Kamakura, The Muraki's, and Japanese Baths

  Yokohama, Japan
Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Around Hotel 1

Around Hotel 2

The unfortunate thing today is that it is raining very hard. This will make the trip to Kamakura difficult. It is going to suck walking around in the rain but since I am only meeting up with Shino for the day, we cannot reschedule. Shino used to be a tour guide in Kamakura when she was younger. This will be awesome as I should get some really good insights into the different monuments.

Yokohama Subway 1

In looking at the travel guide, Kamakura was the capital for a brief period in Japanese history. It is also where the warrior-zen philosophy first flourished hundreds of years ago. Many of the temples were built to honor the meditative warrior ideal.

Kamakura

Cherry Blossom Road

Shino was at the Kamkura subway exit when I got out of the station. We had agreed to meet at 10am but she was there at least 20 minutes earlier. It was so considerate of her to come early to make sure that I did not have to wait.

We walk from the station down the original cherry blossom road that was preserved from a thousand years earlier. We follow the path from approximately 1 km where it ends at a large shrine. According to my guidebook, the Shrine represents a sect of Shinto that the warrior class adopted. From this religious belief came the whole concept of the meditative warrior.

Kamakura Shrine

Kamakura Shrine 5

The shrine was in amazing condition. You can see that the government spent a lot of money to upkeep the monument. What was especially interesting is that New Years is a big holiday for Japan. Typically people come home and be with family during the New Years holiday and then go to the Shrine on New Years day. The concept is similar to Chinese New Year except that in Japan they follow the solar calendar instead of the lunar New Year. What was nice was that I got an opportunity to see the workers prepare for the New Years festival.

Kamakura Shrine 7

We went to the offering box and Shino tells me about a Japanese superstition on what type of coins to throw into the offering box. The 5-yen coin is associated with good luck and the 10-yen coin is associated with bad luck. Apparently the reason behind this superstition is due to the phonetic similarities between the 5/10-yen coins with some Japanese words for good/bad luck. As a result, the Japanese only offer 5 yen pieces and not 10 yean pieces. The whole process consists of throwing the 5-yen coin into the offering box and then clapping 3 times and make a wish. I forgot to ask what the significance of the 3-claps is for. I guess I will have to look it up when get back.

The unfortunately thing about the whole morning was that it started to rain harder as the day went by. We were soaking wet despite of having umbrellas. Worse by cloth shoes were soaking wet and felt very uncomfortable. The silver lining to all of this was the fact that there was nobody at the monuments. This made it easy to take nice pictures of the area. Check out the photos in the section for yourself.

The Great Buddha

Buddha 1

After the Shrine we head towards the Giant Buddha in Kamakura. There is an interesting story about how a few hundred years ago the Buddha sat inside a small wooden building. However there was a large flood that came to Japan and washed away everything but the Buddha. From that point forward the Buddha has sat in the open air.

On the way to the Buddha we run into some older travelers from Mexico. It's rare that to see Mexican travelers in Asia and if you thought it was hard to find an English speaker in Japan, good luck on finding a Spanish speaker. Fortunately for them Shino's Spanish was better than her English. I was surprised at how well Shino spoke Spanish. She was surprised too that I actually could speak some Spanish. Heck, the Mexicans were super surprised to find ANY Spanish speakers in Japan!

The Mexican travelers tagged along with us to the Buddha. At this point the rains turned into showers and soaked all of us. Yet when we reached the Buddha, I quickly forgot about the rain. There's something serene about seeing a Giant Buddha in the rain.

Probably the most interesting question I got from the Mexicans was about the swastikas on their map. On the Kamakura tourist map there were symbols of shrines and temples. The Temples had the traditional Buddhist Swastikas whereas the Shrines had a different symbol. The Mexicans had thought the Swastikas as being an exclusive Nazi symbol but I corrected them by saying that the Swastika had been associated with Buddhism for years and that the association with Nazism was only an unfortunate by product of Hitler's choice for his party symbol.

Buddhism vs. Shinto
Probably the most interesting story I read was about rivalry between Shinto and Buddhism hundreds of years ago. These were the two dominant factions of Japanese Religion and often the followers with one clashed with the other. However a Great Monk whom both sides respected resolved the differences by stating that Shinto & Buddhism were in fact different expressions of the same philosophy. As a result of this great epiphany, Shinto & Buddhism have co-existed peacefully for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Japanese Curry
For Lunch Shino took me to a famous Japanese curry shop in Kamakura. I had seen Japanese Curry before in stores but I have never ordered it. I had assumed that it would be very similar to Indian curry so I never bothered to try it out. Boy was I wrong.

The Japanese curry is less like Indian curry but more like American gravy. Similar to American gravy, Japanese curry is served as a sauce with shredded meat and poured over a plate of rice. It's very similar in texture and functionality to mash potatoes and gravy but it tastes like a hybrid of curry and Japanese sauces. Another interesting point about lunch is that they serve the salad with the entre. Unlike in the US where the salad always comes first, in Japan salad is eaten concurrently with the main course

Back to Shibuya
I had asked my travel agent to send my Kyoto package to my hotel in Shibuya for pick up. I should have sent it to the Yokohama hotel instead. I was going to pick up the ticket tomorrow morning and then head straight to the Shinkasen (bullet train). Fortunately Shino convinced me to pick it up today. I had assumed that the tickets were like the subway, where you just go at any time. I was wrong. The train had assigned seating and assigned times. Good thing we went back and picked things up because I would have missed my train!

Shino's Town & Meeting the Parents
We head back towards Shino's town after Shibuya on the Tokiado subway line. Shino lives in a small town about 1.5 hours away from downtown Tokyo. We arrive at the station and Shino's father picks us up because of the heavy rain. We would have walked back but it was raining heavily and it would not have been practical with all my luggage.

Shino's town was a small village community built many, many years ago. The population is about 30,000 and was a quiet sleepy place. Her house was built by the Muraki's 20 years ago on a plot of land her father bought many years ago. It was a good sized house by Japanese standards and it comfortably housed Mr./Mrs. Muraki, Shino, and her 2 brothers. The decorations straddled between traditional Japanese items (Tatami Mats) and Western items (cuckoo clock).

Probably the most difficult part about meeting Shino's parents was the fact that they spoke zero English. They were friendly people but we could barely converse without Shino's help. They seemed shy and I was told by Shino that they had assumed that as an American that I'd be a blonde haired, blued eyed person. They were ultimately relieved that I was an Asian because they would have felt awkward otherwise.

Dinner with the Muraki's
For dinner Mrs. Muraki made a huge Japanese feast of 8-9 dishes. It wasn't a "feast" like in Chinese banquets but rather more like tapa-style with numerous small plates. The dishes were things I've had before but the presentation and flavor far exceeded anything I've had in the past. Dinner consisted of 5 types of sashimi fish, Yakitori, Japanese pickles, two types of salads, and Japanese vegetables. Each dish was amazing. I never knew there were so many different grades of Tuna (Maguro) or that there were so many different types of sauces. From the untrained eye, the food seemed understated but when you eat the food, you taste the complexity and subtlety of each dish.

As part of dinner, Mr. Muraki brought out his collection of alcohol (Sake, Shoju, and beer). The Muraki's rarely get guests from overseas and Mr. Muraki wanted to share some of his favorite drinks with me. He starts the meal by pouring me his favorite unfiltered sake from a micro-distillery. The sake was a first distillation using last year's rice harvest. The taste was very fragrant and sweet, unlike the dry vodka-like taste of sake back stateside. The sake was some of the best stuff I've tasted. Apparently he buys from the same distillery each year. I felt much honored that he'd share with me his best stuff. I could tell that he only brought it out for special occasions.

He then proposes a toast to me for taking care of his daughter while in SF. Secretly I feel embarrassed because the amount of effort or help that I actually did was minimal. All I did was take her out to dinner a few times and show her a good time in the city. Definitely nothing compared to the hospitality that I am being shown right now by the Muraki family.

With the toast, we began dinner. I've had a lot of Japanese food back stateside but I have never eaten with a Japanese family. It's interesting to see how they eat the food. The first thing they tell me is that Americans mess a lot of things up. For example wasabi is supposed to be accent the soy sauce. Americans tend to put WAY too much wasabi in the soy sauce. The second thing is ginger is not mixed in with wasabi and soy sauce; rather it is mixed separately with soy sauce in another dish. The over mixing of wasabi, ginger and soy sauce takes away form the natural flavor of the food. Equally interesting is the role of rice in a meal. Rice is not eaten with the meal but rather after the main dishes is consumed. I'm not sure of the reasoning behind this but my guess would be that eating dishes with rice takes away from the flavors of the dish. The rice becomes the central focus and you lose out on the flavors of each dish.

What's also interesting is the drinking etiquette at dinner. The host always poured for the guest and when the host is pouring the guest must hold the glass up to receive the drinks. The host never allows the guest's cup to go empty. I didn't realize this fact until much later. I had learned to not waste food/drinks from a young age. As a result, I try to eat and drink whatever was placed in front of me as not to be rude. Long story short, I kept drinking what Mr. Muraki was pouring. The problem with that is that he kept pouring because it's inhospitable to let the glasses go dry. Mr. Muraki kept drinking himself because he didn't want me to drink alone. After about 1.5 hours of this I finally broke the silence by declining any more drinks because I was pretty buzzed after consuming large quantities of alcohol.

Japanese Baths
After dinner, I was treated to a Japanese style bath. Once again this was a cultural experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. They explained to me that it was a ritual for the host to offer his guests a bath as a sign of hospitality. Taking a bath was different from the US. What you were to do was to first take a shower to wash away the dirtiness of your body before soaking yourself in the bath. The Muraki's did not understand how American's can wash themselves in a bath and then soak in the impurities that they just washed off.

I think symbolically baths had to do with purification. Therefore the act of taking a bath is one full of ritual and meaning. The bath I took was in a special tub that had an electronic heater that allowed you to control the water temperature to the exact degree. Contrast that with the US bathtubs which are essentially a ceramic tub that fills with water. It was a neat experience for me but I probably missed out on a lot of the intricacies of the symbolism.