Every Day is Sunday

It all started with a great gift.  For our anniversary, Jeff’s parents offered to buy us dinner and put us up in a nice hotel.  Since we celebrated our actual anniversary with Danielle, Melanie, and Seth in Bangkok, we took a raincheck and spent the next several months trying to find a spot to celebrate properly.  It took us two months and four countries, but we finally found the perfect hotel located at the base of Mt. Fuji.

We booked an “East meets West” room at the Green Plaza Hotel.  “West” because the bed was a proper foam mattress, “East” because the mattress was on the floor.  As much as we wanted to stay in our spacious, inviting and sleekly decorated room, it was a beautiful day and we felt compelled to go out and explore. 

Some of the best views of Mt. Fuji can be seen from the shores of Ashinoko (Lake Ashi), so we crossed the lake on a sightseeing boat which was randomly modeled after a 17th century French sailing warship. 

The views alone were worth the price of admission, so it was an added bonus when we got off the boat and found ourselves steps away from a beautiful cedar forest planted more than 400 years ago.

Just when we thought the day couldn’t get better, we took the bus to Hakone’s magnificent outdoor sculpture garden.  The pieces were original, thought-provoking, and sometimes just downright weird. 

The highlight of the garden was the “Symphonic Sculpture” by Gabriel Lorie, a stained glass exhibit that featured a fifty-foot high cylindrical building where everything but the ceiling and floor was stained glass.

The sun was starting to go down and the garden was closing, so we boarded a cable car that would drop us near our hotel.  What we saw next took our breath away.

We’ve seen many, many sunsets on this trip, and each one has been special in its own way.  But when the cable car crested the hill and we saw the sky erupt into a sea of scarlet-red clouds, we knew we had seen the best.

We celebrated 3 years, a perfect day, and the most amazing sunset we’ve ever seen by sitting down to a delicious 7-course meal of non-identifiable Japanese food.  Afterwards, it was time for a soak in a Japanese onsen (bath). 

Perhaps the main attraction of the Green Plaza Hotel is its large onsen which is fed by natural hot springs.  In Hakone we learned that communal bathing is an huge part of Japanese culture.  The Japanese even have an expression for it: hadaka no tsukiai (“naked communion”).  The idea is that communal bathing in the relaxed atmosphere of a hotel or ryokan with an attached onsen helps with breaking down barriers and getting to know other people.  What a strange practice in a culture that is normally quite formal and reserved!

We thought it was a little weird to celebrate our anniversary by bathing with perfect strangers, so we skipped the public bath that evening and took advantage of the smaller private onsen in our room which had an excellent view of Mt. Fuji.

Walking the streets of the Gion neighborhood in Kyoto was like entering a different era.  Small red lanterns hang between the teak houses lighting the way for women dressed in kimono shuffling quickly between social functions.  Gion is unique in that it has largely avoided modernization and looks much like it did 50 years ago.  We could not help but admire the Japanese for the way they preserve their ancient culture even while living in a modern society. 

The Gion neighborhood is most famous for its tea houses where Geisha have been entertaining wealthy Japanese men for centuries.  Although the art of Geisha is waning in the modern era, there are still more than a few geishas walking the streets of Gion. We stalked one Geisha through the streets until she was nice enough to stop and allowed us a picture.

Although we saw the influence of Western culture all over Japan, young Japanese are not forsaking their rich cultural heritage for Nike and McDonalds.  All over Kyoto, we saw young girls in the traditional kimono dress, and even a blushing bride in a traditional white head covering.

Unlike Tokyo and Osaka, Kyoto was not a target of the carpet bombings that destroyed much of Japan during World War II.  Some of the oldest and most important shrines in all of Japan are located in Kyoto. 

 By far the most beautiful spots in Kyoto are the gardens.  In a fast-paced country where space is at a premium, the huge tranquil gardens located throughout the city are quite meaningful and impressive. 

Our favorite way to experience a country’s culture is through food.  The Japanese food is generally tasty, but it has been largely an unaccesible mystery to us.  In Tokyo we had very little idea about what we were eating.  In Kyoto we had absolutely no idea.  Even when there were English menus, they were not very helpful.

After spending our first few nights at a hostel, we decided to spend our last night in Kyoto at a traditional Ryokan.  A Ryokan is a type of traditional Japanese Inn that was most popular during the Edo period (1603-1868).  We checked into Kikokuso, an intimate two-story wooden Ryokan with an exquisite Japanese garden that has been family-run for five generations. 

Our hosts met us at the door and warmly invited us to join them as their guests for the evening.  We removed our shoes at the front door, traded them for laughably small slippers, and ambled down the narrow wooden corridor to our room. 

We opened the sliding door to find a lovely 10-tatami mat room with a balcony.  In the center of the room was a table, two legless chairs, and a pot of hot green tea.  We slipped on our Yukata – cotton kimono worn after bathing – and headed to the onsen for a traditional Japanese bath.  At night the table and chairs were pushed aside and futons were spread out on the floor to sleep on. 

While many Japanese still hold fast to their ancient customs, we also saw evidence that the times are a-changing.  One afternoon we wandered into a coffee shop run by a father, mother, and daughter.  The shop was quiet and so the daughter invited us to join her and her friends at their table.  We learned that the family had made kimonos for several generations, but that the business closed because fewer and fewer people wear kimonos.  The family decided to open a coffee shop where they display kimonos and try to revive interest in this ancient dress.  The shop was celebrating its one-month anniversary that afternoon, and we promised to come back when the shop celebrates its 10-year anniversary. 

Jeff:  I love a good steak.  And I was lucky enough to marry a meat and potatoes girl.  Instead of going to an overpriced restaurant in Tokyo for Japan’s most famous meat, we decided to head directly to the source.  We hopped a train to Kobe in search of the perfect steak. 

Erin:  I expected Kobe to look like Wisconsin in summer.  I pictured rolling green hills, wide-open pastures, and hundreds of cows being massaged by thousands of tiny Japanese women.  Looking out the window as our train pulled into Kobe, there were tons of skyscrapers but no cows to be seen.  It turns out that Kobe is a suburb of Osaka and looks a lot like Newark, New Jersey.  I was disappointed until I took my first bite.

Kobe beef is a special grade of beef that comes from Wagyu cattle raised in Kobe, Japan.  What makes Kobe beef distinctive is the special breeding of Wagyu cattle.  What makes Kobe beef famous is the way the Japanese pamper their cows. 

On a daily basis, Wagyu ranchers brush their cattle with sake.  Believing that the softness of cow’s skin is related to meat quality, Japanese producers brush the cow’s skin with sake to soften the animal and improve the flavor of the meat.

Also, Kobe beef cows have a diet that includes large amounts of beer.  Apparently the beer stimulates their appetite during the hot summer months when the temperature and humidity make it too hot to eat.  We never found out if the cows prefer lager or ale.

Finally, the cows actually get regular massages.  This is not an urban legend.  The massages are done for the same reason that anyone gets a massage: to relieve stress and muscle stiffness.  The Japanese producers believe that they can improve the eating quality of the meat if they keep their cattle calm and content.

We made our way to Wakkoqu restaurant to measure the effects of all this tender loving care. 

Jeff:  I could taste the sake, beer, and shiatsu massage in every bite.

Erin: Each bite melted in my mouth like butter.

The tiny restaurant had room for only 30 people, and we had our own personal chef cooking up our tasty meal.  He cooked the first half of our steak, sliced it up and presented it to us.  He monitored our progress and waited until we finished the pieces on our plate before starting to cook the other half.  The effect was that we were always eating a deliciously hot steak right off the grill. 

Several people have asked: Was it the best steak you ever ate?

Jeff:  This steak was amazing, but the steak I had at Alberto’s in Bariloche, Argentina has a slight edge in my mind.  The Argentinians cook their steak in a asado over wood charcoals, and the wood adds a unique flavor that takes the beef to another level.  Also, Kobe beef is served in thin slices suitable for chopsticks and (as Erin said) melts in your mouth, but the steaks in Argentina are thick and juicy and the flavor explodes when you chew.  For my last meal, I’ll head to Bariloche.

Erin:  The Kobe beef I had in Kobe was by far the best steak I’ve ever had. I especially like the way it is prepared: bite-sized bits of goodness.  I couldn’t get enough of it.  I even considered postponing our flight out of Japan so we could make another trip to Kobe.  It’s just that good.

It was late afternoon and our bus was the only vehicle on the quiet streets of Koyasan.  At the second to last stop we got off the bus and, with our bags in tow, began walking up the hill toward the monastery.  By the time we reached the entrance, a young Japanese monk with a shaved head and dark brown robes was waiting outside to greet us.  In broken English he asked us to remove our shoes and to leave our bags in the large foyer just inside the entrance.  He led us on a brief tour of the monastery: the communal bath, the meditation rooms, and the shrine. He ended the tour at our small room where our bags were waiting for us.

More than 1000 years ago the Buddhist monk Kobo Daishi received permission from the emperor to build the first monastery of the Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism.  After searching for years for the perfect spot, Kobo Daishi ultimately built his monastery in a 2000-foot high valley nestled between the eight peaks of Mount Koya.  The original monastery has since grown into the town of Koyasan with over 100 monasteries, many of which offer lodging to pilgrims.

Our monastery required that all of its guests attend morning prayers at 6:00 am.  We awoke at dawn and waited for the monk who knocked on our sliding door at 5:50am. We followed him to the shrine for an hour-long ceremony of rhythmic chanting.  After morning prayers we followed the monks to a small temple on the edge of the grounds for a beautiful 20-minute fire ceremony.

Each night we were served “shojin-ryori,” or Buddhist Monk vegetarian meals.  As with most Japanese cuisine, the food was unidentifiable, it had a mushy texture and a slightly fishy aftertaste.  Not the best food we’ve ever had but at least we knew we were eating healthy.

Koyasan differs from the other Buddhist holy sites we’ve seen recently.  Unlike the monks in the Luang Prabong who wear bright saffron colored robes, the monks in Koyasan wear more somber colors.

And unlike the garishly decorated temples in Koh Samui with their huge florescent statutes of the Buddha, the temples in Koyasan were simple and elegant in design. Shingon temples mimicked the natural beauty of the surrounding mountains and giant cedar trees.

And unlike Bodhgaya, the city in India where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, the city of Koyasan is quiet, peaceful, and spotless.  After walking around Koyasan we were finally able to understand the kind of peace the Buddha had experienced under the Bodi tree.

In Tokyo, we felt like the city was moving at 100 mph all around us.  In Koyasan things hardly seemed move at all.  On our first day we explored the Garan, a temple complex designed by Kobo Daishi on the western side of town.  At the center of the Garan is the Konpon Daito pagoda, which according to Shingon doctrine represents the central point of a spiritual circumference that covers not only Mt. Koya but all of Japan.

The temples were nice, but the heart of Koyasan is the Okunoin – the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi.  The mausoleum is surrounded by an atmospheric and immense graveyard, set among giant cedar tries with winding paths throughout. 

Some of the gravestones were quite funny, including a monument erected by a pesticide company to commemorate all its insect victims, and a corporate tombstone.  Rest in peace, Panasonic.

Jeff:  It looked like I was going to miss baseball season this year.  I don’t remember ever letting an entire season go by without making at least one trip to the ballpark, and this year I haven’t seen a single pitch.  When we decided to add Japan to our itinerary at the last minute, I wasn’t thinking of sushi, samurai, or sumo.  I was thinking of baseball.

Erin:  I may not be as big of a baseball fan as Jeff, but I do love going to the ballpark and watching the game with a beer in one hand and a hot dog in the other.  I hoped the game would be just as fun with beer and udon noodles.

Tokyo has five baseball teams, which means there is a baseball game in the city every night of the week.  We went to Jingu stadium for a contest between arch rivals in Japan’s Central League: the Yakult Swallows and the Chunichi Dragons.

The rules of the game may be the same, but the baseball experience is completely different in Japan.  Where U.S. fans only to cheer in unison when their team scores or makes a spectacular play, Japanese fans sing songs and perform elaborate cheers whenever their team is at-bat.  They even have official cheerleaders at the bottom of each aisle who wear whistles and coordinate the cheers.  The atmosphere is closer to an English soccer game than an American baseball game.

We decided to root for the home team, and so we had to learn the unusual way that Swallows fans celebrate a run scored.  All the fans bring umbrellas to the game (even when there’s no threat of rain) and whenever the Swallows score a run their fans open the umbrellas and move them up and down.  We didn’t know about the crazy umbrella cheer, but some fellow Swallows fans were nice enough to let us use their umbrellas when the Swallows scored their first run in the bottom of the 6th.

Although the players’ uniforms looked familiar, some of the spectators were wearing outfits you wouldn’t see at the Nationals Stadium in Washington DC.

Another difference is that the Japanese take safety very seriously.  In addition to the screen behind home plate the Japanese installed screens all the way down the field.  .  And, in case anyone forgot about the danger of foul balls, they had a guy walking around with a bull horn between innings warning people of the danger.

One similarity we thought was weird: the team names are in English.  “Swallows” is not an English translation – the team has an English name.  Japanese people who don’t speak a word of English yell “Go, Go, Swallows!” throughout the game.  We never found out why.   

Jeff:  The Swallows were down 3-1 in the bottom of the sixth and I figured the game was over.  I’ve been a Nationals fan for four years and, unfortunately, have become accustomed to my team falling behind and staying behind.  But despite their terrible name these Swallows have heart!  They rallied for three runs in the bottom of the 7th to take the lead behind a controversial homerun down the left field line by their first baseman Jamie D’Antona – the only American on the team!!  The Swallows relief pitchers retired the Dragons’ next six batters in order, and we got to celebrate the Swallows victory with a jubilant home crowd.

Erin:  It was a great game and even when it got a little dull there was always a super cute beer girl and a bowl of udon close by.

 The hotel alarm clock screamed out static at 3:15 am. Why do hotel alarms always go off at the maximum volume no matter how carefully you set them? Erin hit the snooze button and we both slipped back into that wonderful sleep that you only get during the five-minute snooze window. We finally managed to struggle our way out of bed and found a taxi to take us to Tsukiji.

Of all the wholesale fish markets in the world, the Tsukiji Fish Market ranks in the top in every measurable category: more than 40,000 people buy and sell about 450 varieties of fish from 60 countries at one of the market’s 1,500 stalls that span 57 acres.  Tsukiji makes the Maine Avenue Fish market in DC and the Fulton Fish market in the Bronx look like flea markets.

Although Tsukiji is a serious place of business, the buyers and sellers are surprisingly tolerant of tourists.  We squeezed through the aisles surrounded by tubs and tanks and plastic-foam trays, dodged forklifts and narrowly avoided the hoses streaming water across the concrete floors.

The main attraction at the fish market is the tuna auction, which sets the tuna prices for Tokyo and the rest of the world.  Having arrived 45 minutes early, we were the first tourists to enter the warehouse and were able to stake out the best spot for viewing the action.

We both gasped as we walked in the front door.  Hundreds of giant frozen creatures were laid out in neat rows on the floor of the chilly warehouse, giving off a faint frozen mist under the fluorescent lighting.

Men in work shirts and rubber boots were bent over the frozen fish, inspecting them by lifting a flap of skin that had been cut open on each one and peering at the meat with a flashlight.

After watching thousands of pounds of tuna sold at auction, we started to get hungry.  It was only 6:20 am, and questions of sustainability still lingered in our heads, but we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to eat a breakfast of some of the freshest sashimi on the planet.

After 10 months on the road we had become a bit cocky.  We thought we could just roll into any new city and figure it out in no time.  Then we got to Tokyo.

The bus from Narita airport dropped us in the heart of the Shibuya neighborhood, a densely packed area with thousands of businesses, hotels, bars, restaurants, and shops right on top of each other.  We exited the bus and found ourselves in one of the busiest intersections in all of Tokyo.

We were a bit intimidated, but we didn’t doubt our ability to navigate to our hotel.  After all, we had the address (albeit in English) and we knew that the hotel was only a five minute walk from the bus stop.

After 10 minutes of vainly trying to decipher the street signs we started asking for help.  After 15 minutes we found a local who spoke English and was nice enough to use his cellphone to call the hotel and ask for directions.  After 20 minutes the local gave up trying to understand the hotel’s directions and hailed us a taxi.  The fare for the 3-minute ride to our hotel was more than the cost of a mid-range hotel in India.  Welcome to Tokyo.

We spent our first two days in Tokyo looking up in wonderment.  Much of Tokyo looks like Times Square with neon lights and huge television screens everywhere.  Tokyo is in constant motion, yet it doesn’t feel like a huge urban center because the city is so quiet.  The cars don’t honk their horns, stores don’t play loud music onto the street, and nobody yells at anybody else.  It has all the action of New York and all of the serenity of San Francisco.   

From the architecture to the high speed trains and high fashion, everything in this futuristic city looks new, polished and sleek.  It probably helped that we don’t understand Japanese – even garish neon advertising promoting “2 for 1 Deals” looked pretty cool to us.

As we learned the hard way, Tokyo is a city where it really helps to have a local connection. Lucky for us, Erin’s cousin John does a lot of business in Tokyo and put us in touch with his colleague Yoshiko.

Yoshiko and her boyfriend Steve took us out for dinner, and immediately confirmed everything we heard about Japanese hospitality.  They met us at our hotel, organized our taxi to the restaurant, explained the menu, ordered for us, gave us great sightseeing advice, and bought us many, many cups of sake.  Yoshiko did all this even though she had just spent the last week in bed recovering from swine flu!  We had a wonderful evening at Gonpachi, which Yoshiko called the “Kill Bill” restaurant because Quentin Tarantino used it as his inspiration for the fight scene in Kill Bill with the Crazy 88’s.

Despite a slight sake hangover, we got up early this next morning to visit the Meiji Jingu shrine and learn about Shinto, a religion we hadn’t come across anywhere else in Asia.  Practiced by millions of Japanese, Shinto is characterized by an intense worship of nature and based on the belief that everything in nature contains a kami (spiritual essence) deserving respect.  With its heavy focus on ritual purity, Shinto is a religion in which actions and rituals are much more important than words.  The beautifully simple Meiji Shrine is one of the most important public shrines in Tokyo.

The Japanese take fashion very seriously and spend a lot of time and money on their clothes.  For casual clothes the predominant color is black – the standard weekend uniform for most Japanese men and women is black designer shirts, black designer jeans, and some kind of grey accessory.  For work clothes, every Japanese man who works in an office wears a suit to work.  During rush hour the trains are packed with pinstripes and shiny black shoes.

When we got back to the hotel we asked the concierge about the girls dressed like dolls.  The concierge took a slight offense at the question, informing us curtly that the girls were dressed like princesses not dolls, and that the “hime gyaru” fashion is an accepted style in Tokyo.  We apologized profusely for our cultural insensitivity.

EE:  I tried to stay hip by getting a haircut in Tokyo.  Unfortunately, the hairdresser only spoke three words of English: shampoo, cut and shaggy.  After failed attempts at hand-gesturing and pointing at magazines, I let her do her thing.  When she finished cutting, smiled and said: shaggy!

When most people think about Japanese food, they think of sushi.  Although there are tons of sushi restaurants all over Tokyo, sushi is just one of dozens of different types of Japanese cuisine.  After making the obligatory stops in traditional sushi bars, we started to get a little adventurous.    

The last time Erin ate teppanyaki was at a restaurant in Madison called “Ginza of Tokyo.”  To test its authenticity we traveled across town to the Ginza neighborhood for some grilled beef teppanyaki.

Many restaurants had menus with English translations, but even then we weren’t always sure what we were ordering.  At Shabu-zen, we ordered beef and were asked whether we wanted shabu-shabu style or sukiyaki style.  It took 15 minutes and 4 waiters to explain the difference.  We chose shabu-shabu, and so they brought us thinly sliced raw beef and boiling hot broth and told us not to leave the beef in the broth for too long (it was a lot like Chinese hot pot without the oil).  We later found out that the famous “angry lunch” scene in Lost in Translation was filmed at the table next to us, and it made us feel better than neither Bill Murray’s nor Scarlett Johannson’s character had any idea what they were doing either.

On our last night we went looking for a nightcap and stumbling into a tiny bar in the basement of a nearby building.  The place looked more like a garage than a bar – it was decorated with toys, gardening tools, baseball souvenirs, random business cards and clothing.  The owner was a character, and we spent an interesting evening with him and two of his very drunk patrons.