Golden Week

Golden Week in Japan is what Memorial Day weekend is to the US. Everyone feels compelled to jump in their car and visit something. Only in Japan, Golden Week strings together 4 national holidays. It's a mad busy time. Here's my story. I wrote it in an email to Can the other day. It's a rushed, stream-of-thought piece (with horrific verb tense consistencies), but I think it fits the way I felt during most of the trip. Foggy from a lack of sleep, but determined to keep moving and to see and experience it all.

Leave Ota by night bus. It's raining. I sleep little. Arrive in Osaka at 8. Osaka is a big city. Aaron said it felt like New York. Main road is 10 lanes wide with an elevated highway above. Stumble around for the hotel. Ask everyone. Eventually find it. Capsule hotel. 25 dollars a night. Leave our bags. Get caffeine and food. Get on train to Nara. Is crowded. Walk. Tame deer everywhere in Nara Park. I feed a deer, pet a deer, pose for pictures with deer. Scruffy things. Force fed by hundreds of tourists who buy $1.50 bundles of "deer cookies." Look at temples and pagodas. Nothing special. Seen em at Kyoto and Tokyo. They look the same to me now. Keep walking. Wandering into a festival! Get okonomiyaki and grilled bamboo on a stick. Eat under a tree. Two young girls a few paces from us stop, turn inward, giggle. Courage gathered, they approach with a bag of chewy sours. They offer a piece to each of us, then sit down next to us. The process reminds me of how I had earlier approached the deer by offering bread. They are excited by our foreignness. We talk and giggle and take pictures before returning them to their mother who doesn't seem to mind that her two kids have been talking with strangers away from her sight. That's Japan for you. We walk on to the big attraction--Buddha. On the way I am stopped by two HS girls on an English assignment. Am interviewed. Name? Country? Have you eaten Japanese food? Do you like Nara? Where in Japan have you been? They give me a self-made pamphlet on Nara's deer, my name done in hiragana, and a promise to send a post card to my home (US) address. Awesome! Keep walking. Biggest Buddha in Japan. Housed inside the biggest wooden building in Japan. Both are jaw dropping. Japan is beautiful. Return to Osaka exhausted. Go out for food and drinks.

Day2 we get up early. Breakfast at the capsule hotel is nice. Two thick pieces of bread, hard boiled egg, and unlimited caffeine. No room there for a second night. We move on. Can't find the hotel we had previously booked. Walk into another and get a room. 15 dollars a night. Pallets on the floor. Neighborhood is Japan's dirtiest. Smells like piss. Get on Shinkansen to Hiroshima. Costs mucho dinero. 90 dollars one way. Only takes 1.5 hours for over 300 km though. We zoom. My ears hum and pop with pressure. Everyone but me sleeps. I write and watch the scenery fly. Trees and ocean glimpses. Small populations. Hiroshima is bigger than I thought it would be. We get confused about how to get to the Peace Park. Take the wrong bus, get off, get a taxi. Peace Park is having a festival. It's Greenery Day. Dance troupes. Concerts. A wedding. We pay our 50 cents to get into the museum. It's crowded. Devastating pictures. A watch stopped at 8:15. Small in its case, unworthy of the symbolism. There's a gift shop mid-way through. Sells t-shirts and history books. Modest, but still seems inappropriate. I tear up at the tricycle and helmet that were once buried with a 3 year old victim. Crusted with dirt and rust. A father's desire for safety, the helmet, did nothing. The child's belief in play, the tricycle, brought to a stop. The innocence of both were on display, buried, exhumed, made into relics. I hurry through the rest. Not listening to the tracks on my audio guide. Outside, a wedding on the main stage. Young girls dance to 80s music on a secondary stage. Large paper statues of cranes rise behind me on a lawn. I wait for my friends to emerge.

We all continue down the Peace Park. We stop at the monument to the girl who made 1000 cranes while dieing from radiation cancer. While looking, a Japanese man approaches us and makes small talk. Introduces himself as "Sun-flower." He directs us to a bench and takes pictures of us. First as a group, then just our faces. It's like a line-up. We aren't sure what he means do to with those photos.

We cross a bridge and see the remains of the A-Bomb Building. The fragile dome. The stripped walls. The rubble they never carted away. It's more moving than the museum. While looking there, a baseball game ends and crowds of people happy with their jerseys and sporty exhilaration flood the sidewalks. It's hard to be solemn in such celebration. Hiroshima was a self-contained lesson in disaster and the ability to recover, reconcile, and move through pain. It's impossible to look at the A-Bomb Building without seeing the modern towers rising up behind it.

On the Shinkansen back we are goofy. Is it the lack of sleep, or the need for relief from the day's emotions? We sleep early that night.

Day3. It's our last. We go to Himeji as early as we can. It's an hour away and 15 dollars. We have breakfast at place that has spent too much money on their tables. Heavy marble. I have spicy rice and miso soup. We walk towards the castle through a shopping corridor. It's manic. Finally we spot the castle in the distance. It's beautiful. Himeji is Japan's most famous castle. It's white and majestic. The crowds are immense. 6 bucks to enter,but it's worth it. Even the crowds couldn't keep me from enjoying the place. I find it hard to describe. Powerful. Elegant. We walked around in circles through 50 foot stone walls. The modern city laid out below seemed weak and inadequate. We stood in lines for hours to wind our way through the 6 floors of the main castle. Passed by displays of armor, swords, paintings, guns. The top floor had a shrine. Back in the town I bought omiyage for the staff, lusted after some rose flavored ice cream at a closed shop, and wandered into a festival set up for whatever holiday it was that day. Lunch was had at one of those festival tents. We all ate from the vendor that sold hot dogs coated in cheese rolled in an omelet, covered in ketchup, drizzled with mayonnaise. It was delicious and deadly.

Post Himeji, we went back to Osaka. Picked up our bags at The Sun Plaza and made our way to the bus station. Ate dinner at the station at an over priced Indian place. My mutton masala was 13 dollars. One more hour to kill meant shopping. I bought 3 complementary bracelets from an Indian import store for 9 dollars. Some gum for the road. A bottled tea. Our bus was nearly half an hour late. We boarded. I began a book. They turned out the light at 930 to the disgruntlement of all our group. Got some decent sleep. Woke at 330 in desperate need to go the bathroom. No toilet on the bus. Muster the courage to ask the bus driver about a bathroom. Am rewarded with an answer, and a good one at that. 10 more miles. Dawn at 5. I'm awake. Arrive in Ota at 7. Our group splits. I board a train to Kizaki. Get off the train. Can't find my bike. I circle the lot three times. It's missing. Someone has stolen my bicycle. Am sad, but too tired to feel deeply. Walk home. Fall asleep shortly afterwards.

Pictures are in the sidebar.

Adventures in Tokyo

Since I had no family to visit or turkeys to eat, I decided to go to Tokyo to visit my friend, Margalit, for my Thanksgiving Day holiday. Friday the 23rd is a national holiday in Japan. It translates as Labour Thanksgiving Day, but apparently signifies nothing to the Japanese other than a day off from work.

Going into Tokyo by myself was the first adventure. It only took two hours, but required me to change trains four times. I brought a book to read for the trains, but didn't get through as many pages as I had hoped since I was wary about missing a stop. My first train wasn't doing me any favors either. Trains have an electronic message board telling the next stop in both Japanese and English. However, my first train's message board was broken, meaning that the conductor just called out the approaching stops in Japanese. I eventually caught onto the words he was using and could isolate the name of next station which allowed me to relax and focus on my book.

Finally arriving in Tokyo around noon, I tried to find the meeting place Margalit and I had decided on. Unfortunately, I exited the train station in a really strange and far away place. I finally found someone, and managed to ask them where Hachiko (a famous statue of a dog) was. Following their directions, I found Margalit whose blond hair made her very easy to spot.

We ran across an Indian restaurant and decided to eat lunch there. They had a special lunch deal where for 8 dollars you get two curries, a drink, and unlimited naan and rice. Updating each other on our lives in the last months, we gorged on the delicious food.

After lunch, Margalit took me to Yoyogi Park. The main walkway into the park was an avenue of street musicians. Evenly spaced, men and women, most with microphones and guitars, some with audiences, jockeyed for attention. They had stiff competition that day, since just beyond that avenue we found a large dance party in full swing.






It seemed to be an AIDS charity event with djs and craft and food stalls. We entered the crowd for a few minutes of dancing. The dj soon shifted into slower beats, and we left the scene.

We continued through more the of park, which despite being chilly was pleasantly filled with people.



Near the park is the Meiji Shrine. Meiji Shrine is one of the most famous shrines in Tokyo. It is dedicated to the souls of Emperor Meiji and his wife. At the front is a torii.



Farther inside is the shrine. There were lots of tourists, young children in kimonos, and perhaps due to the season: displays of vegetables. I even spied a traditional wedding setting up. The bride was wearing an elaborate and gorgeous white kimono. Her hair was stylized in shellacked rolls around her head. I would have loved to been able to watch her wedding. If I ever get invited to a Japanese wedding it would be such a highlight.

We left the shrine (taking time to browse the gift shop), and headed to Akihabara--a crowded shopping mecca known for its unique culture and girls who like to dress in highly stylized costumes. I bought some gloves for my cold hands, and caught sight of some girls wearing outlandish costumes. However, overall my experience in the crowded street wasn't pleasant. It was hard to move, it was so crowded.



By this time it was dark, so we took to the subway and went to Margalit's apartment, which is off a street labeled Happy Street. Her boyfriend came home a few minutes later and we headed out to find dinner. They took me to a small okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is a regional food that is similar to a pancake. You order a bowl of ingredients (I chose squid) which arrive raw at your table. A griddle in the middle of the table is heated and the contents of the bowl are dumped on it. Using spatulas you shape it into a pancake shape. When it is fully cooked, you take a small, flat spoon and scoop up portions. It is homey, warm, and delicious. I have to say it made for an excellent meal for my Japanese Thanksgiving.