It’s a little known fact that Yon once lived in Japan, spoke Japanese fluently and was pretty damn good at Karate. I have certainly been glad of the precision she was taught, as it has saved me serious injuries on several occasions when she’s popped off a few show-off kicks (well, except that one time when she overcooked a fake punch and very nearly broke my nose, much to the amusement of the kids in a Bolivian bus station). She took me to Japan on our way to London in 2005. My first real memory is of us walking down a tiny, deserted lane at night, and poking our head into a small restaurant. Yon called out “hello” and a wooden panel snapped open. A little man, dressed all in white, with a matching white hat, yelled “Hai!” in the Japanese way of saying “Yes, at your service!” It was straight out of “Spirited Away“. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and I was hooked.
In 2009, four years later, we were back. Yon’s Japanese was by then a bit rusty, but I found I could read a few signs. Chinese and Japanese share some characters, like those on the Bullet Train destination signs. My new found not-quite-total-illiteracy was vaguely useful when looking at menus, but, as before, I relied on Yon for the majority of communications.
Hokkaido
Our first stop was glorious Hokkaido. Home to beautiful forests and deep, dry powder snow, its resorts are also swarmed by Australians. As we stood in line for lunch at a cafe on the ski slopes at Hanazono, three Japanese skiers walked in. “Ai! Have we just flown to Australia?”, one asked, as they turned on the spot and walked out. A certain strain of English did indeed dominate around there.
After a few days fun skiing with family, we sought some solitude and moved on to the pristine forests of Daisetsuzan National Park, several hours north of Sapporo. En route, in Asahikawa, we enjoyed more of Japan’s legendary formal politeness. Walking on the footpath, we stopped to let a truck proceed down the driveway onto the street. Instead, the driver waved us past, and as we went, he and his companion both bowed furiously.
The tiny snow village beneath Mt Asahi was almost deserted. Most of the fifteen or so chalets were closed, but the youth hostel was expecting us. This was not your average youth hostel, the dorm-filled backpacker infested party dens of western Europe. Our room was spotless, with tatami mats and futons, and a huge and delicious dinner awaited us in the dining hall. Outside, it was snowing, and the green light of the streetlamps lent an eerie but attractive mystique to the whole place. “Magical” only begins to describe it in the most superficial way. Clouds of fine powder floated around Yon as she ran her arm along the snowy embankment, and larger flakes drifted down from the night.
After the rough and tumble of Beijing, and the hustle of a ski resort, we found the silence here almost profound. Skiing along on skinny skating skis, we followed a trail deep into the forest. There was nothing to hear – no wind, no animals, no other people. Just the soft swoosh of our skis and the occasional grunt as Yon faceplanted (it was her first time on skinny free-heel gear).
At night, we soaked in the rotemburo – outdoor natural springs – attached to the hostel. There were two, one each for men and women, and both were surrounded by a two meter circular wall of fresh snow. Every now and then the top layer of powder would blow into our little circle, tickling our faces and dissolving instantly in the hot water. A star was visible for a second, then two, then nothing as the cloud came back over. I sat naked with two Japanese guys and we made small talk in rudimentary English. One was a snowboarder, and the other asked me what I did. Unsure if he’d know the word, I said “Tele”. His eyes lit up. He turned to his friend, the boarder, and said “bye bye”. Then, with a grin, he said “Telemark!”
We were instantly friends, and had we not been leaving the next morning I’d have rented some tele gear and skied with him. Instead, we left beautiful Hokkaido for Matsumoto.
(Telemark skis leave the heel free, so the turning technique is different to normal alpine (downhill) skiing. It’s a more graceful style, and with modern tele gear, you can do anything that can be done on alpine skis).
 Mt Asahi |
 Bullet train vs plane |
 Mt Yotei |
Matsumoto
We arrived late at night after our two friends and discovered them bleary eyed in the dining room of a little inn, a Japanese breakfast of grilled fish and rice in front of them. We’d not seen them in several years. We had chosen Matsumoto for its outstanding castle, one of the best in Japan. Back then, I had enough trouble keeping my Mings from my Qings in Chinese history, and still haven’t taken the time to get to know much about Japan’s pre-20th century comings and goings. But this castle was begun in 1504 and more or less finished about 90 years later. More important, it looked really cool.
At Matsumoto Castle I renewed my love affair with Boss Coffee. It’s well known that Japan has a vending machine to cater to any taste. It’s less well known that Boss Coffee (The Boss of them All) has a can to cater to nearly any taste. I once had a collection of about 30 different ones. Alas, no longer. But I indulged heavily on this trip.
Snow Monkeys
A winding train ride took us past Nagano and up to the valley town of Yudanaka. Here we found a fantastic hotel, with the Boss of All Dinners. We tried sake in a neat little bar (discovering what we should have already known, that there’s a lot more to sake than the house plonk you get at cheap Japanese places back home). And we strolled the streets of Shibu Onsen sampling the different hot baths (nine in all).
The real reason for coming here though was to see the famous “Snow Monkeys”. Supposedly, an inn-keeper took pity on the freezing monkeys one winter in the 1960s and left food out for them. They started bathing in the inn’s hot pool, so a special rotemburo was built for them. Then Life arrived, photographed the scene, and the rest is history.
These guys are completely comfortable with people papping them at close range. Occasionally one will turn its bright pink rear end at you, which is a pretty obvious sign of disdain, but generally as long as no-one tries to touch them, the monkeys are content to soak and pick the fleas from each others’ fur.
Back in the village, I bent over at a tiny bubbling pond by the door of a lovely old ryokan inn. A small handwritten sign said “hard boiled eggs, 50 yen”. A 50 yen coin – a gojuyen – is a little coin with a square hole in it. I took a gojuyen out of my pocket and used the scoop to fish out an egg. It was wobbling away in the small pond that was taking volcanically heated water straight from the channel by the street. Cracking it open, I’d discovered a deliciously gooey yellow egg inside, and immediately gone for a second. Yon was enjoying them too. As I turned around, still crouching, a black BMW pulled up beside me. The door opened, and two impeccably shod legs swung out. As I stood, my eyes traversed the most elegantly dressed woman I think I’d ever seen. In her late 60s, her gloved hands clutched a patent purse in front of a pitch black velvet jacket matching a stylish hat. As I stood up in front of her wearing my North Face puffer jacket and ratty old backpack, inexplicably, I smiled and held out the hard boiled egg. The woman gave me a slight smile, restrained but warm, as if to say “Your inability to speak Japanese has made you behave like an infant, but I do hope you enjoy that egg”. Whatever she really thought of this strange foreigner, she kept it politely to herself, nodded a farewell, and went into the hotel. I flipped another gojuyen into the jar and took my fifth egg for good measure.
Old Friends in Tokyo (and the Starbucks Toilet)
Our old friend T, who we’d known in Beijing, met us in Asakusa and we caught up on old times. He was happy in his new life back in Japan, and we had a great afternoon catching up over okonomiyaki (a cool kind of cook-it-yourself pancake).
After lunch Yon needed the bathroom. We saw a Starbucks, so I said I’d buy a coffee so she could use their toilet. “You don’t need to buy anything”, said T. “This is Japan – they’ll thank you for using the bathroom”. We trudged across the street, pulled open the glass door, and stood in the front of the cafe. A boy in Starbucks livery stood before us. Yon asked for directions, while I wondered if I should at least pretend to look at the menu board. T stood there, calmly, a bit bored. Yon arrived, and as we turned to leave, the boy yelled at us. “Domo arigato gozai-masu!” – Thank you very much!
Japanese politeness. The legends were true.
Later we ventured out into the suburbs to see Yon’s friend (also called T) from her time in Nara as an exchange student. Married now, with a very cute baby, T and her husband gave us a great homecooked meal. Both were at a major electronics firm – he as a salaryman and she as the female counterpart, known as a “career woman”.
It was wonderful to see our old friends. But we’d been to Tokyo before, so after some shopping and some more food, it was time to move on.
Shhhhinkansen
Who doesn’t love Bullet Trains? We enjoy them in China now, and they rule. But the Bullet Trains in Japan are the Boss of Them All.
After all, Japan invented the Bullet Train. Called “shinkansen” which just means “new trunk line”, the world’s first dedicated high speed trains rolled out in 1964 in time for the Tokyo Olympics. Today, the Shinkansen network has nearly 2,500km of tracks, and its trains glide along at 300 km/h. The line from Tokyo to Osaka, at 515 km, can now be done in 2 hours and 25 minutes on the fastest Nozomi trains. It carries 151 million passengers a year. From Tokyo west there are 49 trains a day by 11 am! The timetable is more like a subway timetable than a long distance train.
What I love most about the Bullet Train is picking up a bento of fresh sashimi on the platform, watching as the train arrives precisely on time, finding my seat, and settling in at 300km/h that feels nearly as smooth as if you weren’t moving. This must be statistically the safest form of transport anywhere, with more than 7 billion passengers carried since 1964 and only a single passenger fatality. Just one – a poor soul who was trapped between the closing doors.
The Strange Water Imps of Northern Honshu
A shinkansen took us north from Tokyo to Shin Hanamaki where we transfered to a funny little local train. It was dark by the time we arrived in Tōno so we took a room in the train station hotel and found a nice little cafe in the deserted town center. Next day, we hopped a bus out to another youth hostel, lying in a chilly but pretty valley. The owner showed us to an immaculate tatami room, and we were the only guests.
Over “tea tai-mu” – green tea and some delicious snacks around tea-time at 9pm – we talked with our host about the hostel business (tough) and the meaning of the train names of Shinkansen. One we’d taken recently was named yamabiko, or mountain echo; hayabusa was the peregrine falcon, the world’s fastest bird (300+ km/h); hayate translated as the powerful Valley Wind (which is what a Shinkansen sounds like when it rips past). Another was named for a mysterious princess, so mysterious I didn’t write it down and can’t find it on wikipedia.
Tōno is in an agricultural area and we had a bracing walk in a building snowstorm to reach a traditional village (helped by a friendly old man who drove us the last kilometer after taking mercy on us in the blizzard). Here we saw some lovely traditional farmhouses, one of which sheltered a pretty remarkable deity.
But the really interesting supernatural creature who lives around this area is the kappa. This complex water imp, who lives in streams, is, to an outsider at least, something “only-in-Japan”. He thinks it hilarious to fart (think crazy Japanese TV game shows) and likes to upskirt women’s kimonos (Tokyo subway, anyone?). The more malevolent kappa (and here I obviously drop my “only-in-Japan” analogy) are reputed to kidnap children and rape women. They will also drown horses, given half a chance.
But kappa do have another very Japanese trait – they are obsessively polite. This is their great downfall, and your only chance of escaping an encounter with one. The kappa’s life energy depends on the water in the bowl on his head. When he bows, as he must out of decorum if you bow to him, the water spills out and he is rendered powerless. Furthermore, if you then refill the waterbowl, the kappa is indebted to you. His sense of honour will prevent him from ever breaking this bond.
The wikipedia entry on kappas is charming and amusing:
Kappa are not entirely antagonistic to humankind, however. They are curious of human civilization, and they can understand and speak Japanese. They thus sometimes challenge those they encounter to various tests of skill, such as shogi or sumo wrestling. They may even befriend human beings in exchange for gifts and offerings, especially cucumbers, the only food kappa are known to enjoy more than human children. …
Once befriended, kappa have been known to perform any number of tasks for human beings, such as helping farmers irrigate their land. They are also highly knowledgeable of medicine, and legend states that they taught the art of bone setting to humankind. Due to these benevolent aspects, some shrines are dedicated to the worship of particularly helpful kappa.
We left Japan refreshed and longing to come back. Hokkaido in Spring! Hokkaido in Autumn. Okinawa. Climb Mt Fuji. So much more to do. Instead, we looked out the window at Tokyo and the mountains beyond, and flew home happy. Japan. The Boss of them All!
