Nara period field trip

Sunday was a fieldtrip for my archaeology class, which is currently my favourite of all the courses that I’m taking. Unfortunately, this was an all-day field trip, during which it poured rain unceasingly. The trip was to see two different palace sites from before Kyoto became the capital of Japan, when Nara was the capital instead. We’re talking 710- 784 AD. Well, the thing about ancient capitals is that there doesn’t tend to be a lot left of them, and this was no exception. The Heijo Palace complex in Nara was huge, and they’ve actually discovered where most of it is, but what I actually found myself looking at, was a bunch of holes in the dirt. You see, the first site that we went to see was where they had built a visitor’s centre around the archaeological site itself, which consisted of the remains of where the support beams had been placed when the original palace structure was built. Some of the other ways of showing what had been discovered included covering the area with dirt and then marking at ground-level where the posts had been (with different colours of cement or bushes) or even fully re-constructing based on archaeological findings. This last option was very interesting, though expensive enough that it is not widely exercised, though we did walk through a lovely reconstruction of a Nara period garden. At Nara period garden parties (among the nobility, of course) people would sit along side a little brook and write poems in Chinese that they would then recite to their friends. To reward people for good poems, a little raft with a cup of sake labelled with the poet’s name would be floated down the brook. The funny thing is, though this brook had been added to the reconstructed garden (and is reinforced by written records from the time), the actual site that the reconstruction is of has no evidence of any sort of stream at all. After this was a little museum, which would have been more interesting had I not been hungry and cold. Next we hopped a train to Osaka, where we saw the site of a palace from the same era (Naniwa Palace, if you’re wondering) represented in the coloured-concrete method, and then hurried into the museum that stood pretty much on top of it. The museum was actually one of the most interesting ones that I’ve seen, including a scale replica of a small portion of one of the buildings at Naniwa and several mannequins dressed in Nara court dress. There were other artefacts on that floor, and the floors below moved forward through Osaka history up to the pre-war period. After this we all headed back to Kyoto, and I was back in time for dinner.
-Rubber boots may not be fashionable, but I was extremely happy to have them for an entire day of walking in the rain.
-They used to use wood as toilet paper in the Nara period. It doesn’t seem worth it.
-As interesting and well done as the museum in Osaka was, according to my host family it hasn’t received as many visitors as they had been hoping, and the new governor of Osaka has talked about closing it down. I really hope that they don’t, but then I neither vote nor pay taxes.

Kimono day

On Saturday there was a special orchestral concert that was free for those people who wore kimono. My host sister invited me to go, so I dressed up in kimono and hakama, those long pleated pant-like-things that I tried at Meiji Village several months ago. I had bought a pair of my own in the meantime as well as a kimono to go with it, and I was pretty excited to have a chance to wear them. The weather was beautiful, which was very nice touch, and though the concert bit was short it was nice to see the very lovely concert hall filled completely with people in different kimono. I was the only foreigner and one of the only people in hakama. The other event that was going on after the concert itself was the choosing of that year’s ‘kimono queen’ from among contestants from the entire length of Japan. They all stood up on stage in their long-sleeved kimono with their hair all done-up, and I was struck by how the all managed to look alike even in one-of-a-kind, beautiful kimono. They all had basically the same hairstyle except for one girl whose hair was in a traditional Japanese style, which I rather liked. We decided that this was not very interesting, and so my host sister and I went over to the neighbouring botanical gardens, which were also very beautiful. We strolled through the plum orchard, along a large planting of daffodils, and then into the greenhouse, which had a large variety of plants, including some of the only truly blue flowers that I’ve ever seen. Not long after returning home I was back out again, still in my kimono, to meet up with another friend of mine who had tickets to see the garden of a temple near to Gion that was going to be lit-up. Once we figured out how to turn in our reservation in exchange for actual tickets, the garden was very beautiful; whoever designed the lighting really knew what they were doing. After leaving the temple, we walked around Maruyama park, which is behind Yasaka Shrine, where they had a number of large Ikebana flower arrangements and sculptures similarly lit up. There were a number of very pretty arrangements, but I was amused by the sheer novelty of the sculpture made of slices of daikon radish. Continuing onto the grounds of the shrine itself we met with the food stands that one usually finds at these sorts of festivals, though sadly there was no okonomiyaki, which is probably my favourite savoury festival food. I settled on something that I translated for the store owner as a pork omelette, which was pretty good. There was pretty much nowhere to sit, but we perched on some convenient rocks and shared the orange juice that my friend’s host mother had packed for him. While we were still eating I got a text message from some of our other friends inviting us to go do karaoke nearby, so that was our next stop. The entire walk there I had different people staring at me. One drunk guy even turned away from the maiko that he was standing by next to in order to try and engage me in conversation. Karaoke was a lot of fun, but before long it was time for me to head back home, which is always a bit of a trick, but I managed to find a bus that was still running. On the way to the bus stop I had another (probably also drunk) guy call me a samurai, which does make me wonder if I’m walking with too heavy a stride.
-Twice a year, I believe, there is a weekend where, if you’re wearing kimono, you can use coupons to ride the subway and gain entrance to various places in Kyoto for free. I didn’t pay for transportation even once.
-I received a lot of compliments, as seems to happen a lot, from older women and their husbands. If I was half as popular with the younger people of Kyoto as I am with their grandparents I’d never have to pay for dinner again.
-I really didn’t get any work done this break, but I think that I’m okay with that.

Suffering Fan

My favourite Takarazuka top star (Aran Kei) is currently in a show called ‘The Red and the Black’, which is playing for a week in Osaka, and I desperately wanted to go. I called for tickets the day that they went on sale to the general public and by the time I got through the tickets were already entirely sold out for every day in the Osaka run. Though I struck out there, my friends and I decided to see if we could get same-day tickets one of the days, and decided to go on a day when there were two shows, so that if we didn’t get the tickets for the first one we’d be in line for the second. Unfortunately, the theatre was not selling same-day tickets, so my friend and I decided that plan C would be to go to Osaka and hang around outside the theatre looking for scalpers. We got to the theatre extremely early, and were actually able to see some of the actresses coming in to get ready. The excitement of this was somewhat lessened by the fact that it was pouring rain and cold. At one point, while walking around to see where scalpers might be hiding, we saw a group of people waiting near to the stage door, and assumed that they must be waiting for the top star, because from that direction she could conceivably arrive by car. The woman standing next to us gave us some strange looks, but we ignored her. Finally, the people upstream of us started clapping and bowing, which we assumed meant that a star was approaching. We were, however, a little surprised when, instead of a fashionable Japanese woman in sunglasses, we saw a small group of middle-aged men come around the corner. These were the top actors for the show going on in the *other* theatre in the area, who looked at us two foreign women a little strangely, wondering perhaps how we had become such big fans of theirs. We waited and looked around until the doors closed and saw not a single scalper for the show we wanted. Having struck out entirely and soaked our shoes through, we decided to get some lunch and look around the area until closer to the second show of the day. I wasn’t aware, but there is actually a big antique book strip mall near Umeda station that has a great variety of things, including, as we discovered, old Takarazuka periodicals and programs. Neither of us escaped unscathed. We went back to the theatre to see if there were any scalpers this time, and were greeted with a large crowd of people, none of whom where selling their tickets. In the end we just decided to get some coffee nearby and head home. I only hope that I get back to Japan before Aran Kei retires, because I’d really like to see her again.
-Scalping is not necessarily illegal, from what I can tell, but there doesn’t seem to be much of it.
-When my boots get too wet they dye my feet black on the bottom.
-Apparently I need to enunciate better, because I asked the woman at the coffee shop for hot tea and wound up with a cappuccino.
-I used to laugh at the idea of famous people wearing sunglasses to hide who they were while out in public, since I thought that there was no way that that would be sufficient. However, it was actually really hard to tell whether I saw Aran Kei enter the theatre or not, because everyone was wearing sunglasses and hats and were essentially identical.
-I think that all of the tickets were bought up by the fan clubs before they even started selling to the rest of us.

Dinner with Sumo Wrestlers

Wednesday I pretty much hung out around the house getting caught up on some sleep, but that evening my host mother took me down to Osaka to see a friend of hers that owned a temple that housed a sumo stable. I’m not exactly certain what the arrangement there is, but Sumo is currently having a tournament in Osaka, so there was a group of Sumo wrestlers staying on the grounds. The main guy there is a graduate of the same school that I’m currently studying at here, and was very nice, especially since he’d one his match that day. When we got to the stable, we sat down on the floor around low, circular tables on which were laid out a variety of cold dishes such as pickled plums, this tasty spaghetti salad, and marinated squid. The place setting included a rather large rice bowl and a smaller bowl that they put ‘nabe,’ (nah-beh) a sort of Japanese soup with chicken, clams, cabbage and other things. I was a little surprised when, instead of filling the larger bowl with rice, they offered to fill it with beer. Apparently, when dinning with Sumo wrestlers you drink out of rice bowls instead of glasses or sake cups. I decided on some sake, though only a little to start off with. The people at our table were very nice, though a little tipsy already when we got there, and the main Sumo guy was kind enough to pose for a picture with me. When drinking with friends here, it is customary to fill each other’s glasses, which meant that it was a little difficult for me to stop people from refilling my rice bowl. We were served the whole time by younger Sumo wrestlers that I took to be junior stable members. All of them seemed rather young, though all of them were, naturally, several times my size.
-Apparently women aren’t allowed into the Sumo ring. I’m sure that this is because Sumo originated as a Shinto ceremony.
-Sumo wrestlers are much bigger in real life than they look on TV
-When a top-ranked wrestler looses a match the front several rows of people throw the cushions that they are sitting on into the ring.
-To advertise at Sumo matches, they have people walk around the ring holding up cloth signs during breaks between matches.

Sensouji temple and back home

Our final day in Tokyo wasn’t really a full day, as I had to be back to Kyoto in time for my dance lesson at 5:30pm. As such, we had really done all of the things that we’d planned for the trip on the preceding days and thus had a bit of a free-form morning. First, we went to see the famous temple located very close to where we were staying: Sensouji. I don’t really know much of the history of the place, or why exactly it is so famous, (though I do intend to look into it) but it was quite pretty and had a massive lantern out in front of it that we could have fit ten people inside of, I think. While we were there we bought some souvenirs for our host families. I decided on these rice crackers that came in several different festive colours that I had heard were the official gift from Sensouji temple. After this we decided that we had enough time to go back to Hibiya and do some more Takarazuka-related shopping at the stores that they have around the theatre, and so checked out of our hotel and parked our luggage in lockers at Hibiya station. In an interesting stroke of luck, we managed to arrive just as the actresses were heading into the theatre to prepare for that day’s show. The procedure for greeting the actresses entering the theatre appears to be identical to that for greeting them as they leave the theatre, which we had seen the previous day. We were, luckily, on the opposite side of the street from the last time, so we were able to see a little better one of my favourite actresses, who had had her back to us before. We didn’t stay to watch the whole thing, however, as we had a train to catch, and so proceeded with our shopping. That done, we schlepped our luggage over to Tokyo station, bought some lunch to eat on the train and another souvenir called ‘Tokyo Banana Cakes’, which I had heard were popular, and then headed home. Once I was back in Kyoto I really only had time to drop off my luggage and grab my dance things before I had to head to class, which went alright, but a bit difficult.
-Tokyo’s very exciting, but it’s nice to be back in Kyoto.
-When praying at a Buddhist temple you’re not supposed to clap like you do at a shrine. I didn’t know this until my friend pointed out a large group of Chinese tourists doing so.
-Tokyo seems to believe that it is in the tropics. The Denny’s that we went to their had take-out mangos (just the fruit, no preparation), the Thai restaurant we went to had papayas as a featured item, and the most popular gift at Tokyo station is a banana-cream-filled banana-shaped cake.
-Overall, even though the Tokyo subway system is confusing, it is extremely cheap, with the most expensive ticket that I bought all trip still less than the minimum fare on the Kyoto subway.
-Station pay-lockers are extremely helpful.
-When messing up in dance class, remembering that a Takarazuka actress thought you were cool helps with keeping a calm expression.

An Amazing Takarazuka Experience

Monday was the day that we had been waiting for since we got to Tokyo: Takarazuka day. Takarazuka has its main theatre in the city of Takarazuka where I’ve been many times now, but it also recently opened a theatre in the Hibiya district of Tokyo. We had already planned to stay after the show for and wait for the actresses to leave the theatre so that we could see them up-close, but my friend came up with what turned out to be a brilliant addition to this plan: we would wear some of the clothes that we had bought in Harajuku the previous day. The goal of this was to be extremely visible among the legions of Japanese fans in normal clothing, and it proved pretty effective. All day we had people staring at us and, outside the theatre, asking to take pictures with us. One older woman asked me if I was an actress, and when I answered ‘no’ she told me that I should be, which was very flattering, really. After the show we scoped out a good place to stand by next to the fan club for the number 3 star of Snow Troupe, Mao Ayabuki. Within a given troupe every actress is distinctly ranked from the top star all the way down to the chorus members, with Mao Ayabuki outranked only by the top ‘pair’, the top otokoyaku (male-role player) and the top musumeyaku (female-role player). This is reflected not only in how parts are distributed and where people stand during the finale, but also in the placement of fan clubs outside of the theatre, which was surprising. The fan clubs are extraordinarily organized. Besides the fact that they are actually administrated by the company that owns Takarazuka, they have elected officials and very specific rules, it would seem. Whenever an actress left the theatre, the front two rows of people in each fan club would sit down, either to show respect or to allow the people behind them to see, we were not certain which. When a star exited the theatre, she headed straight to her fan club and stopped there, taking the messages and presents that she was handed and saying her ‘thank you’s. When she reached the end of the line, the president of the fan club would be waiting there with a bag for her to carry all of her gifts in and she would leave without looking at anyone else. In the case of Mao Ayabuki and the troupe’s #1 Mizu Natsuki the president of the fan club also had their car parked at the end of the fan club line to take the star to (I assume) her hotel. This process was repeated right in front of us as Ayabuki Mao met her fan club. She didn’t seem to notice us until she had already climbed into the car and was about to wave a final goodbye to her club. Just then she clearly noticed us for the first time, stared for a couple seconds and then just said a word in Japanese that is a bit hard to translate, but basically amounts to ‘wonderful’, ‘lovely’, or ‘cool’. My friend and I were speechless, and were probably staring stupidly with our mouths open as she drove away. We were pretty excited by this, as you can perhaps imagine. We decided that we needed to commemorate this event, and so headed to Akihabara, a district famous for electronics stores and large gaming complexes where we knew there would be print club machines. ‘Print club’ is where you choose a background, lighting level etc. and have your picture taken in a variety of poses. After the pictures have been taken, you can draw on them, add images or otherwise customize them, then choose your favourites and have them printed out as stickers. We did this at two different machines with great results. Afterwards, we had some Indian food (really having the curry tour of Japan, I guess) and went home where all we could do was gush about how wonderful of a day it had been.
-Mao Ayabuki called us “suteki” (pronounced steh-key).
-Fan club members have matching mufflers, Mao Ayabuki’s where beige, Mizu Natsuki’s were blue plaid and Otozuki Kei’s where purple.
-The actresses where all incredibly fashionable, even those who didn’t have fan clubs and were thus not very highly-ranked yet.
-The women who play female roles look, rather unfortunately, like any other Japanese women when not onstage, which makes them much less noticeable than their otokoyaku counterparts. They also didn’t appear to have fan clubs of their own.
-The Tokyo theatre is, on the inside, nearly identical to the one in Takarazuka, probably on purpose.
-Akihabara is filled with maid cafes, but we didn’t really feel a need to sample them.
-I had expected the lighting inside the print club booths to be fluorescent and thus unforgiving, but we actually looked really good in the final product.
-The secret to walking around all day in unusual clothes without being embarrassed seems to be to act as though you always wear clothes like that. Confidence is apparently key to not feeling like a complete idiot.
-Mao Ayabuki called us ‘steki’.

Harajuku Sunday

One of the more famous areas in Tokyo is a place called Harajuku. Harajuku is home to a vast variety of stores selling very off-beat clothing called ‘street fashion’. Within street fashion there are many different sub-groups, but the one that I am most familiar with is called ‘gothic and lolita’, which grew out of clothes worn by Japanese bands in the early 90’s, I believe. This style draws heavily on rococo and Victorian clothes as well as more punk-looking styles, and while often in black or other dark shades it is also found in pastels for a cuter look. While some people do wear these clothes to do everyday things, many people wear them in a park near Harajuku where they can see and be seen. The streets were absolutely packed with people, many of whom where foreign, and lined in many different boutiques selling all matter of different clothing. While we looked in many shops, I didn’t find anything that particularly jumped out at me until I caught a glimpse of a very colourful shop out of the corner of my eye. It turned out to be a costume store unlike any I’d ever been in before. The place had everything from large sequined headdresses to French aristocrat-style men’s jackets, all of it very well-constructed and unique. When I found a rack of men’s military costumes based on styles from Takarazuka I knew that I had to get one, and so, in an uncharacteristic impulse-buy, purchased a white square-buttoned uniform that was rather reminiscent of ‘Rose of Versailles.’ After leaving that store we looked at a couple more, and my friend found a really cute outfit for herself that was cute without being overwhelmingly so. After this we decided to head over to Shibuya, where the map that we had been given at our hotel said that there was a dim sum restaurant, the first that either of us had heard of in Japan. Shibuya station is enormous. It seriously felt more like an airport than a train station and was very difficult to navigate, even though the signs were in English. Near Shibuya station is a district called ‘Kabuki-cho’, which is rather infamous for its sleezy clubs and the like. We didn’t go in. Unfortunately, when we got to the promised dim sum restaurant it was closed for remodelling, forcing us to find somewhere else to eat in a very expensive area. We finally found a nice, clean, Thai restaurant, where we ordered a 2-person lunch set that was very good but extremely spicy to the point of being mildly painful. Our next planned stop was at something called a ‘butler café’, which is a take on the much more common maid cafés that crowd the Akihabara area of Tokyo. Basically, in a maid café the waitresses are dressed in frilly maid outfits and do everything in a very cutesy manner. Butler cafes come in two types: ones where the waiters are men, and ones where the waiters are women. Both types of butler cafes cater to young women, and my friend and I decided to try out one of the later type. The café was on a side street in Ikebukuro, and had I not known what to look for we would have walked right past it. The décor was elegant and the black-tea ice cream was really tasty, although I had, in an unfortunate oversight, chosen to sit in a corner about a foot away from a young couple that started smoking about 15 minutes after we got there. Part of the point of this sort of café is to talk to the waiters, which was, sadly, a bit difficult from our vantage point in the corner. We were both pretty tired after a long day of walking, so we headed back to the hotel early and watched some dvds, though we took a short break to go down to the corner for some curry.
-Harajuku is *very* busy on Sundays
-There just doesn’t seem to be any dim sum in Japan. I have heard rumours that there might be some in Yokohama or Kobe, both of which have historically had a lot of foreigners, but I’ve been to neither yet.
-In butler or maid cafes you basically can stay as long as you like if you buy something every hour. In the case of our café everything on the menu was 500yen, which really isn’t bad in Japan.
-Most sleazy areas in other towns seem pretty much okay in daylight, but Kabuki-cho is pretty unsavoury even in daylight.
-If you want to get to the other side of Shibuya station, I would recommend leaving the station entirely and navigating around it.

Kabuki and Tsukiji

We had jotted down a couple of things that we wanted to do in Tokyo while we were still on the train, but when we got to our room there was a pamphlet about the current Kabuki performances being shown at the ‘Kabuki-za’ kabuki theatre that peaked our interest. Two of the pieces on the program looked interesting to us, the first being a dance piece called ‘Onna Date (that’s ohn-na dah teh)’ which means ‘female dandy’ about a woman who fights off would-be suitors, and another called ‘musume dojoji (mu-su-meh do-jou-gee)’ or ‘the woman of Dojoji temple’, which we had studied in class. I was most excited about this second piece, as it is famous for having a great many costume changes, ending with the main character turning into a snake demon. I wasn’t aware of this before, but apparently there is the option of buying same-day tickets to individual pieces within a day’s program instead of a whole act, so we decided to see if we could get in. Before the tickets that we wanted went on sale, however, we had time to look around the neighbouring Tsukiji area, famous for being where fish are taken off the boats early in the morning and sold to the area’s restaurants. The sushi in this area was supposed to be amazing, so we made a point to have our lunch there, finally deciding on a nice-looking place that had been around for over a hundred years. It was, in fact, the best sushi that I’ve ever had. After that we bought our tickets for the kabuki dance piece, which also included (because ‘Onna Date’ is rather short) the piece directly following, about a young man who, having been disowned by his rich merchant family for spending too much of his time with the courtesan Yugiri, returns to see his love again after three years. The protagonist in this piece was played in something called ‘wagoto’ style, which originated in Kyoto and is used to depict sensitive men of good breeding. I have to say, however, that while the effect was interesting and definitely amusing, the man’s courtesan lover showed more backbone than he did. After the first selection was over, we decided to go to ‘Musume Dojoji’ as well, and so had another couple hours to kill in the other direction from Tsukiji, the ritzy Ginza district, which is full of designer stores and boutiques. We, however, happened to be looking for a restaurant that my friend had seen on tv, famous for being the first restaurant to serve something called ‘katsu kareh’, which is basically a breaded fried piece of pork or beef that is put on rice and covered in Japanese curry. The restaurant was called ‘Grilled Swiss’ (I couldn’t tell you why) and was pretty good, but a little more expensive than I’m used to. Finally, the kabuki play was well worth waiting in line for and then standing through when there were no more seats left. The main character went through 8 costumes, some changes were offstage, but others were done by having attendants pull off layers onstage, which is pretty amazing to watch and hard to describe. The climax of the piece comes when the woman stands under a large bell that is suspended from the ceiling of the stage and has it come down around her. At this point, the actor inside the bell changes, not just clothes, but also wig and costume to go from a beautiful young woman to a demon snake. The snake is confronted (but not obviously defeated) by a man acting in the flamboyant and much more masculine ‘aragoto’ style, a nice counterpoint to the hero of the previous piece. After a full day, we decided that we might as well take a look at Roppongi, an area that is most famous for having a lot of clubs that foreigners tend to frequent, but also a good view of Tokyo Tower at night. The way the clubs were described in the guidebook made them sound more than a little bit sketchy, not that we were much in a clubbing mood anyway, so we were there pretty much to look at Tokyo Tower. Every building that was not affiliated with the new, ritzy, Roppongi Hills development was dirty and unappealing, and everywhere we looked there were roving bands of drunk foreigners. We took our pictures and headed back to the station, where there was, against all odds, a Wendy’s. The spicy chicken sandwich was smaller than in the US, and the frosty was considered a desert and therefore could not be included as the drink in a value meal, but otherwise it was a very nostalgic dinner.
-A normal Kabuki program consists of two acts, each made up of several small, self-contained stories and lasting over 3 hours. This seems to be a theme with traditional Japanese theatre, as a traditional Noh program also lasts all day.
-I’m not certain if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but Kabuki is always performed by men with some men (called ‘onnagata’), specializing in women’s roles.
-Everywhere we looked in Tokyo there were groups of foreigners. It was unnerving.
-For some reason the main street of the Ginza shopping area is blocked-off with benches where there would be medians normally. It was really odd to see people sitting in the middle of the street, especially since it in every other way looks like a normal road.
-There is something called ‘Natural Lawsons’ here that seems to be the Whole Foods of convenience stores. I think that everything in there was supposed to be organic, I only know that it was more expensive.

Tokyo Bound

On Friday afternoon, directly after classes had ended for the day, a friend and I boarded the bullet train for Tokyo. For my spring break, I had decided to go see Tokyo, even though I’d only have a couple days, since I couldn’t dance class on Tuesday in good conscience. After a comfortable 3-hour ride, we arrived in Tokyo station, which was quite daunting. Even after we found our way out of the bullet train terminal to where we could catch the subway (not an easy task), finding which train line to take was not obvious. I have often said that the streets in Boston were planned by wandering cows, and I have to say that they seem to have enlisted the same cows to plan the Tokyo subway system. The map looks like a pot of spaghetti. In addition, for all that Tokyo is a very international city, most all of the maps had the names of stops only in characters, instead of written out in roman letters as they are in Kyoto. Luckily, my friend had been to Tokyo before over winter break and was thus able to get us to Asakusa, where our hotel was. Once we had checked in and dried off a bit (it had been driving rain ever since we got to Tokyo) we headed out once more to find some dinner, which we finally managed in a diner sort of place in one of the massive buildings along the main street. On our way back from dinner we passed a tank of fish outside of a restaurant where they presumably comprised the house specialty. They looked a bit like a sort of puffer-fish that I’ve seen before in Hawaii, which is to say that they were rather boxy with little fins on either side and a mottled shade of grey. These fish did not have a very large tank, but on one end of it was a bubbler that created a bit of a current. The fish seemed to find this very amusing: they would swim up to the bubbler, stick their ‘face’ in it, and get whooshed up towards the top of the tank, usually getting turned upside-down in the process. I watched this several times before my friend said it was time to go back to the hotel.
-One can buy reserved seat tickets on the bullet train for extra money, but we had no problems finding seats together in the non-reserved car.
-I bought a map immediately upon arriving in Tokyo, but it did not prove in the least bit helpful. Instead, we received a free map from our hotel, which we used in conjunction with the subway map that came in the back of my friend’s Japan guidebook.
-I have never before this met fish with a hobby.

Still in Ise

Saturday we woke up early-ish to get to the breakfast buffet and checked out of our hotel. The buffet was good, though I had really been hoping for some pancakes or something, and had a nice mixture of Japanese-style- (pickles, rice, miso soup) and American-style- (bacon, cereal, bread) breakfasts. After eating we piled back onto the bus to go to the actual shrines, Geku, the outer Ise shrine, and Naiku, the inner one, dedicated to the goddess Amaterasu. I had already been to both, and I’ve already described both here, so I won’t say much about the details. Geku was rather calm, but Naiku was a zoo. To pay one’s respects at the main shrine one had to wait in a large crowd of people of all ages, almost all of whom were Japanese or on the same trip as I. When I finally got to the shrine itself, I was about to toss my coin into the grate when I felt something small and solid smack me upside the head. I was, understandably I feel, rather confused, and at first couldn’t tell what had happened, did it fall from the sky? What was it? And then I looked down and saw a 10yen coin. I think that one of the small kids in line behind me, tired of waiting for their turn, felt that they could just throw their coin into the grate from where they were standing, and were mistaken. After regrouping and purchasing a charm for good luck, a friend and I struck out to find lunch and souvenirs. My friend had an apparently very nice beef and rice bowl, and I had one of the other regional specialties, sushi rice with sashimi on top, which was also amazingly tasty. The fish practically melted in my mouth and was not expensive at all. If the shrine had been crowded, though, the shopping area outside of it was much more so. It was very difficult to wade our way through the area in our search for gifts, but somehow we managed. The actual main Akafuku store that has been around since the early 18th century was in this area, and people waiting to buy the snack there formed a line that disappeared over the horizon of one of the area’s wooden bridges. We decided instead to get our other gifts and then find somewhere else to buy the requisite Akafuku. I wound up getting some shrimp crackers (another regional specialty) and the same brand of sake used in ritual offerings to Amaterasu at the shrine. On our way back towards the bus (there were some stops on the way for a tofu donut and a puff-pastry, mochi, red bean paste, and roasted chestnut pie-lette) we ran into some of the other students who had actually waited in the ridiculous Akafuku line, so I bought a box off of one of them for my host family. We stepped off of the main street for a bit to find another store that was selling the famous snack, where my friend bough a couple boxes and I bought a new Hello Kitty dressed as the Shinto goddess Ame no Uzume. We stopped for one more famous Ise treat, which was a sort of mochi-sandwich with roasted chestnuts in it and a cup of roasted tea, and then got on the bus and headed back. I slept most of the way, but I did wake up to play bingo, though I didn’t win anything. Now I’m happily back at my host family’s house and very ready for bed.
-According to my friend, because the kid threw the coin at me and not towards the goddess I’m the one who’s responsible for granting his wish. I say that if you are going to throw money at me, at least make it more than 10yen.
-While I’ve never seen anyone give more than 100yen at any other shrine, here I saw 1000 and 10,000yen bills (about $10 and $100 respectively).
-Apparently the mochi sold at the Akafuku main store were made that morning exactly, while the boxes sold in other, smaller, stores in the area are day-old, which in part explains the line.
-Capitalism works: I didn’t want to stand in line, but I was able to find someone who *was* to buy from.
-Hello Kitty does not appear to be allowed to be Amaterasu herself, but other goddesses appear to be fair game.
-I ate entirely to much on this vacation.
-I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but ‘sushi’ actually refers to the pickled rice, not the fish, which means that they sometimes here have ‘sushi’ that is basically a bowl of pickled rice with various toppings, which is what I had for lunch.
-They used to include a pretty picture in each box of Akafuku, but the one that I bought just had an apology from the president of the company about the freshness scandal.
-Akafuku are *extremely* sticky: I accidentally had the box perpendicular to the ground for about 3 hours, but when we opened it up they were still exactly in place. The box actually comes with a little wooden scraper to help remove them. They gave my host mother quite a fight.
-My host mother’s waka (traditional Japanese poetry that is chanted) group performed for the president of Croatia while he was in Kyoto this weekend.

Ise Jingu

This Friday we didn’t have class in favour of the program’s Spring field trip to Ise shrine in Mie prefecture, about 3 hours away by bus. I had, in fact, been to Ise before during Fall break with my friend (and reported on it here!) but it was still amazingly fun. Well, the bus ride wasn’t very fun, but I in general don’t like car trips. We did, however, have a very nice tour guide (who I think came with the bus) who pointed out things as we passed them and told us little stories to keep us from getting too bored. Our first stop was for lunch at this aquarium and shopping area near the shrine with the two big rocks that have the rope between them. Here some friends and I had ‘Ise Udon’ which is like a thicker version of normal udon noodles with a light soy sauce on them. Very tasty. After eating we went out to take a look at the rocks and the shrines on the shore across from them, one of which is for a frog deity and the other of which is supposed to be at the cave that the sun goddess Amaterasu hid in when she got angry at her brother. I was using the later when I heard a bunch of older Japanese women behind me, when I turned around they were surprised and started laughing, and when I said ‘hello’ and ‘excuse me’ to them they laughed harder. What I believe happened (based on my friends’ accounts) was that the women had been talking about how long my legs were, so when I turned around they got embarrassed, and then when I spoke Japanese to them they got even more embarrassed. I thought it was pretty amusing myself. After this we went back into the shopping area and tried some of a treat called ‘Akafuku mochi’, which is a famous brand-name sweet that originated at Ise shrine some 300years ago and is still considered a must-have souvenier. The last time that I was in Ise, however, there had been a controversy about its freshness, which meant that all of the brand’s locations were shut down. I have to say that it really is quite good, though simple. It is basically sweet glutinous rice cake with thick, smooth red bean paste hand-pressed over top. They served it with roasted tea, which suited it well. As we were heading back to the bus, we noticed that outside of the aquarium in front of its sealion tank they were having a little show of sorts. The seals inside the tank jumped and made faces against the glass by sticking out their tongues, and were very adept at catching the fish they received in return. For me, however, the most amazing thing was when they took the male seal out of the tank so that we could all get a closer look at him. He was MASSIVE. I looked at the small child standing in front of me and could only think that if this seal wanted to eat the kid he could just swallow her whole. After leaving the plaza, stop two was the Mikimoto Pearl Island. Now, if you don’t know, Mikimoto sells some of the world’s most expensive and beautiful pearls, and it is based in Ise, where the company first invented the technique of making cultured pearls. Here we first walked through an exhibit about the process of pearl-making, which was very well done, with some of the best English that I’ve seen since being here. After that it was time for the pearl divers’ demonstration. Pearl Oysters have been traditionally collected in Ise by female divers who, with their floating bucket tethered to one ankle, dive deep into freezing cold water wearing only cloth suits and head coverings and no shoes. After being very convinced that I did not have a future in pearl diving, I went to look at the museum, where Mikimoto has collected examples of pearl jewelry from all over the world and a vast range of time periods, almost all of it stunning, though some of it just strange (three-dimensional jack russle terrier, anyone?). The second half of the exhibit was all things that Mikimoto had made, and most of it was extremely beautiful (I thought that the pagoda made out of pearls was a bit much) and had me very prepared to go to the gift shop. Apparently aware that only a small fraction of their guests could possible afford an actual string of Mikimoto pearls, the majority of the gift shop was given over to less-expensive pearl options, one of which I availed myself of. After leaving the island it was time to go to our hotel, which turned out to be very nice. We were split into groups of five people, and each given a little cabin with its own bath, living room and kitchen and more than enough sleeping room for everyone. Before dinner we all decided to go to the hotel’s ‘Aqua palace’, which was basically a series of different pools of varying temperatures that had jets that would focus on different muscles. After this was dinner, where I ate entirely too much and enjoyed myself thoroughly, and then back to our lodge to watch some DVDs and hang out with the other students. One of the people on the trip had arranged a wine party, which was a lot of fun, mostly because the majority of the people tried to keep it classy and not get too drunk. Since the public hot spring bath closed at 11pm, a few of us left a little early to make sure that we got our turn. It was very nice in the outdoor tub (once one actually got from the door to the water, that middle part is really not fun), a nice cool sea breeze, hot salty spring water and fun people to talk to make for a good time. We also met some Japanese girls who had just graduated high school and were very energetic and nice. Post-bath we returned to our lodge, watched some more DVDs and fell into bed.
-Male seals are enormous and I hope that I never meet one in the wild.
-I still don’t like car rides, and will thus most certainly NOT be taking the 6-hour one from Kyoto to Tokyo, no matter how cheap it is.
-Somewhere in Shiga prefecture there is a massive, self-contained horse training centre that is essentially its own town.
-The Amaterasu myth, for those who don’t know it is this: The Sun Goddess had a brother who was a real problem and bullied her mercilously until, in a fit of anger, she locked herself in a cave and refused to leave. Because there was no sun, everything died and people starved, and the other gods, seeing this, tried everything to get her to come out. Finally, Ame no Uzume, another goddess, jumped up on a bucket and danced wildly and stamped her feet. All the gods laughed and cheered and Amaterasu, hearing the noises, peeked out of her cave to see what was going on, bringing light back to the world.
-My host sister mentioned before I left that recently the Akafuku had been better than it ever was pre-scandal, and I have to say it tasted extremely fresh.
-Akafuku’s trademark is that the red bean paste on top has impressions on it from being hand-packed onto the mochi.
-The Mikimoto exhibit made me want a tiara, but the gift shop did not have a single tiara on sale. This should be remedied.
-You can get a fairly decent Chilean wine at the 7/11 here for under $10.
-A large percentage of the people in the program don’t drink at all.
-Bathing in hot saltwater kinda stings after a bit.

Hina Matsuri

Monday, March 3rd was the Doll Festival (Hina Matsuri), also called Girl’s day. This is a day when families throughout Japan display dolls that are dressed in traditional Japanese court dress in their houses and offer them sweets. The dolls come in many different types, and in some instances are arranged on multi-tiered structures, with an emperor and empress doll on the top with trays in front of them, lanterns on either side and attendants in order of rank descending downward. My own host family chooses to put their dolls up in April when it’s a little warmer and more fitting for the spring feeling that the holiday is meant to invoke. For this holiday there were several events and exhibits all over the city, one of which was going to be at a temple not far from my house. Hokyoji temple was to have a display of dolls from different periods of Japanese history, and on the first there was going to be a dance by a Tayuu from the Kyoto Shimabara district. Perhaps I have mentioned this before, but a Tayuu is an Edo era courtesan of the highest rank. A long time ago there ceased to be Tayuu in any actual sense, but in Shimabara there is one house that still has a couple women who train in the dances, songs, and general culture specific to the Tayuu. They are far rarer than geisha, and so when I read in my program director’s note that there was going to be one not far from my house I made sure to get myself over there. Unfortunately, there was no time listed in the note, and my guess at a reasonable time for it to happen was a couple hours too late, so I missed her completely. At least I got in to see the dolls, many of which were from the Meiji period (late 19th century) or before, and the weather was nice enough that I didn’t dislike the walk to get there.
-According to one of the host mothers, if someone’s daughter is getting married soon the family will put out there dolls for Hina Matsuri early.
-The positioning of the Emperor and Empress dolls in relation to one another is different in Tokyo.
-I seem to always be asleep when things are happening.

Going to the Movies

These last two weekends I have gone to see movies with a friend of mine. The first one was a Japanese movie called ‘KIDS’, and the second was ‘The Golden Compass’, which just came out in Japan. Movie theatres here are a little different than in the states. The first thing I noticed was that when we bought tickets we chose what seats we wanted. The prices were the same, we just had assigned places to sit. For the first movie it didn’t much matter, as the place was pretty empty, but the second time it really did since it was ‘Golden Compass’s first weekend in Japan. Another difference is that you can buy programs and movie merchandise in the theatre itself. I’d never really thought about it, but I guess that there’s no real reason why there *shouldn’t* be programs for movies like there are for plays and concerts, there just aren’t in the US. During one of these excursions we stopped by this parfait restaurant in the area before our movie. This place had models of some of their parfaits in the front of the café, and over 100 different types of parfait on the menu. We decided to split a berry and chocolate one, but the selection was rather daunting. I might have to go there again and try one of their green-tea ice cream ones, though I think that I’ll do without the tomato one.
-American movies here can be seen either dubbed in Japanese or subtitled in Japanese, I natural chose the later.
-The ending song for ‘The Golden Compass’ movie is terrible. In my personal opinion the end song for a movie should not outline the premise of the movie just viewed in softly reverent tones with an overly simplistic rhyme scheme. But then that’s just me.
-The refreshments available at Japanese movie theatres are, I suppose necessarily, different from those in American ones. They had: red bean bread (anpan), caramel corn, oolong tea, and green tea ice cream, among other things. But no diet coke.
-There is something really disorienting about walking on an escalator that isn’t moving. One of the escalators at the theatre was off for some reason, and stepping on and off of it felt really weird.