Sorry there aren’t captions and descriptions, but I just don’t have the time to add them. If you have any questions about what you see, though, feel free to drop me a note.

Cleanliness

Urban Japan is startlingly clean. The airports and train stations, including the tracks themselves, are basically spotless. The cities themselves are also devoid of litter, cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, etc. I saw exactly one example of graffiti. One could speculate that they pay particular attention to keeping the tourist-heavy areas looking their best, but even the industrial/warehouse district on the outskirts of Kyoto that we passed through on the way to the airport was dramatically cleaner than, say, the outdoor mall in Boulder.

Agriculture

We were surprised by the number of fields for crops we saw in and near the cities we passed through on various train rides. It seemed that just about every city and town was surrounded by crop fields (mostly for rice, we guessed, based on the stubble from last season) and there were usually fields visible here and there inside the town. It’s a fair bet that the average Japanese urban population eats more locally grown food than the average American town.

Origami

I didn’t see much origami. One temple had skeins of origami cubes as decorations, and we saw kusadama balls for sale in a gift shop in Kanazawa. A couple of other gift shops had small packages of paper, often in adorable paper-covered boxes. I left wondering where people go when they want to buy packages of paper like these, for example.

One of the most memorable incidents of the trip happened because of my interest in origami. We arrived in Kyoto several hours before the check-in time at the hotel, so we wandered around in the shopping mall for awhile. There was a bookstore there and, much to my great joy, I purchased six books by Tomoko Fuse, my favorite origami author. Eventually we went back to the hotel lobby to rest for the remaining time. We sat next to a middle-aged Japanese man and his son, who I’d guess was about 8 or 9. The boy was examining a tiny plastic model of the Golden Temple, which they had visited earlier in the day. I pulled one of my books out of the shopping bag to pass the time, and the man pointed out the book to his son. This inspired a brief flurry of Japanese followed by the man tearing one of their sight-seeing leaflets into a square, which his son grabbed and started folding with impressive speed. He started with a bird base so I assumed he was doing a crane; I started folding a crane from a receipt I dug out of my wallet. Tracie giggled a bit because it was pretty clear that the kid could fold faster than I can.

I assumed incorrectly. Rather than a boring old crane the kid whipped out a rather impressive triceratops head. He handed it to me with a good deal of ceremony and bowing; I accepted it with what I hope was an appropriate amount of gratitude and attention. It was a nice piece of folding. He got his father to produce two more squares which he used to make a stegosaurus. (Later I realized that this must indicate that the common fascination that kids have with dinosaurs must extend across cultures.)

I racked my brains for something more interesting than a standard crane; unfortunately I really don’t have many origami models commited to memory. Fortunately the one I did recall was not something the boy had seen before: a paper cube, a model my father taught to me many years ago and possibly the first origami model I ever learned how to fold. He seemed quite impressed with it.

Then it was time for us to check in and them to leave, so he presented me with the stegosaurus (uttering the word “tape” in English and pointing to indicate how I should join the two parts) and I presented him with the cube. He looked back and waved very endearingly as long as we were in his sight.

Communication

We encountered a wide range of abilities with English among the Japanese, ranging from none at all to quite fluent. There doesn’t seem to be any way to predict how well any given person will speak English; I wasn’t able to discern any correlations between fluency and age or gender. Our guide in Tokyo said that all Japanese children learn some amount of English in school but the emphasis is on reading rather than conversation.

Tracie and I speak next to no Japanese, so I don’t mean to sound as though I’m criticizing anyone in Japan for not being able to converse with me in a second tongue. We really had no trouble at all with communication in the sense that there was never a situation in which we weren’t able to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish because of a language barrier. At times it took a good deal of pointing at maps and guidebooks and pantomime, but in the end we were always able to make our point or to get theirs.

I did discover that even one or two correctly used words of Japanese will go a long ways. Even if you have a conversation in English with a hotel clerk, they will smile even more broadly if you thank them in Japanese. If you use the Japanese phrase to your hostess or waitress at a restaurant that the meal was delicious, she will laugh in delight and bow to you (not that she won’t bow to you anyway).

Culture Shock

We felt very comfortable in Japan. Yes, it is crowded at times and yes, the train stations and shopping areas are very busy, but there is a tangible difference between those crowds and American crowds. There is a subtle sense of order in the chaos. Nobody runs or yells. Nobody exhibits impatience if they have to wait for a crossing light or wait for other people to disembark from a train. Kids don’t scream and cell phone conversations are rare, quiet and unobtrusive.

The worst culture shock occurred during our trip back. To begin with, there were more fat people at the airport gate for the flight departing from Osaka than we’d seen in total during the entire previous time we’d been in Japan. If you want evidence that America has an obesity problem, it was right there.

The real shock happened when we hit the U. S. Customs area in San Francisco. People were yelling, running around with no apparent purpose, changing lines with no apparent reason, and venting their impatience in no particular direction. There didn’t seem to be any particular protocol for dealing with someone in a wheelchair; as a result I had to wrestle with all of our carry-on luggage while Tracie was left to walk through the metal detector with no support (her cane was taken away from her to be x-rayed). I ended up on the far side of the security area with no laptop bag and no shoes, and was treated rudely when I pointed out their error. Our wheelchair assistant vanished altogether when we reached the baggage-claim area. Compared to the quiet, orderly efficiency of entering Japan through one of its customs areas, it was sheer bedlam.

In Japan, all of the taxi drivers were efficient and courteous at the very least, and unbelievably friendly in one instance. When we were in Nara, a youngish taxi driver took the opportunity to convey his extensive knowledge of some of the local sights to us (using our guide as an interpreter), bought us a guidebook from the shrine we visited, and insisted upon pushing Tracie’s wheelchair when we visited a museum. This he did for no charge other than the usual meter fees while we were driving. The taxi driver who drove us from the Denver airport to our house didn’t know his way around the Boulder area, argued with us about whether or not we were within the city limits, and overcharged us for the ride.

The courtesy, friendliness, and genuine warmth of the hotel employees was nothing short of astonishing. The shop clerks and restaurant staffs were also always friendly, cheerful, and clearly pleased to have appreciative foreigners among their patrons. Even people on trains with whom we exchanged no more than a smile during the ride would pause to wish us well at the end of the journey.

In contrast to our experience at the hospital in Takayama, after our return Tracie has been erroneously prescribed medicine to which she is allergic, as her file clearly states, and the on-call doctor failed to return her call after the pharmacy notified her of the error. This drastic oversight was not made by her usual physician but by his partner; he also advised her to stop taking the antibiotics she had been taking which resulted in her relapse a few days later.

So, altogether we’ve been suffering somewhat badly from what might be described as culture shock in reverse.

Sayonara

This will probably be my last entry for this travelogue. Thank you for reading; I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Special thanks to everyone who has written to thank me for these posts and apologies if I’ve neglected to thank you personally.

Some of the people who have written to me have somewhat tentatively asked whether we had a good time despite Tracie’s illness and us cutting the trip short as a result. The answer is yes, we had a wonderful time. We loved it, in short. We’re already thinking about when we might be able to go back.

Over the next few days I’ll post some random thoughts that I haven’t posted previously.

Accessibility

As I’ve described in previous travelogues, one of the challenges we face when traveling in foreign countries (or our own country, for that matter) is the uncertainty of accessibility for the less mobile. Tracie has MS, causing her to have limited agility and limited stamina. In the past we have taken her wheelchair because although she can walk, doing so for any distance wears her out very rapidly. We originally planned to take her chair on this trip but made the pivotal decision to not take it shortly before our departure. The reasoning was that it would be difficult to use a wheelchair in the train stations and crowded and/or narrow sidewalks, while at the places we would most need it there would be chairs available for her use.

Our reasoning turned out to be sound and we were very glad that we did not take her wheelchair. In many cases it would have been nearly impossible to use a chair. The smaller train stations were generally not accessible, so passing through them would have been difficult. The trains themselves would have been difficult to board and maneuver within.

In general, older structures are not accessible, newer ones (say 20 years old or less, at a guess) are. Temples and shrines were often built at the top of hills ascended by a flight of steep and/or uneven stone steps. Entrances to the buildings themselves almost always have a short flight of steps and usually have a 8-10″ high threshold. All of the historic sites we visited had at least one feature that falls into a class of objects which Tracie collectively refers to as “cripple traps.” This is not meant to be a criticism or complaint, just an observation and warning to any would-be visitors to Japan with mobility hinderances of their own. We wouldn’t dream of expecting–or wanting–some centuries-old temple built by Buddhist monks to be remodeled to accomodate wheelchairs. However, if someone tells you that you won’t have any trouble getting around in Japan even though you don’t walk in the usual fashion for the species, they’re either lying or they have no idea what they’re talking about.

On the other hand, all of the hotels we stayed in had accessible elevators with both buttons placed in locations reachable from a wheelchair and audio prompts announcing the arrival at floors and the state of the doors (I think–they were in Japanese, naturally). The larger train stations such as the ones in Tokyo and Kyoto do have elevators although sometimes their location is obscure. I think that the automated ticket dispensers in the stations are low enough to be reached from a chair although I wouldn’t swear to it. The sidewalks in smaller cities such as Takayama are indeed narrow or absent altogether, but the sidewalks in large cities are usually reasonably wide and often flush with the street at corners (probably because bicycles are so common and are allowed on sidewalks). The sidewalks and the floors of train stations have clever textured strips embedded in them to help visually impaired folks find their way around. Some busses and trains have the blue-wheelchair logo on them although you’d have to get assistance from someone before you could actually make use of any accessibility features. In fact, you won’t even be able to board most trains without assistance because of the gap between the train and the platform.

One faintly amusing unanticipated issue: Japanese, generally speaking, are physically smaller than Caucasians. I’m not tall by American standards but I was a bit taller than average in Japan. Tracie was more or less the same size as Tamae. Tamae-san told us that women’s clothing comes in three sizes–small, medium, and large–and that she wears a large. Tracie, on the other hand, is squarely in the “petite” bracket of American clothing. Logically enough, Japanese wheelchairs tend to be small. On one of the occasions that we did borrow one Tracie found it fairly uncomfortable because of the length of her legs. (Well, I found it faintly amusing, anyway. I don’t think that she did.)

I’m quite sure that people in Japan, unlike people in America, would be entirely happy to help someone in need of assistance if they perceived the need. Besides the four or so occasions in which someone stopped and asked us if we needed help finding something when we were gazing around with baffled expressions on our faces (occasions which had nothing to do with Tracie’s mobility), there were several times in which someone offered Tracie their seat on a crowded bus or train when they noticed her cane. (Yes, that’s all it took, one look at her cane. I saw one middle-aged fellow notice our approach from a good distance away on a train platform and vacate his seat on the bench, which happened to be the closest one to us, even before Tracie or I realized that it was where we were likely to want to sit down.) Often they’d insist that I take the seat next to her also even though I’m not any less able to stand than the next average person. But if you were going to navigate your way through Kyoto Station in a wheelchair to meet a shinkansen at a particular time, you’d definitely want to arrive quite early so that you’d have time to both figure out where you were supposed to end up and to find someone who could help you locate the necessary elevator(s) and board the train itself.

Here’s the view from our hotel room window:

Some shots from the grounds of the Imperial Palace:

Photos from the Meiji Shrine, starting with the tori on the way in:

The fountain [? maybe not the right word] for purifying yourself before entering the shrine. There is a specific series of steps for doing this:

1. Scoop up some water with a ladle held in your right hand, pour some of it over your left hand.

2. Transfer the ladle to your left hand, pour some of the water over your right hand.

3. Change hands again, pour some water into your cupped left hand. Use that water to rinese out your mouth, not swallowing it.

4. Rinse the handle of the ladle by holding it almost vertically, cup end upwards.

We saw two weddings being conducted in the traditional manner by Shinto priests. Actually we didn’t see the ceremonies themselves, just one of the processions and the lengthy preparations for the group photos.

The shrine itself. This isn’t a particularly good photo but our guide told me that it’s a no-no to take photos directly front and center in a shrine. The low boxes in the foreground are for tossing coins for offerings. The process here is: throw a coin, bow twice, clap your hands twice (with the left fingers extending slightly beyond those of the right, for reasons I’ve now forgotten), pray, bow again.

Oddly enough, Tamae-san said it was not rude to take pictures of the priest attending the shrine, and insisted that she take our photo with him:

This is a poem near a bend in the path on the way to the shrine. Tracie asked what it said and Tamae-san’s reply provided a brief insight into the complexities of translating written Japanese. She said that the poem itself was written in an old style that she could not read. Next to the poem is a translation into modern text, but even that was complicated enough that she wasn’t able to express it in English (and her English was quite good).

Here’s what I had for lunch: sashimi in the center, miso soup on the right, chopped and pickled vegetables on the left. Re small cup with green leaves is a custard-like dish. I wasn’t wild about it but than I don’t much like custard in general, so custard with leaves and corn didn’t do much for me. The white slices on the plate of fish are octopus, which was quite good.

Our guide, Tamae-san. she was delightful. If you ever need a guide in Tokyo, drop me a note and I’ll send you her contact info.

The two-fingered gesture is something that Japanese women younger than about 55 will flash more often than not when in front of a camera. I don’t know whether or not it’s a direct dean dirt of the 1960s-American “peace” gesture.

A couple of shots from the boat we took to see the cherry blossoms. It was neat to see how many Japanese, of all ages, were taking boat rides for just this event. Our guide in Kyoto told us that “it is impossible for the Japanese to separate ourselves from the cherry blossom.” I thought it was a lovely thing to say.

The Kaminarimon Gate, entrance to the shopping area of Asakusa:

The huge incense burner in front of the Senso-ji Temple. Those light-colored objects are entire bundles of sticks burning at once. The smoke is said to have curative powers if applied to an ailing part of the body.

Tracie and Tamae learning their fortunes. We all received rather bad fortunes but Tamae-san said that this temple’s fortunes tend to be negative.

The Niten-mon Gate, the oldest structure in this area:

Sunset seen from our hotel room, Mt. Fuji visible in the distance:

Vending machines are a very common sight in Japanese cities. There seems to be one on about every block (loosely speaking–not all of the cities we visited had “blocks” in the American-city sense of the word) and sometimes you find several at once. Here’s a photo of a large bank of them near the Meiji Shrine:

The one on the left has cigarettes; the rest have beverages. They usually offer a wider range of beverages than those in the US. Here’s an example:

You’ll notice a couple of familiar logos in there. US brands tend to be in the minority, though.

They also usually dispense both hot and cold beverages. There are colored strips, red for hot and blue for cold, and appropriate labels. Sometimes you’ll see the same beverage available at both temperatures, e.g. coffee or tea.

Pocari Sweat is always sold cold, of course. I almost blew it and very nearly left the country without trying this famous Japanese delicacy. Fortunately I realized my oversight about 15 minutes before we boarded the plane in Osaka and was able to buy a bottle from a machine near our gate. It tastes more or less like mild, orange-flavored Gatorade but less salty. It’s pretty tasty.

Here’s the first drink I purchased from a machine:

You’ll notice that it’s a Kirin product. In the US we think of beer when we see the name Kirin, but it turns out that they make all sorts of non-alcoholic beverages as well. The same is true for several other brands: Asahi, Sapporo, and Suntory. (You can get beer from vending machines but I didn’t since I don’t drink alcohol at all.) This can is black tea, and in this case it was hot. I was quite impressed by its quality. For tea in general it was quite good, and for commercially brewed tea in a can it was outstanding. I also tried several brands and blends of coffee; they were also quite good. Here are a couple of other teas that I tried:

That’s Tracie’s beloved Creamy Cocoa on the right, of course. She tried a couple of other brands of cocoa and said that while they were all good, one was outstanding.

Sometimes you find familiar brands with unfamiliar flavors. One of these Fanta cans contains “Melon Creamsoda [sic]“:

Many of the machines have plain water or mineral water, which was very handy since Tracie doesn’t drink consume caffeine and we weren’t always sure of the contents of the Japanese beverages.

Some of the products are kind of strange from an American perspective. Corn soup, for example, seems to be quite popular in Japan and you can get it in cans:

I didn’t try any corn soup so I can’t tell you how it tastes. Nor did I try any of the following vegetable juices. I’m not even sure what the stuff in the second photo is.

Aside from the infamous Bikkle, there was only one item that disappointed me. I bought this bottle expecting it to be cold green tea:

It was cold, and it was tea, but I think that it was roasted green tea. I’ve never liked roasted green tea and this beverage was no exception. It smelled exactly like wet cardboard and didn’t taste much better than the same. On the other hand, I did see several locals drinking it so I guess it’s popular there. It was in nearly every machine I looked at.

Odd as it may seem, memories of these machines and the products they dispense will remain among my favorite experiences of the trip. It’s hard to explain, but there is something profoundly satisfying about rolling a small, warm can of coffee between the palms of your hands while waiting on a cold train platform.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well. We had a great trip. I have lots more to write here and many more photos to post, but I’m kind of loopy now. I just wanted to let everyone know that we’re home, and to say thanks for reading my posts.

It’s been a good trip. Yes, it’s a major drag that Tracie is ill and that we have to cut the trip short. However, we did see some beautiful and amazing things and when we ran down our unofficial list of things we wanted to do/see/experience/accomplish here we actually managed to hit most of them. We also know what we want to do when we come back.

Sayonara, Japan!

That last photo was taken in a Noh theater which we visited briefly at lunchtime.

This may well be my last posting from Japan, unless I find some spare time tomorrow morning. It won’t be the last posting about our trip, though; I still have quite a few other photos I want to put up and more to say. Stay tuned to this channel…

First on our itinerary was the Heian Shrine, a very large shrine fronted by the largest tori (gate) in Japan. Passing through a tori is said to purify the walker, so Shinto temples usually have one or more tori in front. They also have a small fountain or well for performing the water-based purification ritual. (You don’t want any impure types running around in the shrines after all.)

The shrine itself is impressive but the main attraction to us was the adjacent garden which is said to be the most beautiful landscape garden in all of Kyoto, and by extension all of Japan. I won’t argue that choice. No verbal description can do justice to this place. I think I can speak for both Tracie and myself when I say that we were unprepared for the dazzling and seemingly endless beauty of this garden. It was one of many “yes, this is why we flew halfway around the world” experiences of this trip. I took at least 100 photos in this garden itself; obviously the following are just a small selection.

Now is as good a time to mention something I’ve been meaning to mention, which is that all of the photos I’ve posted here are by necessity considerably reduced from the originals. I’m using a 6 megapixel camera which produces photos of more than four times the size that I’m posting here. At some point after we get home I’ll post the full-resolution versions and/or burn some slideshow CDs for friends and family.

You’ll notice that the cherry blossoms are in bloom here. Our timing has been incredibly lucky in that we saw the cherry blossoms in both Tokyo and Kyoto.

Next we visited the Nijo Castle. This castle was built in 1603 as the residence of the first Tokugaawa Shogun, and is significant in part because it was the site at which the last ruling Shogun officially returned sovereignity to the Emperor of Japan. I was surprised at how spacious it was inside. Photos are not allowed within the castle itself because it is decorated with very old and treasured paintings, but the surrounding grounds are quite beautiful, as I hope these photos will illustrate to some degree.

Yes, women still wear kimono here, and not just elderly women. Here’s a nice juxtaposition of the old and the new: a woman in kimono using her cell phone:

Next we went to the Rokuon-Ji temple, known as the Golden Pavilion. Sid told us that this is the top tourist attraction in Japan but that it’s a bit much for his tastes. I can understand the reason for both points: Americans (et al) are drawn to shiny expensive things like moths to a flame, and Japanese aesthetics (in my extremely limited understanding of them) don’t encompass things this ostentatious. Still, it was pretty neat to see a gilt temple in person, and again the grounds around it are quite beautiful.

The experience was faintly unreal: a gold-covered temple in a garden of unutterable beauty.

I think that if you live a particularly virtuous life you may be reincarnated as a carp in a pond at a Japanese national monument. These have to be the most pampered fish on the planet. They’re huge, fat, and clearly accustomed to being fed by hand.

Our final destination was largely picked at my request: the Ryoanji Temple, home of one of the most famous stone gardens. These are the racked-gravel-and-rocks gardens associated with Zen monasteries. Sadly the temple is no longer functional except as a tourist attraction, and it’s difficult to appreciate how serene it must have been when it was populated only by monks. The understated beauty of the garden’s design endures but like a musical instrument placed in a museum, never to be played again, something wondrous, intangible and precious has been lost.

We also stopped for lunch halfway through. I had sushi and Tracie had rice. It was a long day and in the end it was too much walking for Tracie. Hopefully a night’s rest will restore her; tomorrow we go to Nara to see more gardens.