Japan, Day 7: Pretty things in Tokyo

Today more or less made up for yesterday not being very fun for me. Bobby took the day off of training and we went to Tokyo to do some tourist-y stuff. We started at the imperial gardens. The palace has many gardens, and you could spend a whole day just walking through one of them. We spent a good portion of the day in the east garden of the imperial palace. (More pictures coming soon!)

Pink bicycle and pink flowers

Entering the imperial garden

Me in a bamboo forest

Bobby in a bamboo forest

A view of a garden

Garden path

Trees and flowers

Gnarled trees and more flowers

Pretty yellow flowers

Koi and sakura

Looking out over the pond

Another view of the pond

Pretty ferns

One of several turtle-y friends we found in the pond

After that, we went back to the park we were at earlier in the week viewing sakura, and we took a rowboat out on the moat to get closer to the trees. Bobby did the rowing, and he even serenaded me, like you see in those old-time movies. The only thing missing was me wearing lace and carrying a parasol.

After that, we decided to see if we could get to Tokyo tower. Much like the Empire State building in NYC, you can pay to go up to the top of it and look out over the city. It was pretty dark by the time we got there, though, and we decided it wasn't really worth it to go up and take pictures at night. It's still a pretty cool building on its own, though. We stopped at a McDonald's on the way there, just to see what Japanese ones were like. We got teriyaki burgers, which were actually more like sausage patties with teriyaki sauce on them and a little bit of lettuce, and also mayonnaise (which I wiped off), because they like it on everything. We didn't try the fries or drinks there, but based on their definition of “burger”, I wouldn't really think they'd be too good. Not that I expected much, but you kind of have to try it just for the novelty factor.

Anyway, it was late and were were tired by this point, so we hopped on the subway and went back to the hotel. The subway systems there are pretty extensive, so you can get to a lot of places without a car, which is nice when you're visiting. Some of the stations, though, are so huge and complicated. To get from one line to another line in a few of the stations, it involves walking underground for a mile or more, going up and down stairs and turning around so much that it's a wonder you didn't wind up back where you started.

Japan, Day 6: Ticking off the natives

Today was the inevitable day in any of my travels where something goes wrong or upsets me. It started out innocuously enough. I slept in while Bobby went to class, did a bunch of homework from my hotel room, lived through another earthquake...you know, the usual. Then I went out to get lunch and explore the city a bit while the staff cleaned the room. I walk around a bit, window shopping, and after not too long, I find myself right in front of this big temple. I don't go in, because it's all in Japanese, and it doesn't really look tourist-friendly. I did snap a few pictures from the outside before moving on, though.

Temple

Lion in front of what appears to be an incense-burner on the left

Other lion in front of part of the temple and a little thing that fortunes go on

A sign in Japanese that probably tells me what this temple is all about

Family leaving the temple

After the temple, I decide I'm hungry enough to eat and adventurous enough to try something unfamiliar. I find this place that makes seafood dumplings and get a batch of them.

Food

Now, one thing you should know about Japan is that eating in public, especially while walking, is frowned upon. You should also know that there are approximately three park benches in all of Kashiwa (or any regular, non-tourist city), because the Japanese don't like to sit down or stand still for too long. They're like sharks; if they stop moving, they'll die. At any rate, I can't go back to my hotel to eat my food yet, because I know that they're still doing room cleaning. I find one of the elusive park benches to sit down on and prepare to enjoy my meal. I don't even have my food opened yet, and this woman comes out of an electronics store that's semi-in-front-of the bench that I'm on (but by no means is it indicated anywhere that the bench is affiliated with the store or that you aren't allowed to eat there), and she starts yelling at me in Japanese. She's also making an X with her fingers, a sign which means “no” or “we don't have that” or apparently “don't sit here, gaijin”. I'm quite flustered, but I managed to remember how to say that I don't understand Japanese, which I know she heard and understood, and instead of going slower, attempting to speak English (because they all know at least a little bit of it here), or trying to communicate exactly what mortal sin I had committed through any other kind of gesture, she keeps yammering on in Japanese and making the “no” sign at me.

I don't know what her problem was, but I got up and left. I speculated that maybe she didn't want me eating there, but later I explained what happened to Bobby and he said that maybe she just didn't approve of my outfit. What was I wearing? Jeans and a t-shirt. Nothing offensive was written on it (nothing was written on it at all), it wasn't red (sometimes considered a bad luck color, though usually just when it's a gift), and it wasn't exceptionally revealing. Apparently, however, it was too low-cut for the Japanese because it showed a little collarbone. There's a weird contradiction in Japanese fashion. Girls can wear skirts that are so short that you can see their underwear, and shorts so small and tight that you don't have to imagine what's under them, but God forbid you show any kind of cleavage, collarbone, or shoulder, because that makes you a slut. I've seen it, too, where there's some schoolgirl flashing the whole world her panties while she's got a turtleneck on. It just doesn't make any sense to me. This shouldn't be surprising, I guess, coming from the nation where it's a cardinal sin to show affection in public, but you can buy porn at every convenience store and used panties from a vending machine.

At any rate, I walked around town upset for a little longer (not caring who saw me wipe my nose...another faux pas), until I knew for certain my room wouldn't be occupied, and then I went back to the hotel to eat my food and cry for like an hour. I did stop on the way for something sweet to cheer me up, which wound up being part of a belgian waffle filled with raspberry cream. Today was just not really my day. I had been getting frustrated with the complete language barrier all week up to this point, and bored with doing stuff on my own while Bobby was training, and sick of all the earthquakes, and the stupid woman who couldn't just ignore the gaijin doing something out of the ordinary and get on with her life was kind of the last straw. I was sick of Japan and wanted to go home.

I tried eating once I got back to the hotel, but after starving all afternoon, I'd lost my appetite. It's a shame, too, because the seafood balls were actually pretty good (I even liked the seaweed flakes on top), but they went to waste. There was a sizable earthquake again, but I didn't really care this time. I pretty much just slept and waited for Bobby to come home. When he did, he had cookies for me with chocolate inside them that was all melty and delicious, and that helped me feel better.

Japan, Day 5: Adorable cakes and ninjutsu training

I was particularly tired for some reason this morning, so I slept in while Bobby went to more ninjutsu classes. Frankly, I don't know how he does it. I'm tired just thinking of how many hours he's spent training so far, and we're still here for a few more days. There was another sizable earthquake in the morning, and there were smaller tremors throughout the day, though not as scary as the one yesterday. Bobby came home from class and we went on a quest to find a scroll for Bobby to have the grandmaster paint the name of Bobby's dojo on. We didn't end up finding one, but we did find some nice boards for painting, so each of us got one so that we could ask Soke (pronounced soh-kay [that's kind of the grandmaster's nickname]) to paint us each a picture. Lots of people get stuff done by him, and while I'm here, I figure, why not? We need more stuff on our apartment walls anyway, and how cool would it be to have a personalized painting from Hatsumi Sensei? While we were out, we also indulged in another Japanese specialty: adorable desserts.

Cute cakes

More cute cakes

Even more cute cakes

Some of the most adorable ones

My cake

Bobby's cake

There's cherry filling!

They even wrap them nicely (they wrap just about everything you buy at a department store nicely)

Then we went to the grandmaster's class. I trained with one of the only three other girls visiting the honbu this week. I made sure to snag someone before class so that Bobby would have a chance to train with someone a bit closer to his level rather than being stuck with me. It worked out well for him, which I'm glad about. Again, the class went really fast and I didn't really get much out of it, but it was fun. When we took our break, Bobby and I lined up with our boards to get paintings done. I asked for a picture of a turtle, and Bobby asked for a picture of two samurai battling. They both came out nice, but Bobby's was not quite what he'd expected. Soke is well known for his sense of humor, so if you ask him to draw whatever he wants, it's probably going to be a naked lady or a cat with giant balls. Therefore, I was not surprised when instead of a serious picture, Bobby's was these little cartoon samurai and one of them had the bump on his head and the ouch face from being hit by the other one. I think that's hilarious, and Bobby liked his picture too.

My turtle

Bobby's samurai

After that, Bobby and I had supper at this nice little restaurant. It was one of the traditional ones where you had to take your shoes off and you sat on the raised part of the floor with a low table on these little mats. There wasn't a menu per se, but little paper signs all in Japanese (no pictures) hanging up around the walls of the restaurant with prices on them. I let Bobby order for us both in this instance. We got chicken on a stick and it was really good. When we asked the woman who presumably runs the place who was waiting on us to take our pictures, she was happy to, but only if we made the peace sign, which all Japanese people apparently have to make in just about every picture they take. It was funny. The people at this place were really nice. Kind of made me wish I did understand a little bit of Japanese.

Peace!

Japan, Day 4: Training, earthquake

Bobby and I woke up early and had breakfast in the café inside the hotel. Their idea of “western style” breakfast is kind of interesting. There was what appeared to be a fried egg...okay, normal so far...except it looked kind of weird and the yolk tasted funny...but whatever. Then there was fruit, two pineapple pieces and a strawberry. That's good. And yogurt, plain but semi-sweetened yogurt with kind of an odd texture. And a little cup of miso soup (by the way, they drink their miso soup out of little tea cups rather than eating it in a bowl with a spoon like we do in America). Kind of an odd choice for breakfast, but whatever. There was also a small garden salad, a small bit of potato salad, a little bit of corn, cooked but cold broccoli with mayo on it (They seem to love mayonnaise here, and they'll put it on just about anything...yuck), bread and butter, and get this – meatloaf – for breakfast! The meatloaf, strangely enough, was actually the best part of the whole thing. Oh, and when I asked for milk for a drink, they asked me heated or iced. I chose iced, thinking it weird that they'd offer warm milk (hardly anyone drinks warm milk in the States anymore, and even so, I'd only heard of drinking it at bedtime). And they actually meant iced. Not just cold, but milk with ice cubes in it. How very strange some things here are.

I went with Bobby to the first ninjutsu class of the day, because a man named Shiraishi was teaching it, and Bobby had been saying that I had to take at least one class with Shiraishi-sensei because he was so friendly. He was, indeed, very nice and the class went slow enough for me to actually catch on to a couple of things, unlike when I was in the other class, so that was fun. Afterwards, we went to this little tabi shop in town. Tabi are those socks that have the big toe separated from the other four. It's like a mitten for your foot. That's the traditional footwear for ninjutsu (they have tabi shoes as well for outside training), and the adorable old woman who runs the shop makes her entire living because the the main dojo for Bujinkan ninjutsu is right down the street. I think that's just wonderful. Then we got lunch at an Italian-style Japanese restaurant in town. I was a little bit afraid of what they thought Italian food was supposed to be like, but it wasn't that bad. Bobby had spaghetti bolognese, and I had something I don't recall that was kind of like a rice lasagna (meat, cheese, and sauce cooked on top of rice). It was all pretty good. They have some strange sodas here, which we both tried. Mine, C. C. Lemon, is this very lemony soda, not very sweet, but still not too sour, and it's got a ton of vitamin C in it. Bobby's was this green soda that was melon-flavored. He liked it, but I thought it was kind of weird. Anyway, it was back to the honbu for Bobby to take a more classes, and I went back to the hotel to do some homework.

Me taking a stance in front of the honbu

Bobby in stance in front of the honbu

At some point in the middle of the afternoon, the hotel room started to shake. I'd felt this before, so I didn't pay it any mind. But then it just kept going. Most of the tremors up to this point had lasted less than a minute. This one went on for probably a full five, and on top of that, the shaking got worse and worse as it went. The other ones I could either barely feel, or they only made me feel like I was on a moving train. This one, however, was big. The whole room was visibly moving back and forth, and I could hear the vibrations in the earth. It was really scary. I think the worst part about it was the fact that I was by myself. Bobby wasn't going to be back until much later in the evening, and it's not like I know anyone else here. I'd heard from Bobby later that he was outside when it happened, and he could actually see the ground moving, like there was a dragon under the surface, is how he described it. There was no damage, though, to the structures around us and nobody was injured. The only after effect on my hotel room was the internet cutting out for a little while. It isn't the best connection in the world to start with, so that wasn't a huge deal. It only freaked me out because it was my line of communication to the outside world and it had been cut off, but it was restored in less than an hour. I was still unsettled for the rest of the evening until Bobby came home safe. There were other tremors almost at regular intervals for the rest of the night, but none as bad as that first one. I found out later that this one was much closer to the surface than some of the earlier ones, so even though the magnitude was about the same, even a little less than the one the night we got here, the one that was further underground we didn't feel as much. The Japanese do know what they're dealing with, though. The modern buildings are all built to withstand violent shaking, and in many places, hanging light fixtures are not to be seen. In my hotel room, for instance, there's nothing on the ceiling that can fall on me, the desk is sturdy, and the mirrors are all on one wall (making it easy to avoid them in case they fall and break). Even the window has solid shutters that close in front of it to keep you away from the glass.

Japan, Day 3: Cherry blossoms and turtles

I woke up early/was already up when Bobby had to get up early and go to a couple of morning classes. I'm pretty sure breakfast again consisted of something from the convenience store. I wandered around the shopping district some more, stopped in at Mr. Donut again, and found some really cheap strawberries that were delicious. I also came across a pet shop that made me want to cry. It was tiny and down some back alley and they had turtles maybe ten to a tank (if you can call the little plastic box they were in a tank) with maybe an inch of water in the bottom. They were all piled on top of each other trying to bask to stay warm from the sun, and it looked like almost all of them had some kind of shell issue going on. These were the juvenile turtles, about the size of one's palm or one's hand. Then they had two other tanks of hatchlings, twenty or more each, in the same inch or two of water. They were selling them dirt cheap, too. The whole operation was probably illegal. I didn't have my camera with me at the time, so no tragic turtle pictures as of yet. I may find my way back there later in the week, though.

At any rate, I spent the rest of my day mostly in the hotel doing homework or sleeping, waiting for Bobby to get back from class. When he did, we hopped a train into Tokyo to go see the cherry blossoms, or sakura. We were going to visit the imperial palace, but discovered that they closed pretty early. We did, however, walk around one of the parks in Tokyo, visit a shrine that held an ancient warrior's decapitated head in a box, got baked sweet potato and ice cream from street vendors (they have sakura flavored ice cream!), and took many pictures of the sakura petals. Below are some of the better ones, though we took many, many more.  **Don't forget: You can click on any picture for a larger version.**

People leaving water for the spirit at the shrine

Giant koi in the moat around the imperial palace

Sakura close-up

Bobby and me with sweet potato

Sakura overlooking the river and highway

Japanese modern art (just as perplexing as American modern art)

That would be a rose TREE, not a rose bush

Sakura over the water

Ground cracked by earthquake (Don't worry, it's roped off and we didn't tread on it)

Bobby and me under the sakura trees (Awwwwwww!)

Weird freaking tree

Some flowers along the walking path

We're growling along with the lion statue

Entrance to the main sakura walk

Look at all the petals in the water

Bobby trying to steal the lion's ball

Some of the trees had crutches so they wouldn't bend too far or break

There were so many sakura trees

Blossoms in the dark

Boats you could row down the moat in (we didn't get there early enough to do that this time)

More blossoms at night

I think this was the night where there weren't any tremors, until I woke up to pee at about 6 in the morning, and as I'm going back to bed, thinking, “Huh, no aftershocks tonight...” the room starts to rumble and shake. At this point, I've given up on having an earthquake-free night's sleep, and I've stopped counting them, because they apparently don't want to stop anytime soon. Still no damage to where we are, thankfully, and they've been relatively mild so far. Just kind of annoying/unsettling.