Wandering around Japan
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2007
1
3
7
Trip End
Nov 17, 2007
Onomichi,
Japan
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Even the rice fields inJapan are organized
. Philosophy aside, here's the blog from our first week+, and a LOT of pictures. Sorry about that, upload speeds are so fast! And the Internet cafe is clean, quiet, spacious, AND has free coffee! They're geared towards the hard core gamers who play for many many hours, to the extent that there are blankets, pillows, and a shower here. not kidding. Even about the shower - everyone knows that geeks would never shower in the middle of a game. We started the trip with the island of Shikoku, the smallest of the 4 big islands, and one of the most rural, so we figured this would be a nice quiet start. Among other attractions, the island is known for the pilgrimage of 88 temples, and the only undammed river in Japan. Really. The civil engineering in this country is out of control; apparently a lot of this has to do with politics and how rural areas get a pretty big say in budget, and therefore suck up lots of money into massive civil engineering projects essentially as make-work, economic re-distribution programs. This unfortunately results in massively over-built roads, an amazing number of unnecessary tunnels, and huge number of water control programs. Sometimes entire hillsides are covered in concrete just to stifle the mere thought of a land slide. On the up side for us, the roads are all fantastically smooth, and usually the gradient isn't more than 10% even in the steep hills. Japan has hills, a LOT of hills, the country is 75% mountainous, and the rest is coastline
One of the 88 Shikoku Temples
. Most people live on the coast, so it's a toss-up whether we'd rather stick to the flatter coast, or find the true, rural Japan, but have to push up some real monster climbs. First we needed a map. We couldn't find one in Romanji, but found the 1000\ series of maps to have a very good scale for biking. It is all in Japanese, we have no idea where we are going, or where we have been, we just follow the road numbers (in Arabic numerals, imshallah), and hope nothing in the legend we can't read was really important. The first few days of biking are actually a nice combination of both hills and coast. We start on the flats, and then head inland to mild hills, drop back to the coast for lunch at one of the 88 temples, and find, of all things, a nice little Indian restaurant. The owners (Japanese) had spent 3 years in Manali (where we were some weeks back), so we enjoyed a break from noodle soups, but it felt wrong to be eating Indian in Japan. And it cost about 5x more than any other Indian meal we ever had in that country!! Speaking of costs, one of the psychological problems with the \ (yen, pronounced "en") is that anything under 1000\ is a coin. That's anything less than $10! So, you go spend 750\ at the 7-11, and it's "pocket change" but you just spent $7! And I'm not kidding about the 7-11; this place is loaded with convenience stores, including 7-11. We eat a disturbing amount of food from them, but for a country where vegetarian eating in restaurants is very difficult, even the 7-11 sells tofu, hot damn! The country is also phenomenally addicted to vending machines
Even the temples have vending machines
. There is at least one Coke machine in every small town. And there are a lot of small towns. In bigger towns, there are just banks of vending machines, dominated by Coke and Pepsi, a couple local brands, some sell cigarettes (lots of smoking here), a few even sell beer!! Unlike the American counterparts, these machines have a lot of choices, usually upwards of 15 drinks, including many varieties of coffee, tea, and maybe a couple soft drinks in the bottom corner of the display. Many of the machines even have a hot selection of the coffee type beverages. I had to try this of course, and wondered if there would be a 20 second pause for the drink to be flash heated, but no, instantly pops out. So this machine is keeping cans warm and cold, side by side. How much of Japan's electrical budget goes into vending machines?? Along with coffee on every street corner in machines, there are a lot of coffee shops - I know this because "Coffee" is one of the few words routinely in English. This is one seriously caffeinated country!The first night we spent at an official camp ground, arriving right around dark, as per our usual procedure when the sun sets so dang early (5:30 and earlier every day. sigh.) This place is ritzy, and costs it as well - $30 to camp!! Next day we buzz along much flatter coast. It's all very pretty, although not stunning; pretty, but not picturesque. More temples, more coast line, around the southern tip, back up the other side, and we decide to check out temple #27 for a possible camping spot
They never let me ring the bell
. We've been told that we can camp pretty much everywhere; basically "gaijin" (foreigners) are not expected to know how to behave, so that gives us incredible amounts of leeway for being able to camp in city parks, country parks, and wherever we feel like, and no one ever blinks. They may come over and babble at us enthusiastically in Japanese for a while, even after they find out we don't speak more than 5 words, but no one has objected to any of our camp spots, from road side parks to on the beach. The temple camping seemed like a great idea, until we checked the contours and found 400m of climb (1300 ft!) in 3km!! We pushed the bikes 900ft up this impossibly steep slope and then found a little gazebo, bathroom with running water, and picnic table. Bingo! Another home for the night! We are rather Dependant on this sort of thing popping up faster than the sun drops down, which has bitten us hard a couple times so far, but we've also been pretty lucky most nights. A word about the 88 temples; the pilgrimage connecting them is about 1400km, which we are definitely NOT doing, but we see a lot of the henro (specific name for the pilgrims on this pilgrimage) walking the route on the road, anywhere from 10-30 henro per day. We thought this was a lot, although the book says "only a small fraction still walk it". I found this hard to believe, but in that last hour of pushing our bikes up to the temple, we found the other very large fraction as bus after bus of henro passed us
Shikoku coast
. The occupants are still all dressed in the traditional white robes, and carrying the walking sticks when outside the bus, despite getting their asses carted, not walked, the 1400km. Seems like cheating to me, a pilgrimage should involve a little more hardship than having a seat mate with a runny nose. After the temple, we spent a night in Kochi, on the coast, in the middle of the island, where we met a couple German tourists, in Japan for a couple weeks. They are marveling how different it is in Japan, whereas, coming from India, we were marveling at how similar it is to Europe / US! It's a developed, wealthy country, lots of infrastructure which is under-utilized, not stretched past the breaking point, there are emission controls, you can drink the water and breathe the air, food is hygienic, and everything is expensive.Unfortunately for the Germans, they had found they didn't like Japanese food, and had seen enough temples already, so were killing time trying to find Italian restaurants before their flight home. Too bad for them, bring on the kitsune soba soup!
From Kochi we headed for the the interior, cutting off the western coastal tip. This is when we found the hills, really serious hills. We had figured on rolling hills, and indeed, many of them were, including a gorgeous section of coast which dipped and swooped up and down sea level to 400 ft, around, and back again. This would be fantastic fun on a light racing bike, but our touring bikes are more like driving a race course in a UPS truck
Henro on the 88 temple pilgrimage
. While riding my racing bike, I can use words like "sprint" and "zip" and "zing", but sadly, the most accurate way to describe us pulling away from the curb is "wobble". And when it gets to long climbs, it's just serious grinding and plodding. Crossing Shikoku was a fantastically gorgeous day of bright sun, very small rural roads (finally found an unpopulated section of Japan!!), gorgeous forests with rushing rivers, and hellish 1500-2000ft climbs. We even found a down hill ski area at the top of the last hill, 3000ft AGL. Considering that we are at the latitude of LA, this is impressive! At the end of the day, we were 25km short of where we wanted to spend the night with 1.5 hours left of daylight, and that's when my front tire went flat. So I patched it with the last of some patch cement, blew it up, and it immediately went flat again. Bad glue. Open a new tube, patch it a again, blow it up, drop into the next small town to find food as we're very hungry; after all the easy convenience stores, we stopped carrying so much, and found out the hard way there are none away from the coasts, but even before we can do that, it's flat again! SOB!!! Gretchen goes in search of food, I pull the inner tube... and can't find a leak. I pump it up and watch. It goes flat again. I pump it part way, and limp down to Gretchen, who has both snacks, and all the spare inner tubes. I change the tube and blow it up. The fourth time. Eat snacks, discuss course of action, and meanwhile, the castle burns down, falls over and then sinks into the swamp - the tire is flat again
Japanese relationship with the Pacific, defined
. We take the advice of a local and find a Minshuku (rural inn serving full board) for the night. Price is 6500 yen, very reasonable with two meals, and the woman running it speaks some English. We have a fantastic night, traditional room with tatami (rice mat) flooring and futons. This is actually nicer for us than a western room; the futons are folded in a corner, much more space to use in a small room, pull them out for sleeping, we always sleep on a futon at home anyway, and the pillows are buckwheat, which is my preference at home as well. Dinner is fantastic, huge soup of noodles, veggies, tofu and mushrooms, lots of mushrooms. Breakfast is also great, and she even serves us a cooked egg. After breakfast we find out two things; the other guest was a Henro - he puts on the white outfit over his normal cloths, and that the 6500 yen.... was per person. I apparently don't hide the stunned look on my face fast enough when I go to pay (that is $115!!), and she feels bad about the misunderstanding and cuts the rate to 10,000 yen total, which, with two meals, is pretty good for Japan, but back to camping for us! In contrast, the next camp site is utter hell, next to a busy road, in light rain, but all we could find, especially since we wanted a roof for the forecast of rain. Japan is very green, very lush, and there is a very good reason for that. Despite being at the latitude of LA, the climate this time of year is much more like Seattle; many days don't break 65F, cloudy, living in Tupperware sort of thing
Henro in stone
. So we found this roadside park as it got dark, the other occupant arrived shortly; a local on a moped who obviously lived on the moped. In my less optimistic moods I notice that the only difference between us being a tourist rather than a vagrant is ethnicity.The final day before our Kyoto side trip is a fantastic ride of about 80km over a string of small islands. These have all been connected by bridges in the relatively recent past, and as such, all the bridges have bike lanes! In fact, we had massive, independent entrance ramps, huge sweeping ribbons of concrete up to these massive suspension bridges. There are 7 bridges, lots of islands, excellent signage for directions (until the last 10km when they leave you on your own), and it only really, truly poured buckets of rain for about an hour late-morning. We managed to hide from most of it in one of the many very nice highway rest stops, where it was raining so hard, all the street lamps came on and the staff came out to marvel at the downpour. At the end of all this is Onomichi, a not overly remarkable town, but a place where we stash our bikes, and panniers, and get on the Shinkansen (bullet train!) back to Kyoto. We didn't want to bike in and out of a major metro area, and you can't visit Japan without taking a high speed train trip, so this was a great combination, and our friend Andie Zengion who has been wandering around Asia met us there for a couple days. We bought "non-reserved" seats which on a Friday night meant standing room only
Gotta love a religion with dragons
. Here we are, traveling at 300 kph (180 mph), and we're standing like it's the subway!! But there has never been a Shinkansen accident, so it's the way to go. Considering the size of Japan, and the fact that airports are usually inconvenient to the city, and that there is no security at all for the trains, they are a much much more convenient way to travel than intra-country air for anything along the two main islands. But you won't save money, just time; the bullet train round trip ticket for the 280km journey was about $150. Kyoto is the old provincial capital of Japan, steeped in multi-thousand year history (something which boggles the American mind), and about the most popular tourist destination in Japan, especially in the fall when the red maples start to turn color with a bazillian and two temples, shrines and castles to take pictures of, get married in etc. etc. Most of the tourists are local, but way more foreigners here than the entire island of Shikoku. We even met a couple Italians at the youth hostel who were also traveling by bike, although they tend to bike a bit, work for a longer bit, bike a bit etc. We check out a bunch of temples, the maples are just starting to turn, the rain is just stopping, things are generally quite lovely, and it's a total mind-bend to be visiting an old classmate on the other side of the planet. One of the big sites is Nijo-jo castle, a small complex of buildings, with a nice big moat (with carp of course), and "singing floors" - the original lord who built the castle was paranoid about intruders, so the floors are made with a slight gap, and metal clamps (spelled "cramps" in the brochure, really.) which let out a little squeaking singing noise when you walk
crowded bike parking! Kochi, Japan
. Traveling around Japan now, it is a very developed country (I shouldn't call it Western, they really wouldn't appreciate that I think), so one can forget pretty easily, just how amazingly different the cultures were a mere 200 years ago. Compared to the castles in Europe, this was a nice building, but not so big, and there was no furniture at all. Just elegantly painted wall panels, nice gardens, bamboo roofs, all that stuff. No turrets, massive ball rooms with chandeliers, hugely grandiose furniture etc. etc. The first meetings of east and west must have been a fantastic shock all around. Along with castles, a modern funny collision of cultures is in toilets. The traditional is a squat toilet, which I rather prefer actually; it is more hygienic (no body parts touch anything), more ergonomic for waste expulsion, good for the flexibility, and there is no splashing to worry about. Most of the toilets are squat in the places we stay, but the more modern places have these super-scary toilets which have big, complex control panels which make photocopiers look simple. They make simulated flushing sounds, have heated seats (this is just wrong), the lids go up and down on their own accord, and there's a lot more buttons there which I don't even dare to touch. East meets West, hell, East watches Star Trek and builds a toilet!After a day or three in Kyoto one has seen all the temples one really wants to, and has had enough of the crowds, so back on the bullet train (definitely a good place to use words like "zip" and "zing") to Onomichi, and stock up at Mr
Navigation in Japan is tough
. Donut before getting back on the bikes. The bread here is generally white, fluffy, and amazingly expensive, but the donuts are awesome with all the sugar and fat one expects from a donut. Great for pushing us up hills, and staying warm on days where it is 60F all day at 100% humidity with no sun. But that is for the next blog,Sayonara!
(yes, that really is Japanese for "good bye")
mk
P.S. If Starbucks is any indication, we still have a lot more culture shock coming. I thought Japan would be a good buffer, and no doubt it is, coming from India to here was a major shock. But I just had a grande latte from Starbucks, and the thing was HUGE. Supersize me batman! Guess I'm used to drinking the mini-sized drinks like the rest of the world now, which I complained about so much, say, 9 months ago.
P.P.S. It is now November 5th, and there is Christmas muzak and tinsel in this city of Beppu. Oy.
Comments
I beg to differ
I, for one, read all of your blogs, and Gretchen's, and go through each of your pictures, making them all large, one by one, so as to see them better. I also copy your words, and Gretchen's, into a word document and send them to Ramona, who, after reading them, gives them to her friend Cathy to read and then she returns them to Ramona. Andrew takes a sampling of your pictures and prints them onto sheets of paper, in color, and sends those prints to Aunt Margaret, Ramona and is continuing the set started for Lillian by sending them to us. So you see, lots of interest here. Am surprised at the lack of internet access in Japan, would have expected the opposite.
See you soon, Jude
Heron picture and large o-daiko drum
The picture of the heron flying over the waters is lovely, quite impressionistic.
I also noticed a large o-daiko drum in the picture of the temple. Are you two going to be anywhere near the island of Sado where the ensemble Kodo practices? That would be interesting.