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Japan:
Third
time
around
Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published in the
Reader Weekly
October 25, 2007
Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published in the
Reader Weekly
October 25, 2007
When you read this I’ll already be back in Duluth after our third trip to Japan, two in the last year and a half.
We visited our son and daughter-in-law in Tokyo where he is now working. The occasion was to visit our third grandchild, first granddaughter. We also took my 92-year-old mother-in-law. We spent most of our time in Tokyo with a weekend trip to Sendai to visit with our daughter-in-law’s extended family.
Narita, the main Tokyo airport, is a vast sprawling place (aren’t most modern airports), but it is rather void of decorations or even advertising. It also seemed quiet, but that may be because we were last off the plane. Another absence was wheelchairs; we needed one so Grandma didn’t have to walk so much. We came across an employee with an empty wheelchair, but he was off to help someone else. He sent us to a nearby JAL desk. After a bureaucratic delay, one young woman came out with a wheel chair and took us through crew passport control, baggage pickup, customs, on an automatic train to another building, and to the arrival hall where we finally met our son and his little family.
He had rented a seven-passenger van to haul all of us and our luggage. We were soon reminded that despite its large investment in public transportation, Japan still has an extensive car culture with its accompanying me-first attitude. There seemed to be four speeds on the toll way; a bit under the speed limit, the speed limit, a bit over the speed limit, and whoosh. Also, many abrupt lane changes.
As on our previous trip, our chauffeur didn’t find the correct route and it took a bit of extra time to arrive at his house. At least I didn’t have to warn him that he was low on gas like I warned his sister-in-law last year. As we got nearer his house, we were on progressively narrower streets. We went from four-lane two-way city streets, to supposedly two-lane winding streets among houses, to one-lane streets with bicycles and cars parked along one side. The proximity alarm on the van went off frequently. We ended up at the dead-end where he lives. He had to back up to return the van.
His house is a small duplex with combined living room, dining room, and kitchen as well as the bathroom downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. We had elected to stay at a nearby hotel. We had checked in and dropped off our luggage before we came to his house. After dinner he walked us back to our hotel. Wind through the streets, past a police post, turn at a major street, cross streetcar tracks, go over the subway tracks, down a flight of stairs, and around the corner to our hotel. When we retraced our steps by ourselves in the morning, we only doubted our next turn once. Just as I was ready to call our daughter-in-law, I saw a mailbox I had noted the previous night.
The walk was not without a mishap. As I was striding down one street, I stepped on a wet grate on the sidewalk and my feet went flying out from under me in a classic pratfall. I fell on my butt and then flat on my back. My first thought was about the computer in my backpack; was it all right? As you can see, it survived intact. It took a bit before the small of my back stopped aching. The stuff in my shirt pocket had gone flying. Luckily, the cell phone didn’t go down the grate, but I did lose a pen.
Our son lives in a quiet neighborhood, that is, mostly quiet. During the day there are a lot of crows constantly cawing; at night, the crickets are chirping away. On the other hand, the neighborhood around our hotel is noisy, klaxons and roaring motorcycles, beeps and the constant undercurrent of traffic. However, if we keep our window closed, we hardly hear any of it.
We open our window when the room gets a bit stuffy. There is no room air-conditioning. The upside is that unlike in most American hotels, we are not subjected to rooms far chillier than most people heat their homes in the winter. Our room has almost constantly been at 25° C. (77° F.), the equivalent of a nice summer day.
Japan is a wondrous mix of low-tech and high-tech: short women with short brooms sweeping the streets and animated billboards, rubber sink stoppers and automated toilet/bidets. We’ve seen fancy toilet seats in people’s homes, but we thought these were mostly seat warmers. When we sit on the toilet in our hotel room we think a horse has let loose because of the sudden whoosh of water. Each time we move on the seat, we get another whoosh of water.
We like to use stairs instead of elevators, but we can’t do so in our hotel. The stairs are outside and may be accessible to non-guests. So, the doors to the stairs are locked. However, one cannot just push on the door in case of an emergency. There is a keyed lock with the key in a little green box just below it. I can just imagine trying to find that key and then the lock in a smoke-filled corridor.
Red signs about the size of a car side-window are scattered along streets and roads that include the English words “Fire Hydrant”. In the city, there might be a standpipe mounted on a building within a few feet of the sign. In some neighborhoods and in rural areas, no hydrant is to be seen. They are buried in the street under a square access plate surrounded by a yellow outline painted on the pavement.
I first thought that Japan had superfast internet access. I watched an episode of “Little Mosque on the Prairie” at my son’s house without the jerkiness and waits I get in Duluth with my 256Kbps DSL. He thought he had 50Mbps access. Well, he misplaced a decimal point; he has a 5.0Mbps access. Qwest offers 7.0Mpbs in Duluth. Our hotel has 1.5Mpbs. That’s still fast enough to convince me to upgrade to 1.5 soon.
Food in Japan is not for the fussy. One could live on rice and noodles, but one can do that in the U.S. Large metropolitan areas like Tokyo also provide some cultural variety not found in Duluth, even those one would expect in Duluth, like a Swedish restaurant!
Our first meal out was at Lilla Dalarna, a tiny restaurant in Roppongi, the entertainment district. The food was more a fusion of Swedish and Continental, small elegant courses of typical Swedish ingredients. They even had punsch, a sweet liqueur that I haven’t even found in liquor stores in Duluth.
Since breakfast is included at our hotel we eat the same fare everyday. We accepted this because we generally eat oatmeal everyday at home. The offering is rice cakes, pickled vegetables, miso soup, and coffee. One can take as much as one wants or come back again and again. I was eating three rice cakes each morning, but found I was getting a bit round. We also got a can of orange juice from a vending machine. That was a bit of a pain because the staff parked the dish return cart right in front of it. We finally bought a liter of orange juice at a convenience store and put it in our room refrigerator.
More high-tech, low tech. The vending machines take thousand-yen notes (sort of a ten dollar bill) any which way, but the breakfast staff washed and dried the dishes by hand.
We joined our daughter-in-law’s family at the “half-way” point of a pension outside Sendai. A high-point was the feast we had for dinner.
In addition to the array above, there was also a huge platter of sashimi (fresh, raw fish slices) for all to share. I gave most of the food a try. The foil-wrapped item is a scallop in its shell on a small grill. It was better than any I’ve ever had. I ate about three quarters of the upside of the small fish. I quit when I got a mouthful of bones. I didn’t touch the crab because I thought it was too much work to get a little meat out of the legs. The only other thing I passed on was the shrimp. I didn’t want to eat the heads and I didn’t want to try to bite off the tails while holding the shrimp in chopsticks. Yes, people eat the heads of shrimp. My son, who moved green peppers from his plate to his mother’s as a ten-year-old, eats the whole shrimp. He also eats candied grasshoppers. I gave them a try but I don’t like chewing and chewing the chitin of either. I did take a bit of comfort that at least five others in our group of 17 didn’t touch the crab either.
Although we spent most of our time in Japan with family, we did get some sightseeing in. We went with some friends to Rikugien (Rikugi Gardens) in Tokyo, a centuries old park and garden surrounded by high-rises and noisy traffic. Except for the crows, it is very peaceful. One could spend all day walking and sitting.
I missed recording a crow that called “Ah-low, ah-low” because I spent too much time looking for it rather than just getting the sound.
In Sendai prefecture, we stayed at a pension in Shichigahama (Seven Beaches). We spent an hour or so walking one of the beaches. The scenery in general was great but the beach was littered with shells, a dead crab, many, many pieces of rope, a pair of swim goggles, and much other junk. However, I got some fantastic pictures, including surfers.
You can see many of these pictures on Flickr at
Look for my sets or collection on Japan.
We also took a boat tour of Matsushima Bay and walked on Fukuura island. Taking pictures on the boat was difficult. Either I went out on the small rear deck where all the smokers were or I took pictures through the windows.
Fukuura Island is reached by the bridge shown below. Foot bridges in Japan are often red whether they are made of wood or steel like this one.
I would have shown you more pictures of the island, but all the good ones were looking out across the water rather than inward.
Near the end of our stay, as we were walking to our son’s house, I said to my wife, “I could live here.” I do like cities with a complex infrastructure and a variety of things to do. However, this might have been my last visit. I liked being there, but I didn’t like getting there. Flying has just become a hurry-up-and-wait, cramped experience. I think I’ll just visit places I can drive in three days or less. Sayonara!
See also "Everyday Japan".
©2007 Melvyn D. Magree