachimanguu Shrine was curious. It was made to be very wide at the end farthest away from the temple’s entrance. As we neared the temple it grew narrower. These two aspects created an optical illusion which made it appear longer than it actually was.
At the top of the stairs leading to the shrine was a giant, very ancient ginkgo tree. It was very impressive to think that it was living when Kamakura was founded as the shogun’s capital. Next to the shrine was a museum with many old artifacts of the shrine’s history. One in particular was a placard that had the kanji for “Hachimanguu.” The fascinating part of this was that the symbol for hachi, “八,” was represented as two birds facing one another.
Following this shrine, we were dismissed for lunch. Before Matthew and I went about, we stopped at a coffee shop suggested to us by Dr. Fukushima, one called Renoir. It used a method of brewing coffee that took eight or so hours to make one cup. The method used no heat and just steeped the coffee in cold water. This allows a different flavor to develop. Although I can’t describe the difference, I enjoyed it very much. Additionally, I like iced coffee to begin with, so it was convenient, if a bit expensive. I have always thought it silly to heat coffee to brew it, then ice it to cool it down quickly.
When we were done savoring our coffee, Matthew and I went shopping. We found one store in particular that offered fine cloth bags and ceramics. I could have spent all day there just browsing and touching the merchandise. We ran out of time very quickly and had not gotten lunch yet, so we went into a grocery store and bought some fresh baked goods. One of mine was a loaf of maccha bread with azuki beans inside. The bread was of a very deep, dark green hue, which was very appetizing.
I saw two peculiar signs in Kamakura. One was a restaurant that repeated the usage of two birds for the kanji of hachi. I think this was in reference to Hachimanguu itself. Another was a tea house’s name, Chamuki, which, I found out with the help of Dr. Fukushima, substituted the regular kanji for “kumi” with ateji characters. Ateji is a practice whereby kanji are used for their phonetic value only. This predates the widespread usage of the hiragana and katakana syllabaries in Japanese. However, in this instance the substituted kanji still had their meaning put to use. The name communicated the sentiment of “tea for future (drinkers),” which was a very ingenious wordplay that is entirely untranslatable.
Following our free time, we went to the Daibutsu statue. It was very large and made of bronze. We saw a lot of other foreigners in this area. In addition to walking around the statue, we were also able to enter the statue for a very small fee. By entering the bronze structure, I really got a sense of how it is the size of a small, two story barn. There was also an illustration inside of its construction. Apparently it was put together in three main phases and the individual pieces were fit together like puzzle pieces.
Following Daibutsu, we stopped momentarily at a gift shop. Here I bought a daruma doll. This doll is small, round, and red. It represents Bodhidharma, one of the patriarchs of Zen Buddhism. Our next destination was a Kan’non temple which houses a Nara Period statue of Kan’non called “Juuichimenkan’non,” which means “Eleven-face Kan’non.” No pictures were allowed in the temple itself, but the statue, which is entirely made of wood and many feet tall, impressed me greatly. The air was a very solemn one near the Kan’non. Before going today to this temple, we had read in Hearn’s text that the statue was supposedly found floating in the sea.
Outside the building holding Kan’non, there were many of well-kept flowers and trees. There was a path with many hydrangeas that led up the hill and eventually gave a great view of the sea. From here we could see one factor that played into Kamakura being chosen as the shogun’s capital, that the sea was very shallow leading up to it. There was also a cave on the temple grounds, which housed many stone statues installed in niches in the walls.
When we got back to Isezaki Mall, we went to Book Off, where I saw a Boredoms DVD entitled “Super Seeeeee!!!!!!” I debated purchasing it, which is a tactic I always use to make myself save money. For supper, Matthew, Michael and I went to an okonomiyaki restaurant on the Mall. I ordered yakisoba, which consists of soba noodles that are fried. Today, the most impressive sight was the puzzling sign “Chakumi,” which I did not figure out until I got back in Arkansas. In addition to having a significant meaning, there is a symmetry in the three kanji, “茶来末.”
Purchases:
¥550 Renoir iced coffee
¥560 on maccha bread and a mango sweet for lunch in Kamakura
¥315 a little bag from a vendor in Kamakura
¥500 or so for a red daruma in Kamakura
¥750 okonomiyaki on Isezaki Mall
June 11th
This morning we went to breakfast at a place I suggested, a restaurant that serves rice porridge. Although I am not a big fan of porridge in general, it sounded like something new. The entire meal consisted of rice porridge, a very long, whole fish, miso, and pickles. The rice porridge was not runny, but I still had to be very careful with my chopsticks while eating it.
Our trip out today was intended to show us sights of Yokohama and acquaint us with its history and present situation. We have been particularly lucky on this trip. Just as we went to Matsue at the time of Horan En’ya, this year is the 150th anniversary of Yokohama’s opening as a port.
The first major place we visited was Yamate Hill, which saw foreign settlement in Yokohama’s early years of being an open port. In particular there were a lot of ambassadors’ residences. This was important because foreign ambassadors generally live in the capital city of whatever foreign country they interact with. However, Yokohama occupied the unique position of being the economic capital, while Tokyo, the official capital, lagged behind. The residence we visited had a very large rose garden with many different varieties. Many of the roses were named after international celebrities or icons. Also in this area we walked around Harbor View Park, which afforded a good view of the harbor, in addition to its well-manicured plants.
After the district for wealthy foreigners, we went to a fancier shopping area called Motomachi. This road had very many nice shops. In one in particular I saw a bright purple chawan, or tea vessel. However, I was put off by its price, which was around ¥4,000, and the fact that I had already bought one in Yokosuka.
We considered having lunch in Motomachi, but could not agree on anything as a group, so we went to Chinatown instead. At the restaurant in Chinatown I had fried squid and vegetables, all of which had a very pleasant texture. As we left I made a mistake in saying the word “separately:” I said “butsubutsu,” which means murmuring, instead of “betsubetsu,” or “separately.” Before we left Chinatown, we had a while to walk around, but I couldn’t really get a grasp for Chinatown. It was mostly geared toward feeding people, as far as I could tell.
Next, we went to Yamashita Park. There we got a pretty good view of the harbor. I went off on my own during this time and walked up a long series of ornate stairs. They were covered in tiles and had a stream of water going between the left and right aisles. The most interesting thing about the stairs was that they were ocean-themed. The water would go down the stairs past tile crabs, or other shellfish, where it eventually entered a pool with a large, open mouth. At the top of the stairs, they opened up to a circular area with short pillars to sit on and tall pillars for decoration. It was pretty.
Then we visited Osanbashi Pier, which was a very long wooden structure that took us far out into the water. From this location I took some great photographs of Landmark Tower and the Ferris wheel that I have come to associate intimately with Yokohama. Landmark Tower is visible from many parts of the city and is a good way to orient myself. The Ferris wheel always has the time displayed on a giant digital clock, so it helps me orient myself in another way.
Later that night I went to the sushi place below the hotel for supper. The conveyor belt sushi concept is great if you have self control, because you can then monitor your spending and adjust accordingly. However, if you are like me, the constant temptation leads me to overspend consistently at these places.
Tonight I got my fill of uni and tried something new, bonito. Bonito is widely used in Japanese cooking, just rather covertly. It is one of the main ingredients used in dashi stock, which is one of the basic flavors of Japanese cuisine. The fish is also dried and then shaved to make wide, thin bonito flakes that are put on top of food, such as okonomiyaki. After I ate my supper, we also had our meeting at CoCoCurry, so I bought a squid salad, which was a pretty light snack.
Purchases:
¥315 cute notepads in the shape of beans which I lost on the way home, bought at toy store in the shopping area called Motomachi
¥850 squid lunch in Chinatown
¥1,164 at conveyor belt sushi place below hotel
¥350 squid salad at CoCoCurry
¥170 Maccha croissant at St-Marc Café
June 12th
Today for breakfast at Jonathon’s I had grated taro root, nattou, and miso. The taro was very sticky at first and I was not sure how to detach it from my bowl. However, a little bit of the soy sauce that came with it soon accomplished this. Our destination today was the Kanazawa Bunko Campus of Kanto Gakuin University. It was an alternate one to the one we visited the other day. Today we received a lecture by Dr. Fukushima.
However, before we did this we ate lunch at the university’s cafeteria and played soccer with the Kanto Gakuin students. For lunch I bought soba, which was on par with the other soba I have had in Tokyo and Yokohama, that is, kind of poor.
Dr. Fukushima’s lecture discussed how political discourse manipulates and utilizes simple words to wide-reaching effectiveness. He gave it to the Arkansas students and also the students of Dr. Misono’s seminar class. It was titled “Simple Words Aren’t That Simple.” He first talked about the area of political linguistic analysis, which is not a very popular field in the United States.
His contemporary subject was the question of what makes President Obama’s speeches effective. The conclusion was that he used simpler words to greater effect and did not alienate people with a cumbersome vocabulary. He referred to Lincoln’s speeches, which have been analyzed in an identical way. Dr. Fukushima went on to say that though the simple words are common, short, and easy, they have “extended meanings” that go beyond their “basic meanings.”
We engaged in an exercise to see the differences between the Japanese and English words for “drink” and how they had big differences that are not apparent in their basic definitions. We found out that the Japanese “drink” could be parsed in a very specific way as “to introduce a substance into one’s mouth without chewing it.” This is because it is valid to say that one “drinks tobacco” in Japanese. In English the meaning could be parsed as “to take orally some liquid that is expected to maintain one’s physical well-being.”
After Dr. Fukushima’s lecture, which he held in both Japanese and English, we engaged the Kanto Gakuin students in a discussion about topics that affected our everyday lives. The topics were the environment, employment, amongst other areas. Later, when we had finished our cultural discussion, we all went out for supper to a bar. Following such a long day I was glad to be in the hotel room. The most memorable image from today was of the Kanto Gakuin and Arkansas students playing soccer together. Even though I am not skilled at soccer, I still managed to have fun.
Purchases:
¥450 Soba for lunch at Kanazawa Bunko Campus
¥1,000 or so for dinner at all-you-can-drink and several-course-meal bar
June 13th
Today we had the opportunity to spend a lot of time around Yokohama Station. It is busier than most of the other stations in Tokyo and is one of the busiest train stations in the world. A lot of shopping and other forms of infrastructure have grown specifically around the station. The number of shopping malls and stores that are directly annexed to the station is surprising. This is due in large part because the division between Yokohama Station and the outside world is indiscernible; the station has extended itself by way of these stores and malls, which attests to the economic effects of its location. This is because the malls and stores are effects of the station itself.
We began our day by eating at Jonathon’s, which serves both Japanese and Western style breakfasts. I chose pancakes with azuki bean paste for the topping. Although this may seem like a synthesis of Western and Japanese tastes, it was pretty much a Western dish. Once we arrived at the station, we were allowed most of the day to explore on our own.
The first place Matthew and I went to was the Tokyu Hands department store. It was a short walk from the station and we were not sure of its precise location, but eventually we found it. It had a lot of higher-end house wares. The most surprising levels were the hobby and crafts ones. The hobby floor had a large selection of chemistry set and astronomy supplies. Additionally, the crafts floor did framing and had a large number of markers, pens, and other art supplies.
On the games floor in the card games I saw some expensive, but entertaining, Japanese language card games. One was a card version of “100 Poems by 100 Different Poets,” which Dr. Fukushima had discussed when we were in Kamakura the other day. This game consists of one player reading the first few lines of a famous poem, waiting for the others to guess. The cards are strewn about and the players must find the one matching the recited poem.
Another was an iroha karuta game that was based on cooking terms. Karuta is played by placing all the cards face-up on a table. The holder of the game calls out a kana from the Japanese syllabary and the other players must search the cards on the table for the correct symbol. The cards had certain foods that began with their specific syllable to help recognition. For example, “wi” had a picture of a potato, “wimo.” The most fascinating part of this set was that it was an iroha karuta, which meant it had some obsolete sounds, such as “wi” in the previous example, which is now pronounced “i.” However, this deck was around ¥4,500, which was too much for me to spend.
For lunch Matthew and I met back up with Michael and Nick. We tried to find the others, but were unable to. We went to a food court as a group, but could not decide on a place suitable for all four of us. Matthew and I ended up going to an okonomiyaki restaurant. Mine was very good and this time the meat was only squid, unlike the time we ate okonomiyaki on Isezaki Mall. We met back up with the others and went into a mall called Mores. Here we found a Tower Records store and a really nice tea shop called Nana’s Green Tea.
While at the Tower Records store I browsed for a few artists, such as, Jun Togawa, Acid Mothers Temple, Boredoms, and ROVO. When I was looking for CDs, I heard in the background, very loudly, a nice electronic violin and recognized the song to be by ROVO. I was very fortunate, because a new DVD of theirs was playing on a small screen very near me. I was also able to find a slot for the band Acid Mothers Temple, but it had no CDs in it.
After Tower Records I got a maccha float. This was a wonderful idea, because the ice cream in the float was maccha flavored, which inundated my taste buds with its sweet, chalky flavor. While I prefer unsweetened tea, the milky sweetness and tea flavor mixed very well in this situation. It in effect cancelled out any bitterness in the tea. Later we returned to meet with the others and go back to Isezaki Mall.
We walked around Isezaki Mall a lot tonight. Right before our meeting tonight, I went to a takoyaki place and ordered four such balls. They always remind me of Hiroki Fujimoto’s apartment in Matsue, where I made takoyaki with Minako, Nozomi, and Chika. After our meeting that night, Matthew and I went to the St-Marc Café and I drank a maccha latte while he read his book. From today I will always remember the bright green of my tea float. It is very similar in execution to a root beer float from home, but somehow so new.
Purchases:
¥6,000 withdrawn
¥1,039 spent on souvenirs at Tokyu Hands department store
¥830 spent on lunch at Fugetsu restaurant squid and egg okonomiyaki
¥550 on maccha float at Nana’s Green Tea
¥630 ume plum jam from grocery store next to Hinodechou Station
¥360 takoyaki on Isezaki Mall
¥530 maccha latte at St-Marc Café on Isezaki Mall
June 14th
We started out the day with breakfast at Gusto, where I had my by now usual salmon breakfast. Today is the day for us to really use Lafcadio Hearn’s text in an exciting way, by being historical detectives. We are taking a chapter from Hearn’s work and engaging the subject of the research of Dr. Fukushima’s brother, whose name is Daiichi Fukushima.
. During Hearn’s circuit on his first day in Japan he sought an image of the Buddha but failed to see one. In his narration of his trip, however, he did not name his temples or shrines, just described them. Mr. Fukushima researched each location meticulously and determined the exact locations Hearn visited. I will give a brief description of the temple in Hearn’s time and a brief description of it today
Hearn’s first location is a Buddhist temple with two gates. The first gate is a many-cornered Chinese roof with dragons and line-headed gargoyles. From the temple, the sea and Mt. Fuji are visible. Its second gate is similar to the first, except with two stone lions, one female and the other male.
The second place is a Shinto shrine with about one hundred steps and two torii. Hearn’s third destination was another Buddhist temple with a very lofty flight of steps. The location was very near the ocean and was near a cataract or waterfall of some sort. The fourth and final place Hearn visited that day is yet another Buddhist temple. This time it was devoted to Kan’non. The entrance of this temple was guarded by two red, nude statues of oni.
Now I will tell you the places we went today in chronological order and then match up Hearn’s travel with ours. Our first stop was a Buddhist temple atop a pretty tall hill. It was in a mostly residential district. Its name in Japanese was Narita Yokohama Betsuin. There was a pair of lions at both the upper and lower gates.
The second location was a Buddhist temple named Shirotaki Fudouka. The place was at the top of very many steps and next to a waterfall. While we were here we saw a group of Kanto Gakuin students, none that we knew, visited the same temple.
Our group’s third place did not actually exist anymore, so we went to the general area where it once was. It was a Shinto shrine and was located near the nice shopping district called Motomachi, where we had gone on the 11th. Mr. Fukushima reported to us that it formerly had one hundred stone steps and was destroyed in the 1920’s. One way he figured out it had one hundred stone steps was the name of the street, “Hyakudando-ori,” which literally means “One hundred step street.”
The fourth place we went to was widely known as Akaman, meaning red gate. Two red statues guarded the entrance and the area was relatively flat, compared to the other areas we visited today.
Thus, the unnamed temples that Hearn visited correspond to ours as follows. Narita Yokohama Bestuin, our first location, was the name of the place Hearn first visited. The no longer extant Shinto shrine on Hyakudando-ori, the place third on our trip, corresponds to the second of Hearn’s destinations. Shirotaki Fudouka, the second place we visited, was Hearn’s third. And finally, Akaman’s red guardian statues of today had their equivalent in Hearn’s own time, making our fourth location and Hearn’s fourth location the same.
In all, today was a very fruitful exercise. We got the opportunity to meet Dr. Fukushima’s brother, who is variedly accomplished. He has composed music to one of Shakespeare’s plays, taking into account music conventions contemporary with Shakespeare. Historical texts such as Hearn’s are not even his specialty. His area of employment is actually computer programming.
For lunch today we ate at the same Chinese restaurant as we did on the 11th. This time I ordered a large plate of fried eggplant, which had a positively pleasing texture. After we returned to the Isezaki Mall and said goodbye to Mr. Fukushima, the whole evening was open to us. The others were going to meet some Japanese students and go somewhere.
I opted out and stayed around the hotel, eating a large amount of uni sushi at an inexpensive sushi venue. After visiting Vie de France for some muffins, I returned to the hotel and finished reading a book I had started reading five months ago, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. It was very relaxing to sit back and dive into a novel, something I had not done in a very long time. Having accomplished something of a personal goal in finishing my novel, I slept very well. Some things just take five months to finish.
Purchases:
¥98 banana for a snack
¥750 eggplant in Chinatown
¥150 fried sesame balls in Chinatown
¥876 on conveyor belt sushi for supper
¥168 on mugwort muffins at Vie de France
June 15th
Today we explored all the parts of Yokohama we missed on the 11th. We saw Aka-Renga, some bayside area attractions that celebrated the 150th anniversary of the port’s opening, and Bashamichi. Later in the evening I bought some books and ate some very spicy ramen. This day we got around with a one day bus pass. The first place we entered was the red brick warehouses called Aka-Renga. It consisted of two buildings, in which today there are restaurants, gift shops, and exhibitions. The environment was kind of disorganized from what I could tell, so I am still not sure of the significance of the two buildings. After Dr. Fukushima purchased our admission tickets, we visited to attractions, “Y150 Hajimarinomori,” or “Forest of Beginnings,” “Y150 Tomorrow Park,” and finally the “Nissan Y150 Dream Front.”
The first had numerous illustrative exhibits about Yokohama’s history as a port and the intrusion of Matthew Perry. For instance, it had an illustration of the Japanese meal offered Perry during his visit. In this middle of these informational, contextual sights was a giant, 12 meter tall mechanical spider, which was “the main attraction of the Y150 celebration,” according to the bayside area map that we got at the entrance to the park. As with the warehouses, I was sort of confused and pulled in several directions at once with the irrelevant spectacle.
Following the relatively educational exhibits, we visited “Tomorrow Park,” which had a live radio station and a giant movie screen where they showed an animated film called “Baton.” The screen was enormous and brings the word sublime to mind. It was too big for a viewer to grasp in any real way. To say the least, what was going on in the actual anime was beyond my comprehension. I left the theater before it was over and enjoyed the sunshine.
Next, we returned to Aka-Renga for lunch. However, their prices and seating were not favorable, so we went to the lower floors of a department building called World Porters. Leaving Aka-Renga, I noticed that Nana’s Green Tea was located in the other red brick warehouse. So, I lagged behind the group and purchased an iced maccha with white rice dumplings. Luckily I was able to catch up to the others without getting too lost. At World Porters I had udon with grated taro root on top. It was relatively delicious.
Next we walked a span to the Nissan section of the exhibition. Here we watched a movie called “Gift” on a very high quality screen. It had various scenes about children, nature, and animals. Afterwards, we watched a presentation about a new car called “PIVO 2” that is charged while it is driven, amongst other new features. Perhaps the most pleasing portion of this portion of the exhibition was Word Park. Here, the viewers wrote their suggestions for Nissan on leaf-shaped papers and submitted them by pneumatic tubes into large, clear plastic spheres suspended from the ceiling. It was a very practical and interactive ending to the exercise.
Afterwards, we attempted to go to the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History, but it was not open. I was disappointed because I had very much enjoyed the Edo-Tokyo Museum. To compensate for this loss and expedite our return to the Isezaki Mall, we took a walk down Bashamichi Street, which commemorated a lot of Yokohama’s firsts, such as horse-driven carts, ice-cream making, photography, and gas lamps.
A statue commemorating ice-cream making in Yokohama really put some of my experience in Japan into perspective. I realized I had tried seven new flavors of ice cream here, none of which I could ever find at home. They were maccha, purple sweet potato, squid ink-black sesame, fig, wakame, maguro tuna, and Daisen cream. It was a rainbow consisting of a wide variety of flavors and it was intrinsic to my culinary experience in Japan. Eventually Bashamichi led us back to the Mall directly.
After we arrived, Matthew and I visited a bookstore named Yurindo, where I bought several English language novels. One in particular was named Cha-No-Yu by A.L. Sadler, which concerns the tea ceremony. Since the visit to the tea house in Matsue, I had been curious about the particulars of the tea ceremony, so this was a treat to find.
Following this, we waited for the others and visited a ramen shop directly behind the bookstore. It was called Rairaiken and was Hokkaido ramen. This ramen was hot. I ate the spiciest that they offered, which was level 20. Although it reached a tolerable ceiling in terms of oral discomfort, my stomach rolled and ached for a very long time after my meal. In order to walk off my discomfort, I browsed the stationary store of Yurindo and wound up purchasing an orange Rhodia notebook, which is a French brand, for a friend. Afterwards, I went to the Piago grocery near the hotel and purchased two kiwis. Interestingly enough, these kiwis were golden yellow on the inside. The difference in their taste was difficult to pin down, but it was a pleasing mask for the salty, oily flavor of the ramen.
Purchases:
¥600 at Nana’s Green Tea in Aka Renga
¥590 on tempura kabocha, or fried squash, and grated taro root udon at the food court at the bottom of World Porters
¥3,030 on 3 books at Yurindo bookstore. They were A Quiet Life by Oe Kenzaburo, Cha-No-Yu by A.L. Sadler, and After Dark by Murakami Haruki
¥200 on two golden kiwis at Piago grocery store
June 16th
As today is the last day of activities in Japan and a free day, Michael and I decided to spend it out and about. We started the day as a group eating pancakes at a charcoal roasted coffee shop near the end of Isezaki Mall. Michael and I left the restaurant and made our way to the subway. We were heading for the Yokohama Museum of Art. He had contacted Natsumi Hyogo, Yuka Kimura, and Masahiro Kaneko and asked if they could meet us there around 11. However, in travelling to the museum we ran into a lot of confusion. First, Michael forgot his camera with a map of that part of Yokohama in it.
We returned to the hotel and then headed for the train station, thinking it would be simpler, but we headed in the wrong direction for the train station and instead went several blocks in the wrong direction. Then, at the train station an attendant said that we could just walk to the museum, since it was right by Landmark Tower. After this, we walked for a long time again. This walk, though it was not very well-planned, helped to synthesize the previous week’s trips through Yokohama. I had never realized how close and within walking distance a lot of major sites were.
Eventually, we arrived at the museum, after having passed by Bashamichi, Landmark Tower, and Sakuragichou Station. We got there a lot later than we had expected, but Natsumi and Yuka and Masahiro were there waiting for us. I had met them all before, but never really spoke with them. The museum had an exhibition of French paintings of the 19th century.
There was also a permanent exhibition of artwork by Japanese and otherwise artists, which I enjoyed more than the temporary French exhibition. This was because the permanent exhibition was more contemporary. A couple of works in particular stood out to me. One was a large black sculpture that reflected the entire room. I captured a picture of Natsumi sticking her figure at the amorphous, large object. Another was a group of Max Ernst paintings. I have never seen a Max Ernst work in person, so it was very moving for me.
Something that was very educational in the museum was a series of photographs of Yokohama taken around the time of the construction of Landmark Tower. The enormous building, from a visitor’s point of view, seems so timeless and permanent and I would be hard-pressed to imagine an orientation for the pedestrian without it in the cityscape. Before leaving the museum, I decided to purchase two postcards, one of eggplants and another of a French painting. This painting was created by Carolus-Duran in 1874. It depicts the goddess Hebe atop a hawk or bird of some sort, high in the air. She is merely standing on the small bird’s back while she pours oil or some liquid into a cup. The whole scene strikes me as rather odd and impossible. What if she spills her oil so far up in the sky?
After we left the museum we were all starving and decided to go to a pasta restaurant. I ordered squid with a walleye Pollack roe sauce. It took boring spaghetti and made it a little more interesting. We next took the train to Yokohama Station and wandered the department stores in the vicinity, because Michael was searching for a shirt with poor English. Then we went to Nana’s Green Tea and had some maccha floats together. I was very happy to share this venue with my friends. Even though food disappears, I would much rather spend money on food than goods. Once you eat it, it is much easier to carry.
Afterwards we had to return to the hotel to prepare for the next day’s departure. Following the group meeting, Matthew and I went to an okonomiyaki place on Isezaki Mall, where I ate some delicious fried eggplant with stringy cheese on top.
Purchases:
¥1,100 admission to YMA collection and “La peinture francaise du XIXe siècle”
¥100 on another postcard of a French painting of Hebe, Hercules first lover and the goddess of youth.
¥158 on one postcard of eggplants
¥1,650 on three maccha floats at Nana’s Green Tea in More’s department store near Yokohama Station
¥100 on day of the week magnets at ¥100 shop by Hinodechou station
Withdrew ¥5,000
June 17th
I had a lot of caffeine early in the day today. Before entering the plane to depart from Tokyo, I had already drunk seven cups of tea and one cup of coffee. We woke up kind of late and ate at Gusto for a final time. After this we went to Yokohama Station by limousine bus. At Yokohama Station we waited for quite a while, as the express train to Narita Airport came at very specific times. Here, I drank a lot of tea and coffee and bought some ume plum snacks. On the train to the airport, I bought maccha ice cream, which I attempted to savor.
At the airport I ate “nattou isobe age,” which is fried seaweed with nattou on the inside. The sign outside of the restaurant said that it had perilla leaf instead of seaweed, but I am not sure which is correct. In any case, it was very delicious. Warm nattou has a very delicate flavor like metal and nuts. Before we left Japan, I paid for the cellular phone and turned it in. We waited additional time before passing through security and waiting for the plane.
On the plane, I sat next to a woman named Merope, who was returning to Brazil from Japan. She worked at Mazda, though I am not sure under what capacity. She slept a lot of the way, so we didn’t talk much. I didn’t understand her Japanese very well. I wish I had been able to converse with her more fluidly in Japanese, because it would be exciting to converse with another who speaks Japanese as a secondary language. Her flight was connecting to São Paulo, which would take many hours in addition to the flight from Tokyo to Dallas. I was not able to read much during this time, but I wrote a lot of prose poems about the ocean. The flight from Dallas to Arkansas was too short to notice. When we arrived, I was exhausted. On the ride home I tried to formulate anecdotes and summaries of my trip, but it was too difficult.
Purchases:
Withdrew ¥2,000 early in the day
Spent a few Suica points on ume plum candies, tea, and Dutch brewed coffee at Yokohama Station
¥500 maccha ice cream on Narita Express Train
¥1,050 on souvenirs
¥260 on a maccha daifuku cake, it was frozen and filled with maccha ice cream
¥870 on Ika Nattou and Nattou Isobe Age at airport
