Tokyo (Monday, October 11)

Our sightseeing day in Tokyo.  The weather was beautiful - not a cloud in the sky, which was a welcome relief from our rain-drenched weekend in Nikko.  But it was hot.  It probably got into the 80s (we were subsequently told it was a record high for Tokyo).

Two gardens, an aquarium and Kabuki - it was a very full day.  In keeping with our desire to check every garden in Japan off our list, we visited two Rikugien Garden, which dates from the Edo period around 1700, and is a classic Japanese landscape garden.  There is a central pond (in which there are hundreds of turtles as well as carp), and beautifully sculped pine trees and forested areas and tea houses.  There is a weeping cherry tree that must be spectacular.

Rikugien Garden, Tokyo

Rikugien Garden, Tokyo

The next venue was Kyu-Furakawa Garden, only 1.5 kms from Rikugien.  This one was particularly interesting as there was a stately Western residence built in 1917 and rose gardens, which were a week away from fall blooming.  In the lower part of the garden was a classical Japanese landscape garden, so you really got a blend of feelings.  It was awfully pretty.

Kyu-Furukawa Garden, Tokyo

Kyu-Furukawa Garden, Tokyo

Two gardens were enough. We decided to think outside the box and headed for the Tokyo Sea Life Park, their version of our Aquarium.  As we were riding the train over, I reminded Andrea that it was a national holiday.  So think about how crowded the New Aquarium would be on a school holiday and then put that on steroids, many times over.   Was it packed!  But, you know what, it was fabulous.  They have exhibits of sea life there from all over the world - fish I never could have imagined, much less seen.  My favorite was definitely the leafy sea dragon from Australia.  But there was so much more.  Despite the crowds, it was worth the trip.

Leafy Sea Dragon

Orange Thingy?

We hustled back to the hotel to get ready for Kabuki, which started at 4:30.  The theater was right near the Ginza district, although the authentic Kabuki theater is being renovated and this is the more modern alternative.  The performance was about 4 and 1/2 hours, divided into three separate plays.  Two were dramas - tragedies of a sort; the other was a comic performance.  It sort of reminded me of opera, but with off-key, war chant-like singing.  The comic performance reminded me a bit of 'L'Elisir D'Amore.  The two dramas weren't so identifiable.  But it was interesting to see the performance and to observe the crowd (many women in the audience dressed in beautiful kimono, although don't think it's like The Rocky Horror Show or anything like that).  Fortunately they sold English language accompaniments in the form of an audio guide, so at least I could follow it.

And then vacation was over.  I had to meet one of my partners at 8 the next morning to begin two days full of meetings in Tokyo.  I am not going to try to sum it up here.  I will wait until I am on my flight back to Boston this Saturday.  So, dear readers, thanks for hanging in this long, but you'll just have to wait for the grand finale (surely to be another of life's great anti-climaxes) for a few more days.

Nikko and Back to Tokyo (October 10)

It was 10/10/10 today.  As I said, we woke up to a still steady rain, but by about 9 o'clock blue skies began to break through.  The weather was definitely changeable but it held and there was no rain.

We dashed off to the religious area to get our fill of temples and shrines.  And boy did we.  The throngs were out (it is a three-day weekend in Japan) and the shrines and temples were quite crowded.  They are quite beautiful and walking through them is a lot like seeing the great churches of the Western world.  For these, though, the setting is so spectacular in the deep woods of balsams and other types of pine trees.  I will post some photos.

Back to Tokyo and the train connections worked like a charm  We were in our room at The Peninsula by about 5 o'clock.  The hotel is really nice and our room is, I think we both admit, a welcome change from our ryokan lifestyle over the past couple of weeks.  Not that we didn't like staying in the ryokan.  But the amenities of a first class hotel are not to be sneezed at.  And The Peninsula is a really nice property.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant that specializes in unagi (broiled eel).  It was on the 12th floor of a department store.  The eel was excellent - grilled in a way that made it taste better than I have ever tasted it.  A little sightseeing in the Ginza area (which was busier than Times Square, hands down) and then back to the hotel.

Some sightseeing tomorrow - maybe some gardens.   We'll see what the weather is like.  And then on Tuesday it is back to work  . . . .

Rinnoji Taiyuin Temple

Grounds at Rinnoji Taiyuin Temple

Toshogu Shrine

Shinkyo Sacred Bridge

Kaiseki at Hotel Tokugawa

First Course

Clear soup course (tofu and mushroom in fish broth)

Beef, cabbage and mushrooms to be cooked in pot

Pot has water on one side, tofu milk in other

Broiled fish, miso soup and rice and pickles

A rare occurrence - dessert

Broiled fish

It really isn't all about the food.  But verbal descriptions don't really do justice to the cuisine.  And besides, we know that most of our friends are in touch with their "inner foodie" and probably appreciate these photos to one of another shrine!

Nikko (Saturday, October 9)

We really have had pretty good weather so far on the trip.  We did not totally believe the reports that said weather during this time should be between the low 60s and the mid 70s.  It was, although it occasionally crept up into warmer highs.

Our luck ran out yesterday.  We left Tokyo in a light rain that turned into a steady downpour, as we made our way up to Nikko, a couple of hours north of Tokyo.  Nikko is a World Heritage Site, home as it is to what is billed as the most elaborate shrine in Japan (as well as many other sacred sites) and the mausoleum of Tokugawa leyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate.  It is also the gateway to Nikko National Park, with beautiful mountains, waterfalls, lakes, etc.  We could have been in downtown Tokyo for all the mountains we saw!  Virtually everything was fog enshrouded as we made our way on the bus through the park.  It reminded me of a trip many years ago that I took through Austria where it rained every day and I spent a day in each of Innsbruck and Salzburg and never say a mountain.

And I hadn't dressed appropriately for the weather.  Here I had packed a rain jacket, schlepped it the entire trip, but when we consolidated down to one bag for this brief weekend trip, I packed lightly and didn't bring it.  Not only that, I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt in a steady rain and  the temperature had dropped into the 50s.

You have to love my wife though.  Determined to get her money's worth, we are off walking up to waterfalls (which admittedly were spectacular).  A woman whom I can't get to take a walk in Wellesley power walks her way through the fog and rain to capture photos of fog enshrouded waterfalls.  It is a shame about the weather, as you can tell this is a really beautiful spot.  I am only kidding, too.  I was a willing participant and it was worth it.  Not to say that we both weren't quite happy to get to our hotel.  Hotel Tokugawa is a modern ryokan, which combines the amenities of a modern hotel with some of the traditional aspects (think kaiseki and public bath) of the ryokan.  It is really nice and the food was excellent.

Kegon Falls

Yudaki Falls

It is Sunday morning and it is still raining.  Fortunately the hotel has Internet access, and Andrea may try to catch the Yankees game on MLBTV.com.  The hotel has a shuttle that runs to the famous shrines, and we plan to make the visit later in the morning - come hell of high water, as they say.

Kurashiki to Tokyo (Friday, October 8)

It is off the “off the beaten path” track and back to more familiar tourist destinations.  Tokyo is our destination today.

 

We took the Shinkansen today from Okayama to Tokyo (after getting a local train from Kurashiki to Okayama).  There are three classes of Shikansen – the Nozomi (the fastest), the Hikari and the Kodama.  The Hikari was just fine – it covered the 336 miles between the two cities in a little over 4 hours.  Imagine if we were able to travel between Boston and New York in 2 ½ hours – it would easily tilt the balance against the US Airways shuttle.  During our ride we got to see Mt. Fuji (see below, a bit enveloped in clouds).   Our conductor was so cute – he came up to us at the beginning of the trip and told us that at 14:48 we should be sure to look out the left window to see Mt. Fuji.  And then after we passed it, he came by and flashed a “thumbs up.”

At one of the stops, there was a little boy in a stroller outside our window with his mom.  He kept looking at us, and we waved to him.  Andrea took a little gorilla plush toy she had hooked on one of her bags, hopped off the train and gave it to the little boy.  He smiled and waved bye to us.  Lois always wanted Andrea to be a diplomat – her dream has come true with plush toy diplomacy.

    

We arrive in Tokyo at 3:30 and dropped up a couple of bags at The Peninsula, where we’ll be staying beginning on Sunday night.  Tonight it is off to a ryokan in Akasuka (the Sadachiyo), one of the original parts of old Tokyo, and then tomorrow up to Nikko for the day and a night.

We have had two bad experiences with cab drivers here.  It’s quite surprising actually, because we had always found cab drivers to be nothing but pleasant.  Both in Kurashiki and Tokyo we got a ton of attitude from a cab driver presumably disappointed that he was only getting a less than ¥ 1,000 fare from the train station.  Reminds me a bit of the cab drivers at International Place who crab when, after waiting on line for a fare, get someone who is going to Beacon Hill.  But cab drivers in the US are supposed to be surly.  That can’t happen here, can it?  But it did.  Twice.

Tsurugata Dinner

I’m going to try to record the dinner, course by course, in real time as our hostess Matsuo brings it.    We started off with a little peach wine.   Peaches are a specialty of the region.  It was sweet and refreshing.

The first course consists of roe on seaweed, a little mountain potato, a jellied thing with carrot, some maki-like thing that may be soba and maybe fried tofu.  We ordered one glass of shochu, which is a wine based on potatoes, not rice as in sake.  First course was great – even thought we don’t know exactly what it is we are eating.  The shochu was just ok.  They serve it with water and ice, almost like a cocktail.

Next course is sashimi.  There are three varieties – maguro (tuna), aji (horse mackerel) and hirame (flounder), with both soy sauce and a ponzu sauce.  The fish is really fresh and just melts in your mouth – Fantastic!

Next course is the clear soup course.  This one is a clear broth with a purple potato-like thing (I am told it has arrowroot in it as well), mushrooms and some little greens.  It is very delicate and tasty, although last evening’s fish paste and crab was better.

The next course is the simmered course.  A little fish (the whole thing), with lotus root, green beans and fu (a little maple leaf shaped thing made from wheat).  The taste was good, but there were too many bones, so I have to take a few points off this course.

Next course is the grilled course.  Matsuo brings two individual grills, on which is placed a grilling dish in which there are pieces of beef, red and green peppers and little mushrooms placed on a bed of miso, all in a leaf of some sort.  The beef is tender and very flavorful, as are the vegetables.  The miso gives it a nice flavor.

The next is the fried course, which consists of tempura.  A green bean, a little fish covered with a shiso leaf, a mushroom, a piece of potato, a piece of onion and a shrimp.  Although it is very tasty, it really is nothing incredibly special.

The vinegared course was really good.  Crab meat, soaked in a vinegar dressing, along with some cucumber.  They served it with the crab shell over the meat – very fancy presentation. 

The last course before dessert is rice and miso soup.  Andrea wonders why you end a fantastic meal with boring white rice and miso soup.  She has a point (as she so often does).

Finally, the dessert course arrives, which consists of three grapes and a piece of melon.  The fruit was delicious, and this type of dessert has been fairly typical.  No wonder there is less obesity in Japan than in our country.

That is the traditional kaiseki, which has been the bill of fare at the ryokans at which we have stayed.  It is definitely Japanese haute cuisine, although a steady diet of high end food can itself get tiring.  But we are not complaining, mind you.  We really aren't . . . 

Okayama (Thursday, October 7)

A beautiful, cloudless day greeted us.  Today was about gardens.  But before getting into that, let’s talk about breakfast.

I like breakfast – always have.  For me, it is usually a bowl of cold cereal, maybe with some fruit or raisins.  I will confess that the elaborate breakfasts here – focused as they are on fish, tofu, vegetables, rice – were starting to get me down.  But the Tsurugata cured me.  Of course, there was the obligatory fish, but this morning it was three small pieces of mackerel that you grilled on a flame at the table (very simple, not like Benihana), and they were really tasty.  And I got them to bring me hot water with which I made Starbucks instant coffee that I had brought with me (although there is a Starbucks here in Kurashiki, about 600m from the Tsurugata).  I heartily recommend the Starbucks instant coffee to any traveler addicted to caffeine who is traveling to out of the way places.  It's an adequate substitute.  

In any event, breakfast was really good, and it was a great way to start the day.

We did gardens.  First, we went off to Okayama (about a 15 minute train ride) to visit Korakuen Garden, which is considered one of the three best gardens in Japan.  We had seen Kenrokuen Garden, which is one of the other two, in Kanazawa.  So, to quote Meat Loaf, two out of three ain’t bad.  We liked Korakuen, although there were more grassy expanses than we had seen at Kenrokuen.  But they blended agricultural things along with the more aesthetic (for instance, there are tea fields and rice fields in the garden).  The day was beautiful and we took many pictures (which I will try to attach at a later time).

We then decided we would hit another garden, but that involved heading off the island of Honshu and over to Shikoku, which is connected by a series of bridges.  We were game.  So we hopped on a train (the marine Liner) and headed for Takamatsu.  Many islands dot the water (the Seto Island Sea) between the two larger islands of Honshu and Shikoku.  The Seto Ohashi Bridge was opened in 1988 and consists of six separate bridges that comprise the whole.   It is about 8 miles long and is the world’s largest double-decker bridge.  Makes the Bay Bridge pale in comparison.

Our destination was yet another garden – this time the Ritsurin Koen Garden outside of Takamatsu.  We may have even liked this one the best of all (even though it isn’t in the consensus top three).  The pine trees, of which there were many, were both sculpted and wild.  I will try to post some pictures when we get an Internet connection again.

Finally, we decided to take a ferry back across the Seto Island Sea to Honshu.  It was a good choice.  We got great views of the islands that dot the sea, saw the very impressive bridge from a distance and although it was overcast we sat outside and it was not too cold. 

We were beat when we arrived back at the Tsurugata.  In the next post, I will describe the dinner we ate that night.