Technically it was more like seven days if you subtract the travel time, but the trip to Japan was interesting and enjoyable.
If anything, Bob and I agree that our next trip to Japan would
bypass Tokyo and stick to Kyoto and Osaka. We didn't get a chance to hit Nara, the historic city that was Japan's first capital (it's celebrating its 1300th aniversary this year), but it's definitely on the agenda for next time.
We loved Kyoto, it just had a more relaxed atmosphere than Tokyo, and seemed less Westernized and frenetic. Kyoto also gave us a chance to see a little of the countryside of Japan. You have to take a train and then a bus to get out to see the
Miho Museum, and it's definitely worth it.
The bus takes you on a route that runs alongside one of the tributaries of the Seta River and you get to see how people in the suburbs and then the country live and work and commute. Plus, with it being Spring, the river was really moving.
Designed by I.M. Pei, it's a privately funded museum that was built on public land. The brainchild of Mihoko Koyama, an heiress to a textile fortune, it houses a pretty extensive collection of beautiful statues, pottery, sculpture and assorted curios from Asia, Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
As much as the collection is a fascinating look at how culture traveled East-to-West along what we call the Silk Road, you don't really go there for the antiquities. You go for the building and how it's built into the mountan and how it evokes a sense of peace and order.
It's based on a Chinese folk tale, not unknown to the Japanese, about a man who stumbles upon a beautiful, magical valley full of peach trees ...
And the museum tells the story with its structure: from the tunnel that leads to the entrance ...
... to the main window in the lobby, framed by a 300-year-old red pine that overlooks the valley.
We're I.M. Pei groupies, I guess. We love what he did with the Louvre, actually like the Javitz Center and we did get to see the master himself and his wife one night at the penthouse bar of the Mandarin Oriental. They had the best seats in the house, overlooking the Bank of China. Yeah, he designed that, too.
Kyoto is a foodie town and we kind of went out of our way to eat a lot while we were there. Lot's of
eel, and a righteous amount of soba. I think it's because there's almost a college town feel to Kyoto. It's human-sized and walkable and reminiscent in a lot of ways to Cambridge, Mass. or even Dublin, Ireland. But that also could have been the weather. It was changeable and rained all day Thursday.
We hit old Gion where the geishas work, but it was very subdued the night we were there. Oddly enough we met a young either Australian or New Zealand girl who worked as a waitress in the neighborhood. She was in full-on kimono and actually helped us hail a cab. Bob wanted to eat at a French restaurant, Le Bouchon, that had got some great reviews. It was over by Kyoto's City Hall, but that's about all we could figure out from the articles.
We never got her name, but it was charming to see her converse with the cab driver. Her pronunciation sounded flawless and even her facial expressions and mannerisms became quite Japanese. Kind of like how our Irish friend Paul Cody, who now a longtime resident of Masa, Italy, starts speaking with his hands, and purses his lips and uses his head and shoulders when he speaks in Italian. He just becomes Italian.
Anyway, she got us into the cab and over to the restaurant, which was a good French bistro, and after dinner we walked down to Kyomachi and Pontocho, two little streets adjacent to the Kamo River and the little canals that run alongside it. It's hard to describe, but Kyomachi is like St. Mark's Place in Manhattan: trendy shops, restaurants, theme bars and
porn, while Pontocho is this quiet, narrow lane, also crammed with restaurants, but not as gaudy. Pleasant and fun stuff.
Kyoto is also home to Tezuka Productions, the company that gave us both
Astro Boy and
Kimba the While Lion. The town fathers are very proud of this:
We went to Osaka for the final leg of the trip and we stayed at the Sheraton not too far from the city's trendy Namba district and Dotonbori, the place to go to get Tako Yaki, octopus balls as well as Starbucks, sushi and the local favorite,
Okonomyaki, a stuffed pancake.
This is pretty much a giant outdoor mall that runs parallel to the Dotonbirigawa River.
Oddly enough, the Japanese cities are very drab during the day, it's only at night that they really seem to have personality. I mean, we couldn't decide if Osaka was Japan's Pittsburgh, Manchester or San Jose. It's not as charming as Kyoto, but it's user-friendly, if somewhat dreary in places.
Still, it was home to
Spa World, a six-story theme-park like baths that caters to up to 5000 people at one time. Its hot water comes from a hot spring about 3000 feet below the ground and it's separated into different themes -- Europe, Asia, India, Japan, etc. They alternate the months as to where the men and women can go the participate. This month, the men got Europe while the women enjoyed their bathing in Asia.
What's interesting is how family-friendly it is. Fathers were there with there sons and they could bring daughters as well, up to a certain age, probably 5 or 6 I would say from what we saw. Since bathing is a national tradition, there are no hang-ups of grown men and children walking around naked or barely wrapped in towels. Can you imagine a place like this in the States? No way.
I treated Bob and myself to a one-hour massage and that was a nice way to relax from the traveling. Hotel beds, no matter how comfortable, are not your own bed, so it was nice to get the pinched nerves and knots kneaded out. Yes, a very pretty Japanese girl oiled-up and rubbed down 80-percent of my body (naughty bits were covered and untouched, it's a respectable establishment) for 60 minutes.
Awesome.
The Europe floor was appropriately themed with the Ancient Rome bath, Greece's medicinal pool, Spain's open air bath (with awesome waterfalls), but my favorite had to be Finland. This was based on a Finnish lodge and housed two saunas, one was the low-temperatyure, the other, the high. It was surrounded by a cold-water pool and housed in a room whose trompe l'oeil kept "Finland" constantly at dusk/dawn with the sun glowing on the horizon (at waist-level), the ceiling resplendent with aurora borealis and -- my favorite touch-- two wolf statues prowling the lodge's roof, one on point, the other baying at some unpainted full moon.
There are some things about Japan that I find odd. The love affair with giant robots. I mean, this giant bug was on top of a building in Osaka:
The people are unfailingly polite and we found them to be generous to a fault with their time. One elderly couple in Kyoto walked us not once, but twice to our destination. We kept running into them on our ramblings in Gion.
Yet, while the people are more polite than say in Hong Kong where people will go through you for a shortcut if needs be, you definitely get the feeling you are an outsider. That even if you learned the language and lived there a long time, you would always be a guest and never a native. Still, the food was great and Kyoto and Osaka are fun places to walk and eat and relax. We're glad we went and we'll be back.
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