Worth every penny

Remember how we mentioned once you’re willing to spend money in Japan that life becomes so much better? Well, we sucked it up and decided to splurge on a day and a night at a Sanga Ryokan in Kurokawa, renowned in Japan for its onsens (natural hot springs). Hot baths are something of a ritual in Japan, which we first discovered in a local Kyoto bathhouse. You begin by sitting on a bucket (naked, of course), soaping and showering to remove any dirt, and only then submerging yourself into a hot tub. Being naked around strangers is something that the Japanese are quite comfortable with and, once you get over the initial awkwardness, it’s actually kind of freeing. Anyway, we were experts by the time we got to Kurokawa and the setting was much more natural: outdoor pools surrounded by trees and rocks with hot spring water pouring from bamboo pipes. We languished under the majestic sky while the steaming water washed away our travel aches. Tia even got up the guts to join me in the “mixed” bath, where two older Japanese men politely averted their eyes while she got in.

Every touch of Japanese service was perfect, down to our bathrobes that made us look like lounging samurai and the tatami mats on the floor where we slept. Finally, we were treated to a traditional kaiseki dinner, which had an endless assortment of mostly unrecognizable foods. Unfortunately, while some of it was incredibly delicious, the net effect is that Japanese is no longer Tia’s favorite cuisine. Must have been the raw horse meat…

11 bottles worth of sake lessons

We had grand plans to utilize Couchsurfing when we first started this trip but it always seemed that the time it took to find someone we thought we’d like and the value of privacy and independence far outweighed the $10-20 a night we’d save on accommodation. This calculation changes, however, when you’re looking at spending $100 for a night in a capsule hotel and all other costs are equally inflated ($100 each for a 1-hour train ride on a Shinkansen, $10 for a simple bowl of ramen). Given this, I was really proud when Juan went to the trouble of scouring through Couchsurfing profiles and arranged a couple of places to stay. Not only that, it turns out Juan has impeccable judgment!

Without a doubt, meeting Hiyo was one of the highlights of our whole trip. She kindly offered to pick us up at the Uto train station and after dropping our bags at her place promptly invited us to go digging for bamboo shoots with her. Bamboo digging season is apparently short, and if you don’t dig up the roots early on they turn into enormous bamboo trees that take over the surrounding areas within a short period of time. In addition, when cooked, the bamboo is supposedly delicious (we were leaving the next day so didn’t reap the fruits of our labors, but we’ll take Hiyo’s word for it). Luckily Juan redeemed himself for breaking her shovel by finding the biggest bamboo shoot of all.

After a quick shower, we hopped on some bikes for a 15 minute ride to a cute Japanese restaurant. It was a nice change for Hiyo to order in Japanese – we’ve been limited to ordering omakase (basically this means you let the chef choose what to serve you) which means we’ve been stuck eating things like chicken spine on occasion. Hiyo also decided to give us a lesson in sake styles. Eleven bottles later, we’d pretty much forgotten the lessons but discovered that Hiyo has the tolerance level of a linebacker.

Luckily we spent the previous afternoon at Kumamoto Castle where the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and people dressed in authentic samurai gear were wandering the grounds. Not sure we could have handled a day of sight-seeing with those hangovers…

Nagasaki

Beautiful, picturesque Nagasaki is nestled among mountains along the western Japanese coast. A nighttime trip on the cable car gave us a panoramic view of the city as it stretched across the valley.

The next day we would watch video simulations showing where the epicenter of the atomic bomb tore through that same valley. Nagasaki’s Peace Park was built at this site and cherry blossoms were in full bloom, belying any sign of what once happened there. The nearby museum graphically accounts the bomb’s toll (75,000 people killed in 3 seconds, out of a population of 240,000) and has audio testimonies of people who lived through the blast and described their ordeal on a very personal level. The word “sad” can’t even begin to describe it. I couldn’t shake the feeling of self-consciousness at being an American here and, yet, the Japanese have only espoused a resounding message of peace. It made the whole experience that much sadder.

You get what you pay for

Waking up on our last morning with Divyam, we were off to Osaka to pick up our Chinese visas and spent the night watching a bunraku puppet show.  Aside from learning that it’s ok for grown men to play with puppets in ladies’ dresses, it was a window into Japanese discipline to watch the narration, the Shamisen player, and the puppets move in perfect unison. 

We hit the road early the next day to speed straight away to Hiroshima to visit the Peace Park and Miyajima.  Little did we know that our JR (Japan Rail) passes, although much cheaper than the Shinkansen (bullet train) passes, were next to useless in terms of getting us from one city to another.  6 ½ hours and 3 transfers later we found ourselves in Hiroshima, much too late to see anything that we had wanted to.  The kicker is that it would have taken a little over an hour on the Shinkansen.  I was reminded of how a friend who lives here once told me that Japan is great but you have to be prepared to spend money to enjoy it: a lesson that has made itself felt more painfully each day we were here… 

At dinner later that night, we made the best of the situation by finding Tia some oysters (I take full credit for turning her on to them when we were in Sydney) for which Hiroshima was renowned.  They came roasted and were delicious.  As I idly squeezed lemon onto an oyster shell and Tia looked at me with utter astonishment, I realized that we have reached that point in our marriage where we don’t care if we look like complete morons to one other.

If you give a deer a biscuit...

It’s cool that Nara was Japan’s first permanent capital and is full of imperial history but it was talk of free-roaming deer that eat out of your hand that really drew me in. Sure enough, as soon as we stepped foot into Nara-kōen (a huge park occupying half the city), we were surrounded by deer. True, I’d already bought deer biscuits and they could probably smell them, but they were also everywhere. Laura Numeroff should steer clear of writing, “If you give a deer a biscuit…” because really all that happens if you give a deer a biscuit is that he follows you around until you have no more biscuits, then he follows you around just a little longer to make absolutely sure. Considering how intimidated I was by this, you can probably imagine how the little kids felt. Their faces would go from excitement to sheer terror in a matter of seconds. Kind of priceless.

We obviously stopped by Tōdai-ji for a look at the famous Daibutsu (Great Buddha) and Niō guardians at the entrance gate, but we also discovered that Isui-en garden is Juan’s favorite Japanese garden in all three of his trips to Japan. The show-stealer for me, though, was the walk to Kasuga Taisha shrine. The pathways are lined with hundreds (maybe thousands) of lanterns. And I’m not talking paper lanterns you buy for Halloween to line your sidewalk. I’m talking four- to six-foot stone lanterns patterned after pagodas and covered with delicate rice paper. The 8th-century shrine itself is also fascinating because Shintō tradition apparently required that it be completely rebuilt every 20 years.

Helping Japan's economy one tourist at a time...

After carefully parsing through all the sensationalist news coverage on the disaster in Japan, we ultimately decided not to cancel our trip. I mean, how many other chances will we have to visit Japan during cherry blossom season? We cut Tokyo from the itinerary but everything else was a minimum of 500 kilometers from Fukushima. Anyway…it was a good decision.

Most people who know Japan know that Kyoto is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places to visit. Suffice to say, there are lots of temples, they are surprisingly unique, and our legs are tired from seeing so many. When we finished biking the Philosopher’s Path under the just-bloomed cherry blossoms, I could see Tia’s eyes sparkle as if meeting me again for the first time. Which, when you consider how androgynous someone becomes after spending 270 consecutive days with them and watching their sweat stains on clothing grow dark, is nothing less than remarkable. You should go there.

Our stay in Yonbanchi guesthouse, an old samurai abode, was improved by the acerbic wit and reliable tour advice of its host, Divyam, a native Frenchman who spent his restless youth wandering the world and “just missed Woodstock” to give you an idea of how long ago. He subsidized his first years in Kyoto by selling paintings he bought in Hong Kong as French masterpieces to the burgeoning Japanese middle class (who evidently didn’t know any better in 1980). It’s inspired us to come up with a similar scheme: maybe mixing cheap versions of Kahlua and Bailey’s and calling it Tia Vasquez Mexican liquor?