Voyage Junkie

Several years ago we had the opportunity to take some good friends of ours, Bo and Liz, to Japan. I'm going to focus on the new things we did and then link to previous blog posts for reference to the things we repeated from our time living in Japan. The trip started out awesome and then kind of fell into a bad place for me and Matt, unfortunately. I chalk it up to our inability to tell Bo and Liz when we wanted to do something different from what they wanted to do, and Matt's desire to be a good guide in the country as he was the only fluent Japanese speaker. He felt a lot of responsibility and then got really tired and very stressed out, which in turn made me very stressed out. I say this not as a rebuke of our friends, who had no way to know how we were feeling since we didn't communicate, but as a gentle suggestion to anyone who travels with friends. Say how you feel and don't be passive aggressive about it. Own up to your limitations and ask for what you need. Your ...

Matt here, to try and get some mileage out of my degree in Japanese literature.  So, welcome to 倚松庵 ( Ishouan  -- "The hermitage among the pines," or, more literally, "hermitage resting against the pines"), home to one of the most important writers of Japanese modernity, Jun'ichirou Tanizaki.  He had the house built for himself and his third wife, whose family was the basis for his most famous novel, The Makioka Sisters (you might also have seen the 1983 film).  The construction was based entirely on his strict aesthetic principles, which he lays out eloquently in his essay, In'ei raisan  ( In Praise of Shadows ).  The first third of the book is devoted to descriptions of his various successes and failures in trying to preserve the Japanese-ness (as he saw it) of his living space while still utilizing the modern conveniences coming to Japan from the West.  It's a worthwhile read, if you can ignore the slight xenophobia that peaks through at poi...

Since we were staying in Kobe, we ordered some cake from an allergy-friendly specialty shop in Akashi, a few train stops from the city.  We should have been able to hop off the train, find the store, and see the castle ruins in under 2 hours.  But Google couldn't tell where the address was, and every time we checked someone's iPhone it placed the store in a different place.  This lead us on a 2.5-3 hour hike, until a nice lady finally told us the map was wrong and the district we were looking for was... by the station.  How no one else we asked knew this, I don't know.  We luckily ran into a Max Value grocery store, where the baker picked us up and drove us back to the station.  On the way, she showed us where her store was - sure enough, it was around the corner from the station, beside the park - exactly the opposite way from where the maps sent us.  Oh well, we got the cake and it was delicious: mango raspberry, zebra, mont blanc, and strawberry ...

Our third day in Kobe took us to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art located near the waterfront in the HAT district.  It was an interesting building designed by architect Ando Tadao , who we later discovered also designed Gifu's convention center.  He had no formal architectural training, although he traveled and took in famous buildings.  His style is sleek and spacious, and his designs often take the environment into account rather than making the environment bend to the design.  He uses natural light to a great extent, as with a church he designed, where the cross is made from cutouts in the building's wall so sunlight shines through.  This museum didn't work so much with light, but the design played impeccably between lines and circles . The permanent collection was probably the best laid-out of any museum I've seen.  The first floor began with self-portraits, showcasing primarily Japanese artists with a few Westerners thrown in.  This slowly t...

The second day we hopped a train to the district of Nada, where we started off with a tour of a sake brewery.  When we lived in CO we took tours of local mead and beer breweries, so it was something I wanted to do before leaving Japan.  There are a plethora of sake breweries in Nada, and they each have a slightly different history and way of making sake.  We chose Kiku-Masamune  because it was easily accessible from the train station and advertised a museum component.  It was a wonderful experience and quite educational for me.  It was free to enter and we also got a sake tasting.  We bought a few bottles as presents and one for ourselves, and the nice cashier deftly threw in some commemorative sake cups on the sly. The pictures above come from the museum.  The process this brewery utilizes is called kimoto zukuri , a traditional method of making moto , or sake seed mash.  It starts by mixing malted rice with steamed rice and well wate...

Since our winter vacation is incredibly long, a week after our trip to Nagano it was time for another mini-vacation, this time to Kobe.  We loved Kobe when we visited over the summer , and so were eager to get to know the city a bit better.  The day we arrived was a true winter day, cold but clear.  We met up with Matt's Japanese teacher (whom we met on our last trip to the city), and after a lunch of negitoro   donburi  (raw tuna and scallions over rice with miso), we went for a long stroll around the canals of Kobe.  It took us a long time to find the canal promenade as we wandered around the industrial ports, but eventually we came upon a scenic park and walkway that followed the canals.  There were even canal cats wandering around, chasing seagulls. On the way to the canal district we passed many shrines and temples.  The area seemed particularly dedicated to Inari , the fox god whose main shrine is in Kyoto .  Matt's teacher pointed o...

This amazing statue is in Kobe, on the way to a wonderful park on the harbor.  I just love Kobe so much, and I'm so happy we're going there again in a month!

The back entrance to Ikuta shrine at the base of a mountain in Kobe.

Kobe is a half-hour from Osaka by rapid train, the same distance as Gifu to Nagoya, so we traveled to Kobe twice over our short trip.  We went the first evening as an extension of our nori-hodai  tickets and explored the pier pictured to the left.  Kobe is a true port city, and this is only one of many piers.  This one seems mostly for tourism now, but before the earthquake in '95, we think it was used for business also.  Now on one side there is a big memorial park with amazing statues and dedications to the quake victims.  There's also an incredible hotel that looks like a ship.  Below, Matt and I pose in front of the view of Mosaic, a fun shopping, entertainment, and eating pavilion. We loved Kobe so much on our first night there and we were excited to visit again.  Kobe is known for its old Western-style houses (remember: port city; all the foreigners used to live in Kobe back when foreigners were first openly allowed in the country a...