Silver Week: Odawara and Hakone

This week started with ‘Silver Week’, a very long weekend formed by the co-incidence of several holidays within the same week. Under Japanese law, any day preceded and followed by a regular national holiday must also a holiday. This week, Monday and Wednesday were both holidays, thus Tuesday was too. Silver Week’s name comes from two sources: first, by being the smaller cousin of May’s Golden Week, but also because one of the holidays is Respect the Aged Day.

So Keiko and I had several days off together, but apart from attending a friend’s wedding (with the preparatory shopping), he had no plans going into the week. We eventually decided to visit Odawara,  which we should have done while living in Sagamihara when we were a lot closer, but as serial procrastinators we never
made it.So on Wednesday morning, we found ourselves on a train with no idea what to expect besides a castle and a long ride.

We took the JR Tokaido line for over an hour, and I sat beside an old guy chatting with a young couple on the other side. When they got off in Yokohama, he began to talk to another couple, then later an older lady until just before Hiratsuka, he started talking across me and to Keiko, interrupting my Scribblenauts frustrations (some of those puzzles are hard!).

At 86 years old, he was making the journey from Kawasaki to four hillside ancestral graves to make offering of fruits and vegetables. The holiday, which celebrates the Vernal Equinox, is traditionally spent visiting family graves and regardless of how heavy his produce-laden bag and how high he’d have to climb, this gentleman was going to continue the tradition.

A child of Kanagawa, born in Zama, he told us he was born after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and jokingly warning us to watch out for the 20XX Tokai Earthquake after he dies. He reminisced about the various stops along the line, told us about the rivers and swimming spots, and fondly remembered boat trips in Sagami Bay. It was a bit awkward but he was a lovely guy. Still, I was relieved when the train terminated in Odawara.

After seeing off the old man at the top of the escalator, we made our way to the castle. He had told us that the castle was 30 minutes away on foot, so we should get a bus. He also said we wouldn’t be able to see the castle from the station, but we glimpsed it from the overpass and decided to set off on foot. It took no more than 10 minutes to the foot of the castle. Perhaps subsidence has moved it closer over time, or perhaps the old man’s memory is not as good as it used to be.

We wandered around the old lower bailey but, with no surrounding walls, it was difficult to notice. There was a street music festival and a car boot-like area of stalls hawking crap, unwinnable games and mediocre Japanese festival treats – takoyaki, yakisoba, shaved ice, etc. The music wasn’t all that bad. The band were belting out great classic rock music (Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones) but the singer’s warbling was really letting down the side. There were some rowing boats in the moat too, but Keiko was getting dangerously hungry and with no restaurants around I made the executive decision (as husband and whiner-in-chief) to climb up to the castle and look for something there. I really should have learnt what to expect by now.

The path up to the main bailey was flanked by traditional walls, but it was rather unremarkable. There was a zoo at the top, but halfway up we read that the Indian elephant there had died.  Around its now-empty enclosure were flowers and people signing a memorial book. Without an elephant, the zoo was simply a cage full of monkeys – uninteresting ones at that.

That left only the motte to keep us happy. The price of admission was ¥1200, and there were five floors of exhibits, which seemed pricey. There were a few pieces of art, several weapons and sets of armour, and the typical collection of pots and lacquerware. No Japanese museum would be complete without models, and this castle doesn’t disappoint. What has always struck me about Japanese museums is that there are far too many replicas and models. I don’t really care to pay to see replicas of letters, claywork, or other such minutiae. One floor had photos of castles around Japan, one small photo of each: very skippable, very disappointing. The top of the castle had the standard observation deck. A handful of signs pointed out features in the distance, but while I could see the sea, maybe even as far as Chigasaki or Fujisawa, with Izu in the distance, it was all rather dull.

Perhaps I’m just jaded, but the preservation and display of history in Japan has always struck me as half-hearted: concrete replaces wood, gravel replaces dirt, classics are lost and are replaced by Meiji Period replicas instead. There are very few original castles as, made of wood, they were lost to fire during Japan’s many disturbances and wars. Preservation has given way to reconstruction. I would love to see more of the style of display seen at Warwick Castle or Nijo Castle in Kyoto: rooms laid out and decorated as one would have seen in their original condition. That, however, is unlikely at this stage. Shamefully, most castles have been hollowed out and made into generic galleries for relics and replicas alike.

After a break for donuts, we tried to decide what we would do next. There was little in Odawara to see, so I suggested we head to Hakone-Yumoto for a look around. Hakone is a mountainous region in Kanagawa’s western mountains. It is famous for its onsen resorts. Scattered throughout the mountains are hot springs that have been used to cleanse and heal the body for centuries. However, due to a lack of time planning, we didn’t have chance to bath. Instead we got to enjoy the region’s fresh, cool mountain air as we walked around.

We stopped at Hakone-Yumoto, the terminal of the Odakyu line, and bought tickets for a Romancecar (EXE6) ride home. Odakyu’s Romancecars are limited express trains. They can take you from Shinjuku to Hakone-Yumoto with only a couple of stops. They are reasonably priced (from Hakone-Yumoto to Machida cost us only ¥600 on top of the standard ¥870 fare), and save a great deal of time (we shaved off 20 minutes). You get a seat and a trolley service, which might be typical back home but is rare here. Compared to the usual train ride, a Romancecar feels like business class.

It was a national holiday and the main street of Yumoto was crowded with Japanese and foreigners alike. Most of the attractions can be found at Gora, slightly further up the Hakone-Tozan Line (an extension of the Odakyu line), so we contented ourselves with a walk along the town’s river. I hoped to see the Tamadare Falls, a waterfall not far from the station, but there was construction work on the bridge to cross over to it and there didn’t seem to be any other way across, so we walked on by.

We spent 3 hours walking in and around Hakone-Yumoto, but there was really little point going if we wouldn’t have a bath. Next time though, we’ll head straight over to Gora and stay overnight, the way you’re meant to do it, but for now, at least we know it’s a nice respite from the Tokyo heat. Plus, next time we can skip Odawara and its cage of monkeys.

Branching Out

I’m considering expanding my blog (structurally) to account for the various kinds of posts I make. Not sure how I will do it yet, but I have some ideas.

This blog basically consists of 4/5 strands:

1. Personal posts: these are the posts I write for my friends and family so that they know I’m alive;
2. Living in Japan posts: these I write to help those in a similar situation;
3. Political/Military posts: these I write to further my academic interests.
4. Photography posts: these posts deal solely with my attempts to get to grips with my DSLR.
5. Reviews: these cover books and movies, but I’m looking to expand that to maybe iPhone apps (I go through a few) and so on.

Somehow, probably using categories, I will separate out the different parts so that different visitors can keep to what interests them.

Anyway, once work quietens down (the reason for my recent silence) over the o-bon holiday, I will get to work.

Review: Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

It’s been a very long time since I read a work of fiction, my mind is frequently more concerned with matters of fact or opinion that I hadn’t found the time to indulge in the other side of reading. With this admission, I was extremely happy to find myself reading some of the works of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a master of the short story in Japan’s Taisho Period.

In this volume, Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (Penguin Classics), skilfully translated and collated by Jay Rubin, one can find some of Akutagawa’s best and most famous stories. Standing out are In a Bamboo Grove (the plot of which formed the basis for Kurosawa’s Rashomon; the setting and plot came from the other titular short story, also presented in this volume), Hell Screen, Dragon: The Old Potter’s Tale, Horse Legs, and Spinning Gears.

In a Bamboo Grove is the story of a murder told from the various perspectives of its participants who show a range of motives and present a confused and by no means definitive representation of the true events. Shuttered off like a stage, what went on in the bamboo grove remains a mystery except for its outcome, not even the ghost of the dead man can present us with the truth. Indeed, it is as if we are incapable of both knowing and telling an objective truth, which is a much appreciated lesson in ontology.

Hell Screen is a tour-de-force, and a dark one at that. How far will one man go for his art? Just as Akutagawa seemed to be haunted by his work, as presented in the autobiographical Spinning Gears, so too is Hell Screen’s protagonist, a man seemingly lacking in humanity. The depiction he paints of hell and the process of painting it is as horrifying as the real thing and leads to his pathological demise.

Akutagawa’s mother grew insane after his birth and this has indelibly affected his prose. In Dragon, he brings forth questions about faith and mass hysteria, can we believe even something we know to be false? If enough people believe it, does it make it true? A Buddhist priest seeks to teach the others a lesson for mocking him, and so he starts a hoax: a dragon is residing in a nearby pond and will soon rise to the heavens. The rumour spreads and even the big-nosed priest finds himself wrapped up in the hysteria.

In Horse Legs, a man is mistakenly killed by the gods and loses his legs. He is kindly resurrected but with the legs of a horse. The protagonist slowly loses his mind to the feral instincts of the horses, his second nature overcoming his normal mode. This seems similar to the process that Akutagawa undergoes himself in Spinning Gears, where he feels the weight of madness.

Akutagawa, a man troubled by his supposed nature, crafted several masterpieces, many of which are presented here in considered thematic context. Quick to read and a proven page-turner, I highly recommend it.

One Year Past

Monday was our first anniversary. Any such occasion gives you pause for reflection, and looking back, I have to say that while the year has been difficult for us at times, we’re in a situation a million times better than where we started. Tough experiences at work, settling in, lack of time together, and topping it off with the miscarriage, we’ve had our good times and our horrible times, but finally we seem on the up and up. We have a home that we love in an area that is great for future family, the only thing that I really want is to change my job to be in something with either more convenient working hours or better pay, but there is no rush on that for now.

Monday was a national holiday, but not one for my company, so I asked for a day off months ago so that we could do something on the Sunday and unwind on the next. We really didn’t have a clue what we would do until the last few days. We discussed having a night in/around Kawasaki, but that was a little risky for me (we barely know the place and we’d probably be disappointed), or we could have gone on a buffet cruise in Yokohama, which seemed really nice (all-you-can-eat Chinese) but a little pricey (¥7500 each). In the end we settled on visiting Shibuya’s Bunkamura to see a Trompe de l’Oeil (Trick of the Eyes) exhibition. At some point though, I wished that we hadn’t.

I have never been to such a popular exhibition. The queue to buy a ticket was a 30 minutes long squeeze into sweaty, hot demarked lines at the end of which was a calamity: customers who already had tickets were being delayed from entering the exhibition because, as one member of staff put it, those who had bought the tickets on the day had been standing in a queue for the last 30 minutes. When we got out of the first queue, we joined the second queue while those around us strolled into the hall. The guy in front of us, with his family, was fuming and laid into the attendant. It was a bit of a farce.

Inside, we were confronted with another queue, although we were free to swan around in whatever fashion we wanted. Keiko went off, I stayed in the queue, wanting to see the pictures close up… but the queue barely moved. At picture after picture, people were either stood staring for 5-10 minutes, or kids were completing tasks in their programmes, or people were pushing their way in so that we couldn’t move forward. It was a rabble, people squeezing their way in and out of the crowds around the pictures, stabbing at the air around the paintings (despite the fact I was told not to use my fan near the paintings because they were ‘sensitive’); the usual Tokyo rudeness had migrated from the trains to the gallery and the staff were oblivious. Not to mention the fact that I have never heard such nonsense as was coming out of some of the attendees’ mouths. Some clearly did not get the idea that the paintings were tricks, although its a testament to the Renaissance artists that managed to fool even a modern audience. Others were clearly there to fulfil their monthly pretentiousness quota.

After an hour or so in the scrums, but with a great deal of art under our belts, we headed back into the streets for a drink. It’s summer now: the humidity is unmistakeable, even if I feel less affected by it than I did in my previous two Japanese summers. So to stay somewhat fresh (as by now I was soaked with sweat) we had regular breaks for drinks. We were meant to visit another exhibition, a free one, but it was in a cafe and was awkwardly located, so we headed to Parco to see a Spongebob Squarepants exhibition which was tiny and free. It wasn’t really worth the effort in any case, but I did get to spend a long time in the bookshops in Parco’s basement floor.

Come 7pm, we were off to dinner on Parco’s 7th floor, a European dining bar (‘Fancy going for a European?’) called Marvellous. We had coupons for free champagne, and ate our way through German sausages (the best sausages I’ve ever had in Japan) and some chicken and steak. It is the Japanese style to share the dish, and despite this being a European-style eatery, the dinner plates were big and accompanied with sideplates. Not to mention the fact that the food came out at ridiculous times: our drinks came before we finished our champagne, and no dish arrived at the same time as another. We were disappointed with the service, but our stomachs were satisfied.

Over dinner we debated where to go next, settling on a British Pub and then karaoke (I had to twist Keiko’s arm a lot to get this one – she said she hates karaoke). The British Pub, the Aldgate, which had nice decoration but expensive drinks (although if you like Kettle Chips, you’re in for a treat). It was there I discovered that Heinz (of ketchup and baked beans fame) is actually an American company, a fact that haunts me even now. We didn’t stay at the Aldgate long, for a British Pub there was a noticeable lack of foreigners and no-one was really chatting to anyone else, plus I was itching to get some karaoke in.

We arrived at Big Echo and we were presented with a new style DAM machine with a new points system and remote. It was all pretty cool. Keiko sang and she said she enjoyed herself and wouldn’t mind going again, which is a result. Not really too much to report here though, I sang my usual variety and Keiko tried far too many songs that she either didn’t really know the tune to or needed a second part, but it was fun, as usual.

To wrap up our evening, we ventured into Shibuya’s love hotel-packed district of Dogenzaka. For the uninitiated, love hotels are hotels made specifically for romantic trysts. You can ‘rest’ (i.e. pay per hour), or ‘stay’ (i.e. pay for the night). Our choices for the night had been all-night karaoke (fairly expensive, about ¥12,000 all told – plus it’s impossible to sleep), an internet cafe (where we might have found a comfortable room and even have had a communal shower, but it’s hardly the way you want to spend a night as a couple), a business hotel (¥20,000 or up and difficult if you don’t book in advance), or a love hotel. Turns out it wasn’t that expensive either: for ¥16,300 we received a double bed, a TV, and an awesome bathroom with a mist sauna and jacuzzi-style bath (and a TV in the bathroom, which when I turned it on was switched to a porn channel). Okay, so you don’t really have room service (unless you’re looking for kinky outfits) and your bed has probably been soiled thousands of times, but truly, it was the best option.

Our room had some added spice: called Pinky Queens, it was, I guess, for bondage. The butterfly on the right actually has Velcro wrist and ankle ties for something… I wasn’t quite sure what, but I had my money on riding crops. There was also a strange chair with an unknown but undoubtedly kinky purpose. We hadn’t realised what the room held in store for us, but creepy butterflies aside, it wasn’t a bad place to unwind, bathe (oh god, yes – what better way to beat the heat) and rest. Plus we had the added pleasure of awkwardness as other customers walked in as we were trying to find a room, and also of watching the other customers in the district pour out into the rather pungent Shibuya streets in the early morning.

All in all, a good night. Certainly one of the  best nights since we arrived. We rounded it off shopping for Keiko’s birthday-cum-anniversary present – a coffee machine. She can’t complain and neither can I. One year down, many more to come.

The New Place

Thanks to everyone for the well-wishes, we appreciate knowing that your thoughts are with us. I’m not really ready to write up anything big at the moment, but I want to show you some photos of our new place.

I took these the day we moved in, and they’re admittedly rubbish, but they give a taste of our place. I’ve put them next to photos of our old place for comparison (those too are from the week we moved in).

Old Bedroom (left), New Bedroom/Tatami Room (right)

Old Kitchen (left), New Kitchen (right)

Old Living Room (left), New Living Room (right)

What a difference a year makes!

Anyway, we’re settled in and have all the furniture we need (there is a desk, not shown above, and a sofa). The whole thing looks and feels like the home that it is. We couldn’t ask for much more. Despite the amount of junk everywhere in the above photos, by the third day, I had finished unpacking entirely. I’ll get some updated photos up when I’m up for it.