Collin Condray’s Blog

Today was our much awaited first free day during the program. After a quick meeting, with a diminishing few of our conspirators from last night we decided to head to the so-called romantic train that goes between Kameoka and Saga Arashiyama that we have seen so many times from the main train line that goes between Kameoka and Kyoto and then head back to Osaka. So we stopped off at the second Kameoka train station with a big sign at the terminal that says “Romantic Train” to find tickets. We ask the ticket taker where the train is and he says, “No.” So after a brief discussion among ourselves, we assume that that train is closed and so, wait for the next train to Kyoto.

After hopping the train, we look out at the next stop, Saga Arashiyama, we see the romantic train on a separate track next to the station. So, we sprint out of the regular train to the romantic train and just miss it. We decided to stay around for the next one which runs in about 50 minutes. During that time I wander around and don’t find much (except some green tea ice cream). When I return, I notice a great big map that shows a lot of really interesting things in this area which I walked right past on my way out.

So next, we get on the romantic train and it was gorgeous. There is a natural gorge that a river runs through with very steep, heavily forested slopes. The sun was shining and everything was beautiful. In the river we saw several boats filled with tourists braving the whitewater in the river. We briefly considered taking one of the boats but at ¥3900 we couldn’t really afford it. Maybe we’ll hop it later in the trip.

After that, we went to Kyoto to talk to the people in the National Tourist Office to find out if there are any soccer games in Osaka or Kyoto today. Again we were out of luck on the soccer, but we did find out there is one in both Osaka and Kyoto on Saturday so we made plans see soccer that day. For lunch we wandered around outside the Kyoto station and stumbled on this great little restaurant with a great lunch special, soup, rice, salad, and Japanese fried chicken for ¥750. Delicious.

Since our outing to Osaka was cut short and Rebecca had a dinner appointment, we headed back to Saga Arashiyama to see all the things we had missed earlier in the day. It was a very happy accident, because we had a really good time that day. There was a lovely river that we all just sat down and watched for a while. We then headed up this huge mountain on the far side of the river to see the monkeys. They were very cute and fun loving. We also had an excellent view of the valley below us and got some spectacular shots.

I went with Rebecca to dinner with a new friend she met, Ayumi. Ayumi is a high school student that she met earlier in the trip. She is currently a swimming teacher for children and will soon be going to the University of Kyoto. She was very sweet and took us to another Japanese restaurant where I had a tempura dish. All of it was very good except for the sweet tofu.

The rest of the day was spent doing administrative stuff like laundry, packing for Tamano City, and going to bed early.

Tomorrow, Sanyo and a Hanshin Tigers professional baseball game.

Today our group visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. A few of us took a walk to see where the bomb hit. It turns out, our hotel was only a few hundred yards away from hypercenter, the place where the bomb would have hit the ground if it wasn’t an air burst. Of course you couldn’t tell any effects of the bomb now. There was an apartment building just behind the plate that designates the hypercenter and only a block away was a baseball stadium. We also visited the nearby Peace Dome which you will probably recognize from the pictures of the aftermath of the attack.

After that we went to the Peace Museum which gave the history of Hiroshima before the bomb and showed before and after effects on the city. There were several displays showing the history and function of nuclear weapons and Hiroshima’s commitment to peace. The final exhibit followed several personal stories of some of the citizens in the aftermath of the attack. After leaving the museum proper, we rang the Peace Bell and dropped off a string of folded cranes at a special memorial outside of the museum.

After Hiroshima, we went to Osaka to visit Himeji Castle. The castle was built in the early 1600s to control western Japan by Tokugawa’s son-in-law. The castle covers only a fraction of its original space. There were two other moat and wall fortifications around the surviving keep and the entire castle could house up to 25,000 samurai for 2 years. The castle was designed to be impregnable and was never attacked. As several of us nearly tumbled to our death in the castle just walking up it, I can only imagine what it would be like to try to ascend it when people a shooting at you through the arrow and gun slits located all along our path. The stairs within the main complex were quite tall and it was march to make it to the top. However, the view from the top was worth it allowing you and impressive site of Osaka.

We remained in Osaka to have dinner at a fancy place called the Entec Group. The food was on the Italian side, lots of pastas and garlic, but unfortunately I forgot to snap any pictures of it. We all split a lot of different dishes and I got to taste, among other things, beef cubes, spicy chicken, Japanese fried chicken, carbonara, and caramel mousse. It was all delicious especially since Dr. Stapp picked up the bill. Thanks Dr. Stapp! You’re the best.

Returning to Kameoka we retreated to a late night place called The Food Spread to plan for our next day’s outing. We made our orders and planned a little bit for our free day until our waiter decided to show us a card trick. The card he was looking for was the six of clubs, after a couple of tries he decided our card was the nine of hearts. Oh well. As a consolation prize he gave us a deck of cards and in return Tim suggested we show him how to play Texas Hold ‘Em. Rebecca, wound up winning the most chips and we didn’t get any planning done.

One administrative note before I leave. I have postcards for several of the people who are reading this journal but no snail mail address. If you would like a post card from Japan (and I know you do) could you email me your snail mail address so I can get those out? Thanks everybody!

Tomorrow, make something up!

Sorry for no posts in a while. I’ve got a lot of stuff ready to go up but no usable internet connection. I am alive and doing well (if a little footsore). Keep watching the site for a ton of new updates. Take care!

Today I have decided to take up the challenge of packing lightly, with my laptop of course. For this trip I’m just taking only just what I’m going to wear the entire trip. If it works out then I’ll take less and less and just wash what I need. I eventually just want to get down to carrying around a single sock.

Today’s train ride to Hiroshima was a nice, long one so finally I got a chance to sit down for once and got to get caught up in my journal. Our first destination in Hiroshima was Miyajima island a beautifully rugged island with a temple on in. The temple has a very famous gate on it called the O-Torii gate, something that you probably have seen before. When we arrived, the tide was in and the base of the gate was covered. However, by the end of the day the tide had rolled out and we were able to walk right up to the gate. Tradition has it, that if you can throw a stone onto each level of the gate, your wish will come true. Several members of the group tried to do it but no one could get above the second. I almost got hit in the head from everyone trying to make their wish come true however.

We took a trail up into the hills to a series of waterfalls that were quite lovely. I took a lot of pretty good pictures of the falls. Most of us took off our shoes and waded up the river. I tried to stay out of the ensuing water fight. In light of this, I’d like to take this opportunity to give everyone fair warning about getting me into a water fight when I’m carrying around my electronic gear. Don’t. You have been warned.

Our Japanese language lesson of the day was the word shimahebi or snake. Rebecca our resident animal lover saw a long snake slithering through a patch of bushes. Between the two of us we got several nice pictures of it. When pointed the snake out to a couple of nearby Japanese people, everybody seemed pretty nonchalant about it. I guess that there are no poisonous snakes on the island. The birds nesting in the area were not happy about their reptile neighbor and were chirping and squawking at it. I think the snake was not happy with us as well since we were really cramping his hunting style.

We returned at the end of the day to watch the sun go down behind O-torii and again got a lot of good pictures. I think that I shot the more pictures today than any other day.

After watching the sun go down, we checked into a hotel and each one of us had our our own room, a welcome change of pace. After cleaning up a bit, it was about 9:30 PM, our first chance to find some dinner. A lot of the local shops had either closed or we simply didn’t understand what they were offering. A few of us decided to head to a known quantity in dining, McDonald’s. I ordered a double cheeseburger meal which I though was lavish but my companions ate a lot more than me, even Alisa, a tiny slip of a girl compared to me. Tim ate 4 hamburgers by himself, a very impressive feat.

At McDonald’s, there were some high school Japanese girls lurking in our conversation. Unfortunately for them, Alisa speaks Japanese. She would translate tidbits of information from their conversation for our amusement. It was nothing too mean but they were talking about us. At the end of our dinner, Tim asked one of the girls in English where we can find karaoke. They of course they couldn’t answer. Then Alisa asked them in Japanese where it was. You should have seen the look of horror in their faces, it was priceless.

It was after 10 PM and getting very late but we still wanted to do something fun like karaoke. I was pretty run down at this time and had to find some coffee to rejuvenate me. I stopped in a few Japanese coffee houses but they were all closing down but there was a Starbucks. I have had Starbucks 3 or 4 times since I’ve been here, more than I think I have ever been to in America.

At this late point, we couldn’t find any karaoke so we stopped in one of the many arcades. I played a weird typing game. It looked like Resident Evil, but instead of aiming a gun at the zombies, words would pop up and if you typed it in correctly, it would kill the monster. I didn’t do so well even though I’m a pretty extensive vi user. The hit of the night was air hockey though. We played boys against girls and it was not a good day for boys. Tim and I did a lot of scoring, unfortunately, for everyone of our points we knocked in, it seem like we knocked one of the pucks into our own lock. We lost every single game. Then the girls took on Nhan and Alisa and the girls got killed. We did have a lot of fun because there was a lot of squealing while the game was being played. I might have squealed a few times myself actually.

After a short stroll through Hiroshima Peace Park we returned to our very own rooms at the hotel. I did a little sink laundry, hung up my clothes and made it to bed around 1AM

Tomorrow, Hiroshima Peace Park in the daytime and Himeji Castle.

Toji flea market located in the courtyard of a Buddhist temple was today’s destination. It has been held the 21st day of every month for over 600 years. They have over a thousand stalls there selling everything from food to clothes to antiques to just plain junk. At first, I didn’t buy a lot of stuff. Dr. Stapp says that in Japan, things speak to you wanting to be bought, and since nothing called out to me, I bided my time. At the end a few things did speak to me. I spent about $90 on presents my biggest spending spree of the trip (until Akihabara). I got a few gifts for some of you who are reading this so, I’m not going to tell you what I bought and spoil the surprise.

After the flea market we were off to Osaka, the second biggest city in Japan. Out attempt to find a sporting event was a no-go, according to the Osaka Information Office, there was no soccer tonight and baseball game was sold out. The helpful lady at the office really helped to overcome our poor planning. She suggested that we go to the Umeda Sky Building which we did and it was a lot of fun. There is an observation deck on top of the 35 story building that lets you see all of Osaka. The gallery has some very spectacular shots and I encourage you to check them out.

Our next stop was to the HEP 5 (Hankyu Entertainment Plaza) a shopping mall. At the doorway, we met Wayne W. from Ohio, who was acting as a type greeter who at very helpful. He encouraged us to pick up the magazine he works for, japanzine. Its in English an covers things happening in all of Japan. Wayne, we forgot to get a picture from you. If you’re reading this send me a picture of you so I can add you to my journal. My grade depends on it!

The HEP5 is basically a 5 story mall with a Ferris Wheel mounted on the top if it. We noticed immediately that we, in our sweat stained travel wear, we were the most underdressed people there. We spent ¥500 on the Ferris Wheel ride but I didn’t get any good pictures because my camera couldn’t compensate for the continuous movement of the wheel. The view was spectacular so I hope Rebecca’s camera did better than mine.

The HEP5 also had a two level arcade as well called Joypolis. Naturally, the arcade had a ton of games all in Japanese. They also had several cool looking rides/games of various sorts with names such as Wild River, Air Car, Terminator 3, and Biozone Contamination 4-D. The last looked pretty cool but it was in all in Japanese and after spending so much money earlier that day, I didn’t feel rich enough to take a chance.

We began our return trip to Kameoka during the Osaka rush hour at 9:30 PM. We were packed in pretty tightly, reminding me of the Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert is sent to another country that has a different take on personal space. The punch line is from one of the natives Dilbert meets, “The pockets in your pants, these are for you, yes?” If it’s this crowded in Osaka, I’m a little worried what we’re going to see in Tokyo.

I retired to my room to do my pre-pre-preparation for tomorrow, storing my loot from today and getting ready to go to our next destination for tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Hiroshima and catching up on my journal.

Our group has been very lucky in set of experiences we will have in Japan. We have had two very unique ones recently. Last night at 11:45 PM, there was an earthquake centered on Kameoka. It ranked a 2 out of 7 on the Japanese earthquake scale. A couple of the members in the group said they heard a loud noise and the building swayed a bit. I slept right though it. Then we found out that there is a typhoon heading this way and will hit tonight sometime.

So in the face of the typhoon, we headed off to Shoyeido an incense manufacturer who has been in business for over 300 years. Shoyeido has a big factory in Kyoto where they make most of their incense by machine but we saw the handmade incense at their headquarters. We were told that there has been no loss of quality in the factory process, in fact, the people who originally made the incense by hand currently do the hand inspection of the machine made incense and say the quality is quite good.

The production of incense starts with wood such as sandalwood from India or agarwood. The wood is hand chipped from the logs before it is ground up so only the best is added in. Other spices, such as cloves, frakensense, sea shells, and other items used in Chinese medicine, are powdered and added in as well. Shoyeido imports almost all of its incense components since they can only make a tiny amount of ingredients here in Japan.

Various liquids are added to make a type of dough. The air is crushed out of dough and the dough is push through spaghetti making machine and placed on wooden boards. Craftsmen cut the incense to one size, make sure it is straight, a very important step, then dry it in a special climate control room. After drying, the incense has a final hand inspection and is then wrapped for shipping.

Our lunch meeting was with Masataka Hata the CEO of Shoyeido. He is the 12th generation of his family to hold this position. He gave us a short presentation about the history of incense in Japan. It described how Buddhist brought incense to Japan in the 6th century and over the years, the Japanese slowly altered the ingredients and manufacture of it so that it became their own. It has played a big part in Japanese life for centuries for things like perfuming of hair and in games where you have to correctly identify the type of incense by smell.

Mr. Hata was very philosophical about incense making considering it from many different perspectives. He sees burning incense as a universal process, citing its use in both Buddhism and Catholicism, and working on all five senses. The fragrance calls attention to it through its smell that makes you want to look at it and, as he put it, you can “listen to incense”

He also pointed out through his presentation that with the sense of sight, is easy to handle what direction you want to focus a smell on. However, a smell is hard to focus on one place but eventually the sense of smell eventually adapts to an ambient smell.

Mr. Hata also noted that as technology has progessed in the 20th and 21st centuries, our sensory experience has been dominated by digital audio and visual stimuli. The sense of smell has fallen behind and that there is still market opportunity to feed that sense.

Shoyeido has a plant in Colorado and Mr. Hata discussed a little about trying to market in America. Incense has long been associated with Buddhism or hippies (his word, I swear), but he wanted to expand the experience of incense to a bigger market. He believes that Japanese fragrances are very compatible with US market. So, in a smart marketing move, he uses the Japanese word for incense, koh, when discussing his product. This removes the perceived negative connotation in the US. In Japan, he uses the English word for incense to market it better.

As the typhoon was beginning to roll in, we visited Nijo Castle. It was built at the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate as a symbol of its power. The castle was deliberately built to be less than defensible. This was to show that the shogun was so powerful he could afford to show some “weakness” because he was completely unafraid of any challengers.

The castle was built with the famed nightingale floors to protect against ninja attack. There are special pins under the floor so that when you walk on it, the floor makes a chirp. When our group walked on the floor it really did sound like a small flock of birds was in the hall with us. Even though the floor was built 400 years ago, it still works just as well today. There were also various beautiful gardens around Nijo but it was a dreary day and we were drenched by the time we made it to the sword shop.

At the sword shop, Nhan bought a daisho, a beautiful set of swords with a black lacquer scabbard, blue hilt wrappings and sageo, and a black same. The photos do not do them justice. He spent $900 on both of them and another $80 for shipping. The most brave thing he did though was buy it with his girlfriend in the same room. Nhan, I salute you!

We returned to Kameoka early to get some Internet time. By the time we were finished, a lot of the places were closed including Dr. Stapp’s favorite yakimeshi (fried rice) restaurant so we went to Seiyu for dinner. Rebecca is a vegetarian so we asked for an order of yakimeshi with no meat, or at least we thought we did. Apparently, shrimp is not in meat Japan so Tim and I got a few extra shrimp.

Since we were at the Japanese Wal-Mart, we all stocked up on supplies and food for the up coming weekend. I was looking to replace a strap on a piece of carry on luggage so I split off from the group to look for one. With horribly bad Japanese I asked the saleslady if they had one. After a tortured discussion I got across what I was looking for and she got across that they didn’t have one for sale. She did remember that they had extra replacement straps behind the counter so, she gave me one. Seiyu, I thank you!

After shopping, most of us came back to play Texas hold ‘em. It was a pretty fun game but no one was really able to dominate the game. The winners of big pots kept moving around the circle but Tim, a finance major, usually had the the biggest pile.

Most of the people on this trip are still undergraduates so I was Teased terribly about being “old” especially because I wore a fanny pack. Hey! My fanny pack is incredibly useful and I can pack a lot of stuff in it…OK, I feel the same way about fanny packs, but I forgot to pack a smaller day exploration pack. The pack still works quite well for day trips and it holds a surprisingly large number of items leaving my hands free. I don’t care what it looks like I’m taking it with me.

Finally, very late, we planned what we’re going to do tomorrow with our semi-free day. We decided to go to Osaka and hopefully catch a matinee of a Bunraku, or Japanese puppet shows, try to see a sports game (soccer or baseball), go see the gadgets at Den Den Town, and see what else we can see there as well.

Tomorrow, Todiji Flea Market and Japanese puppet shows.

Today we said goodbye to our homestay families. Mine sent me off with a breakfast of curry and nan bread, a surprise for me but very tasty. Sumiko took me to the train station to meet the rest of the group. Ioku was there as well to send us off. Dr. Stapp conspired with us to give her the Banzai treatment. We surrounded her, lifted her off the ground, and threw her in the air three times and yelled “Banzai!” It was a hoot!

Then, we returned to Nagoya where we visited Kirin Beer. The Kirin Beer tour was a lot of fun. We had a great tour guide, namely Dr. Stapp, who was very, very, very enthusiastic about Kirin beer. Kirin had a nice exhibition hall where they showed how the beer was made. One section had the actual components used to make beer, the barley, hops, etc., that you could touch.

The hall overlooked the actual beer process. It was very much like the opening scene in Laverne and Shirley where all the beer comes down in rows on a conveyor belt. Kirin uses the andon system the same as Toyota and while we were there they had stopped production to fix a problem.

At the end of the tour, they had free samples of Kirin products. I had one of Kirin’s orange juice drink and a fruit drink called Amipurusu (I think that’s what it was called) which were both quite delicious. They were served with a little package of Kirin’s snack food which included a wasabe corn ball and small, dried fish with the eyes still in it which tasted, well, like fish. Now after this trip, I hope they don’t revoke my Baptist card.

On the way back from Nagoya to Kyoto I did some wartraining. I detected 6 hotspots, 4 unsecured and 2 secured, evenly divided between b and g protocols. There might have been more but the bullet train goes so fast weaker networks might not have been detected.

I also have to say again how stunning beautiful Japan is. If I didn’t know any better I’d say the almost the entire country was meticulously manicured. We passed through some low hills back to Kyoto and the fog was slowly rising off of them in the background.

Afterward dropping off our gear, a few of us went shopping at a department store near the Kyoto station. We had been in there earlier in the trip but we had arrived there just as they had closed so we didn’t see very much of it. When we returned tonight, we found that it is a much bigger place than we originally thought. They have everything there from clothes to a bookstore to an electronics store in it.

The bookstore was a little depressing. I love bookstores and I love being able to sit in them and read. To be in the presence of so many books with their form and smell and know that you can’t read any of it was frustrating. However, after wondering around I found a wall full of English books and magazines. They even had my favorite magazine, the Economist, and I finally got to catch up with what’s going on in the world.

The electronics store was a little different from American retail outlets. They had computers, software, and other gadgets just like a BestBuy. But you could also buy motherboards and cases there as well.

We returned to our hotel to work a bit and catch up before the grind starts up again tomorrow. But a maybe, we’ll play a little poker first.

Tomorrow, Shoyeido Incense, Todiji castle and its sword smith shop, and a Typhoon!