TWO TOKYO TRAVEL HIGHLIGHTS

Having Greg, Ted's cousin, reserve three Ghibli Museum tickets for us several weeks ago proved a wise move. Although nominally only 100 tickets per day are allocated to the world beyond Japan, it was readily apparent that the chance to obtain tickets once we arrived in Japan was minimal at best. We lined up shortly after 10:00 a.m. with quite a few others - many Chinese and Korean - under the entrance canopy after a lengthy twenty minute walk through Inokashira Park from Kichijoji Station, awaiting entry to Miyazaki Hayao's world of animation magic.

The wait and the effort to obtain advanced tickets proved well worth it. The next two hours was spent happily watching a twelve minute animation shown only at the museum, sorting through various sketchbooks and film stills and learning about the various processes involved in completing a Miyazaki anime. What surprised me most was the wide range of resource materials consulted by the animators well before even beginning to sketch. A special exhibit featured a version of the Nutcraker due for release in the Autumn of 2015, one based on a re-telling of the Hoffman original by children's author Alison Jay - it looks like an unbeatable hit!

On our return walk to Kichijoji, we stopped for lunch at Pepper Mint, a Thai restaurant overlooking Inokashira Park, for an especially delicious meal. Then we happened upon one of those places sooooo typical of the Japanese quest for "endless choice", a small store overflowing with beautifully designed stickers (and related merchandise) of every imaginable kind and subject. We scoured the complete collection for nearly an hour, trying to locate the perfect image to encapsulate our entire experience in Japan. What fun that was!

Our last stroll took us through more of Kichijoji's narrow streets and alleyways, all bustling with even more examples of the "endless choice" aesthetic, but we still liked B-Side, the sticker shop, best.

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TOKYO: FROM TRADTIONAL TO CONTEMPORARY

We took advantage of yesterday's decent weather to drain our PASMO cards of about 1500 yen each traipsing about the city by subway, monorail and surface train. The system has grown so much that, while access has improved, figuring things out takes more thinking skills. Colin has stepped into the breach, often putting everything together faster than either of the other two of us.

After our morning visit to Sensoji in Asakusa, the obligatory Buddhist temple every tourist MUST visit, we took in a ninety minute act at the Kabukiza, the all-dancing one I had hoped to work into our visit. Fortunately, they still have available the earphone guides I have used in the past, so the commentary helped both Ted and Colin appreciate the show. It lacked the spectacle of many productions I've seen, but both enjoyed the performance.

The rest of the afternoon we focused on contemporary Tokyo, walking through Shiodome's skyscrapers, Odaiba's Toyota showroom and faux Venus Fort shopping mall as well as Roppongi Hills' mixed use complex.

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After dinner at a lively Italian cafe in the Roppongi Hills complex, we returned to our hotel REALLY ready for bed!

 

 

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INTO EVERY TOUR A LITTLE RAIN (SNOW) MUST FALL

Unlike three years ago when the weather cooperated and provided unparalleled views of Mt. Fuji, this time around it snowed instead, cutting visibility to nearly zero and bringing out the warmest clothes we had with us to bundle up in before setting out for our day in the mountains.

We took a cable car to a rope way, the rope way to a pirate ship, the ship across Lake Ashinoko to Moto Hakone, Visited a recreation of a traditional checkpoint guarding access to Edo (modern Tokyo), then hiked around in the woods before having lunch and returning to our hotel in the late afternoon to retrieve our luggage and head off to Tokyo.

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It wasn't the most pleasant of excursions but did provide a different kind of experience that undoubtedly in retrospect will benefit from hindsight.

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OFF TO THE MOUNTAINS

Before beginning our trek to the Fuji Five Lakes area near Hakone, we spent the morning wandering the charming traditional white-plaster-and-gray-tile streetscapes of Kuashiki's historic district. The chill kept away the usual hordes of tourists, allowing me to take many more pictures than expected.

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The remainder of the day was spent on the Shinkansen "bullet train" to Odawara, a change to a Hizan Tozen local, followed by a lengthy vertical climb in a train making several switchback maneuvers as we ascended into the Japan Alps and a cable car ride to the stop closest to our resort hotel.

Unfortunately the weather has not been particularly accommodating - snow is expected most of the day today (Wednesday), accumulating several inches, and the clouds obscure views of Fuji. Last night, however, the cold made the hot springs bath we all enjoyed that much more welcome!

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THE UNEXPECTED ALL THE WAY AROUND

Our day in Hiroshima actually began the evening before when the three of us met up with Greg O'Keefe, Ted's cousin who lives and teaches in Fukuoka. Dinner together at Okonomiyaki-Machi was a special Hiroshima treat, okonomiyaki, a noodle-and-egg-based grilled pancake containing multiple other ingredients.

Tuesday morning we toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, always a sobering experience and one which engaged Colin particularly.

Then, as the morning wore on, we walked through Peace Park to begin our trek to Miyajima, an island located an hour or so out of the city and noted for its ages-old Shinto shrine which appears to float on the Inland Sea at high tide.

That's when the unexpected began to exert an influence. Actually, earlier, when out for breakfast, we wandered far afield after not really reading the hotel-provided map all that well and overshooting our Starbucks destination by a long shot. That local unfamiliarity plagued us the remainder of the day, but the kindness of strangers saved us each step of the way.

First we got on the wrong streetcar, a fact discovered about twenty minutes into our trip. The streetcar motorman reoriented us, wouldn't charge us for our ride, directed us to the proper streetcar on which backtrack to the appropriate stop, then called ahead to assure our new motorman also wouldn't charge us but instead make sure we made our needed transfer to the proper streetcar line smoothly. All this for the eventual cost of a 160 yen ticket!

On the second leg of our journey we struck up a conversation with a fellow passanger - who reached into her shopping bag, pulled out a beautifully wrapped box of chocolate-covered cookies and gave them to Colin "because he was so good-looking." She explained that these particular cookies were only available at this time of year and that she had gotten up early to stand in line to purchase them. Their special characteristic? Each cookie was sprinkled with gold dust, real gold dust! Colin, of course, was thrilled, if not a bit embarrassed, by all the attentiion - but thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to ingest a bit of gold with his sweet chocolate!

Our visit to Miyajima by ferry and foot thereafter went well, getting us headed back to Hiroshima in plenty of time to make our late afternoon train to Kurashiki.

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However, by now, Greg wasn't feeling well, having developed a headache and feeling increasingly fatigued. He decided he needed to return to Fukuoka instead of contnuing on with us to our next stop.

Then we got off at the incorrect train stop and had real difficulty finding a taxi to return us to our hotel to pick up our stored luggage. We finally managed to hail a cab but kept getting bogged down by traffic or frustratingly long traffic lights. I was sure we would miss our train; however, moving right along, we made it to the platform a full minute before the train did.

Things started looking up thereafter. We enjoyed a delicious mizokatsu pork cutlet dinner at my favorite restaurant in all of Japan early in the evening and then were totally blown away by a transformation that had occurred north of the train station since our last visit three years ago.

Gone was Tivoli, a recreation of the Danish amusement park built during the late-eighties Japanese craze for replicating foriegn experiences "right here at home". In its place now stands AROI, an IMMENSE shopping mall with hundreds of shops on several levels, all stocking the very latest consumer goods and boosting a wide international selection of brands and franchises.

We were there for more than an hour just walking around, observing what was available, marveling at the very possibility of the local economy supporting such an extensive expansion of consumer options.

Amazing - and indicative, I think, of the difficulty always of trying to assess the actual state of economic affairs on external appearances alone. Japan is, after all, still beset by the economic collapse of the 1990s as well as the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-meltdown.

 

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STROLLING KENROKUEN AND KANAZAWA

The day dawned gray and gloomy but lightened up as soon as the rain stopped, giving way to the perfect light for a lovely stroll through one of Japan's most famous gardens, Kenrokuen in Kanazawa.

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Before leaving for HIroshima in the early afternoon, we also had time to walk around more of Kanazawa, even to absorb the atmosphere of a neighborhood once home to the loyal samurai serving the local Maeda family, one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the traditional empire.

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TRAVELER'S SERENDIPITY AT PLAY IN TAKAYAMA

I sometimes find the unexpected to be the most interesting experiences one has while traveling. No matter how carefully planned a trip might be, it's what isn't supposed to be happening that makes or breaks the entire experience.

Today was supposed to become increasingly cloudy and to turn to rain in the early afternoon. Instead the weather remained sunny and bright right up until we were ready to catch our train out of Takayama headed for Kanazawa.

Earlier we had opted not to have breakfast at Yasuda Pension wherre we spent the night but dropped in instead to a small cafe in town -- where we were abe to watch quite a bit of a major tennis tournament "live" from Miami on a huge HD TV set while enjoying our "morning service" Western-style breakfasts.

Wandering around the historic district with its beautifully preserved seventeenth century cityscape, we began coming upon preparations for a major city-wide festival evidently scheduled for tomorrow. Usually visitors need to visit the local festival museum to see examples of the massive and elaborately decorated wheeled floats that each neighborhood outfits on such occasions. However, we were able to see several of them up close as neighbors gathered to assempled their entry in the festive parade. We even watched and heard several young women playing traditional flutes as they practiced the music that would accompany the floats as they maneuvered through town on the shoulders of young devotees.

Here are some examples of what we witnessed:

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Ted surprised us by opting unexpectedly to undertake a sake tasting at one of Takayama's famous breweries.

Looking for a nice spot for lunch, we happened across a classy French restaurant offering various dishes prepared with Hida beef, some of the best in Japan. We decided to opt in to yet another fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration (since that morning we had FaceTimed with others doing the same over a fancy dinner in Oak Park). The experience proved one of the gastronomic highlights of the trip so far!

Still more serendipity played into our day when it turned out that our travels to Kanazawa took us first to Toyama where we changed trains - and were able to ride from there to Kanazawa on the brand new Hokuriku Shinkansen "bullet train" which just began service in March 2015!

And to top it all off we wiitnessed a full eclipse of the moon right after we finished our yummy ramen supper in the brand spanking new Kanazawa train station.

Hurray for the unexpected!

 

And I will leave you now with a little image slideshow featuring various hanging cloth noren seen in Takayama, examples from my image-taking assignment for the day. Noren displayed outside a shop indicate that the business is open while also providing useful advertising and some modicum of privacy from passers-by on the street. They frequently strike me as works of art as well.

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