A travelogue of Sci’s recent trip to Japan, complete with photos and a record of all the amazing food I managed to go through. Comes with a bonus side of jetlag!!
Day 3: Castles and Boats and WAY too much fish.
Today’s random Japanese food: little donuts filled with red bean paste. Red Bean Paste = love.
Today we headed out from the air base to Odowara castle, about two hours away. The first thing you’ll note is the huge moat surrounding the castle area, which is not just a castle, it’s also a small woods and several outlying buildings. The moat itself is full of giant carp who, due to the bakingly hot day, were all concentrated in what was apparently either the coolest part of the moat…or the part where they were most likely to be fed.
(Intrepid Neuron promises to be VERY good, please do not feed him to the carp!!!)
There was air conditioning precisely nowhere. This is why you need a fan and a washcloth. We started out early but still only arrived at the Castle around lunch, and at lunch I committed my first major social faux pas (known among the Japanese as a “Gaijin Smash” wherein a foreigner (Gaijin) does something completely over the top awful). When I got my chopsticks and pulled them apart, I scraped them against each other to get the splinters off. My parents taught me to do this as a kid, and my two close friends in elementary, middle, and high school (a pair of twins whose parents owned a Chinese restaurant), also did this. I figured it was just…something you did. To get no splinters. Right?
WRONG. In Japan, to scrape your chopsticks against each other like that is an insult, meaning clearly that you trust neither the establishment nor the (presumably) cheap chopsticks they are giving you. I haven’t done it since, and my cold soba noodles were delicious under the slight tang of burning shame.
The castle has a full set of grounds, woods, gardens, outlying buildings, and also a massive cage of monkeys (though not, in my opinion, massive enough for the number of monkeys present). At Mt. Takao there was also a whole monkey park, but we skipped on that one.
Odawara castle was built originally in the 15th century, and is one of the few things I saw on this trip that hadn’t actually burned down at least once. Earthquakes and war losses, yes. Fire no. This will become more and more rare as we go on. It was the seat of a powerful clan in the region, and when you get up to the top of the castle you can see why, the view is completely amazing and you can see the whole region and several miles of the Pacific.
The interior of the castle has been remodeled to be a museum. Museums in Japan are much less informative in the English version than they are in the Japanese, or so I suspect, but the items on display were great. Lots of samurai armor sets and a whole room of sword blades. I take a good bit of amusement from the fact that in the US, a single samurai sword blade or piece of armor is taken as priceless, something with a detailed researched history and very, very, rare. In Japan I have already seen easily twice the number of swords and armor sets as I’ve ever seen in the US, usually in much better condition, and with tour guides saying things like “yeah, that’s just a katana. From the Edo period. We’ve got tons of them” (Edo period is the period in which the Tokugawa shoguns took over the govt. of Japan leaving the emperor as a figurehead. They based their govt in Edo, which is now Tokyo. The period dates from about 1603 to 1868, which the Emperor Meiji received the retirement of the last Tokugawa shogun, mainly over issues of modernization and opening of the ports for trade. I’ll get to more of that later).
After the castle, we headed down to the beach because we could see it, and why not. On the way I tried a Coca-Cola. A had been going on extensively about the greatness of the Coke in Japan, where they use real sugar instead of corn syrup. The Coca Cola comes in normal bottles, but also in adorable little aluminum BOTTLES! With twist lids! Cute.
It was indeed good, better than the US anyway, but in my opinion the best Coca-Cola goes to Belgium, with Coke so sweet my mom and I split one for dessert. Forever the best in my opinion.
We then headed out for Hakone, a resort town on the edge of Lake Ashi, and very close to Mt. Fuji. I REALLY wanted to hike Mt. Fuji, but the support stations were not yet open and we couldn’t fit it in when they were. Next trip, obviously. But Hakone was very nice.
(Weather was a little threatening though)
After checking in to our hotel (omg so many toilet buttons, more on those later) we headed down to the lakeside to take a boat tour of the major shrines in the area. And it was a GREAT BOAT.
(ok, not that boat)
(And not those boats, though I totally could have gone on those boats)
(That one!)
PIRATE BOATS!!! Very fun. We stopped by a floating gate shrine, and then by a terminal where you can take a cable car to see the sulfur fields at the top of the mountain. Unfortunately, there was no time for sulfur fields, which I REALLY wanted to see. So it goes.
We got back and decided to hike along the lake shore ourselves to see the floating gate shrine for ourselves.
The hike was a lovely flat one through some AMAZINGLY large trees. Not like redwood large, but still plenty large.
(Intrepid Neuron feels small and curiously lacking in cell walls)
The shrine itself is mostly the Torii gate (a gate between the real and spiritual worlds used to delineate most Shinto shrines), with some stone paths leading to it and a few statues. We went late in the evening, and had it all to ourselves. Beautiful and peaceful. The path to the gate goes right down into the water between the posts.
(I would like to note that the vast majority of the photos I am presenting are due to A’s extraordinary amatuer photography skillz. Seriously, is that not gorgeous!?)
We got back after dark, and started looking around for dinner. And that’s when we realized. Japan just SHUTS DOWN after about 5pm. The major cities are exceptions, but a tiny town like Hakone…it’s just quiet. Including the restaurants. We were on the verge of getting dinner at 7-11 (which are EVERYWHERE in Japan and not a bad choice all things considered) when we found one place that was open. And here we ran into food fail #1.
You see, Mr. S doesn’t like fish. REALLY doesn’t like fish. Prefers to avoid eating them if at all possible. And Japanese cuisine…well there’s a lot of rice. And a lot of fish. And not a lot else. Some veggies, but not many, and very little fruit. Some other meats, sure, but in a lakeside town like Hakone? Meat. Heh.
And this little place we went to eat specialized in sushi. Everything on the menu was fish. Delicious looking fish, but fish. Finally Mr. S and I conferred and came up with what we thought would be the least fishy thing on the menu. The picture had rice with what looked like a topping of small white noodles, and a little roe. Safe, right? WRONG. Mr. S dug in, and found that…the little white noodles were not noodles. They were TINY FISH. It turned out to be the most fishy thing on the menu. Under the tiny fish was even an entire layer of…fish flakes. Poor hungry Mr. S. We attempted to console him with sake (and just like in Europe, a $5 bottle of sake in Japan is better than a $40 bottle in the US).
A note on toilets: About half the toilets I came across were the old fashioned kind. As in, a hole in the floor. Very clean, and the hole did flush, but yeah, squat toilets. Not for everyone, though you manage when you have to. The amusing thing is that the “Western” style toilets (the sitting kind) in Japan are WAY more technologically advanced than the ones in the US. They come with a heated seat, and more buttons on the side than you can easily count or know the meaning of. If you press the buttons, you will (much to your surprise and possible displeasure) get: a bidet, an anal rinse, a “powerful deodorant”, increased seat heat (warning, may cause burns!), and music or flushing sounds with variable volume to cover any unpleasant noises.
(Question of the day: WHERE IS THE FLUSH???)
Amongst all these buttons, there is never a flush. Seriously the first time it took me about 3 minutes to find it. It was a movement sensor you had to swipe your hand across on the wall. Other times it’s been a normal handle, a button, automatic, and once was included next to the bidet. Never, however, was it in the same place twice.
Day 4: THE ONSEN.
We woke up early in Hakone and took the opportunity to try and see Mt. Fuji. It was incredibly humid and very hazy the whole time we were in the country, which blocked most views. But in the early morning we got one or two by the lake shore.
(Not much for snow cover, but hey, it was June)
Today we went to an ONSEN. An onsen is usually a word used to refer to hot springs, though it can also mean any type of hot bath complex. Japan is a region of large amounts of geological activity. There’s an earthquake recorded somewhere in the country EVERY DAY. There are also a ton of live volcanoes, and both of these make for a ton of hot springs! And with hot springs the Japanese developed the onsen, where you bathe in nice hot water, chat with people, and relax. Many of them are where you bathe nude, but the one we went to, you didn’t. This is especially good because the Japanese (at least, the older ones) frown extensively on…tattoos. They will not allow you in the onsen unless your tattoo is fully covered. With bathing suit material. For Sci, this meant finding a tri shirt that covered the upper back. For other people I saw, it meant large bandage like things covering limbs. But find a shirt I did, and we got to the onsen in the morning when it opened.
A note on the nice people: Dear nice family that gave us free passes to get in to the onsen, THANK YOU!!! I know you probably don’t read English very well, but it was so sweet when you all offered us free day passes. We really appreciated getting to enjoy one of the hallmarks of local Japanese tourism, and it was a wonderful experience!! You are the best. <3, Me.
This particular onsen (Yunessun) is a family type affair where the heat comes from hot springs in the mountainside. When you go in, you get a locker, and a wrist bracelet with a microchip. The microchip opens and closes your locker. It also buys you food, drinks, photos, toys, bathing suits, and anything else that the onsen sells. You just swipe your wrist and pay. You pay all the charges when you are leaving the onsen. As you might imagine, this can get very dangerous…
In we went. We got towels and little robes, that you could wear around when you’re out of the pools. There are indoor and outdoor bathing facilities, all with various themes: Roman, jungle, dead sea, sake…
Sake?
Oh yes. At the outdoor section of the baths there was a whole set of baths that were FLAVORED. Or scented. Or whatever. With different things. We hung out in:
Coffee
(This may have been the fulfillment of my entire life)
Red Wine
Green Tea
…as well as sake and charcoal (where they submerge the charcoal in the water). We even got to try a pool (inside and cooler and no pictures) where you submerge your feet, and little fish nibble the dead skin off. The “Doctor Fish Bath”. Unfortunately the fish did not like my little toes very much, while they LOVED Mr. S. I’m not sure what this says about our feet. Finally we tried a LOVELY one where you sit under a powerful drip and get massaged, and a “walking bath” which was walking down a lane paved with painful smooth rocks to forcibly massage your feet.
On the way out we picked up some snacks, and I ran into TWO major food fails.
The first was this:
Those are pretzels stuffed with green tea…cream. Sort of. Bleh.
And the second was a far crazier food fail. I bought these:
They LOOK like candy grapes. They are PACKAGED like candy grapes. They smell VERY much like candy grapes, and they have the consistency of candy grapes.
But when I opened them…they were not candy grapes. I’m still not sure what they are. I think it might be bubble bath but I’m not eating it until I know. Anyone?
And finally, a word on Japanese television: AWESOME. We flipped through the hotel channels one evening, and in between baseball (the Japanese love baseball, and their games include piles of balloons, large amounts of group cheering, and beer sellers with kegs on their backs) and commercials, I found this:
(Sorry about the glare, but I was aiming my camera at the TV)
Those are people on a game show. A HARRY POTTER game show. They are in teams dressed as wizards, complete with wands, and there’s a dude dressed as Dumbledore asking them questions. …I think.
WHY do we not have this in the US!?!??! WHY?!?!?!? I would watch the heck out of that.
We took the circuitous route back to the air base in the hopes of seeing Mt. Fuji, but the cloud cover foiled us again. We grabbed a quick on base dinner and headed out to Tokyo!
