Tuesday, January 13--Dress Like a Local

I now understand why kimonos have fallen out of favor as daily attire for Japanese women. It takes way too long to get dressed, and I’m not convinced it is something you could do by yourself. Jenny and I got to dress in kimonos today during a class offered by the base. The instructor brought all of the paraphernalia we would need and basically dressed us like we were children.

First we had to take off our shoes and socks and put on special socks that reminded me of camels’ hooves. They were split at the toe into two sections, like mittens for your feet—your big toe goes in one section and the other four toes go in the larger part. Then the instructor did up the hook and eye closures in the back to keep the socks on our feet (they are not knit like normal socks, so they do not conform to your foot).

Next came the “underwear” layer, which was a plain, muslin-colored kimono. Even though the very edge of the neckline is all that will be seen of this layer, it must be properly arranged because you’ll never get to it to fix it once you start adding other layers. All layers of the kimono must be lapped the same direction, left over right (they lap it right over left when they dress your body for your funeral). The back of the kimono must also be pulled away from the nape of the neck. This part of the anatomy is considered sexy, and since it is just about the only skin visible when wearing a kimono, it’s important not to overlook this detail. Once it was all arranged just so, the underwear layer was tied tightly at the waist with a plain cord.

The instructor then dressed us in the actual kimono, and explained that the fabric, colors, and decorations are all indicators of the importance of the occasion and the wearer’s status. Remarkably, there was a kimono long enough for me in the teacher’s collection, and she carefully arranged it to land just at my ankles. She used another plain cord tied at my waist to hold everything in place.

The obi came next, and covered the cord holding the kimono together. A shaped board was stuffed into the front of the obi to make our profile appear as flat as possible—the ideal Japanese figure has no bust and no hips. The obi is also symbolic, showing wealth by its color and pattern, and marital status by the way it is tied. Married women only wear a simple box-style knot, but single women have more elegant choices like bows and butterflies (I got to have a bow today since we were dressing to look elegant for photos). The knot of the obi is in the back, making this the part of getting dressed I’m not sure you could manage alone. In fact, many single women these days book an appointment at a kimono shop to get assistance if they are planning to wear a kimono for a special occasion. A silk scarf gets tied over top of the obi, and a silk cord is added on top of that. The nice thing about all of these accessories is that none has to color- coordinate with the kimono—you could get dressed in the dark and no one would complain that your colors don’t match. Once everything was all wrapped and tied, it was difficult to take a deep breath, much less bend over.

The final touch was a pair of slippery, ill-fitting, wedge-heeled flip flops, which explains why the women I’ve seen around town in traditional dress move so awkwardly. I was a little disappointed to find out the instructor was not going to put our hair up in a traditional style for the photos, but nevertheless I tottered over to have my picture taken, posing gamely with an antique-looking fan and umbrella. It was fun to dress up in the local style, and now that I know what is involved, I have a greater appreciation for the graceful beauty of a Japanese woman in a kimono.

Sunday, Janurary 11--The National Sport of Japan

There’s no better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than watching thousands of pounds of human flesh flying around a dirt ring. Courtesy of yet another ITT tour, we attended the opening day of the Winter Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo today.

Outside the stadium, banners bearing the names of the wrestlers were flapping in the breeze and fans without tickets were lined up to watch the big guys arrive for their matches. Inside the arena, we found that the seats were arranged on two levels, facing the north, south, east and west sides of the dohyo, or ring. The upper level seats, where we were sitting, are the cheap seats and resemble theater seats. The box seats on the lower level go for about $100 each, and are actually cushions on the floor, clustered in groups of four per box. While sitting on the floor for nine hours holds no appeal for me, it does apparently come with benefits--the price of a floor seat includes a bento (box lunch) and souvenirs. Hanging from the rafters above the second floor seats are portraits of the champions of the past 32 sumo tournaments.

All of the action takes place in the dohyo, which is situated on a raised platform, and is bordered by rice bags. The object of the sport is to either force an opponent past the rice bag boundary or make him touch the ground with some part of his body other than the soles of his feet, using one of the 82 official techniques recognized by the sumo association. Sumo is a full-contact sport, and involves pushing, shoving, and even the occasional slap as each wrestler tries to get a hold on the other’s belt (found out if the belt comes off and the wrestler is left standing in his birthday suit, he automatically loses the match). The matches frequently last only a few seconds, especially if one wrestler sidesteps a charging opponent—the laws of physics mean its difficult to stop the momentum of an object of such considerable mass, and the aggressor simply falls on his face.

A wrestler moves up through the ranks of sumo by consistently winning matches. While promotions are often difficult to achieve, demotions can occur with only one losing tournament. The lower-ranked wrestlers face off early in the day, and more important matches are scheduled for the afternoon. These matches draw the largest crowds, as well as television coverage. As a result, some of the wrestlers have numerous sponsors, which boosts the financial reward for the winner of that wrestler’s match.

Sumo is known as the national sport of Japan, but is somewhat less popular today than in the past. One reason for this is the increasing domination of foreign wrestlers—the Japanese have fewer local wrestlers to cheer for. Currently there are only two yokozuna (highest ranking wrestlers) and they are both Mongolian. Some of the more prominent wrestlers have also been behaving badly, with scandals ranging from inappropriate comments to the media to drug use to the beating death of a lower-ranked wrestler by his higher-ranking stablemates. Sumo is a very ritualistic sport, with a long history of honor, respect, and obedience among its wrestlers. Recent scandals are very offensive to long-standing fans of the sport. In spite of all this, the stadium was sold out today.

The Winter Grand Sumo Tournament will continue for another fourteen days, and the wrestler with the best record at the end of that time will be the champion. Since we don’t get Japanese TV at the house, I’ll have to keep up with the results in the newspaper. There are five more Grand Sumo Tournaments during the year, with the next one in Tokyo scheduled for May. By the time we buy our tickets for that one, I will have a favorite wrestler and will be able to cheer his name right along with his Japanese fans.

Saturday, January 10--Chillin' Monkeys and Chilly Castles

We got up at oh-dark-thirty this morning to make it on time to the pick-up location for our trip to Nagano (site of the 1998 Winter Olympics). Factoring in rest stops, the bus ride to the prefecture northwest of Tokyo was scheduled to take about five hours. Heavy traffic and snow squalls slowed us down, though, so it was nearly 11:30 when we reached our first stop, Jigokudani Monkey Park.

Jigokudani is located in the mountains of central Japan, and because its elevation is 850 m, there is snow cover for nearly one-third of the year. Fresh snow was falling today, adding to the twelve inches or so that were already on the ground. We had a 1.6 km (1 mile) walk from the bus parking area to the park entrance, which took us well over half an hour, partly because of the snowy and somewhat treacherous path, but mostly because we paused so often to take in the beauty and peaceful silence of the snow-blanketed landscape.

Near the park’s entrance we began to see steam rising from numerous vents and hot springs, which helped to give the area its name, “Hell Valley.” Wild snow monkeys (Japanese macaques) live in the surrounding forest, living on the abundant leaves and fruits found there. In the winter, however, they have difficulty finding enough food, and come to the valley to forage. Their visits are encouraged by park rangers who provide regular feedings of grain throughout the winter. The monkeys come out of the woods each morning, and spend the day in the park, eating and relaxing in the hot springs, then return to the woods in the late afternoon to bed down for the night. They walk unobstructed through the grounds of the park, paying absolutely no attention to the humans who have come to watch them bathing in the onsen. Visitors are warned not to bring any food into the park, not to try to touch the monkeys, and not to make eye contact with the monkeys (this is seen as a challenge to the social hierarchy, and the monkeys will attack), but are otherwise free to mingle freely with the macaques. As you can imagine, being so close to wild monkeys, especially monkeys bathing in a hot spring in the middle of a beautiful, snow-covered valley, turns everyone into a photographer, and it’s sometimes hard to get a clear shot of the monkeys without capturing someone else’s camera lens in the background. You can see what I mean if you check out the park’s live cam—a photo is taken every hour from the park’s opening at 0800 until its close at 1600. In the menu on the left side of the page, click on the numbers in the far left column to see today’s hourly photos—the numbers in the right-hand column are yesterday’s photos.

After communing with the monkeys, we returned to the bus to travel across the prefecture to Matsumoto Castle. Because we were behind schedule, we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked at this 400-year-old national treasure. Most structures of the castle, including the residences, are gone, but the tenshu (donjon, or main fortified, tower) has been preserved. From the outside, it looks to be five stories tall, but the hidden third floor actually gives it six stories on the inside. We were required to remove our boots and don ill-fitting slippers before entering the frigid tower to explore all six floors. Signs in English pointed out various features of the tower, all designed to help warriors protect the castle from enemy attacks. Windows were specially constructed depending on the type of weapon to be used at that location, be it stones, arrows, or firearms. Wide hallways allowed samurai in full armor to run throughout the tower, but I am baffled by the staircases they used to get from one floor to another. They are the narrowest and steepest stairs I have ever tried to climb. Combine the trip hazard of the slippers we were wearing with low-hung solid wood beams and the polished, slicker-than-ice bamboo handrails we had to hold while juggling cameras and bags containing our boots, and you have a recipe for a good old American lawsuit. I don’t know how armor-clad samurai navigated these stairways with any speed at all—if I’d been defending the castle, the enemy would have time to swim the moat, tear down the gates, and burn the whole place to the ground before I got from the staging room on the second floor to the stone-dropping windows of the first floor.

As luck would have it, we were able to close out our evening at the castle just as the warriors did in times of peace; standing in moon-viewing wing of the tower, watching the full moon rise over the mountains to the east.

Friday, January 9--Rain on Our Parade

We couldn’t have picked an uglier day to go to Tokyo Disney. A big Disney fan, Jenny really wanted to go to the theme park while she was here. Since the park often sells out (they limit the number of guests they admit each day) and you could be turned away at the gate if you wait to buy tickets when you arrive, we purchased tickets in advance to guarantee we would be able to get in. The drawback to purchasing advance tickets is that you are locked into visiting on that specific day or forfeiting your tickets. So even though today was cloudy, cold, and rainy, we gamely bundled up and headed to the Magic Kingdom (which is located right on Tokyo Bay, so the sea breeze did nothing to improve our comfort level).

Now, I admit that it has been a LONG time since I’ve been to Disney (we went to Disney World in Florida before EPCOT was built), and my opinion of the park may have been influenced by my size and perspective all those years ago, but Tokyo Disney is very little. There are very few rides for adults…I don’t know about kids’ rides because we didn’t venture through that section of the park. The good news about the weather…lines for rides were very short! Guess what, Mom? I made it through the whole “Haunted House” without crying (maybe it was less scary narrated in Japanese?), and not once did I get down into the floor of the boat when we went through “Pirates of the Caribbean” (even though I did yelp when the cannonball hit the water right next to me). The one ride I truly wanted to experience in Japan’s version of Disney, “It’s a Small World,” was closed for renovations. I don’t know how to explain why I wanted to go on that ride…I guess it’s the idea of being halfway around the world and finding something familiar from home. Proof that it is indeed a small world.

We did witness something at Tokyo Disney that I am fairly certain would never happen in the U.S. parks. Any time there was a break in the rain, an army would emerge to remove all traces of the bad weather. Squeegee-wielding maintenance workers chased all of the puddles from the sidewalks, while jovial, poncho-clad employees dried every slat of every bench with chamois cloths. Since many of the benches were under rain-laden trees, I truly expected to see individual leaves being dried as well. Inevitably, the rain would start again, and the army would retreat from whence it came, but as soon as there was another break, the troops began their assault anew.

We had intended to stay and close the park (at the very family-friendly hour of 7 p.m.) but by four o’clock we were numb with cold and soggy to the bone, and had really run out of things to do, so we gave up and headed back to the train station. We did miss the electric light parade, or whatever they call it these days, but for all I know it would have been cancelled anyway lest Mickey and Minnie be electrocuted in the rain.

Wednesday, January 7--Seven Gods of Kamakura

Another sight-seeing tour to Kamakura today. I signed Jenny and myself up for a free tour offered by Fleet and Family Services on base. I figured it would entail visits to the tourist “hotspots” Jim and I had already seen, including Hachimangu Shrine and the Great Buddha (Daibutsu), but thought it would be good to have an experienced Japanese guide to explain things we had overlooked on our previous visit. Turns out this is a monthly tour, with an ever-changing itinerary. Because it is the beginning of the New Year, our guide informed us that today’s tour would be a pilgrimage to the Seven Gods of Good Fortune. Hopefully by visiting all seven gods at their respective shrines and temples around Kamakura, we will guarantee ourselves a year full of good fortune. I, for one, will take all the help I can get.

Ebisu, the god of fishermen, is also known as the god of prosperous commerce among merchants.
Jurōjin is the god of longevity.
Bishamon, the god of war, conquers evildoers with his spear.
Benten is the only female deity of the seven, and bestows eloquence and wisdom.
Daikoku, the god of wealth, has a large bag of treasures slung over his left shoulder.
Fukurokuju is the god of wealth and longevity (I guess he’s there in case Jurōjin and Daikoku can’t get the job done).
Hotei is the god of contentment and happiness, and everyone wants to rub his bare belly.

To prove (to ourselves? to friends? to family? to the gods?) that we had indeed visited all seven, we each purchased a shikishi board specifically designed for this pilgrimage (¥500) at the first shrine. We then had a monk at each stop stamp the board with his shrine or temple’s seal and write the date next to it in calligraphy (¥300 each). By the end of the tour, we both had a board suitable for framing (the stamps and calligraphy are beautiful) that can be displayed for the rest of the year. (Apparently any good fortune you get from making this pilgrimage expires at the end of the year, and you’ll have to do the whole thing over again next January.) So our free tour ended up costing Jenny and me each about $50 when we added up train fares to three stops in Kamakura, shrine admission fees, and stamp charges. I’m not too upset though—we were told that the money will be returned to us many times over this year now that we’ve paid homage to the Seven Gods of Good Fortune. I picked up a potential new English student on the tour…is that the beginning of my good fortune??

Monday, January 5--Yokohama

Another city too large to conquer in one day, we picked out three attractions in Yokohama that we hoped would provide a good cultural cross-section of Japan.

We decided to start out at Sankeien Garden, where many buildings of historic importance from around Japan have been relocated and preserved, including a pagoda, which was on Jenny’s list of things-to-see-while-in-Japan. I thought we could easily find this garden—after all, it is 175000 square meters (that’s a lot of surface area in Japan), and you can see for yourself how clearly it stands out on the brochure map. Plus we had directions, and I was eager to show off my new bus-riding skills. Things fell apart when we got off the bus, though. When the directions said, “walk to the Garden (7 minutes),” I assumed there would be signs pointing the way. Well, if there were, they weren’t in English. After walking 30 minutes in the wrong direction, we finally found a gas company employee with a street map, who spent another 10 minutes trying to pinpoint our present location in the well-worn atlas before plotting our course to the Garden. Turns out it is cleverly hidden in a maze of residential streets, which are not indicated on the brochure map. When we finally arrived, we were just in time for a guided tour of the former residence of Sankei Hara, the Garden’s founder. Not surprisingly, the tour was conducted entirely in Japanese, and though we were given fact sheet about the history of the house in English, we missed a lot of the interesting details the guide provided about the unique construction of the house. (We could tell they were interesting because of the oohs and aahs and vigorous nodding of the Japanese tourists.) After escaping from the house, we wandered the rest of the grounds admiring the other buildings. We finally got to see the pagoda, a three-storied specimen relocated from a temple in Kyoto, which was originally built in 1457 (that makes it 552 years old, in case you were wondering). Unfortunately, at this time of year, the only notable flora were the manicured evergreen trees and shrubs. I would really like to return when the gardens are in bloom, but I don’t have a lot of faith that I’d be any more successful finding the Garden a second time.

Next stop, Landmark Plaza, a five-story shopping mall, which is connected to Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan. The Sky Garden, the highest observatory in Japan, is on the 69th floor of the tower, at a height of 273 m. We got up there by taking the fastest elevator in Japan, arriving in only 40 seconds. The 360-degree view from the observatory was pretty amazing. We could look out over all of Yokohama, and well beyond the city. Although the day was sunny, it was somewhat hazy, so we could not see all the way to Mt. Fuji. Looking down on the city, trying to pick out interesting features (like a rooftop Putt-Putt course) reminded me of The Amazing Race when contestants in a sky-scraper were tasked with searching out Travelocity gnomes hidden on nearby buildings. The zoom on my camera gave me a pretty good view of a several block radius, but I would have loved to have had binoculars. Next time we go to the Sky Garden, we will go after dark and enjoy a cocktail while admiring the city lights.

We intentionally hit our last destination at dinner time so we could sample the exhibits of the Ramen Museum. The museum itself was pretty small. The first floor had displays of instant ramen from around the world, ramen shop accessories, and a timeline of ramen history. All of the explanations were in Japanese, so this floor was of limited interest. The bottom floor, however, made the price of admission worthwhile. The entire basement was constructed to look like the streets of 1950s Tokyo. While it was fun to look at the old apartments (with aerial antennae on the roofs and laundry on the balconies), the bars (with neon signs above the doors), and the advertising billboards, the main attractions were the ramen shops. Nine shops offer different ramen recipes from nine regions of Japan. One drawback to the set-up is that you must eat your ramen in the shop where you ordered it—there is no central food-court-type seating area. So unless you want to eat alone, all members of your party need to agree on a single ramen shop. Honestly, I think it’s just a clever ploy to get you to return at a later date to try a different shop! I’ll definitely return, but the ramen at shop number 4 was so amazing, I’m not sure I could be convinced to try another.

Sunday, January 4--Tokyo Highlights

On this, the first day of Jenny’s visit, we wanted to show her Tokyo. Now we know from experience that you can’t see all of Tokyo in a day, so we narrowed it down to a couple areas we thought would make the most lasting impression. We chose to make the hour-long train journey to Harajuku for several reasons. First of all, it is home to the largest shrine in Tokyo, Meiji Shrine. I knew that all shrines and temples would be mobbed at the beginning of January as worshippers came to pray for blessings of good fortune in the New Year. However, I naively believed the numerous sources that said this all took place during the first three days of the New Year. I thought we’d encounter close-to-normal crowds, being as we were going on the fourth day. NOPE. The place was a mob scene. We could do nothing but wade into the sea of people and let the tide carry us around the grounds of the shrine. We occasionally pulled ourselves out for a few photos, but were soon drawn back into the crowd as if by an undertow.

When the waves of humanity finally carried us to the exit of the shrine, we headed across the bridge near the train station, hoping to spot the second reason we’d come to Harajuku—the “freaks.” On Sundays, this area of Tokyo has become a gathering place for eccentrically-dressed young Japanese. Some congregate around the bridge dressed as punk rockers, anime characters, maids, or animals, while others wander Takeshita-dori (a narrow street full of shops catering to young people) in poodle skirts and 50s greaser attire. It seems the number of “freaks” has declined in recent years, ever since a once-pedestrian street was opened to vehicle traffic, but we still found several photo opportunities today.

Last stop in Harajuku was the Oriental Bazaar, billed as the best souvenir shop in Tokyo. They did have an impressive selection of gift items, at very reasonable prices for Tokyo, as well as two floor of interesting antiques. (Side note: Remember our trip to Ueno Zoo with Rudy in October, and the fruitless search of Shinjuku for Shakey’s Pizza? Well, we found it on the way to the Oriental Bazaar—too bad we had just finished a huge lunch of tonkatsu. Its location has been duly noted, though, and we vow to return with Rudy to partake of their lunch buffet.)

Exploring Harajuku took up most of the day, but we wanted Jenny to see Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics district. The streets are nothing but wall-to-wall electronics shops, and are closed to vehicle traffic on the weekends. Thousands of people wander up and down searching for the best deals on TVs, iPods, cameras, appliances, computers, and video games. We arrived after dusk, so got to experience the dazzling displays of lights shining from the highest buildings, advertising Sony, Dell, Sanyo, and countless other electronics manufacturers.

Jim and I had been to Harajuku and Akihabara last summer, so I knew what to expect, but by the time the three of us dragged our weary selves back onto the train this evening, my head was still spinning. Watching all of those people, hearing the street vendors yelling over the drone of innumerable conversations, smelling yakitori and crepes and curry, feeling strangers brush by you in the crowded streets—Tokyo assaults all of your senses, and it takes your brain hours to process everything it has experienced.