Sayonara!

Last post! It's been a fun couple of days in Tokyo. We've been staying in Asakusa in the northeastern part of the city (the street scene above). Jeremy and I spent the days just walking through random neighborhoods in the city and seeing new places. The goal has been to relax and see things at a slow pace, and I think we've accomplished that. (I've also accomplished a lot of shopping) There has been no real architecture to report on other than we saw the Tokyo Sky Tree under construction which will stand 634m tall when it's done and will be the tallest freestanding broadcast tower in the world (see below):So, for my last meals, I had sushi and okonomiyaki (and ice cream, obviously). In fact, we found a place where you make your own okonomiyaki at a griddle at your table. Turns out, after 28 days in Japan, I'm capable of making a cabbage pancake. Note: Jeremy was much better at flipping the pancake than I was. Here are some action shots:



Hope y'all have had fun reading this. I've had a blast in Japan, and if you ever need a travel buddy to come to Nippon, give me a call. Sayonara! (Until Lindsay's in another country...)

I hope my buildings never look like this...

The Flame d'Or... or the Golden Turd, as it's known here in Tokyo

Too legit to quit?

Bunk buddies!

Please note I am standing on our balcony to take this picture and you can see the door/wall next to Jeremy. That was the extent of our room.

Land of the Rising Sun

There is something very important that you should know about Japan: the sun rises at approximately 4:45am during the months of May and June. This wouldn't be a problem except that only 50% of our hotels/hostels/inns this trip have had shades. Initially, we thought we were just waking up so early the first week because of jet lag, but it became readily apparent that we were, most definitely, in the land of the rising sun. So, voila, a picture I took one morning at 4:54am after awaking from a sound sleep:

Pretty bright, eh? And my window wasn't even facing east.

An Interesting, New Development

Jeremy and I got back to Tokyo today, and we were pumped to find our hostel was near a great train station and near a bunch of stuff. And then we checked in...

Bunk beds. Our room has bunk beds. And only bunk beds. By which I mean, our luggage barely fits in the room also. So, Jeremy and I will be reaching a new level of coziness in our friendship. I guess our last hostel which had individual rooms and bathrooms in each room for $35/night was the exception to the rule. Bummer.

But I bet this'll make for a good story.

Tourists to the MAX

Because we have been doing a lot of architecture, Jeremy and I decided to do completely inane tourist stuff for the first portion of our day. This included riding the Tempozan Harbor Village Ferris wheel (formerly the largest in the world in the early 21st century) and going to the aquarium. Osaka has one of the best aquariums in the world, and I agree. It was pretty cool. They had penguins, sea otters, finless porpoises, dolphins, jellyfish from the deep sea, and whale sharks. WHALE SHARKS. They are huuuuuuuuuuuge.

Whale shark

Relaxin' and thinkin' sea otter (see his little paw pressed to his temple?)

Dolphin friend

Penguins!
Giant sea crabs
Octopus swimming

After that we headed to Osaka-jo, formerly the site of Osaka castle where there stands a replica of the castle tower. Built originally sometime in the 1200s, the castle has long since been destroyed, and in 1931, they decided to build a concrete replica of just the tower building. If you think this tower is big, imagine how big the castle must have been on the grounds.

Osaka at Night

Last night, when we got to Osaka, Jeremy and I decided to hit the town. Not really, but we did go to Dotombori which is the center of nightlife here. After walking around a little, we literally ran into our new friend, Rob, on the street. What are the chances? So, we had a little ramen together for dinner, and then Rob convinced us to go to the Umeda Sky building with him. It has what they call a "floating garden" suspended between two towers that has views out to the whole city. What makes this building crazy is that those two tubes running from the towers to that ring are actually escalators. Naturally, I held onto both sides of the escalator like Borat. It goes 5 stories straight up. I got a little nervous. So, here's somebody's daytime image so you can see the building:

Here's my image looking down through the escalators:

And here's Osaka at night:

Food, food, and more food

The above is not food I actually ate, but it was consumed in my presence. Mike Murray got a rice ball and just thought it had something crunchy in it, like tempura. When we got to looking at it, lo and behold, his 7-11 rice ball had baby eel in it. Eyes and all.

I just wanted to gross you out with that... onto the real post:

Three kinds of food you should know if you ever come to Japan are: 1. tonkatsu, 2. kaiseki, and 3. soft-serve ice cream. This is, of course, outside of the usual suspects of sushi, udon, soba, and ramen.

Tonkatsu usually refers to breaded (in panko), fried, pork cutlets served with delicious garlicky, hot sauce over shredded cabbage. It is unbelievably good and light when done at the right place. In Tokyo, we went to a restaurant called "Maisen" which is known for its tonkatsu and is a converted bathhouse (weird when you think about it). The place we went tonight had you grind your own toasted sesame seeds in with the sauce to give it some fresh spice.

Kaiseki must mean "little food that often jiggles" because that's what it usually is visually. In actuality, it's the haute cuisine home to Kyoto that we've been treated to at a couple of group dinners. There are something like 6 courses ranging from single serving appetizer bites to single sashimi to bowls of soup to rice. When we were on Naoshima, the kaiseki included all of the following: jellyfish, conger eel, herring roe, firefly squid, hamo eel, water shield, perch, and turtle. Mmm. Actually, if it weren't such tiny, tiny portions, it'd be delicious, but that's why they give you the rice at the end (to fill you up). Those are normal-sized chopsticks, so, you can see how small the little bites were.

And the greatest of all Japanese food, the soft-serve ice cream. This sustains me on our 7-mile hikes through every city in Japan. It's not a real day if we don't have ice cream. This is ginger flavored below, but the best so far has been black sesame (I was so excited about this today that I had already eaten some before I could bring myself to taking a picture).

In Osaka

Our time in Hiroshima marked the end of the organized trip, so we've all now gone our separate directions (some people are staying in Japan, some people are going to Korea). Jeremy and I headed to Osaka for a couple of days, and tomorrow we go to Tokyo. I fly out Sunday (whoa!).

And now for the heavy...

If the previous post on Hiroshima was light-hearted, then this one will be heavy. I can't really put into words how intense it is visiting the Peace Park, the memorials, and the museum. Any possibility of commentary while you're visiting these sights is removed. You just sort of absorb it all and feel deeply sad. You can't speak, and you certainly can't even comprehend the magnitude of it all as an outsider living in a later time.

The A-Bomb Dome

The park itself is beautiful. Monuments abound: to unknown lost victims, to soldiers, to children, to future promises of peace. The main component of the park is a building from 1915 that withstood the blast even though it sat pretty much directly under the hypocenter. It burned out, everyone in the building was killed, but the walls remained. So it stands as the A-Bomb Dome and the major monument of the park. The building is powerful as a monument, but it's hard to attach the human devastation to that.

The Children's Memorial

The A-Bomb Museum at the head of the park (by Kenzo Tange) really put the effects of the bomb on Hiroshima's people into perspective. If you ever visit Hiroshima, you would be doing a disservice to yourself to skip this museum. The museum's first portion focuses on telling the story of the war and how Hiroshima came to be picked as a city for bombing. I guess it's describing the politics behind it. There are enormous comparison models of the city's buildings before and after the bombing that really illustrate the scope of the devastation. Literally, maybe 5 buildings withstood the blast in the city.

The A-Bomb Museum

But, it's the second portion of the building that makes you want to crawl under a rock and die with guilt that an A-bomb was ever used on anyone for any purpose. The sheer awfulness of the bomb's impact on the population of Hiroshima is horrific. You walk through all the artifacts, photos, and preserved relics (of buildings and body parts) that tell the story of the human casualties of the A-bomb. They have an amazing collection that visualizes it all from the heat of the blast as shown by melting steel girders to the intense radiation that caused people to have disfigurements and diseases for life (and their children's lives). They have iron shutters from buildings that were bent from the blast, the shadow of a human body left on the steps of a bank building, shreds of skin that were peeled from people's bodies, wax figures showing what a bombed victim looked like, children's bloody and tattered school uniforms, plaster walls saved from buildings that show the black rain stains, and watches that were stopped at the exact moment of the blast. It is totally horrific.

But somehow, both the park and the museum end on a note of hope. The final exhibits in the museum and phrases on the monuments always refer to the idea that peace should be a goal of humanity and that Hiroshima's past should serve to remind us of the importance of peace. So, that's where this will end, too, with the hope that we can make sure that something that tragic and horrible never happens again.

A Night in Hiroshima

There are a lot of things that I could say about Hiroshima. I will keep it brief: Hiroshima completely rebuilt itself in the years after the A-bomb, and as a result, the city looks like a late-20th century version of a mid-sized, American city. Bars, restaurants, hotels, stores, mid-rise apartment buildings... What was astounding was to know that our hotel was maybe 500 yards from the epicenter of the blast and save for the Peace Park and memorials, the few remaining buildings, and the museums about the war, you couldn't really discern that an A-bomb wiped Hiroshima flat less than 100 years ago if you just took a quick look around.

Before we seriously visited the park, the museum, and the memorials, we had the evening to explore the town. Hiroshima is now known for its nightlife and party scene (in addition to its past), so we ventured out to try some local fare (okonomiyaki) and find a good watering hole.

Okonomiyaki is best described as a sort of multi-layered pancake cooked on a griddle in front of you. It's delicious, savory, cheap, and best of all, it combines seafood, noodles, and veggies in one fell swoop. They push it towards you when it's cooked, and you use a spatula-thing to cut out portions to go on your plate. Then you grab your chopsticks and go to town.

From dinner we ventured out to a few places listed in my Lonely Planet guidebook, and through the earnest inquiries of our new friend, Rob, we found a gem of a bar called Mac Bar. Mac, the proprietor, is best described as a 60-something Japanese hippie. He also has a dive bar in the basement of some building with a zillion cds that he plays upon request and with delight. Around 1am, Mac broke out his acoustic guitar and serenaded us with a little Bob Dylan. It turned out to be a kind of ex-pat bar, and we ran into some Swedes, some Canadians, and some Brits while we were there.

So, we celebrated the Hiroshima of the present on our first night in the city knowing that in the morning, we'd have a pretty heavy, intense look at the effects of war on the Hiroshima of the past.

Grad Students at Play

There are five grad students on the trip. Here we are: Jeremy in the upper left, Sean in the middle, and Mike Murray with the tongue. Well, Jonas is missing from this image because he was busy elsewhere on the beach (see below).

Random Naoshima

Our lunch shack that was a little surfer joint with a Hawaiian theme

Some yarn art on the side of a building

Another piece of yarn art

Naoshima, In Pictures

Naoshima was a total dream. The ferry took us to the island, and as I mentioned before, it conjures images of secret, evil lairs because of its remoteness. In actuality, it's pretty developed from the seaside fishing village up to the hotels at the top of the island.

On the terrace at the museum (Sean, Jeremy, and me)

When we first arrived, we went straight to the Chichu Art Museum by Tadao Ando, and then we went to our hotel/museum also by the same architect. As you can see in the pictures, the views out over the inland sea were gorgeous. We spent the first night grilling all sorts of sea creatures on a fire pit on the beach. Octopus, squid, clams, fish, etc.

Beach o' grilling

Let me not diminish how awesome our hotel was. To get to the most exclusive rooms (called "The Oval" because they're situated around an oval-shaped reflecting pool), you had to take a jungle monorail for 5 minutes. It screamed Dr. No or Jurassic Park or something, but it was so cool. And we really were living among the art for a few days in a swanky, swanky hotel with balconies facing the inland sea. I would be willing to go back if you ever need a tour guide.The monorail coming to get me (unmanned) and take me to the top

The second day was a free day, and because the island is being developed to have different art sites, I wandered around looking at those. Randomly, there will be an art piece in the middle of the beach. That night we had classic Japanese-style cuisine called Kaiseki (or known to us as "little portions of jelly things"). I'll do a whole post on that next.

Art!

We spent Tuesday morning looking at the different art installations down in the village. They've contracted a whole bunch of different architects/artists to renovate old buildings and put in pieces of art. So, there were 7 different buildings total. I guess it was sort of like Marfa and Donald Judd's work there. What was neat was to see these old buildings (like the dentist's office below) repurposed for art installations with super modern art. I like that juxtaposition.

Recognize anyone in that window? There was a two-story replica of Lady Liberty in this building.

On the Island of Dr. No

Here we are, on Naoshima, also known as the island where they filmed Dr. No. Rumor has it that there is a James Bond museum somewhere around here, but I am not sure where.

Sadly, I am on the computer in the lobby as there is no wi-fi, so I cannot post pictures yet. (I also cannot figure out how to make this keyboard do apostrophes, so there will be no contractions this post).

Naoshima is gorgeous. It is an island in the inlet sea, and from the beaches you can see shadowy mountains of other islands nearby. We arrived yesterday and went straight to the Chichu Art Museum by Tadao Ando. There are three artists featured in the building： Claude Monet, Walter de Maria, and James Turrell. All three artists deal with light, and to see Impressionism up next to contemporary art was really fascinating. The James Turrell pieces called Open Sky and Open Field were mind blowing because he cut a hole in the wall or the ceiling and by using a knife edge of plaster, made it look like he framed the sky or another room. He flattened out three dimensional space. Really cool.

And of course, from the museum, we went to our hotel which is amazing. We are staying in the Museum building of the Benesse House, so when I go downstairs, I am faced with some David Hockneys, Jackson Pollock, more James Turrell, etc. It is by far the coolest, swankiest place I have ever stayed.

Getting excited about tomorrow...

Tomorrow we leave Kyoto for Naoshima (a small island on an inlet sea) by way of train, ferry, and bus. I know it's premature to blog about this since we have all day today in Kyoto, but I was just looking online at tomorrow's hotel and couldn't contain myself. You can read about it here. It's an art museum that is also a hotel designed by Tadao Ando. Even the hot tub was designed by Cai Guo-Qiang, best known for the fireworks at the Beijing Olympics and his show at the Guggenheim where he suspended cars from the central atrium. See this. Beach, hotel, and contemporary art museum. What more could I want?

Hoshida and a Failed Attempt at a Baseball Game

This morning we headed to Hoshida, a suburb of Osaka, to check out a planned housing community. It was definitely a contrast to what we've seen here in Kyoto and to what we saw yesterday because the complex was completed in 1992 (with an additional complex done later).

We finished up there around lunch and decided to go into Osaka, Japan's second largest city. The motivation was to see the Hanshin Tigers play a game at their stadium. Here's where my details get fuzzy, but my understanding is that the Osaka Stadium is the best place to see baseball in Japan and is akin to Fenway. The Tigers aren't a great team, but their fans are totally crazy. So, seeing their games at home is supposed to be awesome. Sadly, the game was sold out when we went to buy tickets, so we hung out around, bought some Tigers paraphernalia, and then headed home to Kyoto on the bullet train.

The bullet train

A dog stoner band? A dog jelly? A dog traffic tangle? I guess we'll never know...

I got my hair cut

Sure did. Heidi Klum bangs meet Japanime character bob. I just let them do whatever because they couldn't speak English, and my Japanese is relegated to "hello," "please," "excuse me," "water," and "beer." This might be a one-run haircut, but I had a cultural experience getting it done. I got not one, not two, but three separate scalp, shoulder, and neck massages during the course of the cut. And of course, I made a new friend, Takashi, my Japanese hair stylist who had an assistant that turned on the dryer for him, handed him the scissors, and brushed hair off my nose with a cotton pad whenever a strand threatened to tickle it.

Things you may not have known about Japan...

1. They don't use napkins.
2. There are no handtowels.
3. Trash cans are impossible to find.
4. Vending machines sell beer.
5. They drive on the British side of the road.
6. Women's toilets are holes in the ground.
7. When there are toilets, they always include built-in bidets.
7. They have miniature dump trucks, backhoes, and delivery trucks for the cities.
8. Sushi isn't native to all of Japan. Kyoto is known for its tofu because they couldn't ship the fish that far inland without it going bad, and also, Buddhist monks couldn't kill fish.
9. Geishas are real.
10. Godzilla is not (so far).

Back in Kyoto, Wednesday and Thursday

We got back to Kyoto yesterday afternoon, and we checked into the townhouse we're renting. It's a big, old, 10 room townhouse in Central Kyoto that dates from the late 1800s. It's just us here, so it's sort of like renting a beach house. It is absolutely beautiful with two interior gardens, rice paper screens, and beautiful woodwork. We spent yesterday afternoon drawing and sketching the house, and then we went out to dinner to another conveyor belt sushi place.

Our machiya

Today we headed to the western edge of Kyoto to see a historic district called Sagatorimoto. The first part of our trip was designed to look at specific sites and buildings, and now we're looking at architecture on a larger scale (as in whole neighborhoods and cities). Sagatorimoto includes many traditional Japanese homes as well as a temple complex, and it's situated at the foot of the mountains. The temple complex was really interesting because in the 20th century, 8,000 gravemarkers were collected from the surrounding area and reconfigured in one massive cemetery. The gravemarkers were previously decaying in random bamboo groves, and they date from as early as 700 A.D.

A streetscape in Sagatorimoto

The field of gravemarkers (Buddha stones) oriented around the central stupa, seen through the surrounding fence

I have to admit, I really love Kyoto, and if I were to move to Japan, I might pick Kyoto over Tokyo. The way it's situated on a river between mountains reminds me a little of Virginia, and the mountain ranges around the city look a whole lot like the Blue Ridge. Plus, there's geishas everywhere.