Condray.net

Today’s outing was to the farm of Dr. Stapp’s former landlord Hitomi-san. Hitomi-san is a gentleman farmer of sorts. He was born and how lives in a house that his family has owned for over 300 years. His family used to be known for their archery prowess and his family crest still has arrows on it. His house also displays several antique bows along with other weapons.

Hitomi-san has has left one of his rice fields unplanted for us to complete. The rice comes in standard sized trays that have to be loaded onto a specially made tractor for planting rice. Each of us got to plant one row rice with the tractor, and for a bunch of city kids, we did OK. There were a few places where the tractor wouldn’t go, so several of us, including myself, took off our shoes and waded in to get blank spots. The cool mud felt good on my feet but I kept stepping on something that wasn’t quite mud and which sometime felt like it moved on its own. I tried not to think too much about though.

As we planted, we tried to find some good country songs to sing but we couldn’t find any that we all knew. We eventually hit on TV tunes that had country themes such as The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Green Acres.

After planting Hitomi-san’s place, we walked around to some of the neighbors’ farms. Most were rice farmers, with a few barley fields, but one little old lady owned a beef ranch. It consisted of a smallish building where the cows stay all day long. They don’t move around much at all only changing the pens that they lie in most of the day and are cord fed. Music is pumped into the building to keep the cows happy. Today’s music was a mix of the 80’s and 90’s, perfect music for cows.

Today’s Japanese lesson is from the title of this post. The word for green is midori. However, no I wonder what the Japanese word for redneck is?

Tomorrow, make more stuff up!

UPDATE

After planting, we went back to Hitomi-san’s house for an old fashioned, country meal of sushi and teppanyaki just like Grandma used to make. I think that I had one of the weirdest things that I have eaten so far in Japan, fish eggs. What can I say, they taste like tiny salty grapes. I guess it is an acquired taste.

During the meal, we got to meet Hitomi-san’s son and his family. Dr. Stapp was on the ball with many Arkansas presents for them.

After dinner we played dress up a little. Hitomi-san owns a set of samurai armor. He took out the helmet and let the guys pose for a shot in it. Although it was really neat to wear the helmet, the ladies had a much more fun time with the various kimonos they tried on that night. I think I heard one of the most frightening sounds of the trip when all the girls were in the changing room cackling maniacally while they were getting changed. It still gives me the creeps just to think about it.

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!

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.

Today is pottery day. We got hit with a rainstorm as we made our way about 7 or 8 minutes away from our hotel to Sensei Nishijima pottery studio. Nishijima is a highly rated potter in Japan. He began when he was 20 years old and has been making pottery for 35 years. He showed us around his studio today and how to make pottery. I decided on an artistically lumpy cup and 3 somewhat asymmetrical serving bowls. And just so you know, they are supposed to look like that. A lot of people made animals, and I was going to make a Linux penguin but someone beat me to it. Maybe I can swipe it from Tim when he’s not looking. Nishijima also had a very compact garden between his house and studio which I snapped a few pictures of.

Lunch was at a Kameoka restaurant where Dr. Stapp learned how to cook fried rice. I didn’t have fried rice, but I had ramen dai, or a big bowl of Chinese noodles. It’s called ramen but its not like the stuff in the US. It’s much, much tastier.

In the afternoon, we went to the Kyoto Budo Center. They’ve got almost every Japanese martial art there. We just missed a kyudo (bow) tournament and saw the final bout of a sumo competition. An iaido tournament was still going strong though. I met an American, David Brier, who is a teacher at a school for Japanese students returning from abroad.

He and his son, who is a student at a local university, practice iaido here. He explained a little about the tournament. We saw several people performing some standard kata, then they switched to their own styles. It was a great event to watch. They do this every Saturday and Sunday, so I will have to come back again. If you’re out there Sensei Brier, thanks!

Also at the Budo Center they have Karate, Kendo, Aikido and Jujitsu but we didn’t have time to see them.

There are 3 martial arts stores near the budo center that support the practitioners. I’m glad I had a handkerchief, because I was drooling at the gear, and also glad that they don’t take MasterCard.

Across the street from the budo center is the Kyoto Handicraft Center. It’s a very tourist oriented shop with special discounts for foreigners. They had your standard tourist stuff (t-shirts, fans, samurai swords, etc.), but I only bought a little samurai sword letter opener. I decided to wait until after visiting the Toji flea market (and after my friends let me know what they want, hint, hint) to buy anything substantial.

Dinner was at a bakery at Kyoto Station. I got a cheese roll and a piece of melon bread. It had a very soft melon taste to it that I enjoyed very much. When I got back to Kameoka, I went to Seiyu to complete dinner with a salad and some fruit. Wal-Mart owns 37% of Seiyu. You can definitely see their mark with the ‘Roll Back’ signs. They also have a big container of sushi for about ¥550, and I’m really itching to buy it to see if it’s any good.

The day ended with some catch up things like laundry, journal writing, some research on Toyota, and packing 3 days worth of clothes and homestay gifts into a small bag.

Tomorrow, Toyota City and our first homestay.

Our day started off with a traditional Japanese breakfast at the hotel in our yucata robes. It was very different from breakfast in America, very vegetable heavy. I also think this is the first time that I’ve ever had tuna for breakfast. It was great!

Next, we returned to the pagoda and the romantic pond we saw last night. In the day, the Nara deer come out, and they are hungry. Don’t turn your back on them, or they may try to take a nip out of you. For ¥150, you can buy little deer treats, and I’m told they don’t taste half bad.

Todaiji, or “large eastern temple,” was our first planned stop of the day. It is a Buddhist temple built by missionaries who studied in China. Dr. Stapp arranged through an old friend to have a special tour given to us by one of the monks.

He provided us close access to the main statues of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas. The main statue was huge. As an example of the scale, the ears are 3 meters tall, and each of the individual hair parts is the size of a basketball. Supposedly there are 32 differences between Buddha and normal people, such as webbing between the fingers of the hand, and are reflected in this statue. One of our members asked our guide why he was a monk. His response was because his parents were monks.

Lunch was not a success today: katsudo, a bowl of rice topped with pork cutlets and runny eggs. I tried it but needless to say, my palate is not optimized for runny eggs. Lunch was not a total loss, as I had more green tea ice cream for dessert.

The second scheduled stop today was Kasuga Shrine. There are over 5000 stone lamps around it, making it look like a forest of stone lamps. Each of the lamps has been added to the shrine over its long life. Some had been recent donations but others had been there for several centuries.

At the shrine, we had our fortunes read. Mine was moderate good fortune. Only one person received a bad fortune.

We returned to Kyoto and had a blast. After dropping off our Nara gear, we hung out at the Kyoto train station. I spent about ¥950 on a huge plate of sushi that was pretty good. The station was also hosting an a cappella pop song contest in this huge amphitheater built into the side of the station. At the top of the station is an observation deck where you can see a large hunk of the city. The windows at the top of the station were dirty, so none of my pictures turned out very well, but you can get an idea of the enormous scale of the city.

Today’s Japanese lesson is “kochi sosama.” It is what you say after leaving a restaurant, but not after leaving a grocery store or clothes store.

Tomorrow, pottery and budo.

Today started with a run with my roommate, Tim. There is a famous monument about halfway up a steep hill overlooking Kameoka and at the top of the hill is another area with many more stone monuments and an observation tower with an even greater view. It has been tradition for the students of the JSAP program to take their morning run up this hill, so Tim and I decided to run it.

The previous night, Dr. Stapp had shown us the street to get to the path up the hill, so we had not seen the actual path before. We had a pretty good run to the beginning of the path. When we got there we found a steep staircase of tiny concrete steps, almost all of them too big for our feet. So we decided to just walk up the stairs to the monument (our only safe course of action). It was overcast that day but you could still see a large portion of the city. Unfortunately, the overcast skies meant that we were going to get rained on later in the day.

Our major event today was Sanjusangendo, a Buddhist temple located in south eastern Kyoto. Its name translated means “the hall of the 33 alcoves” which comes from the architectural design of the temple. There are 35 large pillars that support the building and 33 spaces between those pillars. The original name of the temple was Rengeo-in Temple and it was built in 1164 by the orders of the emperor Goshirakawa. The temple was rebuilt as Sanjusangendo in 1266 during the Kamakura era after Rengeo-in burned down, as so many other temples in Japan have. The hall is enormous, measuring 387 feet long by 59 feet wide, and it is the largest wooden building in the world.

Sanjusangendo is built around the gilded statue of the 1,000 armed Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy. According to Buddhist tradition, each of these arms is able to save one world. There are also a thousand smaller gilded statues of Kannon, but instead of having a thousand arms for each of these statues, each has only forty arms with each arm able to save 25 worlds. These statues were carved by 70 sculptors out of Japanese cypress led by the sculptor Tankai and are all slightly different from one another. One of the customs among visitors to Sanjusangendo is to try to find the likeness of friends and family members in the faces of the many statues located here.

Since 1606, Sanjusangendo has hosted a biannual archery contest on January 15 and May 2. Archers attempt to see who can fire the greatest number of arrows at a target. The archer stands outside at the one end of the lengthy hall and aims at the target located in the veranda of the other end of the hall, a 400 foot shot. The record for the greatest number of arrows shot was set by a 12-year samurai in 1686 when shot 13,056 arrows and hit 8,133 bull’s eyes all in one day.

Miamyoto Musashi, the famed 17th century Japanese swordsman, fought a duel here with members of a rival school of swordsmanship. He killed 16 of his opponents all by himself. At the end of the temple tour, there was a display about this event which included a portrait of Musashi. Needless to say, Musashi does not look at all like Toshiro Mifune.

We were not allowed to take pictures inside of Sanjusangendo so the pictures in the gallery are all from the outside. As you can see from the pictures, it rained very hard today so we canceled our other planned cultural excursion and shopped in the Kyoto train station. I’ve tried to get a few shots of Sanjusangendo to show how large the building is but none of my shots do it justice.

Below the station is a shopping center where we ate lunch. A few of us ate at an Italian restaurant. I ordered the carbonara and finally got my chance to slurp the noodles.

Later I went with Shannon (who is comically photogenic, just look at the photos and see if you can figure out who she is) shopping downstairs. I only bought one thing, green tea pudding balls that I fell in love with at Kinkakuji. When I bought it, the cashier pointed to the 20th on the calendar. I think she meant that you had to eat them by that date (like they are going to last more than a day). When I looked on the packaging, sure enough there was a curious date in Arabic numbers on it, 16.5.20 which sort of looks like its only good from the 16th to the 20th and I can’t eat it for 3 days. It turns out that the number 16 is the current emperor’s reining year, so down the hatch!

I didn’t buy anything else today, but I seriously considered spending all of my money on a foot massage after all the walking we had done in the past few days. The trip is still young.

I finally got to post today, but I had a tough time doing it. The local Internet cafe is open only for 9 hours a day, so it was hard to get back in time to use it after all our outings. It was very cheap, about $1 an hour, but they didn’t have a data port for me to plug my laptop into, so I had to do all my posting and copying from my USB hard drive. They only had one Windows XP computer where the drive would work, the rest of the computers were Windows ME (Windows ME?!? What kind of crappy OS choice is that?). XP kept letting my FTP connection die, so it took a lot longer to upload files than usual. I still haven’t uploaded all my pictures yet. Maybe I’ll get a chance after we get back from Nara.

I can’t figure out how the cafe stays in business. There are only 7 computers working for 9 hours a day for $1 an hour. That means at most, $63 an day. There were 5 people working there, and there didn’t appear to be any other form of income. It’s very strange.

Finally, for dinner we ate at a noodle shop in Kameoka. I choose Cha Shu Men for dinner, ramen noodles with pork cutlets, which were so good I forgot to take a picture of it before diving in. They were great so I think I’ll have to get them again before I leave.

I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk about sweet, tasty Pocari Sweat. Rest assured I will get around to it.

Today’s kanji is the character for tea, ?. It looks kind of like the katakana character ? but with a roof and a short H on it. It is on a ton of drinks and on some food. It’s a very useful character to know.

Tomorrow Nara, Sharp Corporation, and Yakitori.

Today we visited the Kyoto shrines of Kinkakuji and Ryoanji. Kinkakuji was built in the 13th century. In the 14th century, it became the home of one of the retired Ashikaga shoguns. When he died, he willed the temple to a Buddhist sect who made it a Zen temple.

The name Kinkakuji means “golden pavilion,” and if you look at the pictures, you’ll immediately see why. The house is topped dramatically by a Chinese phoenix covered in gold. Kinkaku is the only original building left in the compound, the rest of them having been burned down or suffered other ill fates.

At the end of the tour, there was a shrine with a gong you could pull after offering a small token. The gong was meant to wake up the gods with its ringing so they would hear your petition. There were several shops also at the exit, and many had free samples. The sweets samples were very good, especially the green tea candy. However, the non sweet samples were not to my liking, being overly bitter and vinegary tasting.

Ryoanji is another Buddhist temple we visited that day, interestingly enough across the street from St. Joseph’s Convent. There is a large garden complex built around the temple that is quite beautiful. The temple itself had a rock garden with 15 rocks built into it. The maximum number of rocks that you are supposed to be able to see at one time is 14; the 15th is supposed to appear in your mind’s eye. I only counted at most 13 rocks, so I’m pretty far behind. The main downside to Ryoanji was that it was swarming with gnats.

At both places, I was very intrigued by the Japanese maple trees that grew in the temples and took several close up pictures. The Japanese call them momiji, or baby’s hand, from their pronounced resemblance.

There were huge butterflies flitting about in both places that I had never seen before. One type was big and black with a large red dot on the wing. Another was black with an electric blue flame on its wing. Hopefully, I can catch a picture of one later.

My goal of eating my way across Japan is off to an excellent start. Across the street from Kinkakuji is a restaurant where we stopped for lunch. I ordered an interesting dish they call the Torisoboro set: rice topped with minced chicken and eggs and miso soup for only ¥680. It tasted great and reminded me a little of Korean food but not as spicy.

Shannon ordered noodles, apparently not knowing that it is polite to slurp your noodles. She had a little trouble adapting to this custom, so I helped her by making slurping noises as she ate to give her a little cultural camouflage. I think it helped a little.

Wednesday’s “Eat Across Japan” tour ended at Nigata-san’s restaurant. Nigata-san is a friend of Dr. Stapp and helped us move our gear from the train station to our hotel when we arrived. We had fried rice and curried rice. Both were very delicious, but of course, they were served slightly differently than in America. They had a small salad of cabbage and a small slice of meatloaf. Ahhh, meatloaf. On the side we had Chinese dumplings filled with chicken and vegetables and small sandwiches (which I did not eat because they had something on them that looked suspiciously like mayonnaise, curse my foul enemy that has tracked me here!) and tomatoes (his evil sidekick!). I’m sure they were delicious…or were they?

At Nigata-san’s restaurant we also met Dr. Stapp’s Kendo instructor, Kita-san, who is a member of the Kameoka police department. Apparently, all of the members of the police department study either kendo or judo. We were promised a demonstration later in our trip which I am looking forward to very much (unless I am the demostratee).

We were also told that in Kameoka, a city of 100,000, they only have 3 police cars for the entire city. Can someone find out how many police cars Fayetteville has? I’m sure he would get a kick out hearing how the Americans do things.

Tomorrow, Sanjusangendo, Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto Station and sweet, tasty Pocari Sweat.