The red line is our overland route on Honshu and Kyushu islands before flying back to Tokyo from Fukuoka

 

 

   An Oriental Odyssey in Ancient Nippon

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       (Last updated  May 1, 2007)

  

   Japan is the name that the Chinese gave to this mysterious archipelago of the Orient, and explorer Marco Polo carried that name home for people in the West to use in their languages. But Nippon is what they have always called it here, and it’s the old Nippon of the Samurai and the shogun feudal lords which is what we wanted to see on our splendid 16-day tour in mid-April as the cherry trees burst into full bloom in the ancient Nipponese capitals of Nara and Kyoto.

     Japan had been on our travel list, and although we have long been wary of group tours we  decided to join one this time because this is a country where relatively few of its 128 million residents speak English and outside of the major cities you’d be hard-pressed to find a road sign that you could read. Also, you’d have to have very deep pockets to hire guides in each city if you wanted to learn anything meaningful about this incredibly complex society and its fascinating history. Japan, as you know,  is a very expensive country.  Happily, we selected an upmarket Melbourne-based tour company, Captain’s Choice, and although it was far from cheap it provided abundant proof of the old adage “You get what you pay for.”

     The logistics of our trip were simply superb. We would put our bags outside our hotel rooms and, after being trucked separately to the next city while we rode in luxury in speeding bullet trains, the luggage would magically and reliably appear in our rooms at the next hotel without fail. The hotel accommodations were always first-class---and quite roomy in a country famous for its cramped quarters. The Japanese restaurants where we ate were the best, and we gorged ourselves on mouth-watering raw tuna and other sashimi delights, as well as outrageously expensive Kobe beef (from beer-fed and massaged steers) until we couldn’t eat any more. When not being transported in first-class bullet train coaches we rode in luxury buses, having been divided into two small groups of about 20 people each in order to minimize the “herd” feeling that characterizes large tour groups. We were each given radio headsets so that while touring a castle, temple, emperor’s palace or other historic site we could listen to our guide’s live, real-time narrative even when we felt like wandering away from the group.

    But most important of all was the quality of our two Japanese tour guides, Kyoko Tanabe and Koji Yagino, who were with us throughout our tour of Japan’s Honshu and Kyushu islands.  The little group that Alma and I rode with had as our guide Koji-san, a 73-year-old lecturer in Japanese culture at Tokyo University who wore huge, Jiminy Cricket-style glasses, had an impish smile and, if given a good talent agent, could have been a world class standup comedian specializing in ethnic humor. Kyoko-san, who led the other group, also was delightful as well as being  deeply knowledgeable about Japanese history and culture. But we spent most of our time traveling with Koji-san, who is fluent in both English and Spanish, coaches a Tokyo Little League baseball team, is an opera aficionado and has a degree in theology.  We quickly learned that he could impart vast amounts of knowledge—not only about Japanese history, culture and religion but about Australia and America--while at the same time keeping us all in stitches of laughter. Koji was a treasure and we all came to love him very dearly. I hope his employers appreciate how good he is. More about Koji in the daily diary below.

    The Aussie road staffers were terrific, too: Tour manager John Cowper, an aging hippie whom I suspect wishes he was a Rolling Stones roadie, jumped off of Qantas Airways’ management track years ago to fulfill his love of travel by becoming a cabin crew member for 30 years before retiring and becoming a tour leader; Scott Smiles is a retired diplomat who has lived in a number of foreign postings, including those in Asia; Kym Peck lived in Japan for 2 ½ years as a student and speaks Japanese, and tour doctor Marcel Berkhout (I told you this was an up market tour) runs things in the emergency room at Melbourne’s Epworth Hospital when not helping run tours. They were all great fun to travel with and they continuously made things work.

     In many ways, this was a food-lover’s tour of Japan, and besides gorging ourselves daily on sashimi and old standbys like tempura, we discovered many styles of Japanese cooking that we had not encountered in Japanese restaurants in Australia, the U.S. or elsewhere. Some of them were: okonomiyaki (translated literally as “cooked as you like”), a  pancake grilled in front of you tepanyaki-style containing shredded cabbage, noodles, prawns, squid, pork, a fried egg, scallions and topped with a rich sauce; yakitori, grilled chicken or beef on a skewer; dote-nobe and shabu-shabu, which is Hida beef, fish or vegetables cooked fondue-style in either broth or Soya milk; karage, which is chicken deep-fried in salty batter with lemon and mayonnaise. We ate at Japanese restaurants virtually every lunchtime and dinnertime, limiting our western food intake to only breakfasts, and at night we drank Saki (some restaurants, disastrously, offered up all the Saki we could drink).

 

   Following is an abbreviated diary of our trip, which began in Melbourne on April 11:

 

   DAY 1- Uneventful 6 a.m. Qantas flight to Sydney, but our JAL flight was cancelled because of a faulty onboard weather radar and we are taken to an airport hotel where we are given the options of flying out to Tokyo the next morning on JAL or taking an overnight Qantas flight to Tokyo. We choose the latter so that we won’t miss any touring of Tokyo.

   DAY 2- Arrive in Tokyo and check into luxurious Palace Hotel overlooking the Emperor’s Palace. We meet Koji-san, who immediately charms us by telling a funny story about his daughter who went to Australia looking for a boy to marry but came home empty-handed and instead became a secretary to a Sony executive. She regularly accompanies her boss to the golf courses to take dictation as he plays with clients but she also has to carry his golf bag and, therefore, is really a caddy. Koji-san’s M.O. obviously is to spin a story like this as a way of explaining how intensively Japanese businessmen work. We get his drift, and henceforth appreciate how Koji simultaneously lectures and entertains us. After a nap we visit the vast Tsukiji fish market, where large tunas sell for up to $100,000 each. We take a citywide tour of Tokyo, including the famous Ginza shopping district, and go to the top of Tokyo Tower, a poor replica of Paris’ Eiffel Tower. We wonder that no one at the tower seems embarrassed by this blatant knock-off, but Koji explains that “Japanese are great imitators, they imitate everything.” We visit the Asakusa Kannon Buddhist temple and after dinner fall into bed, exhausted.

   DAY 3-We drive to Mt. Fuji and the clouds part just long enough to see this beautiful, very symmetrical peak, which, as usual, is snow-capped. We drive up to the 5th station near the summit for viewing and then drive to Hakone for lunch and a tour of the national park there, including a boat ride on Lake Ashi. Some things we notice on the drive to Fuji: enormous net cages everywhere for golf driving ranges (they are crazy about golf here, and we wonder why more Japanese don’t win in the pro circuit). We notice lots of “love hotels” along the highways with bizarre names like “Creative Seeds.” Couples rent rooms in these hotels by the hour for trysts, as do prostitutes. We also notice endless numbers of kareoke clubs called “Big Echo” (a nationwide chain) and baseball diamonds everywhere with Japanese boys running about in smart uniforms.

    DAY 4-We travel by bullet train to Echigo, where we change trains for Kanazawa. The sleek “Shinkansen” bullet trains hit 300 km per hour and roar into stations for only 2 to 3 minutes, during which time passengers disembark and others embark. When time is running out during rush hour, professional “pushers” wearing white gloves give a heave-ho against the crowd to wedge everyone inside. Aussie guide Scott Smiles discovers the importance of moving quickly when he is trapped inside a bullet train in Hiroshima and finds himself headed for Nagasaki a day ahead of the rest of the group. The bullet trains are staffed with impeccably dressed hostesses and when they and the conductors enter or leave a coach they always turn and bow politely to the passengers. That’s Japan: everyone is polite to the max, except when they are in queues. Then they push and shove with sharp elbows until they get ahead. I reckon that’s because this is a small country crowded with lots of people and they have to push hard in crowds to survive. We arrive in Kanazawa and visit the beautiful Kenroku-en garden. For me, gardens usually bring on symptoms of some narcolepsy-like disorder, but these gardens really are beautiful and meticulously laid out with tiny bonsai trees and row upon row of cherry trees. We visit the famous samurai street where descendants of Japan’s ancient warrior class lived in the original samurai houses.

    DAY 5-Koji-san starts the day by explaining how Japanese businessmen exchange cards. They each read the card given and, after deciding his relative importance to the other,  makes either a deep, 45-degree bow or a slight head nod. Koji also explains how entire conversations consist of nothing more than “Hai!,” which is Japanese for “yes.”  People often say “yes” when they really mean “no,” Koji explains. That’s the Japanese way. They are just being polite. Example: “Can I have a pay raise, please?” Answer: “Yes, you cannot have a pay raise.” Koji adds that “This is like your song, “Yes, we have no bananas.” He’s priceless. We drive to Shirakawa-go, a mountain village with scores of large, very old thatched houses, and then onto the Japanese Alps city of Takayma, where we see the end of the annual Spring festival, do some shopping and then plunge into the “Onsen” hot springs baths at our resort. The baths are segregated by sex, and we men are startled to see a cleaning lady march right in and start collecting towels. But then we decide most of us are over 70 and our bodies wouldn’t interest her. We gorge ourselves on a dinner of Hida beef—all you can eat—and they keep bringing it on. At home, Hida beef costs a fortune.

    DAY 6-Koji is teaching us Japanese words: Ohayo (good morning), kon nichiwa (good afternoon), arogoto (thank-you), o-kina (thank you in the Kyoto dialect). He makes us sing a song with the words to learn them faster, and we get a new word every day. After lunch we board our first-class train coaches and travel to Nagoya, where we change to a bullet train and travel high speed to Kyoto. The other group’s guide, Kyoko-san, is from Kyoto, which in 750 B.C. was called Nijo and was Japan’s capital. With her knowledge about  the city’s restaurants, Kyoko picks a great place for dinner each night of our stay there.

    DAY 7-We tour Kyoto, starting with the Nijo castle, built by a shogun feudal lord (a generalissimo)  with special floors that chirp like nightingales when walked upon, thereby alerting the owner to the presence of ninja assassins. We also visit the gold-plated Kinkakuji temple and the old Imperial Palace.  Building dates are relative, aren’t they? At home we call a 150-year-old house “old,” but here we walk right past buildings dated back to 610 A.D. without as much as a glance.

    DAY 8- We have an excursion to Nara, another ancient capital of Nippon 1,300 years ago. We visit the Todaiji temple, known as the world’s largest wooden structure, which contains a golden Buddha, and the Kasuga Shinto shrine, with its 3,000 stone lanterns. Koji is a Shinto, as are most Japanese, but he explains most people dabble in Buddhism also to hedge their bets.  Shintoism is more free-wheeling and worships nature and ancestry, while Buddhism is stricter in its doctrine. “We are Buddhists by day and at night we drink Saki and go to kareoke like Shintos,” says Koji-san. We return to Kyoto and on the way Koji reminisces about being a teenager during the U.S. occupation of Japan and how happy he was when Gen. Douglas McArthur decreed that the emperor was no longer a divine leader. Koji says that because of McArthur’s order he no longer had to memorize the names of all of the emperors and their children, and teachers started urging boys to learn baseball instead because it was considered to be democratic. “I liked this democracy very much,” Koji says with his usual deadpan face.  We visit the famous Gion Corner to see a show of traditional dances and Japanese music. We also walk around the Geisha district, as Koji explains that Geisha girls originally were intellectual companions to important Japanese men, but that the line between that and modern-day party girls, or bar girls, sometimes is blurred. In any case, it is raining this night, and the Geisha girls are off the street.

   DAY 9- We take the bullet train, at 300 kph, to Hiroshima, where an estimated 300,000 people died on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, as a result of the first of two A-bomb explosions in Japan. The city of mostly timber structures was instantly wiped out, leaving the steel shell of one domed structure, whose remains we visit. Koji tells us, with sadness in his normally happy face, that horribly burned victims jumped into the rivers to escape the heat, unaware the water was boiling at 5,000 degrees. The museum is haunting with its images of the victims, and it’s hard not to be shaken by the magnitude of this disaster. We see thousands of little paper cranes on display in Peace Park to commemorate a little girl, Sadako Sasaki, who, stricken with radiation, vowed to make paper cranes every day until a cure for her leukemia was found. Her brief life ended before a cure was found, and so Hiroshima’s children continued the project. We are greatly moved by the stone steps of a bank building onto which the image of a man who was incinerated by the blast had been etched. But we are also touched by Japanese schoolchildren who randomly stopped western tourists and handed them handwritten messages of prayers for peace in the world. That night we have a splendid dinner of okonomiyaki pancakes filled with cabbage, squid, prawns and other delights, and then a half dozen of us, including John, Kym, Marcel and his partner, Sonja, head for the “Big Echo” kareoke club, where we rent a sound studio and howl the night away to songs made famous by the Beatles, Aba, Cat Stevens, John Denver and the like. Some of had laryngitis the next day, but we had fun.

   DAY 10- We board yet another bullet train for Nagasaki, making stops at famous Japanese ceramics centres, where the wives have a shopping frenzy and the men are stricken yet again my the mysterious outbreak of narcolepsy. The tour doctor, Marcel, has no explanation for the outbreak. We notice as we leave Hiroshima that the hotel’s manager, assistant manager and senior staff line up to wave our two buses goodbye. This happens everywhere we stay, and I try to imagine this happening in Australia or the U.S. We overnight in Nagasaki.

   DAY 11-We tour Nagasaki, which was A-bombed 3 days after Hiroshima. Because of anti-aircraft fire from the Mitsubishi shipyards, the B-52 bomber dropped the bomb on a less-populated suburb and only 70,000 people died. But the statues in Nagasaki’s Peace Park are evocative nonetheless. The city is a bit on edge because just a couple of days ago Nagasaki’s mayor was assassinated by gunmen from the Yakuza, or criminal gangs, for reasons that are unclear. Koji-san tells us about this mafia-like mob, but he is always careful to spell it out letter by letter rather than say the name. I think he believes it’s dangerous to mention the word in public, or maybe he’s just having us on again. We visit the 400-year-old Sofukuji Temple, and also the Glover Mansion, the first western structure built in Japan after the start of the “new dawn” of western industrialism ended centuries of isolationism and xenophobia in Japan. Thomas Blake Glover, a Scottish merchant, built the sprawling compound of houses on a hillside after marrying his Japanese wife, Tsur,  on whom the American author, John Luther Long, modeled “Madam Butterfly”  in his novel. In Giacomo Puccini’s opera treatment of the story, in which Madam Butterfly awaits the return of her lover, U.S. Navy Capt. Pinkerton, the heroine’s role was famously played by Japanese singer Tamaki Miura.

   Day 12- We drive to Kumamoto via Unzen, visiting the steaming “Big Hell” volcanoes in Shimabara, and then take a ferry across Ariake Bay to Kumamoto. Dinner tonight features another all-you-can-drink Saki deal, and things get a bit silly at our table.

   DAY 13- We leave Kumamoto for a day trip and our bullet train speeds us to Kagoshima, where we visit the famous Iso garden with its pretty bonsai trees and summer house erected by Nariakira Shimadzo, who built Japan’s first factory in 1854, making cannons and heavy machinery after 17 young men were smuggled out of the country to learn western technology in the United Kingdom. We return by train to Kumamoto.

   DAY 14- We tour Kumamoto and its enormous Kumamoto (shogun’s) Castle, built by Kato Kiyomasa, a feudal lord of unusual stature (6’ 3”) for a Japanese man. We walk up six flights of stairs for a spectacular view of the city from this castle, which was built in 1588 and is where the ninja assassins originated. It is one of 17 shogun castles built before the feudal domain system was abolished in 1871 and replaced with a modern governmental system. We then visit the beautiful Suizenji Park, and later drive to Mt. Aso, which Koji tells us in Shinto mythology is where the great-grandson of the Goddess of the Sun came down from heaven, married and started the succession of emperors that led to the late wartime emperor, Hirohito, and his son, Akihito, who is currently emperor of Japan. Mt. Aso is the world’s largest active caldera, and at the rim, which we reach by cable car,  thick clouds of smelly gases rise up before us. We return to Kumamoto for our farewell dinner in the hotel’s banquet room.

   DAY 15- We drive two hours by bus from Kumamoto to Fukuoka Airport, which Koji-san explains was the base of the World War II Kamikazes, or “Divine Wind,” pilots who flew suicide missions against Allied warships in the waning days of the war. Koji explained that in 1271 and again in 1284 Mongol armies sailed against Japan but both times were wiped out by typhoons, which the then-emperor called “Divine Winds.” As Japan braced for an Allied invasion in 1945, “that crazy man,” as Koji called  prime minister Hideiki Tojo, promised the people that another divine wind would yet again save the country. Young pilots then stepped forward for suicide missions and called themselves “Kamikazes.” We fly from Fukuoka to Tokyo and board our JAL flight for Sydney, hoping that the two guys up on the flight deck aren’t into the Divine Wind thing.

   DAY 16- We arrive home in Melbourne, exhausted but with Koji-san’s oft-repeated words ringing in our ears: “I will show you everything in Japan, everything!” Well, we may not have literally seen everything, but we saw a hell of a lot and we also learned a lot from this delightful man, Koji-san, our new friend. Japan is a fascinating, confusing, frustrating, exciting, warm, friendly and wonderful country, and we’ll think of it often as we continue exploring this great big world of ours.

  Thanks for letting us share our memories with you on this little web site.

  Sayonara!

 

   AND NOW TO THE PHOTOS.  AT THE END OF THIS DISPLAY YOU CAN CLICK ON http://picasaweb.google.com/wclaiborne/JapanSlideshow  TO SEE 60 ADDITIONAL PHOTOS IN

A SLIDESHOW FORMAT, IF YOU FANCY THAT.

 

    Tokyo’s bustling Ginza during rush-hour traffic. More than 2 million commute daily by train, otherwise traffic would be a lot worse than it is.

 Waving holy smoke at Tokyo’s Asakusa Kannon Buddhist Temple to assure good fortune. It was one of many temples and Shinto shrines we visited.

  On a clear day, this is what Mt. Fuji looks like, but we didn’t have a completely clear day so I’m winging it with a picture I lifted from a Japan website.  But we could just barely see this beautiful and symmetrical mountain as we approached it, even if my photos didn’t look very good.

Bill near the top of a quite chilly, foggy  and snowy Mt. Fuji, Japans most sacred mountain among many peaks

The famous Kenrouke-en gardens in Kanazawa were stunning, and cherry tress blossomed everywhere

Throughout Japan we encountered gardens like this one

Thatched “Gasshozukuris” cottages at Shirakawago in northwest of Honshu Island.

This street vendor was smoking small trout to sell

 Alma at one of Shirakawago’s 150 thatched houses

Japanese woman pauses for a quick lunch during Takayama’s annual Spring Festival

One of many elaborate floats being rolled off the street after Takayama’s colorful parade and festival

 

 Alma ready to head for the Onsen (hot springs) baths at our Takayama resort hotel. Bill robed up also to go to the separate men’s baths, which had very hot water, indeed

These paraders in Samurai suits looked a bit wobbly after indulging in some hard-earned Saki at end of the march

Japan is a fairly rainy place sometimes, so I caught this cyclist going by some blossoming cherry trees

 Japan is a food-lovers’ paradise as Alma demonstrates

The Rokuon-Ji (Golden Pavilion) Temple of Kyoto is one of Buddhism’s most important. Surrounded by water on three sides, its gold leaf glistens off the lake.

 

On the esplanade before the Todai-Ji Temple in the ancient capital of Nara, these Japanese students were pestered by the sacred but annoying deer that abound

The Todai-Ji Temple, built in 749 A.D., houses the giant, gold-plated  Vairocana Buddha

We watched traditional Japanese entertainment at a popular theater at Gion Corner in Kyoto’s Geisha district

 Food was a highlight feature of our Japan tour, and here Bill digs into a Shabu-Shabu (meat fondue) in Kyoto

 Kyoto is famous for its version of Hida beef, which comes from beer-fed and massaged livestock. It melts in the mouth and we repeatedly had all of it we could eat

Alma tends to her Shabu-Shabu in Kyoto restaurant

Hiroshima’s A-bomb dome, only building left after the Aug. 6, 1945, nuclear attack killed estimated 300,000

Japanese schoolchildren love to practice their English on western tourists. These girls give the peace symbol at Hiroshima’s Peace Park

 

Famous Tori Gate rises out of the sea at Miyajima Island near Hiroshima when the tide is high

Pagoda atop a hill on Miyajima Island near Hiroshima. We never tired of Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines like this one  because they all are so spectacular looking

 

Bill at Tori Gate as hundreds of clammers in background compete for the day’s take before the tide comes back in. When it does, the Itsukushima Grand Shinto shrine’s massive gate appears to float on top of the water

Bullet train roars into station and gives passengers two minutes to disembark and embark before speeding off

 We traveled to most of the dozen cities we visited in Honshu and Kyushu islands by train, either the Shinkansen bullet trains or other modern electric trains. The trains are on time to the second, are clean and efficiently run by staffers who bow as they enter coaches

Alma in one of the bullet trains we rode. The seats in our first-class cars were made of polished cherry wood

 

 

 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki both evoke powerful emotions through the variety of monuments and statues that are compelling in their simplicity.  The Nagasaki fountain above symbolizes the few survivors who desperately searched for water after temperatures on the surface reached 5,000.  In Hiroshima many people jumped into Honkawa and Motoyasu rivers, only to be boiled alive. The Peace Memorial Museum displays the famous stone steps of a bank building on which is etched the figure of a vaporized victim of the explosion.  It’s hard not to leave these two cities without being a bit shaken by the horrors of nuclear warfare, and it’s no wonder some Japanese children were passing out notes urging visitors to pray for peace.

One of three steaming volcano craters at Mt. Unzen

 

    Alma ate this fish head, but Bill took a miss this time

 Our group shares one of many memorable Japanese dinners at some great restaurants

Howling the night away in a Karaoke sound studio

Kym, Bill, Alma, Mavis and Rowley belt out a tune

     Give this man a microphone at your own risk

Bill tucks into a meat-and-vegetable Shabu-Shabu fondue

In Imari I found this husband and wife picking onions

 Saki was a staple for us, but I didn’t really polish off all of these pots of the hot rice wine. I had some help

We are well on this trip, and Kyoko-san, one of our two Japanese guides who accompanied us for two weeks,  was especially expert on food in her home town of Kyoto

Koji-san was guide for our group of 20 throughout the trip. He is 73 years old, teaches Japanese culture at Tokyo University, manages a Little League baseball team and is an absolute delight. With a good agent he could be a world class standup comedian to rival Borak for ethnic comedy. We all came to love Koji-san.

 

 

 Bill with the radio headset we all used throughout the tour. It was particularly useful because you could wander away from Koji and the group as he talked about a site but still hear his explanation. We traveled in two groups of about 20, thereby lessening the unpleasant “herd” aspect of many group tours.

Friends Colin and Judy McLeod at our dinner table

 We visited his beautiful garden at Kagoshima

     As we traveled south, the blossoms flourished

The world’s largest active crater at Mt. Aso erupted only last year, but we were assured the only danger was from getting too close to the smelly fumes or falling over the edge.  We didn’t want to linger too long in the rain anyway.

Koji-san unfurls the Australian flag at our farewell dinner. He says he loves Australia because it was the “number one baseball team in the Olympics.” That was news to most Aussies there, who don’t follow baseball very closely. Cricket’s their sport.

 

This artist was at work in the streets of a samurai settlement in Kanazawa and paid no mind to me

Tour Leader John Cowper takes on an “all-you-can-drink” restaurant (but he had some help with this grog).

 

 When we got home, granddaughters Eleanor and Tilly tried on the kimonos we brought back for them.  They loved them and insisted on sleeping in them the first night.

 

  Click on  http://picasaweb.google.com/wclaiborne/JapanSlideshow  to see even more Japan trip photos

 

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