my japanese encyclopedia U-Z (well, Y)
it has been done - i think it took longer to write about this trip than it did to plan and execute the whole thing, but at least its complete now - i appreciate all of the kind comments that you have all said, and for those of you who couldn't wait for this to finally end, your day is here...
Ukiyo-E if you follow my trip diaries (and it seems that that's all this journal seems to be used for anymore), you know that we like to go to museums. And there are some excellent ones in Japan: my first time there we went to the Tokyo National Museum which is a huge complex filled with every aspect of Japanese art, from old Jomon pottery to samurai swords to woodblock prints to Japanese takes on westernized Impressionism. But as great as it is, it was pretty overwhelming to take in for a couple of hours (especially considering I underwent my first case of jetlag in the midst of the tour). I've been to several other museums in Tokyo since and saw some great exhibits, but they were all of a western persuasion (a huge Kandinsky exhibit, and a touring collection of modern art from the Met in NYC). And despite the pull of some other specials going on while we were there (a monumental De La Tour show, and a big exhibit on tour from the Louvre which granted I'd visited 5 months previously yet how can you really take anything in at that shambolic of a museum?), I really wanted to see a small collection of Japanese art.
Enter the Ota Memorial Museum Of Art. This is a tiny place in Harajuku that focuses on the huge collection of ukiyo-e prints collected by Ota-San. The museum changes its display completely every month, and almost by chance we happened to be there on the last day of May, for the final showing of a group of prints by ukiyo-e master Hiroshige. If you don't recognize Hiroshige's name, or if you're not familiar with the term ukiyo-e, chances are whatever image you have in your head of Japanese woodblock prints was done either by him or Hokusai (a contemporary). You know this famous print? That's Hiroshige. Anyway, the museum had a very reverential atmosphere, very quiet (you're asked not to speak any louder than a whisper) with dim lighting reflecting the 60 or so Hiroshige prints on display. There were tatami floors so we couldn't wear shoes, and the guard rails for the stairs were made out of bamboo. Nice touch. All in all a silent little world of the past, just down a narrow alleyway from the modern-day ukiyo of Harajuku.
Vending Machines chances are, if you've ever known anyone to visit Japan, you've probably heard all about their vending machines. They are EVERYWHERE in the country. Perhaps they are so in America too, but honestly they never catch my eye here. After all, the ones we have do little other than shoot out Cokes or Grandma's cookies and little else. But its a different scene altogether over there...
One of our typical drink vending machines has, what, about 6 choices? I didn't count, but Japan has probably around 20 choices to choose from in quite a lot of the machines. What's more, the machines are equally equipped to serve hot and cold beverages, which means they stock about 4 or 5 different types of tea (with options for "hot" or "cold" doubling your choices), 4 or 5 different coffees (ditto), a few soft drinks, perhaps milk and maybe one or to more things. Everything tends to cost 120Y, or a little over a dollar, which granted is a bit more than what we pay here especially given the quantity, but suprisingly it all tastes great! As I said before, coffee out of these cans trump what we drink in most coffeeshops around here! As I mentioned before you can buy beer and other types of alcohol in machines too, although they're not as ubiquitous but still not too difficult to find. A blast from the past, not necessarily a good one, is the cigarette vending machine. You see a LOT of these all around too, and until I spotted one I had completely forgotten how they used to dot our landscapes everywhere too as recently as 20 years ago.
I only used vending machines for beverages this time around, so sorry for those of you waiting for me to confirm the old "used panties" story.
Viking I mentioned earlier in the gaijin cuisine entry that we went to an Indian restaurant in Tokyo for lunch one day. Like virtually every other Indian restaurant I've ever visited, they offered a buffet at a fixed price. After gorging (but can you really "gorge" at a Japanese Indian restaurant, considering the comparatively minute amount of oil?), the check was brought over to us. I handled it, but as I looked it over, I saw some incomprehensible text with the word "Viking" next to it. I thought, "our server's name is 'Viking'? Now there's something I haven't heard before." I mentioned it to S and she said "No, no, his name isn't 'Viking', what we just ate is considered a 'viking.'" Huh?
As I learned, the Japanese (and from doing some slight websearching, perhaps more of East Asia since it appears to be the word in Korea too) do not call buffets "buffets." Rather, they're "vikings." Why? Who the hell knows? I've tried to find the etymological connection but no dice so far. My pseudo-educated guess is this: vikings were the plundering types, right? And Japanese culture has always presented an austere vision in the dining room, right? So the entrance of (forgive my imperial western speech) buffets in Japan, with the concept that you just go up and take whatever the kitchen makes, as much as you want, seems like plundering the chef. Therefore, people who frequent these restaurants are like culinary vikings. Does it make sense to you? It did to me, and it certainly could apply to people's behavior at seafood buffets when they bring out a fresh tray of snow crab legs.
Weekly Mansions when we planned our trip, we knew we were going to stay in Yokohama for the duration of our visit (barring the excursion to Kyoto) since it was a good center for everything we wanted to do (close to the parents, close to Tokyo, 2 stops away from Kyoto on the shinkansen, etc). But we couldn't stay with the parents due to a lack of space (they've got a LOT of pets). So S' mother set us up at a "weekly mansion." When S told me about the arrangement, I felt a little weird about it. I'm not exactly a mansion-dwelling person. But S told me I was reading too much into it, that a weekly mansion is basically a hotel room that you can live in, i.e. refrigerator, ironing equipment, etc. So nothing fancy, but now I can say that I've resided in a mansion, and not only that but I spent most of my time in the mansion loaded up on drinks (from the convenience store next door) and pornography.
One curious thing, though. There were 5 "mansions" on our floor. We were on the 8th floor, if I remember. However our room number was 806. I thought, "806? How can we be #6 on a floor with 5 mansions?" It turns out that there was no 804, since #4 is the number of death in Japanese culture. Sorta like the western aversion to the 13th floor here that you'll occasionally run across. This shouldn't be news to you Boredoms fans out there since we all know there's no Volume 4 in the Super Roots series, but its a curiosity worth mentioning.
Yokosuka the final entry in my encyclopedia (I guess I've covered zen in sufficient detail elsewhere), and an apt way to end. But before I begin, I must say that I'm not even sure the town I'm about to describe is even called Yokosuka. I've only called the place "Ancient S Village" for the whole time up to now, but I'm pretty sure the place was called Yokosuka. If not, its close enough to Yokosuka to qualify under the name [EDIT: S tells me that the general area is called Yokosuka, but Yokosuka city is quite modern; Tsukuihama is actually the name of the place]. Whatever, let's move on.
S is a Yokohama girl, but for the first 10 years of her life she lived in a small village on the Pacific Ocean. She described it to me as a very rural area, with the ocean being one border and the mountains bordering on the other side. This is where she grew up, playing with her friends in the mountainside and walking along the little beach at night. There was little to see, just a lone restaurant in the entire community, which fascinated me all the more. I told S that I'd really like to visit the town, which sits about an hour south of Yokohama on one of the train lines, and she was excited to see it too. After all, she hadn't been there in 15 years, so it was ripe for nostalgia on her end and ripe for "the real Japan" (as such nonsense nomenclature usually goes) for me. So we planned to take a trip to the area following our lunchtime meet-up with Oba-Chan on the day after our arrival.
We got out of the station and S saw (perhaps with little wonder) that the area had modernized considerably, with lots of little boutiques around, but still it was far and away from the cosmopolitan areas of Yokohama. But unlike what happens here, all of the structures from her childhood are still standing and still serving the same purpose. We went toward the ocean on our walk, with her pointing out the building that she grew up in, the houses of some of her friends (who still live there, according to the mailboxes), and even the restaurant. At the beach, amidst an increasingly rainy sky and a barrage of windsurfers, she pointed out the little area where they would occasionally picnic, grilling the fish that her father would catch only a few feet away. As we walked along the path, we found a small playground that she used to play at. All of the slides and equipment were still there (they all had an animal motif, with the slide being in the shape of a crab - impossible to visualize, I know, so sorry about that but just to give you an idea). In fact, S' very first picture that she remembers comes from this park, next to a little statue of a squirrel. So I had to have a picture of her as a mother-to-be standing in the same spot.
We then found her kindergarten, which was a Buddhist school. It looked like a little temple, excepting the playground next to it complete with more little animal playtoys (the slide there was an octopus). I love hearing stories about her kindergarten days. Music hipsters, you know that amazing Japanese psych album by the band People, Ceremony: Buddha Meet Rock, and the chanting that goes on during the epic "Shomyo Part 1"? S used to recite that every day in school, of course minus that blazing Mizutani solo. And the present she received for graduating kindergarten from the school? A little framed picture of Buddha. I love that story.
By this time, we'd been wandering for about 90 minutes and it looked like the sky was about to open up, so we knew we'd better head back to the train station, nestled in the mountain area (which is about 15 minutes' walk from the ocean area). We had already missed one train and needed to wait another 20 minutes or so for the next one, so we visited the little shrine hidden away on the top of a wooded hill next to the station. We were the only people in the area, and it was a climb of about 100 steps to the top of the hill and the shrine which was blocked out of view due to the trees. On arriving, we saw just the god the shrine was set up for, with the bell for ringing (in order to wake him up) before we made our reverential bow. Without anyone around, and with no sounds other than the birds in the trees, the feeling of the divine was nearby. Like several of you reading this, I consider myself a spiritual person (just not in the sense that most people imagine when they hear the word "spiritual") and this was one of those times when it seemed time either stood still or jumped back 1500 years, I'm not exactly sure which.
stay tuned for next week's opening installment of "my baby encyclopedia, Aa-Ac" - nah, i won't be that masochistic - but the word on the street is that 3 weeks from now, i'll be a father...yes indeed...
Ukiyo-E if you follow my trip diaries (and it seems that that's all this journal seems to be used for anymore), you know that we like to go to museums. And there are some excellent ones in Japan: my first time there we went to the Tokyo National Museum which is a huge complex filled with every aspect of Japanese art, from old Jomon pottery to samurai swords to woodblock prints to Japanese takes on westernized Impressionism. But as great as it is, it was pretty overwhelming to take in for a couple of hours (especially considering I underwent my first case of jetlag in the midst of the tour). I've been to several other museums in Tokyo since and saw some great exhibits, but they were all of a western persuasion (a huge Kandinsky exhibit, and a touring collection of modern art from the Met in NYC). And despite the pull of some other specials going on while we were there (a monumental De La Tour show, and a big exhibit on tour from the Louvre which granted I'd visited 5 months previously yet how can you really take anything in at that shambolic of a museum?), I really wanted to see a small collection of Japanese art.
Enter the Ota Memorial Museum Of Art. This is a tiny place in Harajuku that focuses on the huge collection of ukiyo-e prints collected by Ota-San. The museum changes its display completely every month, and almost by chance we happened to be there on the last day of May, for the final showing of a group of prints by ukiyo-e master Hiroshige. If you don't recognize Hiroshige's name, or if you're not familiar with the term ukiyo-e, chances are whatever image you have in your head of Japanese woodblock prints was done either by him or Hokusai (a contemporary). You know this famous print? That's Hiroshige. Anyway, the museum had a very reverential atmosphere, very quiet (you're asked not to speak any louder than a whisper) with dim lighting reflecting the 60 or so Hiroshige prints on display. There were tatami floors so we couldn't wear shoes, and the guard rails for the stairs were made out of bamboo. Nice touch. All in all a silent little world of the past, just down a narrow alleyway from the modern-day ukiyo of Harajuku.
Vending Machines chances are, if you've ever known anyone to visit Japan, you've probably heard all about their vending machines. They are EVERYWHERE in the country. Perhaps they are so in America too, but honestly they never catch my eye here. After all, the ones we have do little other than shoot out Cokes or Grandma's cookies and little else. But its a different scene altogether over there...
One of our typical drink vending machines has, what, about 6 choices? I didn't count, but Japan has probably around 20 choices to choose from in quite a lot of the machines. What's more, the machines are equally equipped to serve hot and cold beverages, which means they stock about 4 or 5 different types of tea (with options for "hot" or "cold" doubling your choices), 4 or 5 different coffees (ditto), a few soft drinks, perhaps milk and maybe one or to more things. Everything tends to cost 120Y, or a little over a dollar, which granted is a bit more than what we pay here especially given the quantity, but suprisingly it all tastes great! As I said before, coffee out of these cans trump what we drink in most coffeeshops around here! As I mentioned before you can buy beer and other types of alcohol in machines too, although they're not as ubiquitous but still not too difficult to find. A blast from the past, not necessarily a good one, is the cigarette vending machine. You see a LOT of these all around too, and until I spotted one I had completely forgotten how they used to dot our landscapes everywhere too as recently as 20 years ago.
I only used vending machines for beverages this time around, so sorry for those of you waiting for me to confirm the old "used panties" story.
Viking I mentioned earlier in the gaijin cuisine entry that we went to an Indian restaurant in Tokyo for lunch one day. Like virtually every other Indian restaurant I've ever visited, they offered a buffet at a fixed price. After gorging (but can you really "gorge" at a Japanese Indian restaurant, considering the comparatively minute amount of oil?), the check was brought over to us. I handled it, but as I looked it over, I saw some incomprehensible text with the word "Viking" next to it. I thought, "our server's name is 'Viking'? Now there's something I haven't heard before." I mentioned it to S and she said "No, no, his name isn't 'Viking', what we just ate is considered a 'viking.'" Huh?
As I learned, the Japanese (and from doing some slight websearching, perhaps more of East Asia since it appears to be the word in Korea too) do not call buffets "buffets." Rather, they're "vikings." Why? Who the hell knows? I've tried to find the etymological connection but no dice so far. My pseudo-educated guess is this: vikings were the plundering types, right? And Japanese culture has always presented an austere vision in the dining room, right? So the entrance of (forgive my imperial western speech) buffets in Japan, with the concept that you just go up and take whatever the kitchen makes, as much as you want, seems like plundering the chef. Therefore, people who frequent these restaurants are like culinary vikings. Does it make sense to you? It did to me, and it certainly could apply to people's behavior at seafood buffets when they bring out a fresh tray of snow crab legs.
Weekly Mansions when we planned our trip, we knew we were going to stay in Yokohama for the duration of our visit (barring the excursion to Kyoto) since it was a good center for everything we wanted to do (close to the parents, close to Tokyo, 2 stops away from Kyoto on the shinkansen, etc). But we couldn't stay with the parents due to a lack of space (they've got a LOT of pets). So S' mother set us up at a "weekly mansion." When S told me about the arrangement, I felt a little weird about it. I'm not exactly a mansion-dwelling person. But S told me I was reading too much into it, that a weekly mansion is basically a hotel room that you can live in, i.e. refrigerator, ironing equipment, etc. So nothing fancy, but now I can say that I've resided in a mansion, and not only that but I spent most of my time in the mansion loaded up on drinks (from the convenience store next door) and pornography.
One curious thing, though. There were 5 "mansions" on our floor. We were on the 8th floor, if I remember. However our room number was 806. I thought, "806? How can we be #6 on a floor with 5 mansions?" It turns out that there was no 804, since #4 is the number of death in Japanese culture. Sorta like the western aversion to the 13th floor here that you'll occasionally run across. This shouldn't be news to you Boredoms fans out there since we all know there's no Volume 4 in the Super Roots series, but its a curiosity worth mentioning.
Yokosuka the final entry in my encyclopedia (I guess I've covered zen in sufficient detail elsewhere), and an apt way to end. But before I begin, I must say that I'm not even sure the town I'm about to describe is even called Yokosuka. I've only called the place "Ancient S Village" for the whole time up to now, but I'm pretty sure the place was called Yokosuka. If not, its close enough to Yokosuka to qualify under the name [EDIT: S tells me that the general area is called Yokosuka, but Yokosuka city is quite modern; Tsukuihama is actually the name of the place]. Whatever, let's move on.
S is a Yokohama girl, but for the first 10 years of her life she lived in a small village on the Pacific Ocean. She described it to me as a very rural area, with the ocean being one border and the mountains bordering on the other side. This is where she grew up, playing with her friends in the mountainside and walking along the little beach at night. There was little to see, just a lone restaurant in the entire community, which fascinated me all the more. I told S that I'd really like to visit the town, which sits about an hour south of Yokohama on one of the train lines, and she was excited to see it too. After all, she hadn't been there in 15 years, so it was ripe for nostalgia on her end and ripe for "the real Japan" (as such nonsense nomenclature usually goes) for me. So we planned to take a trip to the area following our lunchtime meet-up with Oba-Chan on the day after our arrival.
We got out of the station and S saw (perhaps with little wonder) that the area had modernized considerably, with lots of little boutiques around, but still it was far and away from the cosmopolitan areas of Yokohama. But unlike what happens here, all of the structures from her childhood are still standing and still serving the same purpose. We went toward the ocean on our walk, with her pointing out the building that she grew up in, the houses of some of her friends (who still live there, according to the mailboxes), and even the restaurant. At the beach, amidst an increasingly rainy sky and a barrage of windsurfers, she pointed out the little area where they would occasionally picnic, grilling the fish that her father would catch only a few feet away. As we walked along the path, we found a small playground that she used to play at. All of the slides and equipment were still there (they all had an animal motif, with the slide being in the shape of a crab - impossible to visualize, I know, so sorry about that but just to give you an idea). In fact, S' very first picture that she remembers comes from this park, next to a little statue of a squirrel. So I had to have a picture of her as a mother-to-be standing in the same spot.
We then found her kindergarten, which was a Buddhist school. It looked like a little temple, excepting the playground next to it complete with more little animal playtoys (the slide there was an octopus). I love hearing stories about her kindergarten days. Music hipsters, you know that amazing Japanese psych album by the band People, Ceremony: Buddha Meet Rock, and the chanting that goes on during the epic "Shomyo Part 1"? S used to recite that every day in school, of course minus that blazing Mizutani solo. And the present she received for graduating kindergarten from the school? A little framed picture of Buddha. I love that story.
By this time, we'd been wandering for about 90 minutes and it looked like the sky was about to open up, so we knew we'd better head back to the train station, nestled in the mountain area (which is about 15 minutes' walk from the ocean area). We had already missed one train and needed to wait another 20 minutes or so for the next one, so we visited the little shrine hidden away on the top of a wooded hill next to the station. We were the only people in the area, and it was a climb of about 100 steps to the top of the hill and the shrine which was blocked out of view due to the trees. On arriving, we saw just the god the shrine was set up for, with the bell for ringing (in order to wake him up) before we made our reverential bow. Without anyone around, and with no sounds other than the birds in the trees, the feeling of the divine was nearby. Like several of you reading this, I consider myself a spiritual person (just not in the sense that most people imagine when they hear the word "spiritual") and this was one of those times when it seemed time either stood still or jumped back 1500 years, I'm not exactly sure which.
stay tuned for next week's opening installment of "my baby encyclopedia, Aa-Ac" - nah, i won't be that masochistic - but the word on the street is that 3 weeks from now, i'll be a father...yes indeed...