Milestone: Month 18

It's time for a Milestone! You can compare to my other milestones by clicking on the Milestone label.

Month 18: Summary

Status:

Job: Children's Fitness Teacher
Financial status:  Good

Location:


City: Tokyo
Ward: Chuo-ku
Train station: Kayabacho
Residing in: My apartment, Hermit Fortress


Cast of Characters:


Major Characters:
Ken Tanaka, who's trying hard to gain weight
Aala Kansali of Tunisia
Lo, Jean-Paul the French Laotian
Millo, Julian of France
Eri Karasawa, the cute receptionist

Minor Characters:

Nana Takeuchi, once my boss
Erika Mochizuki (and Maxine!)
Kuniaki "Forest" Mori
Dario Lupoli of Italy
Kazue Inoue 

Retired Characters:

Sofie Monrad of Denmark
Julian "Shank" Einschenk of Germany
Anton "Foxboy" Jermaine of England
Rodrigue Zapha of France

Clement Sanchez of France


Top Five Highlights:
(since last time)

- Kawagoe
- Nikko
- Zojoji and Gyoki
- Takayama and Sanno
- Central Japan


Still to Come:

- Robot Restaurant
- Studio Ghibli Museum (no seriously, for real this time)
- Comiket 86
- The World's Tallest Tower
- Sanja: Tokyo's Biggest Festival

Behind the Mountains: Shirakawago

We had parted with Ken, who had gone to visit a friend in nearby Nagoya on the previous day. After having spent the night in an (unexpectedly) expensive inn, our driver woke up hungover. With one last vigorous push, he drove us to a valley behind the mountains, and left the car in a clearing by a brook where the water ran crystal blue, and fell asleep, leaving Dario and I on our own to explore the World Heritage Site of Shirakawago.

The villages of Shirakawago bear incredible visible historical heritage, from the structure of the tall thatch-roofed houses to the scattered agricultural fields squeezed even between said houses. Villagers here used to make their trade with the outside world by farming the base elements that were necessary in the creation of gunpowder and paper. In these lands were snowfall still comes thick and heavy through the colder months, people made a simple and honest living.

This picture by Dario.

Now that they're considered by UNESCO to be World Heritage, these villages draw a lot of their livelihood from tourism. Many of the farm houses have re-established themselves as inns, allowing visitors an imaginably great opportunity to live as one of the villagers and let the life of the countryside breathe through them in full. Dario had previously been through Shirakawago and done just that, barely half a year ago. In his own words, the place was worth returning to every season of the year. That aside, a lot of the farmhouses have also turned into museums. Once again, history buffs could really have a field day, here.

Shirakawago was the last of our sightseeing stops before we headed back to Tokyo, but I'll be back there, some day, I'm sure.

The Takayama Festival

It was upon the noon of the second day into our road trip that we arrived upon our destination of Takayama. The very purpose of our trip lay here: to attend the famous Takayama festival, renown throughout Japan. Well rested after our stay in the Kiso Valley, Ken, Lo, Dario and I found the streets of the city packed with tourists both from abroad and within Japan, the crowd growing denser and denser towards the epicenter of the festival grounds.

The enormous floats of the Sanno Takayama Festival

In a nutshell.

The Takayama Festival is held twice a year with very slight variations - once in Spring and once in Fall, with each of the festivities lasting two days. During this time, enormous yatai festival floats are pulled into the town square, and a procession of 200 men, women and children dressed in varied traditional outfits can be seen parading across the town. Some are dressed as oni - Japanese demons, children play instruments such as bells and flutes, and others still wear the outfits of Shinto priests, carrying large flag-like standards.

Holy crap it's crowded.

At different points during the festival, the crowd gets extremely densely packed around the festival floats as ancient puppet show over 300 years old begins, puppets emerging from the top of the floats themselves. The three puppets themselves are beautifully crafted and controlled by 12 strings each, requiring 3 puppeteers to man a single one. I later learned the springs in the puppets are carved out of whale. Hoowee. Each puppet gets the limelight for a part of the show, with each segment having an impressive turning point. For instance, the last puppet, that of a maiden, had a dragon burst out of her ass. I kid you not. This part was deemed too obscene for the Japanese public until only 30 years ago.

Hey, even the festival aside though, Takayama is a nice town quite worth a visit. It doesn't at any point feel like a metropolitan city. It has a charming market street with oldish shops, but even nicer still is the presence of rivers running through the town, spanned by scenic bridges from which, looking down, the likes of koi fish can be seen swimming around.
At the extremity of the central part of the city is a park and a mountain from which one can see the whole of Takayama. I was reminded at once of Montreal.

It's quite charming!

The first thing I did in Takayama.

All in all, Takayama was a charming experience and another window into Japanese culture. The festival was worth the trip, but my tip-toeing across central Japan didn't end at Takayama.

As you'll soon see!

On the Road to Takayama

My three musketeers by my side, we had set off to Takayama with the goal of arriving on time for the Sanno Festival, renown throughout Japan - a three-day trip I've only just now gotten back from. The road to Takayama itself, though, was worthy of notice, as we drove through the countryside and up and around mountains to get to our destination. We managed to make quite a number of stops along the way, too, and here are some of them. No doubt each of these would've been worthy of a smaller trip just for themselves.

 Matsumoto
 Our first stop, a little more than halfway to Takayama already, was Matsumoto. Although the small town bares little in terms of bustling city life, it does have the Matsumoto Castle - one of the few in Japan to have remained in such an intact state. Over 400 years old, the castle has resisted the wear and tear of time and still remains as majestic as ever. It has a moat, with koi fish, and, holy shit, say it with me, swans. There are god damn swans in the moat. Wow.

Kiso Valley
 Knowing full well that our chances of finding a place to stay within Takayama would be fairly slim, we decided to spend the night in the Kiso valley, tucked in between the area's numerous mountains. Thanks to Ken, we managed to find a cheap bed that also provided us a hot bath and breakfast on top of that. 
 The Kiso valley, though, is also home to a number of very old post-towns, the likes of which are often seen in samurai movies. The most notable post-town in the valley is that of Tsumago, which we paid a quick visit to, and found rather silent and empty, despite it barely being 7:00 in the evening yet. Still, Tsumago had a very particular and dated feel to it, and left me wondering what its few streets would have been like during the day.

The Japan Alps
Although the mountain paths we took along our drive did not take us very high up the mountains, we did get to enjoy a lot of the mountain scenery, complete with pristine rivers and lakes. Not too far in the distance were white cap mountains, and so too were there too many ski resorts to count, still white with snow but not operating at this time of the year. Takayama city itself lies nested within these alps.

Brief Note: Hitting the Road

I'm off on a road trip, folks - to central Japan, Chubu province, hitting Takayama as main destination. On the driver's seat is Lo, once more, and I'm accompanied by my fellow wanderers Ken and Dario, the latter whom I haven't introduced. Maybe I should do just that.

Dario's from Italy. We're acquainted through Aala, who used to take Japanese courses alongside him. He's happily married to a Japanese woman...with whom he speaks Chinese, having spent a portion of his life in China.
That aside, Dario's a gleeful heart and at least as crazy as the rest of the group, always willing to hop in on an adventure when he sees one.




I'll be back in three days, folks! Cheers!

Nezu - Azalea Flowers and Faregrounds

The Azalea Garden of Nezu Shrine

This month of April is having me catch up with all the major temples in Tokyo I've managed to miss so far, and apparently, next on the list, is Nezu Shrine. Bringing along Ken and Lo, I went to check it out on the first day of its Azalea Festival. More renown for its garden that the actual shrine house itself, Nezu Shrine plays the major part in the Azalea Festival taking place from early April to early May. During this time frame, hundreds upon hundreds of the azelea flower bushes go into bloom, further cementing the coming of spring and attracting locals and tourists alike. A walk across the azalea garden costs nothing but 200¥ and doesn't fail to impress. I'm a sucker for nice flowers, sue me.
Flowers aside, even out of season the shrine has some nice sights to offer, such as ponds filled with koi and turtles and ducks. It's a peaceful place brimming with a simple, docile nature. 

There's a lot going on in this picture.

A nice afterthought, more likely than not unrelated to the azalea festival itself, was the small fare taking place in what seemed like the backyard of the Nezu shrine, which connected into the Komagome shrine nearby. Standard in temple grounds throughout Japan at various times of the year, fares like these offer a welcome distraction from the hustle and bustle of the city itself. One can expect to find charcoal-roasted foods and traditional snacks and desserts offered by various stands packed together in close proximity.
 A number of games are also present in fares like these, challenging children and adult alike.

Credit to Lo for the nice picture at the top.

You Know You Want One

They're so stylish.

Speaking of stupid merchandise, you might have noticed pictures of me wearing shirts with my own face or likeness on them. I made those!
 If you want a shirt with your own face on it, then too bad, go make it yourself. But if you're one of my friends or acquaintances in Japan and you want a shirt with my face on it, then I'll be glad to make you one!
 They're 2500¥, which is the exact amount it costs to make one, so I'm not really pulling any profit from this other than the giggles I'll get of seeing you wear it.
My face is upside down so that you can look down and stare me in the eyes. The other model has me sitting on the ground holding two toy telephones. It's cutting-edge fashion, folks.

They probably won't get you laid, either.

The Best Shop Award Goes To...

...It's Village Vanguard. And it's gonna be Village Vanguard every time. To me, Village Vanguard screams "Japan" in all the ways I want it to. It's quirky and unpredictable and a little confusing at times, and it's just the kind of thing you're hoping to find in a country that's often also quirky, unpredictable and confusing. If you're looking for something bewildering and strange, you've got to come to Village Vanguard.

Holy shit, is there anything normal on this shelf?

The shop claims itself to be an "Exciting Book Store," and truly, it's all that and everything in between. On top of books, one can expect to find trinkets, home deco, toys, games, music albums, DVDs, accessories, magazines and a variety of items with an unusual flavor. From wall-stickers of Jesus to giant plush Gremlins, the shop has some kind of world-class indie appeal going for it. Hell, a lot of what you'll find in Village Vanguard doesn't seem to have any other use or purpose other than being unique.

Just look at all this stuff!

Truth be told, I've never even bought a single thing from Village Vanguard. And maybe I never will. None of the merchandise is actually cheap by any stretch of the imagination. But it's a safe bet that if you ever have 30 minutes or so to kill with a few friends, browsing the shop will feel like time well wasted. It's delightfully refreshing every time. Bring a tourist!
 Village Vanguard is a chain store. You can find one at almost every busy shop-ish corner of Tokyo.

Zojoji - Buddhist Devotion and Unborn Children

Zojoji Temple

Not too far from the foot of the Tokyo Tower is Zojoji, a sizable Buddhist temple with strong ties to the once powerful Tokugawa Shogunate. These temple grounds are actually known for quite a number of things, despite me and my entourage never having heard of this place for the longest amount of time. Drawn here by an event Aala made (but later on cancelled due to lack of attendance and an otherwise busy schedule) I got to get a good look at the temple.

The event in question was Gyoki, the Buddhist Devotion ceremony, where, in early April for the duration of a week, every day at 12:30pm, monks gather in ceremonial garb and perform an ancient dance accompanied by equally ancient music. The ceremony lasts a half-hour, after which the monks silently march in line and disappear into a tent. The ceremony commemorates the death of Honen, the founder of the first independent branch of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism.

With the accompanying backdrop of the now-waning cherry blossoms, the ceremony's quite a sight.

That aside, Zojoji is actually known for one more thing, however grim. The grounds house a garden dedicated to the souls of unborn children, including the aborted and the miscarried and the stillborn. Parents of such children can dress a statue and often leave a gift to Jizo, the guardian of the unborn, to assure that they are brought safely into the afterlife. Each stone piled next to such a statue is intended to shorten the suffering of the child during said passage.

For those interested in seeing it, here's a video of the Gyoki ceremony I managed to take.

A Penguin

I hardly have any explanation for this. I was with Lo, walking around Nakano Broadway, a large shopping center for objects of particular taste, when I stumbled upon this penguin and decided I had to buy it. I don't recall the last time I bought something so retarded. And then I remembered it was going to be April Fool's, so I got a little giddy.
 The rest of my day was a lot of me figuring out what to do with my penguin. Here's a small gallery.

Eventually I settled for placing the penguin on the seat opposite mine on the train and waiting for people's reactions as they got on. This being Japan, no one bothered moving the thing, and settled for respectfully sitting next to it.
 One couple even thought that the penguin was part of a joke set up by the train staff, being that the logo for the Suica, which is one of the two train cards used in Tokyo, is also a penguin.
 I eventually had to get up and pick it up on my way out of the train, but I did get to see them exchange bedazzled looks with one another.
 The penguin now sits on top of my bookshelf, since I decided the bathroom was too cramped. So yeah, happy April Fool's.