A Blog Abroad

The Big Tokyo Post

April 12, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

Tokyo: the last leg of our trip. It’s always refreshing to spend some time visiting my old favorite spots, finding new ones, and visiting with friends. In Tokyo, we were flung head-first into one of Japan’s national sports: find-a-trash. Japan does not have many public trash cans. Usually, they’re on the station platform. If you’re lucky, vending machines will have a recycling bin next to it. People just carry their trash with them here. It’s a great game. Rhett loves it, and only slightly sarcastically.

Anyhoo, brace yourself for a spicy-brained recap of The (new) Things We Did.

We are staying out in Asagaya on the west side, which is exemplary of a normal urban Tokyo neighborhood. This is the one part of the trip that we didn’t splurge on, and I’m happy we stayed out in a normal neighborhood, away from tourists. Our apartment has only one place for Rhett to hit his head, but sadly no couches for him. Staying out in the relative burbs is a great way to truly get a feel for the place – I always recommend this to first time visitors. Also, it’s cheaper.

Asagaya has a lot of foreigners living in it and it’s dotted with covered shopping arcades, coffee bean roasteries (more on this in a hot second), cafes, and small restaurants and izakayas that seat about 10 people. There are no sidewalks, you just walk chaotically in the street and I guess move over if a car comes along.

I’m still mad at american suburbs. You can walk to anything you need easily in Asagaya. I hate the car-centric culture pervasive in most of America.

It’s maybe about time for me to mention that Japan, and Tokyo in specific, has an absolutely killer cafe culture. If you are following along on my instagram, you have likely noticed that I post a lot of coffee shop pics. I really love cafe culture around the world and we’ve had some incredible lattes and coffees on our trip. Generally I am a coffee person in Europe, but in Japan, I usually get milk tea when we go to cafes.

On that roasty note, I bought some hand-roasted coffee beans from a shop in Asagaya. I was lazy with reading and thought it was a cafe and was surprised when I entered. As a midwesterner, I was feeling some guilt over entering and then leaving right away, so I decided why the heck not – time to buy beans.

The drawback to this decision is that I have absolutely no words to express how I might want my coffee beans, outside of “whole beans” and “that one in the middle.” I managed to bungle through picking medium roast, whole bean, gimme that recommended one. Look sir, I don’t know what I’m doing so just tell me when to return. I got the beans. I will report back on their deliciousness.

And get yourself some roasted beans when you go to Tokyo. You can clearly just point at what you want.

Beans aside, here are the new & notable things we did and their relative neighborhoods. Other Tokyo posts can be found here, including day trips to surrounding areas.

Harajuku

We’re gonna dive into the notable category: my favorite Tokyo street food is the humble rolled crepe. We got two on our trip. Best ones are in Harajuku as they are its Thing, but you can find them a lot of places in the city too.

My book told me that there are a few farmers markets around the city, and Harajuku has a big one in front of united nations university every saturday & sunday. It’s exactly what you would expect from a farmers market, plus FOOD TRUCKS! Yeah!

Rhett’s best coffee of the trip was from a truck here. I got a galette. I resisted the siren song of buying gourmet mustards. There was also a vegan ramen stand.

Meiji Jingu in Harajuku is one of the big inner city shrines. Highly recommend a visit as an entry to going to shrines around the country. This one is a shinto shrine.

Since my last visit in 2018, they opened a museum nearby. The museum explains why the heck there is a forest with ancient trees in the middle of Tokyo, which was destroyed in WWII. Spoiler alert, over 10k trees from around the country were sent here in the 50s to rebuild it. It also teaches you about various holidays at the shrine, which is neat. Great intro, totally worth visiting.

If you want to know how to kidnap me, one of the methods you might use would involve luring me into an exhibit about historic clothing or textiles. The Meiji Jingu museum currently has a temporary exhibition on Empress Shoken’s haute-couture dresses from the late 1800s and early 1900s. The late Meiji era into the Taisho era is one of my favorites as far as art + culture goes, as you get this incredible mash-up of Japanese culture with Western fashions and styles and the two cultures trade influences heavily. Commodore Perry comes a-knockin’ and it’s a period of big change for Japan. (They also choose to copy the West’s hobby, colonization, but we aren’t here to talk about that today. Nobody likes it)

Please just imagine the glory of this dress for a very petite lady

Also, Empress Shoken was like maybe, maybe 4’6”. She was so very petite. The big dress they had on exhibit took five years to hand restore. Amazing.

Shibuya

Huge Nintendo store! It’s no different really from the one in Kyoto, but the Parco building is a cool place to browse for goods, and you can walk up the outside. Shibuya is, in general, great architecture, good shopping, great walking.

Ueno

The equivalent of the minnesota state fair, the great get-together, is undoubtedly cherry blossom viewing season in Japan. People congregate in parks, spread a tarp, and share food, dango, and drinks. I have a picture from 2008 of a naked guy splashing in Yoyogi park’s fountains. It was an accident. I kept the picture.

It’s the man in front of the bridge. But you can’t tell because this pic is old and low-res!

Anyway, it was nuts to butts peak cherry blossom madness when we were in Ueno Park on Sunday so we left for Yanaka cat town. The upside of hanami madness is that there are extra trash bins in parks, which means that we can actually find easy places to throw our things away.

Any time of the year, you can go to the zoo – it’s only 600 yen to enter and has a lot of different animals that we don’t see at home. Rhett loved the amphibians house with the biiiig african bullfrog. If you go towards the end of a weekday, you can see the pandas with no wait!

As I am taller than 90% of the people looking at the panda, this is a great advantage.

Yanaka cat town

We walked here from Ueno because it was bananagrams with Hanami on Sunday. I saw no real cats, but it was a fun walk through an old Tokyo neighborhood. It was filled with a wonderful amount of kitty cat shops, souvenirs, used clothing, and all manner of cat-shaped foods and statues. It was a fun walk and a good meander if you are into cute things or cats or, preferably, both.

Also in Yanaka, I got to achieve one of my dreams: shokupan french toast!! This cafe we went to was above a pottery shop. To visit the cafe, you talk to a guy who looks like he’s minding the pottery shop. It felt like a weird scam to sell us some pottery. I wouldn’t be mad.

Anyway my Shokupan had sakura cream, sakura ice cream, and came with a sakura float.

And on the way out, we stumbled across some bloomy bois next to a graveyard.

Asakusa + the Sky Tree

That heading could be a Ghibli title. These are two areas of Tokyo close together, so they make sense to explore on the same day. I went here twice because I don’t like to be logical. Walking around Asakusa along the river is especially good right now, with the cherries in full bloom. You can take a Very Japan Picture with the blooms, the sky tree, and the golden poopy. Also, there are river cruises if you are so inclined (I was not).

The Sky Tree is a newer contraption. It did not exist when I left Japan in 2008 and then existed when I came back in 2012. It’s 3000 yen to go up to the top and I almost never do this type of thing because I don’t feel like spending the money on it. But it’s a clear day and the Yen is weaksauce, so we do this thing. Going up to the highest deck was the right choice because it’s a lot less crowded and is more peaceful. It’s definitely super touristy though, so it’s crowded here even over the lunch hour.

On the day I went to Asakusa, it was a serious kind of Tokyo rain – where you must have an umbrella or perish, but it’s also raining sideways, so you perish anyway. I spent extra time exploring the shops here because Rhett stayed home on this day. I picked up some traditional hair pins and I got myself a haori (kimono jacket), both of which I had been jonesing for since Kanazawa. My haori is a used silk one and was only 5500 yen.

It’s the perfect place to shop and visit the shrine (free!) – especially if you want just some generic Japan souvenirs. I’ve found the prices here are pretty good comparatively for souvenirs.

Ikebukuro

Way more nerdy shopping has cropped up here. We skipped the aquarium sadly but I had a fun time diddling around in the Pokemon Center with its associated cafes and Pokemon Go center. The outside of Sunshine City has a cute little fairy village that I loved.

The final highlight though was enjoying the wonderfully creative mind of my friends’ kiddo, who taught us how to dance party to clean up natural disasters and, in a final act of selflessness, put their soul in a gun and fired their soul at a fireball to save the world.

As you do.

Nikko Ryokan (and Rhett eats a smol squid)

April 8, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

In Nikko, we are doing something I have always wanted to do: staying at a traditional onsen ryokan (hot spring hotel), and having kaiseki (a traditional course meal). This particular stay is brought to you by the combination of the yen being incredibly weak and my airfare being a rewards ticket and thus, costing me nothing but fake airline currency built up as credit card spending during the pandemic.

The ryokan booking is much more of a negotiation process as a vegetarian (a relatively non-strict one) and many ryokan that serve kaiseki won’t accommodate you. After several days of back and forth via email in English and in Japanese, I coerced Oku-no-in Tokugawa in Nikko into accommodating me. Yes, I eat egg and milk. No, I don’t mind dashi (soup stock made with bonito fish flakes). You would imagine that for 90k yen a night for two people, in a country with strong Buddhist and therefore vegetarian roots, it would be easier to get your vegetarian dietary whims catered to. But this is Japan and it does what it does. Speaking the language helps a ton during this process and we eventually were gucci.

Kaiseki is heavily rooted in the joys of seasonality and what is available at that particular time of year. Your fish, meat, and vegetable and other sides will rotate based on when and where you are getting kaiseki. It is a multi-course meal and represents the pinnacle of traditional Japanese haute cuisine.

And it is now perhaps the time to tell you about the amount of cultural synchronicity that Japan has with seasonal change. Seasonal tourism is huge here – the country is gripped with hydrangea mania after the rainy season, delights in the changing leaves in November, and goes absolutely nutter butter for the cherry blossom season in April. April is generally when the school year starts and is viewed as a good time for new beginnings. There are special foods and flavors you can find in every season or for every holiday that will stop as soon as that time period is over. And it doesn’t creep earlier, like Christmas seems to do every year. Stay in December, Christmas.

Exhibit A: all the pink is sakura flavor

While we do have that at home, I don’t think it has as strong as a pull, outside of Christmas and Thanksgiving. Coincidentally, these are some of my most favorite times of the year, perhaps precisely because of the food traditions that come with those seasons. This is probably one of my most favorite things about Japanese culture, the celebration of the passing impermanence of each season.

If you couldn’t guess, there are loads of cherry blossom things everywhere right now, even if those jerk trees are being slow: you can get sakura in street foods, convenience store candy, and in kaiseki and welcome gifts when we check into our fancy hotels.

And this picture sums up the tourism relatively nicely:

Anyway, Nikko. We have a rental car here because 1 – the yen is weak so it’s cheap and 2 – I don’t want to be beholden to the hotel’s shuttle schedule or the Nikko bus system.

We arrive too early to check in, so we picked up our rental car and went to Toshogu, which is where Tokugawa Ieyasu is interred. You learn about him ad nauseam in Japanese history, as he united the country and ushered in the final age of samurai rule, which lated about two centuries starting in the 1600s. His shrine has a ton of gold everywhere, amidst massive cedar trees. The gates are carved ornately. Someone who Totally Knew What An Elephant Looks Like carved some elephants into the side of one of the buildings.

For your entry fee, you get the privilege of walking up 207 steps, each made of single stone, to see his tomb. There’s a sleeping cat carved into the gates on the way to his shrine. I’m here for the cat and for the trees.

I think I skipped the museum the last time I was here. We made sure to pop in to see recreations of the portable shrines and Ieyasu’s swords and swords that were gifted to him posthumously, which I am certain he treasures. The swords are pretty shiny and sharp. There are also huge scrolls depicting his life and invitations he’s gotten, dating back to the 1600s. They are perfectly, meticulously preserved. No pictures are allowed so just picture katana in your mind.

🗡️ <- I am helping you

Oku-no-in Tokugawa is down a weird, very narrow street, past some run-down looking logging and scrap metal yards, in a very unassuming building. They valet the car and the inside is luxurious. We enjoy a welcome tea and a sakura-flavored daifuku (a rice snack) while we check in. Our kaiseki is at 6:30pm and I am excite.

Our hotel room is Japanese-style, but two things are remarkable about it in this: the ceilings and transitions between each room are SO high and Rhett can’t hit his head, and we have a real live lounging couch. If you’re in a home, these aren’t so rare, but there’s been a lot of tatami-style floor sitting on this trip, which is not Rhett’s favorite. When booking, I was only looking out for showers that he can fit into and beds that won’t confine him, and forgot to think about the sitting spaces. Oh well. Next time.

Our suite features an outdoor bath, a water garden with a patio, and some bamboo. They give us yukata to wear, and Rhett fits into it. The toilet salutes you by opening its lid when you open the door. The floor is strategically heated. It is the best.

True to the negotiations, my dinner was perfect. I had a lot of yuba, a style of tofu that is kind of like if tofu were an al dente noodle. They also gave me lots of eggplant and mushrooms. It was all heavenly. Rhett tried a lot of fish and was definitely put off by the sea snail. The shabu-shabu with A5 wagyuu beef was his favorite.

And as to not bait and switch you, here’s the small squid Rhett tried

The hotel tries to murder you with food. Breakfast is also ginormous – a traditional japanese breakfast with several pickled sides (tsukemono), more yuba for me, and a tofu pudding for dessert. I won’t be eating for the rest of the trip.

We stay in the hotel as long as possible to soak in the luxury and keep Rhett’s noggin in safety, and then we head out in the care to go up and over the mountain pass.

The drive is a pretty easy one, and thanks to my relatively recent adventures in Scotland, I reacclimate to using the mirrors almost immediately as we wind up and thru the mountain pass. We’re going to Chuuzenji, the lake that’s just west of Nikko. The road is switchbacky but really wide, and after driving in some dense fog and thru a tunnel, we make it to Oku-nikko.

Oku-Nikko is mostly a Japanese resort town, equal parts kitzch, high-end hotels, and run-down and weird abandoned things. We are in Nikko’s off-season since there’s no cherry blossoms here yet and it’s really known for the lake and outdoor sports. The lake looks super low, maybe 20 feet less than usual. Sadly I forgot to make idle chit chat with the locals about wtf is up with the lake’s water level.

The lake is mysterious and moody with the fog passing through. We go to the waterfall at the north end and enjoy a coffee and an easy walk up and along ryuzu falls.

We stopped midway back at one of the shrines – Futarasan-jinja, named after the sacred mountain behind the shrine that you can ascend. The path doesn’t open until April 24th so it’s a ghost town. I cannot fathom the ascent to the top, which goes up thousands of meters to the summit. It’s said to be a spiritual experience, which I assume is just code for “you will die doing this.”

Futarasan-jinja happened to have a museum attached that had a ton of Japanese national treasure swords and the shrine’s portable shrines on display, including Japan’s longest sword. Sign. Me. Up. This was relatively small but IMO worth the 1k yen to enter.

Japan’s longest sword is several feet long and was mostly used in ceremonies, and gets carried to the top of the mountain once a year as an offering to the gods. No pictures again, but just picture a really long sword that is 140cm long (or 7.7 bananas, for the American audience).

There’s a video on the swordmaking process. It’s all in Japanese but google translate helps with the very difficult and sword-technical signposts. We learned that they take the portable shrines up the mountain once a year and somehow everyone survives. This is bananagrams.

We get some coffees afterwards and Rhett’s matcha latte has some next level tiger art in it.

We skip Kegon falls because it is a zoo and go back through the pass to Nikko proper, stopping to walk along the kanmangafuchi abyss along the way. It follows a raging stream and is lined with jizo statues. There are like ten people here, which annoys me because the last time I was here, it was just me and the beware of bears sign. It’s still really beautiful and the water is an unbelievable shade of turquoise.

Also, the beware of bears sign is gone. I assume this is because Japan is trying to lose some tourists.

When we leave Nikko, it is the very last fancy train of the trip: the newly-released Spacia X train, which runs from Nikko to the east side of Tokyo. I booked a compartment for the two of us, and it’s also got a cockpit lounge, a bar car, and some other fancy seats. It’s a really special experience, with a lot of extra customer service around the bar car, pictures, and boarding.

It’s just under two hours and I love the peace and space we have in this compartment. Even if you don’t book a compartment, it’s a great way to travel between the two places in style.

I will leave you with this train with a face. A friend pointed it out to me and I can’t un-see it.

The oyaki fiends of Nagano

April 6, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

Rhett has picked his word to represent Japan: meticulous. Many shared public spaces that are designated as culturally important or world heritage sites are indeed meticulously maintained: a gardener going after weeds with a tiny tiny tweezers, sculptures and art are routinely cleaned with small brushes and utmost care, or someone trims grass in the shrines with a small small scissors. If you come in the fall, you can witness people picking fall leaves off of shrine grounds one at a time.

To the left, you can see two gardeners working fastidiously with smol tools

He isn’t wrong about the special places. Normal shops or homes are the same amount of clean as anywhere else – there are normal neighborhoods, there are run-down neighborhoods, there’s Saihoji’s impeccable moss fields, and there’s everything in between.

Anyway, here we are in Nagano: you’ve only heard of it from the Olympics (probably). It’s another smallish mountain city that the robots chose for us. It’s raining when we arrive. Aggressively raining.

This is our first air bnb of the trip, since hotels have upped their amenities game and air bnbs without laundry are somewhat slim pickings, especially in smaller cities. This house is a traditional style Japanese home that happens to have no road access (I did not know this when I booked but I don’t care). It’s situated on a tiny triangle of land between two canals. The outside doesn’t look special, but the inside is immaculate.

It has a kotatsu, beautiful woodwork, death stairs, and many spots for Rhett to bonk his head. It smells like sweet tatami and cypress. You can hear the trickle of one of the nearby streams constantly. Despite its weird location, I love it.

Rhett desires siesta. I desire Hokusai. I throw my things down and go back to the station to go to the Hokusai museum in Obuse. I take the electric rail, which still requires paper tickets (and you can buy them electronically with your IC card, for the ultimate electric rail irony). You hand your ticket to a dude and throw it in a basket when you get off and it’s really the honor system if you’re a foreigner because nobody speaks English well enough out here for that, and I won’t reveal my secret fluency.

Nobody gets off at Obuse. This should be a sign to me, but it’s not, because sometimes I just refuse to see the signs. It’s more touristy-twee than I thought, and is also home to sake breweries. The streets have some hot pink cherry trees and are lined with little shops selling crafts and souvenirs. I put on my cuteness blinders and head to the Hokusai museum.

Obuse station. It’s almost said like oh, bussy.

Alas, it is mostly shut down because they’re changing exhibits. The new exhibit opens on Saturday. I think today is Wednesday, but I’ve entered the part of vacation where the passage of time is a fugue and I don’t know what day it is. I check my phone and sigh. I still pay a small fee and go in to look at his sketches and the parade floats because I came all this way and the entrance amounts to three bucks (thank u weaksauce yen). The sketches on his process are interesting, since only his famous works are what you might see in museums.

I wandered through the shops afterwards, poking through pottery and stationary and papercrafts and the sake breweries. It’s peaceful and pretty and worth the quick stop even with my hokusai sadness.

I moistly made my way home, origami paper in tow, and we went to the station to get soba, Shinshuu style. There’s so much soba up here – it’s made locally with the magical water and is considered a specialty. Shinshuu (信州) is the ancient name for this place, so lots of things with traditional-style food says Shinshuu on them. This soba place has real-ass wasabi that comes with our meals. It’s smoother and less watery and builds to a burn more slowly. Definitely a tasty treat. I ponder if I can smuggle some home.

As we ate, we gazed upon the bastion that is a three-floor Don Quijote, aka Donki. If you’ve never been to Japan, Donki is similar to a huge Target but condensed infinitely, with music and ads blaring out at you at every turn. The aisles are high and claustrophobic. They sell crocs. They sell candy. They sell random electronics and home goods. They sell shoe deodorizer, which we desperately need because Rhett’s old tennis shoes smell like death when they’re wet. They still sell halloween costumes in April, which prompts me to tell him about the drunken adventures of Spiderman and Maid in Halloween 2012. (Spiderman and Maid drank too much and ate 50 gyoza between themselves in Shinjuku at 3am)

And before you gaze upon Donki’s photographic glory below, please know that my opinion of it is that this one is a VERY spacious donki. I am used to the shrine of consumption that is the Shibuya Donki.

Rhett is overwhelmed but I think it grows on him. Just wait til we get to the Shibuya Donki. Just wait.

Our only full day in Nagano has no plan and fortunately also no rain. We go to Zenkoji, the parent temple of the place we did our temple stay in Takayama. Notable about the buddhism they practice at Zenkoji is their inclusiveness – the priesthood is not limited to just men. I’m not sure how far down the inclusiveness and acceptance rabbit hole it goes because Japan and my gender presentation fits in a more common box (white goblin cis woman), but they do claim to include all regardless of gender or orientation.

We get off the train and I think I have a good grip on my camera – as an anxious person who is good at dropping things, I have developed a militant routine to ensure I have a good grip on my camera.

This time, I did not. Just as we were stepping off, it slipped out of my hands and NEARLY into the train-platform crack. It bounces. I catch it. I say swears. The camera is ok and the only casualty is the lens cap. No cracks, it still works, all is well. Bless u Sony.

Now I will just need to find a store that carries camera supplies. But this is Japan, and camera shops are legion. We will find one.

Working camera in tow, we stop at a cafe for one of the local foods, oyaki. They’re small buns filled with vegetables. At long last, a vegetarian street food! We also bought a special spring flavored one, which is red bean wrapped in a leaf. It is a delicious stop.

The road up to Zenkoji temple is dotted with street food vendors and shops and cafes. The food looks incredible. We will be back when we hunger more, but we are now full of oyaki.

Zenkoji is a massive temple complex spread out just north of the central Nagano station. With your ticket, you can go into its many museums and climb up into the gate to look out at the city. The gate notably has death stairs which are even more murderous than the ones at our house. Children go up it and then they sit at the top and wait to be carried down one by one. Somehow, their mother does not die.

You can participate in a short prayer ceremony in the main building, followed by a walk through a pitch black tunnel beneath the temple. If you touch the key in the tunnel it’s said you will find salvation. I did this thing, shuffling through the darkness and hoping the thing I found was not a stubbed toe. I found the key and was at least saved from running into something. I’ll take it.

The grounds have beautiful gardens around and behind them, and are surrounded by your usual things you find at temples: senbazuru, places for your prayers and wishes, bad fortunes, and jizo. The lazy b cherry trees are starting to do their thing too.

We mosey back to our house slowly, stopping for grilled oyaki a few times. Did I mention that these are almost all vegetarian?! Be still, my heart. The best one was cheese miso. Rhett tried a sweet apple one, made with local apples. It was similar to a mcdonald’s apple pie but with no cinnamon, and was far superior in quality.

On the way to the camera stop and the station, we found a bakery that sells all kinds of melon bread. I got a matcha melon bread filled with matcha. It was our new child.

The camera shop guy fortunately had a lens cap for me. He was so worried about the lens cap brand mismatching the camera. I told him I didn’t care so long as the lens was protected! And it was just 200 yen. Easy peasy. And now I have a cannon-looking sony chimera beast.

We pass Donki on the way back and Rhett says “well don’t you want to go to Donki for candy?” Yes. I do. We enter the chaos. I knew he would love it. Another Donki fan has been made.

Our final Nagano meal was Omu rice (omelette rice). This is a staple of Japanese comfort food to me, and I would be shocked if you found one at a Japanese restaurant outside Japan. It’s generally made by being a random I-have-leftovers meal where you make fried rice, chuck an omelette on it, and top it with ketchup or curry or whatever you have lying around.

In the reviews for this restaurant, all the Japanese people complain about how expensive it is for the portion size. The foreigners love it. I ignore the fact that it says it’s 4 eggs on the menu and we order a medium. The lady brings us the most gigantic omu rice I have seen in my life and laughs when I ask if she’s sure it’s not a large. Dios mio. For once, I shouldn’t trust the reviews of the locals!

On the shinkansen to Nikko, Rhett asked me how people got around Japan before there was shinkansen. The shinkansen has never not been here, Rhett. Amaterasu let it out when she left her cave and it was a jealously-guarded national secret until 1964.

Striking gold in Kanazawa (and more castles!)

April 3, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

On the train from Takayama to Kanazawa, Rhett confessed to me that Japan has more mountains than he thought. Sir, one of the symbols of Japan is Mt Fuji. How many did you expect? Like just the one? The whole country is practically mountains!

My robot overlord suggested Kanazawa as a stop on our tour, and so here we are. I wanted it specifically because of its preserved historic districts and folk crafts with gold leaf and thread. The robot did not disappoint.

Kanazawa’s ruling clan was the second most wealthy after the daimyo, with the region providing incredible rice, gold trade, and proximity to the sea and trade routes. The power the local lords (the Maeda clan) had could rival that of the daimyo, so they were sometimes scattered to other locations if they got too wealthy.

It was also spared broad-scale destruction in WWII, so there are plenty of historic buildings and a huge castle that are still intact or are nicely restored. This leads to Kanazawa looking like this:

Historic house & normal japanese apartments

I went for a walk around our neighborhood to scout dinner. We’re staying near Omicho, Kanazawa’s famous fish market. Kanazawa is one of the country’s gateways to fish, so supposedly the fish you can have here is the best. This is a very logical pick for my vegetarian self. Maybe I didn’t tell the robot I was vegetarian (but also, I have not been having a hard time finding food). Between the fishmongers are little restaurants selling fish and local specialties.

Japan’s #1 rule is no eating & walking. There’s a sign way up top in Omicho about not eating & walking, and several signs near the vendors.

Idk why this is even written in Japanese, it’s clearly for foreigners.

Ok, there are a lot of other cultural rules and norms, but this was one we talked a lot about in Japanese class. The reason we had always been told was that it makes the air stinky with your stinky food. It’s a fish market – it’s already stinky! If you buy a souvenir here, I’m certain it will smell like fish market. How much worse could it get from someone eating and walking?

The market is super liminal at the tail end of rush hour, with the stalls closed up, colorful bright light filtering in from above, and a few straggling commuters passing through it. It’s peacefully fishy.

For dinner, I found a place that is basically a DIY hosomaki sushi shop – where you pick ingredients and then make your own sushi roll. I feel like this would be a fun and pretty accessible thing to have in the US, since you can use your chosen ingredients to make whatever you want in your rolls. There’s a little video on how to make hosomaki and I watch it twice.

This can’t be that hard. And my first one – perfect!

But then – we won’t talk about the crimes I committed when I tried to roll the other two rolls, fillings and rice bursting out, fusing to the sushi-rolling mat. Nobody kicked me out of the restaurant for whatever reason. I was nearly crying from laughter.

The full spread (click for the bigger pic)

Notably, the wasabi we got was real-ass wasabi. It was creamier and had a slower burn. This is defo not the horseradish stuff we get at home. I’m going to try to bring some back with me!

In the morning, Omicho is alive and full of people and fish and crabs and everything else you can buy in a market – souvenirs and orchids and I’m pretty sure none of this would never not smell like fish.

Our only full day starts with breakfast (who am I? but I’m using this as my jet lag anchor meal since it falls at dinner time) – I picked a little place called tea room castle. It’s a hole in the wall diner run by two super cute, cheerful ladies. There is no menu. The inside is kinda grungy in a cozy sort of lived-in way. Classical music plays softly over the speakers. I could be in a Murakami Takashi book chasing after a sheep with a star, but I’m not (I think).

You just say you want breakfast and specify coffee or tea. For 700 yen, you get a PILE of food. Rhett gets to have my ham, and he is very happy. I get shokupan, and I am very happy. The energetic and adorable ladies who run the restaurant compliment my Japanese. Wins all around.

After breakfast, castle! The Kanazawa castle is in the middle of a huge park, which used to be the center of military operations turned feudal administrative palace. There are signs all over the roads around the castle that tell you where original gates stood or what it was used for.

This castle is super cool – they’re renovating it based on old records and floor plans and photos from pre-WWII. They just finished renovating the main hall in 2021 and the interior of the main keep is all done up in displays about how they rebuilt it and what the rooms were used for and how they made things earthquake-proof. A large majority was dedicated to administration, and the men and women had separate living areas in the castle (as you do).

The castle timber was made up of several types of trees, and all of the walls started as bamboo inside. Neat!

If you look out from the castle, you can see the area where they’re excavating & rebuilding for the next phase of castle work. A+ usage of taxpayer money.

Rhett likes Kanazawa castle more than Himeji. If you are coming this way, I’d recommend it too. It offers more historical background on the construction of the castle, even if it is less grand. I think a lot of the recommendations for visiting on the web are pre-covid and therefore pre-reconstruction and don’t rate this place as highly as it should be rated.

You may recall yesterday’s blog post, where we were trapped in the world’s slowest Indian restaurant and had befriended some Australian Indians. Well, we saw them again at Kanazawa castle as we were leaving for the gardens! They made it out of the restaurant! We congratulated them on their mighty feat.

The castle has a garden attached, Kenroku-en, which is of coursed landscaped beautifully. It’s dotted with cherry blossoms and ponds and ancient pine trees that are held up with old supports. The cherries are starting to bloom but the pines are really what gets me.

Heroically, I fight the urge to climb them, as I know this will lead to an International Incident.

I want to climb this tree but I also don’t want to get arrested and deported

On the way back to our hotel for a siesta, we made a brief stop at the DT Suzuki museum (who is largely credited with bringing zen buddhism to the west). It’s got a big reflecting pond and some info about his life. He liked cats.

Our food stop was a random jazzy cafe set back from the street across a canal, where I got even more shokupan and Rhett got omu rice (rice with an omlette on top). It was super Tokyo and reminded me of Persona 5. Rhett does not often like jazz, but he likes omu rice.

Rhett chose to siesta longer than I did, so I went to Higashi-Chaya, the old entertainment district. The geisha houses and tea shops are beautifully preserved. It’s a warren of tourists now and I wound my way around the international crowd and into the shops selling gold leaf and traditional needle crafts. You can buy a lot of gold leaf everything: golf balls, hairpins, jewelry, cosmetics, and ….. ice cream. So much ice cream.

More importantly, I saw cats.

On our last morning, we revisited the little tea room castle diner and moseyed around Higashi-chaya in search of useful souvenirs and this is the story of how I now own hot pink earrings and a gold leaf kitty cat mirror.

We’re off to Nagano on the shinkansen. This is one of my fancy train rides: I booked Gran Class. This is a new ultra first class, above green car. You get a little seat pod and on some routes, they serve you food. I have train slippers. This was only an extra $50 or so for our route and is so worth it. The only downside is that there’s not a ton of luggage storage.

Living our best zarusoba life in Takayama

April 1, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

It’s around this point in a trip (or sooner) that I begin to miss my heated toilet seats. Not on this trip. My princess buns are toasty and happy. I have yet to encounter an unheated toilet seat, even on the train.

After Kyoto is the part of the trip that our robot overlord chose for us, and a place I have never been: up and into the middle region of Japan, between Kyoto and Tokyo. It is very functionally named “the middle region” (Chuubu/中部) so you can guess exactly where it is. It’s almost like the Danish named it (looking at you, Copenhagen/”Buying port”).

First, we go from Kyoto to Takayama, changing from the shinkansen to a local express in Nagoya. You take a train up and into the mountains, winding through a river through the mountain. They tell you Gifu Facts periodically as you go – about the crafts that depend on the river, the purity of the water, or the fishing technique the locals employed which used birds to fish. NEAT.

Takayama station is oddly trendy and tidy and also the station that time forgot because there are no IC cards at the gate. I physically handed a guy my tickets. That confused me. It was sure to confuse me when we leave, too. Please don’t tell me I am so far in the sticks that I have to use my cash money in this town because I like refilling my Suica IC Card in apple wallet with my Amex and paying with my phone, thus netting me a better exchange rate over cash money.

Fortunately, the station was just a weird outlier. I only have to use cash in vending machines and at the farmers’ market.

Takayama is known for its spring festival that uses big traditional parade floats. We’re a few weeks ahead of the festival but we’re here for the traditional town charm, the open-air market, street food, and noodles. Lots of noodles. Noodles made from the special Gifu Water that they told us about on the train.

I picked a temple stay for this leg of our trip because why not. I haven’t stayed in a temple before – we were going to in Korea, but it didn’t work out. So we’re at Zenkouji, which is a small guesthouse and a working temple.

It was too early for check-in, which meant it was noodles o’clock. We stopped at an old noodle shop, where they handmake the noodles using the local Gifu water. The noodles are goooood and the lowest sodium Japanese noodles I can have (shock!) so guess what I’ll be eating the rest of the trip (it’s zarusoba).

They give you a lil comic for how to eat the noodles

After noodle time, we wandered to the historic district to see some of the historic manors. We picked the Kusakabe house, which was filled with local crafts and belonged to a traditional moneylender. The house is totally ginormous, except for all of the low thresholds. Rhett does not bonk his head and we both in fact survive the death stairs. The little garden in back is beautiful.

The Kusakabe house is next to the Yoshijima house, which was owned by a sake brewer. This one has since been updated with more artistic touches, and there are some articles in the building (in Japanese) which talked about how the style of this home in the early 1900s influenced the arts & crafts movement. You can definitely get mid century modern vibes from it.

I fell prey to a melon soda topped with cotton candy on the way back from ye olde houses. It was like the one I had at the state fair but there were way less bees, so I was happy. I also wanted to see if I still hated Dango (mochi but hot & grilled) and to see if Rhett liked it, so we got some dango too. Shockingly, I no longer gag on the dango mouthfeel, but Rhett doesn’t like the flavor. Fair. And science: achieved.

The temple staff (members? monks?? people???) were super helpful and kind when we checked in. We got a history of the temple, a tour, and learned how to pray at a temple. I’ve actually never learned more than what we gleaned from Japanese friends in college…so the lesson was interesting and informative. Our room also came with a little book on Buddhism in Japan.

Our dinner was Indian food and it was the slowest dinner of my LIFE. It took our food an hour and a half to come and they didn’t even bring us water. That was probably the only time in my life I have ever seriously considered just leaving a restaurant. The honey cheese naan, when it came, was good though. As for the chana masala – well, I can make better. In less than 90 minutes, even if I am the one doing all the chopping.

This is not Indian food but I’d eat it again

The Australian Indians who sat next to us helped us heckle them and we complained about Japan’s lack of vegetarian food despite the strong buddhist traditions present. I gave them tips for Kyoto vegan restaurants and we were confused about Japan and honey cheese naan together. I wonder if they are still in that restaurant.

In the morning, I attended the prayer service the temple offered (at 7am!!!). We burned incense and joined in with chanting the heart sutra. It was a calming and meditative way to start my day off. The monk offered his own insight on what enlightenment meant to him – focusing on living in the present, like when you are focused on chanting one of the sutras. It was overall a worthwhile experience and they seemed really happy to share in their faith and the service with us.

Our morning mosey was over to the morning market in the old town. It it’s on the west side of the old town, next to the river.

There are street vendors selling produce, cappuccino in a cup made of a cookie (why do I get these things when I don’t like coffee?) which was good (!!), and then some taiyaki. It’s a bit early so there’s not a lot of produce, but the snacks and crafts were neat.

We visited the nearby shrine because we were right by it. This is the shrine that houses all of the temple floats and things for the spring festival. This place was surrounded by beautiful evergreen trees and smelled great. They had a gimmicky o-mikuji (fortunes) which would appear if you dunked them in the temple’s water. I couldn’t find them til the exit since the signs didn’t say where to buy them, so I got a normal one out of impatience. At least this lead to getting very good luck! (Stay away Menieres, please don’t be triggered)

After resisting all of the souvenir shops on the way home, we relaxed in the temple common area for an hour until it was train time. After much struggling, I managed to fold an origami grasshopper, my new pride and joy. Time for Kanazawa!

Mossy temples and Murakami

March 31, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

One of the things this trip has revived in me is my hatred of American city zoning laws (as any trip abroad does). There are so many small cafes and shops dotting normal neighborhoods. From our hotel, there are about three little cafes in a 3 minute walk in any direction. It’s delightful. Why does my neighborhood really have only one walkable cafe? (I mean, zoning rules) and American cities mostly suck.

Anyway, it turns out yesterday I overwalked us and killed poor Rhett’s feet. It is just me today on my adventures all around the city. This day is way more bus-heavy than previous days and I have regrets about killing his poor feet. It’s time to visit the moss temple!

Founded nearly 1300 years ago and overrun in 1970 by visitors, Saihoji (aka Kokedera or the moss temple) has taken to a stricter system of visitation – they only allow in a handful of visitors every day with advance reservations. Until the internet existed, you had to do this by sending them a postcard with the dates you wished to visit, and they’d send you one back with your reservation date & time.

Thanks to the internet and then a pandemic, you can do this all online now. I reserved tickets back in January for my visit today.

Anyhoo, getting to Kokedera is a Hike from most of Kyoto. It’s set to the southwest of like everything, and not many tourists come out this way. It’s just me and like five old people on my morning bus. From the bus stop I got off at, it’s another 15 minutes along a winding stream through a narrow neighborhood.

Tranquility. Peace. Alone with nature and the rage in my head.

I pass many cute cafes on my walk. My rage towards the American city grows stronger. I need a good garden visit to cool me off.

To start your visit, they provide you with a sutra to copy – which is easier than it sounds, because you’re just copying an outline on a sheet of paper. I could only hope my Japanese teachers weren’t currently weeping at how much I had forgotten stroke order when I copied my sutra (look, it’s been like 15 years?! Forgive me, Mori-sensei).

If Ginkaku-ji yesterday was a personal 10/10, Saihoji is like an 11. It is incredibly tranquil, there are no people, and moss blankets everything. You can hear the birds chirping and the small manicured streams tinkling. I take over an hour because I can, until my tummy dictates that I should probably go find one of the aforementioned cafes.

I pick Bamboo cafe, which is an eclectic collection of odds and ends, flowers, and is easily the most expensive cafe I’ve been to so far (1300 yen for coffee + cake). My latte is great. I practice my Vietnamese on Duolingo and eat my cake.

Before hopping back to Kyoto proper, I went up some stairs to Suzumushi-dera, a small temple that has a bunch of bell crickets chirping constantly. They gave me candy. I sat and got chirped at. I beheld the tanuki and frog statues. It was very Animal Crossing.

After temples: art museum! Usually I just do temples or shopping in Kyoto. It’s peak tourist season so the temples are bananas and the shopping centers are crowded. The Kyoto city art museum has a Murakami Takashi exhibit that I desperately want to see. Getting off the train, I discovered nearby Heian-jingu is having a festival, and the streets are filled with the performers streaming to and from the shrine. It is another level of chaotic. I flee into the museum, which is less crowded.

Murakami’s work greets you at the top of the stairs.

I have a ton of Murakami Takashi art books and I missed his last exhibitions at home, so this is a wonderful discovery for me. The exhibit was created especially for the museum, and is an evolving work in progress during its duration (thru September). The exhibit is an exuberant and vivid one, as is Murakami’s style. There’s a lot of gold and platinum leaf everywhere, along with holo glitter.

Through the exhibit, you can learn a bit about Japanese visual art history and the artist’s personal life and rise to prominence. Much of his work focuses on the perception of Japan abroad post-WWII, Japan’s navigation of the international community as a defeated country, and how the country adapted to export its visual culture in a capitalist world.

Since he’s actively updating and replacing the pieces as the exhibit goes on, it also happens to smell like wet paint.

I think my favorite part of the entire exhibit is the commentary on capitalism, consumption, and then topping your visit off with a visit to a special gift shop. I partake in gift shopping and decide it’s part of the art.

The Nintendo Kyoto store was my final stop today. I chose to walk because there is no way that city bus is going to make it there faster than I can walk. My path followed a little canal that most people ignored because there were no (not-blooming-anyway) cherry trees. Rather, it was lined with willows. Their loss. It was a great walk.

The nintendo store was packed with people and filled to the brim with so many delightful things that I loved. I found a mug I liked but refrained from buying it (so strong). If it still calls to my soul, I will pick it up in Tokyo. I was able to finally get some missing Zelda amiibos for less than half of what they would have been at home. Success!

My collection of zelda amiibos is nearly complete!

Our next stop is in the mountains in Gifu prefecture, Takayama. We’ll be staying overnight in a temple!

Please enjoy this wee baby fire truck.

Deer me, it’s the Nara sightseeing express train!

March 30, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

I have been somewhat obsessing over all the exciting trains we will get to ride on this trip. Today is one of the train days: riding the Kintetsu Sightseeing Express, which I found on instagram a few months ago and saved so I could get tickets. Today will be trains! And then deer! And who knows what else.

But first: because my body doesn’t know what time it is, I actually ate breakfast. Let me tell you about the glory that is shokupan (Japanese milk bread) – it is everywhere here and I love it. All it needs is being toasted and a smidge of butter. It is pillowy, fluffy perfection. Truly the bread of breads.

A typical western-style Japanese breakfast (yes, that’s right) is not complete without shokupan (and a salad, and an egg)

Ginkakuji is up first today in shrine city. Ginkakuji is one of my perennial favorites, with its expansive mossy grounds and pine trees and nice little lookout over the city. The groundskeepers are working on raking a raised stone garden in the entrance as we enter, using numerous rakes and strings to measure their work. We didn’t stay too long to watch them, but they were still working on it about 45 minutes later when we left.

I just assume that the rock raking people are the same ones that painstakingly pick up every small leaf from the mossy grounds, since they are nigh-flawless. Peaceful little streams tinkle between every manicured area and beneath all the pines. This is a solid 10/10 for me. Plus, we got here just as it opened, so there were no people.

After eating a ginkakuji temple cream puff (cherry blossom flavor, and see previous post about Japanese food tourism), we meandered through a residential neighborhood to the philosopher’s path, which runs south from near Ginkakuji to another temple. It’s said that two professors from universities on either end of the path would walk this route together, hence its name.

I’m really enjoying the abundance of whatever this white plant is. It reminds me of forsythia and my google-fu is weak right now

If the (good for nothing) cherry trees were blooming, this path would probably be a mob. It’s narrow and dotted with quaint coffee shops, stores, and a few shrines along the way. I’m sad the cherry blossoms are slow, but I think I’m more happy that this walkway is not being mobbed, because it’s nice to be able to listen to the bird song and not dodge people.

Because I can be Influenced by signs, we ended up wandering off the path to stop at Hoen-in, a buddhist shrine tucked back a few blocks at the foot of the mountain. We passed a few people leaving, but there is almost nobody here.

Towards the south end of the philosopher’s path, there are a few street performers playing soft music. This is probably where most people enter, since there are actually other human beings in this area.

Ahead of our next destination, we went to Kyoto station for a bit. It’s absolutely gargantuan and you can ride the escalator up 12 floors to the rooftop garden. There are shops and restaurants along the way up, and the top is lovely and sunny today with a nice view of the city.

But we digressed. it’s time for one of the moments I have been waiting for: riding the Kintetsu Sightseeing Express to Nara!

But first, we have to find it, as Kyoto station is a wild zoo, and is very large. I ended up accidentally finding the place Grant & I lost our luggage in 2016 while trying to find this train. I followed a confusing sign for the express and we ended up in the underground back portion of the station. Somehow. The benefit to being back here is that I found some secret shinkansen ticket machines to use later. I had to ask for directions. Turns out we just went the REALLY long way around and could have just gone up and over the concourse, but whatever. We did it.

The sightseeing express is a very cute little maroon train with fancy seats that face the window or your partner. If you’re a group of four, you can get a small seating area to yourself. We are but two and I booked us seats that face the windows. You can even get a cute little commemorative ticket if you want (I wanted, and so I got the ticket).

Nara is home to deer, a giant buddha, and shrines. It’s mostly known for its very bold deer that wander everywhere in the park. If you see deer in Japan on the internet, chances are they are these Nara deer (though it’s not the only place to see them). In 2009, I saw a deer headbutt a child. Last time I was here, they nibbled my shirt. This time, it’s afternoon and they’re sunbathing and less hungry, since the hordes have already moved through.

Todaiji is housed in an absolutely gargantuan wooden building in Nara park, covering its big buddha. The temple complex used to be much larger with some side buildings, but those have since been lost to fire. The buddha and bodhisattvas inside are positively enormous. Even though there are a lot of people, the inside here is not too bad.

There are also like two cherry trees doing their thing here. These trees are very popular.

After the big buddha (I did not get big buddha food), we moseyed over to Kasuga shrine, on the south side of the park. To get there, you walk past a HUGE hill you can walk up if your idea of fun is walking up a giant, sun-baked hill. This is not my idea of fun.

At the base of the hill, there are lots of little deer. These deer will actually bow to you for crackers. Bless their hearts. I fed them many crackers.

Kasuga shrine is famous for all of its lanterns, which it lights up twice a year in a festival. There are thousands and thousands of them, the stone ones covered with moss. The ones outside the temple have the little deer peeking through them. I love them.

It was a longer-than-I-thought trek back to the station (if you are my real life friend, you have been subjected to this, and nobody is surprised) and we were pretty tired on our feet by the time we finally got back to the station. Good thing we’re taking a train that requires a transfer and is therefore less full of tourists!

Secret bamboo groves, Fushimi Inari, and the land of matcha

March 28, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

We slept in alllll the way til 4am today. Wow. Amazing. At this rate, I’ll be back on track in three more days! Surely this will give me powers to beat the crowds at Fushimi Inari Taisha.

SURELY IT WILL.

Even at just barely after 7am, there were somehow a lot of people arriving at Fushimi Inari Taisha. Are these also jetlagged Americans who are up way earlier than they should be? No. No they are not. They are people who got up because Instagram told them to do it to avoid the crowds, ironically forming a crowd themselves.

Anyway, morning people are weirdos. The only reason I am up early is because my body is very confused. I will almost never wake up early to sightsee anything, even if influencers tell me to.

I waited until after the train crush of people passed and yet still there are this many people here at 7am

Fushimi Inari is the head of the Inari shrines – there are hundreds nationwide. It sprawls over a mountain and guests can walk under thousands of gates as they go up the mountain to the shrine at the top. It has a nice history in English on its website or you can read my lazy one below.

The tl;dr version is that in 711, the Inari deity took up residence at the peak of the mountain, the shrine was eventually designated as one of Japan’s highest ranking shrines, it became a national treasure in the early 1900s, and now tourists flock to it and its legion of foxes.

Related to Fushimi Inari (I swear), Rhett wanted to see a bamboo forest, but he dislikes very crowded places (already he dislikes this shrine). I put my google powers to work and found that Fushimi Inari has a secret bamboo grove. We are definitely skipping Arashiyama in favor of the one that’s at this shrine. Arashiyama is pretty, but it was crowded in 2018 and it will surely be ultra crowded now because even though the cherry blossoms are taking their time, the tourists are here.

I took a picture of people taking pictures.

We streamed into the shrine’s main gates with the other visitors, driven forward by the promise of groves that were secret. Lo and behold, we found our grove – past the main shrine buildings and somewhat hidden bathrooms into an area that definitely looks private but isn’t. There are no signs at all (hence the secret??) but some torii beckon you forward.

You can walk through a bamboo-lined path and into a ravine with a creek and a mossy and forgotten-looking sub-shrine. Because I’m a boring adult, all I can think of is how expensive these heavy stone gates must have been and how they’re all just back here collecting spirits and moss.

It was super peaceful and there were only two other people (foreigners) wandering around – we saw them once. It’s hard to believe that there’s a horde of tourists just on the other side of the hill! You could hear birdsong and there were signs that some animal was digging around the path.

But we are also here to climb this mountain, pass beneath thousands and thousands of torii, and see the shrines. This is why I have been doing the stair master for weeks at the gym – I will not be defeated by the mountain!

This is one of the only pics I have without other people in it!

And I wasn’t! It was harder than I thought since I’m currently the beast of burden, carrying the backpack up the mountain. The hordes definitely thinned out after the first city viewpoint. We were free to wind up and down the mountain steps in pursuit of the fox shrines and a workout. At one point, a fireman JOGGING UP THE MOUNTAIN passed us. I felt weak and pitiful.

And bonus: on the reverse side of the mountain, I found a lady who sells postcards with art that has her cat on them. Said cat was wandering around. I got to touch it one time.

We got our fill of people, foxes, stairs, and gates, and decided we were going to head out to often-missed Uji. Uji is Japan’s matcha heart and everything here is matcha-themed.

And now let me tell you about food tourism in Japan. One of the key tenets in Japanese domestic tourism is reserved for leaning hard into both seasonality of food and celebrating a food’s tie to a place or an event. Cities will have their special way of making noodles or sushi, seasons have their flavors, and tourist attractions usually have foods shaped like the thing or related to the thing.

Like if you have ever seen Mob Psycho 100? People turn the giant broccoli in season 3 into a tourist destination, and you can go and eat green food or food shaped like the giant broccoli when you go to see it.

And if you don’t know much about Japan, you are like “what the f?” over this or are at the very least, slightly charmed or puzzled. And if you are Japanese, you are laughing because this is the epitome of Japanese domestic touristing, and this is the entire joke.

And if you are Rhett, you are first puzzled and then on the receiving end of this explanation as you attempt to enjoy your anime episode but can’t because of the constant cultural commentary you receive. (JK I think he likes it)

So now that you know that, you have extra appreciation for the fact that Uji’s Thing is matcha. We went to a highly-rated cafe just a few steps off the main drag – Matcha Roastery. Every menu item used matcha in some way. My salad had a slightly spicy matcha dressing, as did Rhett’s. My latte was phenomenal. We had the cafe next to the inner garden to ourselves for most of the time.

Matcha is not served sweetly here – I find matcha things generally ultra-cloying in the US. Matcha-flavored things in Japan taste primarily like matcha and just have a hint of sweet with them, if at all. It’s heavenly.

After a very leisurely lunch, we visited Byodo-in. The last time I was here was 2008 and they’ve since added a really nice museum that shows off some of the carved bodhisattvas from the restoration of the shrine. Byodo-in was built in 1016 and is on the back of the ten yen coin. You can wander its lovely curated grounds and behold the beautiful reflecting pond out front where one can presumably reflect on if you want to go into the main hall or not.

The main hall is also called the phoenix hall and it has golden phoenixes perched atop it. Rhett was not feeling the shoe removal today so we skipped it, but the museum had pictures of the buddha inside, so it was still in our hearts.

We did a quick circle across the Uji river to Uji Temple, which featured little bunnies that Rhett thought looked like the Monty Python bunny. He wasn’t wrong.

We capped off our Uji day with some delightful matcha ice cream outside of the Keihan Uji station.

I love when I find public transit spaces that are some retro futurist brutalism mashup. Keihan Uji station is worth the 10 minute walk from the JR station. It looks like it’s straight out of Star Wars. It was designed by Hiroyuki Wakabayashi who also happened to design my favorite building of all time in Shibuya. It’s fate I found this station on instagram I guess.

At home, I finally thought to turn on the TV and pick up news, and there’s a big segment on how cold this spring has been – it’s been driving up spring veggie prices since crops aren’t ready yet.

And it’s delaying the cherry trees. Oh.

We finished our day off with some stellar French food (yes, I really am in Japan, and no, I can’t explain the French food either) from a hole in the wall restaurant just a few minutes from our hotel.

Back to Japan (and Hime-jeeze it’s crowded)

March 27, 2024 LK Comments 0 Comment

It’s finally happening: the rescheduled 2020 Japan trip! As I am cheap, after airfare refused to cooperate in 2022 for a trip in 2023, I managed to snag a miles deal for cherry blossom season and here we are: doing the thing. The Yen is at like a 30 year low against the dollar, so we booked some splurges on this trip and I am excited for fancy trains and some nice hotels that I don’t know if we’d ever spring for again.

(Don’t remind me that we are remodeling and I probably should have chosen fiscal responsibility over yolo spending)

We have a few goals on our trip:

After the Tiny Iceland Shower discovery, do not book any places with cramped shower spaces so Rhett is not sad (yes, Iceland really does have tiny showers!!)
Rhett bonks his head as few times as possible
Ride trains forever
Exploit Weaksauce Yen
Get all the taiyaki and tea
Attempt to not trigger menieres (easy in Europe, ??? in Japan)

And so, we’re off!

Pictured: we are excited for a 12 hr plane ride

This has been a pitiful winter for snow at home, so naturally the one and only serious snow storm of the season would be occurring over our departure date. Great. I am so excited.

As one laden with an anxious monkey brain does, I watch all the arrivals at the airport the day before our flight like a hawk to make sure all the big planes landed. According to the airport website, they did!

But unfortunately, as I discovered the next day: the airport website lies. Delta sent our Haneda plane to Paris instead and we had to wait on a replacement one, so our flight ended up getting delayed by four hours. Now we’re getting in pretty late and there is no time for crepes or Meiji shrine. Boo. At least it is only 3/4 full and I can watch Curb.

We landed in Tokyo to infinite rain. Rain in Japan is a serious sort of thing, generally lasting for much longer than we’re used to at home. This was rain and wind and cold and it felt like our weather from Minnesota had just teleported across the ocean in a slightly warmer fashion.

But rainy night Tokyo has a magical sort of vibe to it, so I’m not that mad over the crepes (I swear).

All things considered, it would have been a pretty miserable day for sightseeing, so landing late maybe wasn’t the worst thing. Maybe.

Our hotel was really close to Tokyo station and was the epitome of perfect rest stop: dead silent and great showers. They provided slippers, which I immediately placed on Rhett’s size 13 foot and giggled at the entirely unsurprising outcome.

Returning to our trip checklist, I have succeeded with this hotel: the shower was an uncramped success!

Since Covid, Japan has actually finally made some serious improvements to train booking, and I was able to handle it all online beforehand. I just had to pick up our tickets from vending machines and be on our merry way. I gifted Rhett some 7 eleven curry bread (he loved this, as predicted) and was on my way to my vending machine adventure.

This adventure reminds me that I am wholly unfamiliar with Tokyo station’s east/Yaesu side. I’m really good at the other side, with its fancy brick exterior. It’s the exact opposite of the east side, which is an ultra modern building. I meandered a bit in the driving rain to the station, finding some wiggly woobly art exhibit next to one of the new fancy hotels (this hotel was Too Fancy and exceeded my spending quota even with Weaksauce Yen).

I wrestled my jetlagged self free of the grasp of the twisty, fluttery ribbon thing and went onwards to the stations. Fortunately, the east side is where the Shinkansen tracks are, so finding the machines and using them was surprisingly not a problem at all, even running on airplane cat nap fumes.

Upon the return to the hotel, I realized what The Forgotten Thing was: toothbrushes! This is a much better thing to forget then a camera lens! The hotel had freebies lying around, so we availed ourselves and fell asleep.

Our shinkansen to Himeji left at 7am, because we have about two days of stupid sleep ahead of us, so I will use the early morning nonsense energy to my advantage. The sun was coming out and it was beautifully clear, so we got some gorgeous view of Mt Fuji from the train.

The train was blissfully silent until a gaggle of elderly slavic language speakers got on in Osaka and we were just Upset that the perfect peace was ruined. The old people with their non-native tour guides did not know any train etiquette and I judged them. So loud (strike one). So much seat swapping while everyone else was boarding (strike two). And one man watched something on his phone without headphones (strike ten thousand). Fortunately, they didn’t get off at Himeji, so we were free from their cacophony, unlike everyone else on the train.

Himeji! It’s white heron castle. I’ve been here before during the fall (see Himeji castle!). It’s usually a beautiful castle and garden visit, and I built in some extra time to grab a leisurely brunch. I found a great cafe down a side street (thank u googs) and I got a hazelnutty drink and shared a sandwich with Rhett.

After our brunch: time for castle-viewing. Himeji is an old fortress that has been standing for over four centuries. It’s been entirely dismantled once for restoration and also survived WWII bombings.

It’s one of the best places in Japan to see cherry blossoms (allegedly), but the cherry blossoms have been lazy so far. One would think this would keep the crowds down, especially on a Wednesday.

ONE WOULD THINK.

This is entirely wrong. I’ve been checking congestion and visitor volume on the website, since we only have a few hours here. Visiting over lunch shouldn’t be that bad.

But hoooo boy there were people, and Himeji keep was kind of like an extended Disneyland line. All the Japanese people around us were saying two things:

I was here not that long ago and it wasn’t even this busy and
The cherry blossoms are not even blooming yet so what gives???

Also gleaned from the people around us was information about the weather, as there’s been a cold snap for the last few days and almost all the blooms were pushed back. Oh.

We had to wait about 15 minutes for tickets, and touring around the keep and the castle was mostly a game of long lines. Ugh! It’s beautiful but not fun to combat the crowds. Plus, the four trees that WERE blooming were incredibly popular…

I put our heads over the people but here is one cherry tree.

I didn’t think there was a particularly large crush of foreigners, but maybe because the cherry blossoms are usually out by now and foreigners (like us) can’t just reschedule their entire trip around fickle trees, that’s why so many more people were here today.

But I didn’t cross the ocean on a delayed plane and survive a train full of Slavic Train-Sinners for nothin’.

We wound up all up six stories inside the keep and imagined throwing rocks out of the rock-throwing holes (it would reduce the crowds). You learn about the influential Princess Sen, see some of her restored kimono, and wind through the battlements and apartments. It’s still a great view from the top and a really magnificent structure.

Anyway, pictures.

Don’t skip Koko-en, the gardens just outside the castle gates. This is still my favorite part of Himeji – especially the pine and pond gardens. We arrived in time for Koi feeding and enjoyed the relative quiet of the garden.

On the way back, we chose to not walk down the main road, but detour into the covered shopping arcade. There were way more people over here, and I managed to snag some fresh taiyaki (custard!) from a vendor.

After a day of fighting the crowds and not any invading feudal forces, we hopped back to Kyoto, where we’ll be spending four nights temple hopping. This is the first of the Fancy Hotels – a machiya-style apartment. It’s set far enough away from the city center, so it should be a peaceful respite.

The lobby has infinite free snacks at any time of the day, indoor and outdoor slippers, and children under 12 are not allowed to stay here. Our apartment has all kinds of fun sliding doors and a deep tub. What a gem of a find.

Dinner was a vegan restaurant I found not too far away. They warned me the service was slow since it was almost closing time. Fine – just feed me curry buns! This lady told me my shitty Japanese was really good but I think she is just overestimating my ability to fake it and respond in a socially fluent manner and is really quite forgiving of all my mistakes.

I like this lady and we will be back.

I also keep forgetting Rhett knows no Japanese besides “cowlick” “pine tree” and “sussy baka” so this will be a great 17 days for him after I translate all my conversations with him after the fact. He says he enjoys watching them try to speak English with me until we switch to Japanese and relief floods their eyes so I’ll take it.

It’s an art nouveau day in Glasgow!

October 29, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

It’s like someone summoned half of captain planet up in here because Friday, Glasgow is mizzley windy. The wind gusts so strong that we sometimes have to lean into it to walk. Babet is not done yet, I guess.

We’re very near to Kelvingrove park, which is on the southern side of Glasgow university. It’s a lovely park with a small river (Kelvin) running through it. A physicist at the university was granted the title Baron Kelvin, after the river running nearby, so the temperature unit can trace its origins to the river in Glasgow. Neat river facts.

Arielle also attempted to befriend a squirrel, but really, she had no food, so the squirrel did not care and ran away after an indifferent but very cute sniff. Fun squirrel facts: grey squirrels are native to the eastern US and are invasive in the UK!

We popped our heads into the university because it looks beautiful and is nearby. We wandered around for a bit, wondered if “Quadrangle” on all of the univeristy signs was actually the long form of “quad” at universities. I googled it, it turns out it is, and I don’t like it.

The university is beautiful though, so we wandered through the cloisters and a few of the open buildings.

Upset that we had to learn about the word quadrangle, we wandered to the nearby Kelvingrove museu,. It holds a collection of art, taxidermied animals, and other old and nifty objects. We wanted to see the Mackintosh collection, with all of its Art Nouveau pieces, which you can also find sprinkled around the city. They had an impressive collection of furniture and stained glass.

There was also a small collection by the Scottish colorists, who were at first spurned by their fellow artists for using “too much” color. Ain’t no thing as too much color, colorists. I’m here for you.

My second favorite thing was the orrery! It was made before Neptune was discovered, so the last planet was…Uranus. They had a sign up saying it needed some repairs in order to work – boo.

Our final stop of the trip was tea in the Salon De Luxe at the Mackintosh at the Willow. It was a tea house designed entirely by Mackintosh, down to the tables, chairs, and cutlery. The only exception was the tea set, which was definitely at stylistic odds with the rest: it was blue and white china with a traditional china print on it. The tea baroness (Miss Cranston) paying the bills wanted to use the same set she used at her other tea houses. Mackintosh didn’t like it, but some hills are just not worth dying on.

The tea rooms closed in 1917, when Cranston’s husband died. The building was used as a department store and still operated as a tea room in the decades following, by various owners who tried to restore it to the best of their ability.

It was purchased in 2014 by the current owner, who spent years doing painstaking restorations. Even the velvet that was on the recreated chairs was made by the same velvet-maker in Italy, nearly a century later. If you want to buy a chair, you can – for the affordable price of $2000.

There were two amazing re-creations in the Salon De Luxe: the chandelier (which required a good amount of sleuthing to get the colors and techniques down), and the plaster artwork to one side of the room. It took a year to re-create since the Kelvingrove museum didn’t want to return the original one to the tea house (it was also really fragile to move, so there was a high chance it would be damaged).

The Salon De Luxe was the only room that was ladies only when it originally opened, and it was designed to bounce sound around the room so that you could hear everyone else’s gossip via its curved ceiling. Petty.

The tea service was wonderful – you can try as many teas as you want, and they have a lot of small bites, sandwiches, and decadent desserts you can enjoy as you have tea. If you’re in Glasgow and enjoy fancy treats and good teas, make sure to reserve the Salon De Luxe!

You can also wander around the restaurant after your tea is done. The rest of the tearooms and spaces are all just as gorgeously restored as the salon de luxe.

On the way home, it was time to stock up on candy, as is the tradition of my people on the last day of any trip. The downside is that I have no beast of burden on this trip: it’s just me and my big osprey backpack. It feels like I put 15 bricks in my bag, but the bricks are chocolate. It is miraculously very far from overweight. I did it!

Til next time I see some flight deals to you, Scotland. (Naturally, the sun came out as we were taking off)