Jya mata ne!

See you later, Japan! Thanks for the maple leaves and the great meals, the endless apologizing and the infinite courteousness, the intoxicating jumble of ancient tranquility and modern craziness, and the countless people who have out of the goodness of their hearts gone out of their way to make my trip enjoyable.

I am looking forward to washrooms that have soap and something, anything at all, to dry my hands with, but in general I've had an undeservedly wonderful time, and look forward to seeing you again when I can make it back here, if you'll have me.

Thanks to you also, dear reader, for following me on my journey. See you soon.

And sunkus to you too my good man

These adorable little creatures were pork-and-tofu-skin hot buns I bought at and then consumed immediately outside Sunkus, the erstwhile-ly mysteriously named convenience store.

I say erstwhile-ly because once again Toshi has shed light onto the darkness of my confusion. Japanese speakers pronounce it san-koo-soo, which sounds like "Thanks" to them, which at least makes some sense. However, their logo is still kind of creepy to me.

Star sighting

Saw the comedian/actor Yoshio Kojima doing some kind of TV or movie shoot while we were waiting outside a sushi restaurant in Tsukiji fish market. You should have seen the number of cell phones raised to snap a picture of him as he passed. Apparently he's famous here for doing variations on this.

He was wearing pants when we saw him, however.

Bacon and potato victory

Many of you urged me to follow up on this dangling story participle, so today, my last day in Japan, I dragged Toshi with me back to Makudonarudo. Surprisingly, the B&PP was pretty much exactly as advertised on the box. To wit:

"Now, Come Back! KARI KARI outside, TORORI inside. ATSU ATSU mashed potatoes and tasty bacon... Good for your snack time!"

I hope we'll be getting these in Canada soon. Yum!

Bomb Canada!

At the Edo-Tokyo museum, I discovered that at the end of WWII, Japan released thousands of hydrogen balloons with bags of gunpowder dangling from them, with the idea that they would float over the Pacific on the jet stream and then obliterate America.

Only one of them was successful, killing six people when a girl at a church picnic in Oregon tried to pull one out of a tree where it had landed. The rest landed without incident apparently, including some in British Columbia. I guess I wasn't paying attention that day in history class, because this was news to me. Am I the last to know?

Sea cucumber

in a thick yam foam. Indecently tender beef tongue with braised daikon. Monkfish liver, garnished with a pair of roasted gingko nuts skewered onto a single two-pronged pine needle. Sticky rice with shredded dried-smoked sea bream and pickled plum morsels. Urchin in egg custard, in a tiny cup with a persimmon leaf balanced on top. A completely insanely presented sashimi course (that's the pic).

These morsels were only part of the multi-course kaiseki dinner Toshi's mom treated us to last night, and it was exquisite. Thank you, Hamaguchi-san!

Late for the Olympics

Decided to make my Japan Rail pass work for its money on its last day and returned to Tokyo from Kyoto via Nagano, just to see the mountain scenery (I figure it's my small contribution to balancing the number of Japanese who do the same thing in Banff). It was impressive.

Nagano is also famous for apples, apparently, given the number of apple-themed products available in the shops. You could buy four in a nicely-printed paper bag for about 10 bucks (Y880).

They were pretty big apples, though.

Hot

This is where I was immersed up to my neck at about 3:30 this afternoon.

I had taken a tiny train up into a mountain valley, hiked up and over a ridge that prominently featured towering cypress trees, stands of golden yew and autumnally coloured maples with leaves the size of kitten paws. I wound past mountain shrines, down through a vermilion-painted temple complex and into another valley, to the townlet of Kuruma. I followed its single twisting one-lane road that runs just above the the gushing stream at the valley bottom, ultimately to revive my tired and not-so-fresh-feeling body in this ridiculously tranquil hot spring.

Tomorrow: Back to Tokyo, the long way.

It's the second impressions that are really the lasting ones

My first monkey sighting in the wild happened today, and was extremely brief. I was trying to figure out how to overtake a couple with three small children shambling their way up a narrow mountain trail and there it was, a red-faced monkey nimbly scampering along a tree branch below us, coming to take a closer look. Interesting, I thought. Cute!

These thoughts lasted for about two seconds, after which time a thundering, crashing noise of branches breaking and leaves thrashing about came from above. This noise was complemented by a completely uninhibited howling-screaming-growling banshee-like sort of noise, all emanating from a much, much larger version of the same monkey hurtling and leaping down the hillside at full speed. This was my second sighting of a monkey in the wild, and was infinitely more interesting.

After chasing away the first monkey, flashing its ample red bottom in the process, it turned back to us and made for what was apparently its true coveted object. This was the boy, about age six I'd say. I'm not sure why, but it could have been the neon pink knapsack. To his credit, the terrified child did not completely freak out, instead making a hasty strategic move behind his father, and after a bit of chess-like manoeuvering (picture very, very fast chess) the monkey gave up and sulked off.

This occurred in the Arashiyama Monkipaaku Iwatayama, which I'll just call The Monkey Park. It's like a game reserve for monkeys, except rangers feed them from a central station so they kind of hang around. After this introduction, however, it was pretty smooth sailing, and I have to say, watching baby monkeys' rough-and-tumble play is pretty darn cute. It's just like on the nature programmes, really, except you can't turn them off, you just have to decide when you're going to walk away and probably never get to see this again.

Anyway the best thing about The Monkey Park is that by the feeding station, there's a cage where the more cautious (which I can now say with confidence includes recently charged-at six-year-olds) can watch the monkeys from safety. The monkeys, of course, are crawling all over the cage, checking out the contents. This made for a fabulous sight, take my word on it. This is how all zoos should be, in my opinion, with the humans in the cages and the animals on the outside.

Temple fatigue

Okay, by about noon today I'd had enough temples for a while, and spent some time just drifting around downtown Kyoto. Then, this evening, I decided to see a movie. I'll spare you the story of how challenging it was to find out where the cinemas are and what's playing, and cut to the most interesting parts.

1: It cost me nearly $22 just for the ticket.

2: People who bought snacks got them served in deep trays shaped like exclamation points. The dot was a little deeper and fit in the cup holder at the end of the armrest; the stroke sat on top of the armrest. After the movie, people dutifully brought them back out to the lobby, where workers thanked them as they took them back and slotted them neatly into stacked tray holders on wheels.

Oh, the movie was This Is It, about Michael Jackson's almost-concert. Pretty interesting, I do admire him somewhat. Strange though to see a concert movie that featured no audience, though.

I have met my nemesis and it is made of bacon and potato

Walking past a typical Japanese hole-in-the-wall McDonald's (makudonarudo), I saw a picture on the menu board outside that looked like one of their apple pies. However, this one was labelled neatly, in English, "bacon potato pie". And I thought, I must have one.


I went inside and tried to order, but if I understand correctly, one is not able to buy one of these treasures on its own, only as part of some sort of meal package. I couldn't quite figure it out, but I said, basically, okay, I'll take it. Apparently this was not good enough as several other decisions were requested on my part, but it was totally unclear to me what they were. Eventually I just had to walk out, annoyed and humbled. I noted that a long queue had formed behind me.

Failure to muster sufficient resources to order an item off a McDonald's menu has got to be one of the lowest points of my adult life.

White heron on the outside, samurai on the inside

Himeji castle. It's big. It's white. It's old. It has holes in the wall for you to pour boiling oil out onto your attackers. And now I've been there, right up to the tippy top.

Edibles

Today my diet included ice cream flavoured like toasted brown rice, and a Kit Kat the flavour of ginger ale. They were both very tasty.

Beautiful gravel

My first day in Kyoto has given me the pleasure of seeing two of my now-favourite gardens in Japan: Kinkokujin (the Silver Palace, which is not silver), a former medieval villa-turned-temple, and the 13th-century Nanzen-ji, a temple complex the enormous gate of which is a jaw-dropper in itself (and for a mere 500 yen I was allowed to take my shoes off, carry them in the plastic bag provided, climb up to the viewing deck inside and goggle at the sweeping views of the surrounding mountain, forest and the city beyond).

You know, I never really got beyond an intellectual appreciation of those raked gravel zen gardens, until today. I'm not sure if it's just the high　quality of these gardens, or having been primed for them by being in Japan a couple of weeks now, but I hadn't realized that raked gravel could be so, well, organic.

Anyway, both of these gardens are amazing in that everything is thought out in every possible way. Just look at any random branch, shrub, root, rock, chunk of moss, whatever, and you'll soon realize, oh, it has been selected to simultaneously match and contrast with this or that, and positioned to harmonize with everything else on a micro and macro scale, and every near and distant view is considered. And then you realize that in another season, the effect would be totally different but also just as harmonious. And then you take two steps and look at something else, and have the same experience, but then look back at the first thing from the new angle and realize it was thought about from that angle too. And then two more steps... and two more...

It takes me a long time to get through these gardens. But who's in a rush?

Happy birthday, Nara! (bring fire extinguisher)

Too many candles on this cake I'm afraid, as the city of Nara is about to celebrate its 1300th anniversary of being declared the first capital of a united Japan. Apparently it didn't work out, but nonetheless it's been well preserved and features narrow streets and jumbled olde-worlde-looking houses like a tourist brochure.


And tourists there are, by the tens of thousands, but thanks to jet lag I managed to get up and out very early and saw the famous 15 metre tall 8th century buddha, housed in the largest wooden building in the world, with only two other visitors in the whole place. It was pretty impressive, I have to say. (I passed by later and couldn't begin to count the number of people in the hordes waiting outside, and felt smug).

Tip: If you ever visit Nara, and I highly recommend you do, watch out for the sacred deer roaming the temple complex, they'll chase after you and eat any food you happen to have left somewhere careless, like in your hand.

A shortish hike through the grandly named Kasuga-yama Primeval Forest to the stunning mountaintop view (complete with vending machines), then back down and poking through random shrines and five-storey pagodas before negotiating the labyrinth back to my lovely, medieval-looking inn where I will now open the sliding door to my tiny medieval balcony and rest my tired, tired feet.

Country roads

Well, I wanted to see more of rural Japan so I headed to the bicyle rental shop outside the station at tiny Bizen-Ichinomiya, and headed out on the 15 kilometre Kibi Plain Bicycle Route. It was worth every rotation of the pedals on my undersized, one-speed bike, and went something like this: Quaint road, shrine, canal, rice fields, rice fields, rice fields with a white crane, getting lost, getting redirected by and then having a photo op with a farming couple bundling rice stalks by hand and hanging them to dry, cemetery, temple, rice fields, rice fields, temple complex, rice fields, freeway underpass, getting lost, backtracking, rice fields, quaint hamlet, rice fields, rice fields, horseback riding corral, canal, rice fields with red-headed heron, rice fields with no herons, patch of violets, rice fields, peach orchard, convent with five-storey pagoda, rice fields, town, getting lost, finding the station anyway, then returning my bicycle at a rental shop at Souja train station where they apparently have a reciprocal arrangement with the first cycle shop.

Idyllic bucolicity and pastoralness; a day well spent.

Delightful things

Castles with moon-viewing turrets. Drifting off to sleep on a firm futon to the dry-grass smell of tatami mats. Customer service that borders on codependency. Melon-flavoured candy. Bicycles parked without having been locked up, and with previous shopping left trustingly in the handlebar basket. Overconceptualized gardens. Bowing and smiling. Persimmons.

Welcome to Kurashiki (closed Mondays)

Postponed my plan for a bike ride in the countryside today as they were calling for rain. The weather was clear in the end, but it gave me the chance to see Kurashiki, which is possibly the most photogenic locale I've been to in Japan yet. Strangely, though, almost everything is closed on Mondays -- not just museums, but shops, restaurants, everything. Which turned out to be great, because it was almost deserted and the historic area is so ultra-quaint that I'm sure on a regular day it is chockers with tourists.

Went to a yakitori place for dinner and had one of those comic movie-type incidents where it was hit home for me how limited my Japanese really is, and I had only a vague idea what I was ordering and ended up basically getting a few exquisitely presented canapes for 25 bucks. Still, it was an interesting experience, and yet another place where I was glad to have brought slip-on shoes and lots of new socks (read: without holes in the toes). Man, it seems like a person can't keep their shoes on for five minutes in this country, and don't get me started about all the different slippers to navigate (invariably five sizes smaller than my feet). Anyway, I headed off to 7-Eleven afterwards to pick up a tuna-mayo onigiri for another course.

That was zen, this is now

Well, I've just returned to the "mainland" from a couple of days on Shiraishi-jima, a tiny little farming and fishing island of 800 people, where I and a very pleasant world-touring German couple appeared to be the only non-residents. Our Japanese-style villa was perched on a ridge overlooking a deserted beach littered with cuttlefish bones and urchin shells. On the terraced hillside in between, old ladies in drab-coloured flower-print polyester slacks tended yam fields, and orchards of persimmons, quinces and clementines. The narrowest little paths you've ever seen cut through the plots and function as roads (hard to get a moped down them, forget a car).

The residents are apparently all on the same schedule, as evidenced by pole-mounted loudspeakers distributed throughout the island, which blast a charmless synthesizer version of Big Ben at 6 am, noon, 5 pm and 9 pm. Great weather, fabulous hiking through bamboo forests and camellia thickets up to spectacular rocky outcrops. Overall, a totally bucolic atmosphere that couldn't contrast more with what I had seen thus far in Japan. A much needed and much appreciated rest.

Arrived today in the rain in Okayama, the main city of this rural area, and back to hypercrowded ramen-and-pachinko normalcy.

By the way, Japan, what's up with putting up Christmas displays in the third week of October?

6 August 1945, 8:15 am

Went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum today. A bunch of other things happened, but that pretty much eclipsed everything else. It is undescribable.

Hiroshima

The first thing I did upon leaving Tokyo was to board the wrong bullet train. Hilarity ensued. Got to Hiroshima in the end, though, and it is surprisingly charming. The cute little streetcars help, and bicycles, bicycles, bicycles thronging the pathways and zooming over the numerous bridges that connect the islets of this river-delta city.

Dinner was at Okonomi-mura, a five-storey building containing 27 okonomi-yaki counters. The Hiroshima version is layered, and made with buckwheat noodles (soba), and was delicious. I forked out the extra cash to have oysters in it, for which Hiroshima is also famous, in Japan at least.



Walking back in the warmish-to-cool evening, I took a detour past the A-bomb dome, impressive enough on its own but dramatically set off with up-lighting against the night sky, and of crickets singing like delicate songbirds. A night-fishing crane gave a single indignant squawk from the river behind me before flying off in a theatrical arc. This backdrop seemed all perfectly suited to that inexplicable beautiful sadness of ruins.

Tomorrow it's off to the A-Bomb museum and memorial.

Quintessential Japanese Moment #1

Leaning over to look out the opposite window of my bullet train in order to glimpse the snow-covered cone of Mount Fuji pushing up out of the blanket of clouds covering the surrounding plains.

Back by popular demand

Well, I changed my mind and decided to blog a bit after all. Stay tuned...

日本へ行きます！

Well, the cats are at Greg & Brian's, I have my passport (whew!), I have yen, I'm packed. I'm ready to go back to Japan. In focus this trip: maple leaves, castles, hot springs, practicing my Japanese, and eating, eating, eating. Don't miss out on the reports from the field, check back here often! But first, I have this ten hour flight to take...