February 9-10, Yokohama/Nara/Oji, Japan

Japan
Japan was the first of three countries with
two ports; which means we have the
opportunity to travel over land while the
ship sails between cities. We decided to
get off the ship in Yokohama and meet it in
Kobe, traveling for three nights and four
days on our own.
Themes of Japan travels include:
•
extremely kind people
•
fast, clean, timely trains
•
comparatively loud Americans (that
would be us)
•
new adventures in eating for the kids
•
blend of traditional values with
modern technology
•
some challenging insights.
Sam watches as the pilot boat delivers the pilot from the port in Yokohama who will
steer the ship into the dock.
Monday, 9 February 2010
We dock in Yokohama in the early morning, and because Rob has to work until all students are off the ship,
the kids and KKA decide to explore the harbor area of the city. It is a gorgeous, unseasonably warm day –
which would be a fluke for our Japan trip as a whole – so we walked along the harbor-front. Our eventual
destination was an amusement park that we could see from the ship’s terminal. A huge ferris wheel and
roller coaster were all lit up right there smack in the middle of Yokohama. So one of the first things Maddy
and Sam got to do in Japan was to ride a log flume. When you think Japan, who doesn’t think log flume? They
screamed as loudly on those things in Japan as they do in the U.S.. The roller coaster looked way too scary for
us so we went back to the ship terminal after that to wait for Rob.
Meanwhile, Rob is back in the terminal helping with the emigration process. Each time we arrive in port the
crew and staff have to work with the local customs and emigration officials to process paperwork and
passengers. In Japan students were called
down to the gangway by Sea (student hallways
of between 40-80
students – Rob
In each port tugboats guide us
to our dock. The condition of
works with the
the tugboat and dock can be a
Bering Sea) where
sign of what is to come in the
port. In Japan the tugboat
they would get their
was immaculate, freshly
temperature taken
painted, tires neatly aligned on
the bumper. The dock crew
by a finger machine
were plentiful and all dressed
that was
in clean jumpsuits with colors
according to his task – much
simultaneously
like the deck of an aircraft
recording
carrier. This was our first of
many tastes of a clean,
fingerprints. They
orderly society.
were very
particular about conduct in the secure area where Rob and his colleagues were distributing passports and
landing cards to everyone. For a short while Rob had to be at the post where they were making sure nobody
was chewing gum – and if they were to, collect it from them on a piece of paper – one of the grosser duties
assigned to the student life staff.
While waiting for Rob to appear, the kids
got to experience two fine features of
modern Japan. One is the convenience
stores, which are everywhere in cities.
They sell the usual mix of things –
magazines, basic personal items, drinks –
but also sell a huge variety of good, takeaway food. It was here that I bought Maddy
and Sam their first onigiri
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onigiri] – a
small triangle of Japanese sticky rice, which
is lightly salted and formed into a triangle.
It has a “flavor” inside – a curried sauce, a
pickled plum, a bit of fish, and other
goodies. It comes with a piece of seaweed,
in the shape of a rectangle, that is used to
wrap the triangle up and eat it with. Think
of sushi, but in the shape of a triangle and
no raw fish involved. While the kids did not always love the insides of these, they liked onigiri a lot. We would
eat many of them over the next 5 days in Japan, on trains, walking around, etc..
As we pulled into the port of Yokohama, we could see extensive roads and
bridges crisscrossing the waterfront. It was clear that there is a great deal of
attention paid to not only function but design.
The second experience we had of modern Japan was the toilets.
Traditional Japanese toilets are rectangular, on ground level, and
require squatting. Many public facilities and many places off the
beaten track have these toilets, but you also find the most
elaborate Western-style toilets you’ve ever seen. (I love the
contrast of this. It fits my theory that Japan is a country of
contrasts.) In the terminal station, Maddy and I went to a
restroom that had these toilets. The seats were heated, and you
could choose a variety of “sprays” to clean yourself after you do
your usual toilet business. I’ve seen those toilets with capabilities
to play music (which I assume is to drown out unpleasant “toilet”
noises; enough said about toilets here). It turns out the students
were fascinated by the toilets in Japan too since several of the
video productions from the visual communication class featured
students on the john.
So by the time Rob got off the ship the kids were well on their way
to liking this country a lot. [Kathleen had visited last summer and
This plank is directly connected to the bridge. The
knew she liked Japan quite a bit already!] As we walked to the
pilot brings us in to Yokohama.
train station, we looked for a place to grab lunch. Once again, the
convenience stores were available and looked delicious, and we found one on a main street with eating space
outdoors. (Normally there is no
eating area in these stores at all and
it is rude to eat while standing or
walking around in this very civilized
country.) So we ate lunch at a
convenience store, which is
an affordable way to eat a meal in
this very expensive country. This
store had western-style pastries,
great coffee, miso soup, salads, rice
triangles, and bento boxes (boxes of
beautifully presented cold food to be
taken away to eat as lunch or
dinner; think of a TV dinner but not frozen, and with more “pick up” foods).
Very cool! We were greeted in Yokohama by traditional drummers.
As readers of this blog will soon learn if
they do not yet know this about us, we
are food people. We are not really
“foodies” who are interested in fine or
elaborate food, but we like to eat and we
like to experience new countries and
cultures through, among other ways,
eating well in those places. So part of
taking our kids to all these new places is
to help them learn to try, and love trying
new foods, even if they don’t always love
what they’re trying. At one of the preJapan talks on board the ship that we
heard on “Asia Day,” a veteran traveler in
Japan said: “Don’t ask for an ingredient
list of what you’re eating before you’ve
Kathleen and Sam enjoy our first meal together in Japan.
tried it. Don’t ask what the food is before
you eat it. Try it, see if you like it, and
THEN ask what you just ate.” This became our mantra for Japan with the kids and they were very game with
trying things, including seaweed, sushi, many kinds of pickles, dumplings with various mysterious things
inside of them, and green tea. We were especially
proud of Maddy, who has not been the bravest eater
of our family to date.
We took a train from Yokohama to Oji that afternoon
and evening. This involved several changes, and a
ride on a Shinkansen, the “bullet train” line of Japan.
These trains are amazingly fast, as well as clean and
timely like all Japanese trains. The Japanese train
system is expensive but just a marvel and pretty easy
to navigate, our small-ish mistakes aside.
Because we were
riding during the
weekday our
children were
usually the only
ones in our train
car, and that fact on
top of the fact of how quiet and well-mannered
Japanese people tend to be in public settings such
as this, we constantly felt like the classic Loud
American Family on Vacation. We kept shushing
the kids and trying to get Sam to sit still. Not
easy. Another train highlight, however, is the
ritual of bowing. Before the food cart lady or the
conductor would enter our car after opening the
door, he or she or she would give a little (short,
shallow) bow beforehand; a charming custom (I
say he or she, but food servers were always
women, and conductors were always men. I’m
sure this was a coincidence only. Yeah, sure.)
We were set for our first train
ride – but ended up waiting on
this platform for longer than
necessary. We wanted that
green line but only blues came.
Finally we figured out that we
had to take a blue to the next
stop to switch to a green.
Enroute to Oji
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cji,_Nara ]
a small town outside of Nara from where we
based our travels the next day, we made a couple of train mistakes. We missed a connection, and later
boarded a wrong train that took us to our desired destination but in four times the amount of time had
boarded the correct train originally. Each time we made these mistakes we would ask for help, and we were
given kindness and hospitality at every turn, from train staff to riders of trains. While we did not find people
to be warm and fuzzy and “open” in the way that Americans tend to be with others, there was a tremendous
sense of helpfulness and desire to please. We found this consistently in our time in Japan.
We arrived in Oji (pronounced “OH-GEE”) around 9:30 pm, checked into the inn we’d booked, and were
shown to our room. Before we got to our
room we were exhausted, but the unusual
accommodations gave us the boost of
energy we needed to finish the day strong,
get set up in our room and get to sleep.
Tuesday, 10 February
We spent the night in a place called
Guesthouse Yougen, a ryokan in Oji. A
RYOKAN is a traditional Japanese inn.
Often the owners or staff live at the inn in
separate quarters, and you treat an inn as
you would a home – so you take off your
shoes before you enter, and put on
slippers that are kept at the door for
guests. At a ryokan you usually
sleep on a fouton, on a spare
room that has tatami mats on
the floors and sometimes the
walls too. In this ryokan like
many others you also got a
yukata robe and belt to wear
with it, for use as you lounge
around the inn, and you can
eat your meals in the robe as
well if you like. At this ryokan
like many others, you share a
bathroom, and the toilet is in a
separate room from the
bath/shower room. There are
special toilet slippers to wear
in that room – you take your
slippers off outside the room
before you go in the toilet
room, and wear those
designated slippers inside the
toilet room while you’re using
it.
Even though we were exhausted from travel, Maddy and Sam were energized by the yukatas
which were provided to us at our ryokan in Oji. Yukatas are usually used like a robe for wearing
around the ryokan, but Maddy and Sam also slept in theirs.
Among these more traditional
amenities, our ryokan had two
public computers, great
internet connection, and a Wii.
We were thrilled with the
internet and the kids were
pretty psyched about the Wii,
whose Japanese instructions
did not daunt them in the least.
This ryokan was in a traditional style Japanese house, which meant that the rooms had thin walls and walls
on two sides that slid open and closed, serving as doors and walls at once. (We learned at “Asia Day” on board
the ship that Japanese people and architects are not only very adept at making compact spaces for living but
they are also very good at constructing multi-use spaces that interconnect.) These rooms are not wellinsulated as a whole but many rooms have very efficient space heaters and/or air conditioners. So
unoccupied rooms are cold in the winter and hot in the summer, but if you’re in a room the heater or air is
on.
Our ryokan fee included breakfast, and the night before we had ordered 2 “western style” and 2 “Japanese
style” breakfasts for the morning. We were shown to a simple room with a low table, large pillows on the
ground, and with an electric heater going. Breakfast was brought to us and the presentation of all the food
was just beautiful. Rob and I had a small mushroom omelette, rice, miso soup, fruit, pickled plum, and tea or
coffee. The kids had omelettes, thick white bread toasted (popular in Japan right now), jam, fruit, and tea. We
ate in our yukatas, and the kids especially loved using chopsticks to eat breakfast.
We had originally planned to bike around Nara, as the day was not rainy and Nara is a small city with lots of
blocked off streets and easy traffic. But we had also wanted a guided tour and in the end, did not have time to
do both. So we got the tour, with the idea that we can bike lots of places but are not able to have extended
interactions with very many Japanese people while in Japan. We contacted, through the very helpful people at
the Information Center in Nara, a free English-speaking tour guide who was advertised through the local
YMCA. Yoko, our guide, met us in the city and spent about 3.5 hours
walking us around and telling us about the history and culture of the
city. [While we made the arrangements to meet Yoko, the workers in
the Information center made the kids some origami paper tops and
presented them to the kids; different workers had done this very
same thing the night before, when we were scoping the place out.
We walked with Yoko to see three of the seven World Heritage sights
located in Nara. Nara itself is at least several thousand years old, and
important because it was designated as Japan’s capital in 784 C.E. or
A.D.; the capital was later switched to Kyoto and then to the present
capital of Tokyo. Nara is also important because it was the political
center of Buddhism in Japan, when it came to this country from India
A traditional Japanese breakfast at our ryokan
in Oji, Japan, near Nara.
and China in the 8th century. Nara is a small city, walkable, without tons of traffic, and a lot of history.
Our tour guide Yoko took us to several important temples and shrines – the Todaiji Temple, with the famous
“Big Buddha” inside, the Kofukuji Temple, and the Kasuga Grand Shrine. The first two are Buddhist sites and
the Kasuga Shrine is Shinto. (Shinto is the native religion of Japan, and Buddhism came here in the 700s. Both
are very much woven into the contemporary
culture of the country in different ways.) The Big
Buddha and the Todaiji temple were amazing, and
Yoko told us about the history of the place as a
center of Buddhism for the country. She had a nice
way to talking it through without too much detail
but with enough to keep us all interested. This
was not always easy with the kids. The Kofukuji
Temple has a wonderful five-story pagoda. Again,
Yoko was able to explain all the symbols and
significance of these pagodas. Finally, the Kasgua
Shrine, founded by an old, important Japanese
family (the Fujiwara), whose Tori [gates] are
painted in bright red and which has 3,000 lanterns
on its grounds. The lanterns are lit twice a year for
festivals.
To these temples and shrines we also walked
through Nara Park
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nara_Park]. This
park is notable because it is home to the famous
Nara deer, who basically run the place. These are
sika deer which, according to the legend, are
sacred. Apparently, long ago, one of the four gods
of the Kasuga shrine appeared on a local
mountain riding a deer. So for a long time these
deer were considered sacred and are now a popular part of Nara tourism. [And in fact until the 1600s it was a
capital offense to kill one of these deer.]
Maddy gave Rob a special hairdo for our traditional Japanese breakfast.
We had a lot of fun feeding the deer. Yoko, who had brought her orange peels from home so that we could
feed them, told us how to do it. You hold your hand, with the food, above your head and say “Konichiwa!”
(“Hello!”). The deer then slightly dip their heads, which looks like a bow of respect, and then you feed them.
It worked most of the time, though Sam got confused and thought we were supposed to bow to the deer, but
hey, the deer like a little respect too, I guess.
Our day with Yoko was good. She was like a cool Japanese grandmother, the kind of woman who could tell
you about temples and shrines, had an extra tissue in her purse for runny noses, slipped the kids some candy
when their energy was slipping, and kept telling us to walk faster because there was a lot to get done. Her
English was excellent and we were very appreciative of a free, personal tour of such an interesting place.
You may be wondering about our meals on this day, since so far I have not mentioned eating and you know by
now what food-centric travelers we are. We found what we think of as a small Japanese diner for lunch. We
stumbled upon it and it was a find, delicious, fast,
and affordable. It featured a formidable waitress
who yelled all the orders in a high-pitched,
extremely loud voice. She was the kind of waitress
that really motivated you to have your order
READY when she appeared. But after the meal
Rob asked her to pose for a picture and she was a
softie at heart. For the meal, we had excellent panfried pork dumplings, a ramen bowl, stir fried
veggies, spring rolls, and very nice fried rice.
Sam with the server at a local diner in Nara. Up until this point we had
come to know her only as a loud, all-business, focused, agitated, and
uninterested waitress.
We found Yoko, our
local tour guide, in a flier
at the tourist information
office. She is a YMCA
free guide.
For dinner, we went back to Oji and had sushi,
right around the corner from our ryokan. We took
off our shoes to sit upstairs, sitting at low tables in
a wood-paneled dining room. We ordered
different types of sushi, and Maddy tried some for
the first time. Maddy learned, at this meal, that
fish on sushi is served uncooked, 99.9% of the
time, and she was none-too-pleased to learn this
after trying some. [I had not realized how sushi
sheltered she was, prior to this.] But she was
game, and dinner was good. There were many
tables of smokers around us, and because we live
in a state where all restaurants are smoke-free, we
found that part of the meal unpleasant. Sometimes
we found places in Japan that had smoke-free
sections, but not everywhere.
Adjacent to Nara Park
was a one-room
museum and garden
dedicated to
earthquakes – as
Japan has sustained
many deadly quakes.
Here, Sam is strapped
into a chair which,
when activated,
simulates what it
would be like in a
major earthquake.
The chair shook back
and forth, then
paused, then the
aftershock shook it
again.
The displays in these
two photos show new
technology upon which
museum artifacts and
new buildings are
constructed to make
them earthquake
resistant. The top
photo shows a steel
roller bearing. When
you shake the bottom
platform, the water in
the glass is perfectly
still. The other display
shows a laminated
rubber bearing on
which concrete forms
for buildings are
mounted.
Yoko pointed out the lotus flower design at the base of this
300 year old lantern. In the Buddhist tradition the lotus
represents purity of body, speech and mind as if floating
above the muddy waters of attachment and desire.
Over a thousand
domesticated deer roam
the grounds of Nara
Park. The first few
minutes were exciting
and a little nerve racking.
Then it just became
normal to have them
around, sometimes
surrounding you if they
thought you had food for
them.
Maddy demonstrates the
proper way to greet and
feed the deer in Nara Park.
When you show them a
closed fist, they nod their
heads. When you show
them the palms of your
hands, they know you don’t
have anything for them.
Maddy and Sam pose in front
of the largest wooden
structure to house a big
Buddha. The original
structure was built in 1709.
Most Buddhist temples give
you an opportunity to light
incense and make a small
donation (below). The
incense is reputed to purify
the surroundings.
The Big Buddha in Nara Park is carved and polished wood. The right hand with the palm showing is a message to stop worrying (Yoko said,
“No worries”). The left hand facing up with curved fingers encourages us to keep going. Now worries; just do it.
Two carved “guards” were
posted beside the Buddha.
One has his mouth wide open.
The other’s mouth is closed.
This is a common symbol of
guardians which we saw in
both human and animal
figures. Yoko explained that it
represents the first and last
sounds of the Japanese
alphabet and signifies that
they offer “all protection of the
temple.
It was explained to us that the
hole carved in this column in
the temple was as big as the
nostril on the Big Buddha.
Japanese children were lined
up to crawl through. Maddy
and Sam took their turns.
Thousands of lanterns
contributed by different
families adorn the Shinto
Shrine. A forest of taller
concrete lanterns were
adjacent to the shrine.
Yoko said they are all
illuminated a certain times
during the year. It is
customary to write and
leave a prayer on a rack
at the shrine.
Yoko, our tour guide,
graciously answered questions
all afternoon. When asked
how Japanese balance old
traditions with modern
technology, she responded,
“The old traditions inform our
morals. The new stuff is to be
practical.” When we offered to
pay or tip her, she declined.
“When you see someone in
trouble, help them. That is
how you can take care of me.”
One example of the balance in
Japan between traditions and
technology was the Wii set
available at our traditional
ryokan. Sam and Maddy
seemed unaffected by the
Japanese instructions and
scoring. (left) Sam Skypes
from our ryokan with our friend
Lenn in Connecticut who was
often awake when we were, in
spite of the 12 hour time
difference.
On our first night in Japan, we
got on the wrong train around
a loop. What should have
been a 15 minute ride became
an hour-long ride. We could
have made a worse train
mistake since we were still
going to get to our stop. Sam
(below) didn’t make it without
first taking a little nap on the
train.
Fast food in Japan is a noodle
shop in which you order from
what looks like a vending
machine near the door. But
since all of the buttons are in
Japanese, we were seated
and provided an English
language menu by a waitress.
They thought they were
being helpful by creating
an English language train
schedule. But the cover
was the only thing in
English. All of the trains
and times were in
Japanese characters.
Very helpful.
We ate a a sushi
restaurant in Oji
around the corner from
our ryokan. This was
Maddy’s first full sushi
meal. She really went
for it. She had not yet
been informed that
there is raw fish in
those little rolls of rice.
Aside from the thick
smoke in this place,
we had a great meal.
We found Japanese to be very
hospitable and helpful. While
we were looking through the
materials at the visitors’
center, this woman made
Maddy and Sam origami tops
and origami boxes with lids.
In the courtyard of Yougendo, the ryokan at which we stayed in Oji, Japan near Nara.