Scarlett Letters

I've transcribed my first two journal entries, with pictures, from the Japan trip. Find them here:

Entry 1: Away we go
Entry 2: Wakamatsu Honten, Narita

Note: I haven't done much clean-up on the photos yet, so I apologize for the quality. They'll look much better when I post the set to Flickr.)

More to come later this weekend.

Fantastic day in Kyoto: Shrines, temples, temples, shrines, shopping, and geisha! Walked a hellacious lot. I'm coming home with some small and lovely souvenirs, and more pictures than I've taken since Africa. Can't wait to share them.

Today, I'm staying in Nagoya and poking around here, with plans to visit the Noritake plant and the Robot Museum if I can. We'll see what happens. The days have been full of unpredictability and surprise, never quite finishing what we want to do, but always enjoying ourselves.

Have I mentioned how hot it is here? 80s and 90s every day. We're sweating through clothes at a ridiculous rate. I now understand why the Japanese use parasols and carry little wash cloths with them to pat themselves off with. I've purchased a couple myself and have been using them religiously.

Must run. More anon....

So here we are in our last hotel before I depart for the states. We arrived only about 90 minutes ago via Shinkansen (the bullet train, of which I will post pictures when I get back). The hotel is opulent, and the view from our room includes the Spiral Tower, a school at least 50 floors high featuring a heliport at the top!

Our stay in Kawaguchiko, despite no signs of Mt. Fuji, was still lovely. Our ryokan/hotel was situated on Lake Kawaguchiko. From our room, we were supposed to have a view of Fuji, but the place was socked in the whole time we were there. We didn't let it stop us from sight-seeing around the area, though, even through the typhoon warning and the mild rain that followed. More on that when I transcribe my trip journal.

I've probably already posted about going to shrines--we went to more. We walked a lot. It's really been a wonderful experience in a culture that's both more familiar and more alien than I expected.

Tomorrow, while Jack's working, I'm taking the Shinkansen by myself to Kyoto for a day. Jack thinks I may end up doing it again the next day; we'll see. But this is one of the things I've really been looking forward to because I've read so much about geisha culture, the Gion and Ponto-cho.

I'm leaving out tons of details, mainly because I want to record them with my journal transcript. Suffice it to say, for now, that we've seen true beauty here, as well as some cultural ugliness I really dislike (the racism and misogyny in particular). Things continue to be awesome. Can't wait to be able to share pictures and tell the stories I want to tell.

The sun is rising over Narita as I write.

The plane landed at about 2:45 PM local time yesterday. Having packed only carry-on bags, I was able to go right to Immigration and Customs, which went pretty quickly. My passport now has a sticker in it, plus a stapled-in slip of paper with my personal information on it.

I hit the Japan Rail counter, got a ticket and found out where to catch the train. With 40 minutes to go before departure, I found a pay-by-the-minute internet kiosk, logged on, did some quick catch-up and clean up. Then it was off to the train.

For 320 yen, I got an 8 minute ride from the airport to Narita Station. The subway was clean and quiet (and scheduled!), with announcements in both Japanese and English--signage, too. In most ways it was a very Western experience, though it was funny to see Japanese in lighted, moving, dot-matrix displays. I simply never thought of Asian characters in that context before.

At Narita Station, I stepped on to the street and discovered east and west cheek by jowl: shrines to my left, McDonald's just down the street. I went to the tourist information booth, where the young woman at the counter helped me call the ryokan to get a lift to our first night's lodging.

While I waited for the car, I watched passersby: Japanese school kids, women mostly casually dressed in Western-style clothes. Traffic was chaotic--they drive British-style here on the left side of the road. Disconcerting. And all the cars have this sort of bubble-shaped boxy look.

After a 15-minute wait, the car showed up. The driver was very friendly but spoke almost no English--which proved to be true of our hosts as well, but I digress.

The ride to the ryokan was educational. The first glimpse of Narita it gave me was of narrow streets--only one vehicle wide--with margins on either side for pedestrians, bicycles and motorbikes. The streets were lined with lantern-hung store fronts, pagoda-style overhangs and incomprehensible signs--brightly colored and hand carved or washed out--over doors and windows. It was casually festive, as if such festivity were to be expected. The city is hilly, and the streets wind serpentine around the hills and rises.

I was welcomed to the ryokan by staff, including a sweet older woman in a kimono and obi. She showed me to our room, outside of which was a banner with Jack's name calligraphed.

The room a had a tiny foyer where we removed our shoes. The woman slid aside a screen and we entered the room proper, about 12 x 12, floor covered with tatami mats. At the center was a low table with two seats on the floor (basically seat backs and seat bottoms with pillows, no legs) and tea service ready and waiting. Opposite the door, separated from the main room by shoji screens, was a small alcove with a couple of more traditional chairs and a petite table, closet and windows. The woman made tea for me with quick, sure motions, weak green tea that was quite good--it may be the only way I can drink green tea, since I'm not especially a green tea fan. Then she departed. The table also offered a couple of cracker-cookies and hot hand towels.

Our room was in the front of the building, which is directly across the street from Narita-san Shinsho-ji, an enormous temple park, of which we had an up-close view through our window. My first order of business after I settled in was to go there.

You walk through a large gate into a massive square with temples all around. From there, it's an adventure--staircases, shrines, incense burners bigger than rain barrels, beautifully manicured gardens. The air is stained with the smell of incense smoke and flowering trees.

There are groupings of standing stones all over the park like silent sentinels, covered in Japanese characters--these fascinated me. I didn't know if they were shrines or markers or wisdom saying, and there was no one around to ask. (I found out later what they were. Stayed tuned to a future entry.) I was put in mind of Korean spirit poles through these had no faces.

I saw my first genuine pagodas: many-tiered, tall and beautiful, red and brown and gold. The carvings on all the buildings was beautiful, intricately detailed--fish, dragons, lions.

I arrived fairly late, so the longer I strolled, the longer the shadows became. The light turned golden and created dramatic shadows everywhere.

At 6 o'clock, joining in with the cacophony of birdsong and rhythmic cicada chirping,a chorus of carallons began to play. I turned around then and headed back to the ryokan.

The weather was hot and muggy, so I decided to take advantage of the public bath in the building. I had the place to myself as it turned out, followed onsen etiquette as scrupulously as I could--washing thoroughly first with the soap, shower, bucket and stool provided, then going into the public area unclothed, and staying quiet--and enjoyed the hell out of it. I had a good, long soak. It was a lovely, relaxing end to a long day or travel and site seeing.

By the time I returned to the room, the table and chairs had been moved and futon bedding had been set out on the floor. Futons in Japan are not what we're used to in the US, I discovered. Here, they are basically two thin pad-mats on the floor. They're remarkably comfortable. I laid down, read for a while, and then slept.

jackwilliambell showed up at about 10:30 PM, over-caffeinated and ebullient. I admit that I was, at that point, almost too tired to carry on conversation. But we did catch up briefly before I fell back into oblivion.

I'm mostly packed. I'm finishing printing out important information. My airport shuttle will pick me up somewhere around 4:30 AM.

I'm excited. I'm scared and a little freaked (typical for me before a trip--I know everything will be fine). I'm really tired.

The plan is to try to have some internet access and to journal as I can, but I can't really promise anything. There will absolutely be pictures and reports when I get home.

Have fun stormin' the castle, kids. Just put all your toys back when you're done. See you on the flip side.

Remember how a while ago I was kvetching for travel? Well, I've dug and pushed and shoved my finances into an order that will allow me to...go to Japan with jackwilliambell! He's going on business, but taking a few days to poke around before the meetings start, and I'm going with him. And we leave in a week!

Our plan is one night in a ryokan in Narita, a couple of nights in Tokyo, some time at a ryokan by Mt. Fuji, and then we go to Nagoya where he will be doing business. I expect to be taking a day trip from there to Kyoto (because, given my long-established interest in geisha culture, I couldn't not go to Kyoto--plus temples!). Beyond that, the itinerary is pretty wide open. We've talked about spending one evening at Tokyo Disney, which will be a cheaper alternative than a full day and will still get my smashed penny/pin fetish attended to. Everything else is up for grabs.

Japan was never on my list of places to go. It made a brief appearance on said list after I saw "Lost in Translation" years ago, but otherwise, my focus has always been on destinations in the other direction--Europe, the Middle East. This trip will take me way out of my comfort zone so I'm reading, reading, reading to get up to speed on history and culture (thank you, Lonely Planet!). I'm excited and I'm a little freaked out. I know it's going to be totally worth it--and I can't wait!