We explored the areas around Tokyo on day trips using our JR pass. This day we took a train for an hour ride to the beach town of Kamakura. We look forward to these smooth train rides that allow our legs to rest between all our walking treks. It sure beats the stress of driving a car and navigating unfamiliar road systems that we have experienced in some of our other international trips.
We arrived in Kamakura without a definite plan for the day. So we decided just to walk from the train station to the beach. We wanted to walk in the sand along the Pacific Ocean, and this cloudy day was perfect for that.
The local fishing boats were already back on the shore for the day.
There were lots of windsurfers far from the shore, with stand-up paddlers and surfers closer to us. It was a nice, quiet respite from the crowds of Tokyo.
Snack of the day, bought from another street-side vendor, is some form of chocolate chip bread. It tastes like a cross between angel food cake and bread--both things that Mark likes a lot. It was pleasantly sweet, but probably wouldn't be considered a dessert by American sweet tooth standards. There were only Japanese signs at the bakery, so we have no idea what it is called.
While we walked downtown, we saw the first (and only) RV of our entire trip. It was a tiny motor home, necessary to travel successfully on Japan's tiny roads. After a month away from home, we can certainly tell that RVing is not as popular here as it is in the USA.
We are headed out of town and into the mountains to find the city's most famous landmark--Kotokuin Temple--home of the great Buddha statue.
Second in size only to the one we saw our first day in Nara, this 36 foot statue was cast in 1252. It has outlasted its wooden temple that surrounded it, so it is now out in the open.
Denisa had read about the Daibutsu hiking trail that was supposed to be nearby, so we climbed up over 200 steps to find ourselves on a ridge of the mountains surrounding Kamakura. The trees were huge, with equally large root systems that help them cling to the top of the mountain.
Another hiker offered to take a picture of us together, and we gladly accepted. We have very few of these pictures because we don't know how to ask for them. So we are always happy when someone just offers.
We needed to get to town and the train station, so Mark improvised another of his famous loop tours that took us through the jungle and down the mountain. It was a steep, grassy hike, but we were glad to find one of those shrines in the jungle and its trail back to town.
After visiting so many Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, we haven't seen a single Christian store or souvenir shop to buy a cross from Japan. We have purchased a cross from each country we have traveled to, but we thought we might be stumped here. We
recognize that we are coming to the end of our time in Japan and we
still haven't located a cross to take home from this country. We knew
that there were 65 Buddhist temples and 19 Shinto shrines in Kamakura and in
the surrounding hills, and so we didn't get our hopes up for finding one today. At different locations in Japan we have asked about a place to buy a cross, and we have just been met with blank stares. But the ladies at the Kamakura visitors' center gave us such good guidance on a restaurant to eat fresh shrimp for lunch, we decided to ask them for advice about buying a cross. Their first response was the usual blank stare. But then they started chattering in Japanese, and one got on the phone. The woman with the best English skills explained they had called the only Christian church in town. Their little church store was closed today, but they would open it and meet us right now. We walked quickly, and when we opened the door of the adjacent church we were greeted by the sound of their choir practicing for the Christmas program. The strains of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" have never been so sweet to us! We finally got to make our souvenir purchase--a clay cross made in Japan.
We stopped by a local shop for a very un-local snack. This French caramel crepe topped off our successful shopping trip in Kamakura!
Denisa wanted a picture with this particularly friendly-looking lion that we found under the Torii gate in downtown. We truly felt smiled-upon today!
We caught the train back to Tokyo, glad to have an hour-long relaxing ride and nap back to the city. It got cloudy this afternoon, and it looks like the predicted rain is finally going to find us. Mark spent a good part of his evening looking for a place to go to church on Sunday morning in Tokyo. In a city of 37 million people, there has to be a few Christian churches. This is the largest urban area population in the world, but Mark found only 9 churches with web sites--and only one was in English. We were disappointed that this church's English services were on Sunday afternoon and evening--after the time we would have to leave the city. So we guess that our exposure to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" will have to be our church time for this week.
Denisa had a list of things she wanted to see in Tokyo at night, so we started checking them off her list. One of those was the Tokyo Tower. Built in 1958 during the time of massive post-war construction, it is a symbol of the city of Tokyo, and its ability to recover.
It is 333 meters tall, just a little bigger than the Eiffel Tower that it copies. Perhaps Japan was sending a message to France that anything it could do, they could do taller. There are elevator rides to the observation decks that look over the city, but their price kept our feet on the ground this evening.
It was fun to walk towards the tower, watching it get larger and larger until we were finally standing underneath. We rode the Yamanote Line train (also covered by our JR pass) to the closest station and then walked several kilometers to the base of the tower. We had heard that Japan is very safe, and we had absolutely no qualms about walking its streets after dark.
It looks like Tokyo is getting ready for Christmas, as this is the second huge tree we have seen in a public place today. With only 2% of its population Christian, it looks they still celebrate Christmas here.
We walked back to the train station, and the Yamanote line. We had read that this is the most used train line in all of Tokyo, and we got to ride it during rush hour just to experience it. The picture below was actually taken at a less busy time, because there was no way to get a camera above the crowded mass of people during rush hour. We got separated shortly after we got on the train, and even though we were only six feet away from each other there were twenty people between us. At each train stop a few people would get off, and a multitude more would push their way on. Before we got on, we had agreed that we were getting off at Shibuya station. Denisa hoped that Mark would recognize that name from the very Asian and very soft announcement that were been made on the train. She was also hoping that his claustrophobia wouldn't kick in and cause him to spring out of the train at the next stop. We didn't have a plan for reuniting somehow if we were separated.
After our 30-minute ride, we arrived at the Shibuya station and managed to wriggle our way through the crowd to get off the train. Even though it was now past rush hour, we felt we had just experienced a very rushed train ride!
We came here to see the Japanese equivalent of New York City's Time Square with neon lights and huge television screens. In Tokyo, land is at a premium, so we have learned that there are more stores than just at street level. The vertical signs will show the stores and restaurants on the 2nd through 9th floors above.
Sometimes the advertisements for each business on upper floors is presented in a grid. Below, a pedestrian can see what bars, restaurants and other businesses are on floors 1 through 9, and even the basement.
The main reason we came to this area of downtown Tokyo was to witness for ourselves Japan's busiest street crossing. The picture below was taken as the stop lights for the auto lanes have turned red so that all vehicles have vacated the very wide intersections. You can see hundreds of pedestrians lined up on each street corner, ready for the walking light turn to green.
It's called the Shibuya shuffle when a thousand pedestrians meet in the middle of that wide intersection and attempt to get to the curb on the other side. Because all the vehicles are stopped at this time, people can walk in all directions and even diagonally all at the same time, so they meet in the middle in a wild scramble. With lots of movement and low lighting, getting a good picture is impossible. We went through the intersection several times just for fun. Mark can see over most of the heads to map our way through the crowd, and Denisa learned to stay right behind him and use him as a Shibuya shuffle shield.
Another evening stop was the bridge that crosses the Nihombashi-gawa river. Very ornate and guarded by stone lions and dragons, this granite bridge is the geographic center of Tokyo, and all distances are measured from here. It looks like the bridge is covered with a roof, but that would actually be the expressway. We crossed the bridge daily on the way to our hotel, so we were staying very close to the city's center.
But our favorite stop in Tokyo had to be the Tsukiji Fish Market. This is the world's largest seafood market, moving 2400 tons of sea food each day.
They sell every type of seafood imaginable, some of them so fresh they are still swimming in their styrofoam containers.
It was a little like walking through an aquarium, because we saw octopus,
shellfish,
and containers of squid with their inky mess.
Actually, most of the buying and selling had already been accomplished by the time we got there. The famous blue fin tuna auctions starts at 5:25 a.m. Hardy visitors must be registered by 5:00 a.m., and the first 120 tourists are allowed to enter and watch as the tuna sell for up to $10,000 each. We didn't make it for the auction, as we assumed it would be conducted in Japanese. But the inner market opens to the public at 9 a.m., and we were allowed to wander among the sea food stalls with the rest of the late morning buyers.
There isn't a barrier between the curious tourists and the hard-working men preparing the fish for sale. Denisa is standing very close to some sizable sea food as the fish butcher cut off the heads.
He would carefully trim the back bone away, and then began cutting them into more manageable slabs.
Further into the fish market we found the man that must have purchased those fish heads, and was now trimming off the skin to cut off more meat available for sale.
Nothing goes to waste, as we saw this seller even scraping off the ribs with a spoon to collect the last bits of meat from the bones of these big fish.
For land lubbers like us, it was interesting to see all the different cuts and kinds of meat available for sale every morning. Locals were buying a little of everything, and these nice slabs of fish were selling for $30-40.
There were also fish eggs for sale, out of fish that were swimming in the sea last night.
We have noticed that the Japanese are way ahead of the Americans in their variety of food sold "on-a-stick." I'm hoping that we will never see these fish-guts-on-a-stick at any state fair near home.
The hardest part of visiting the fish market was dodging the fork lifts and handcarts that were zipping in and out of the aisles. They were more interested in getting the fish delivered in its freshest state, rather than dodging local shoppers and a few curious tourists.
After gawking at the fish in the inner market, we headed back outside to the outer market. It was flooded with people and fork lifts, but we no longer had a roof over our heads. That's when we realized that we had spent all that time in a fish market, and we both agreed that it never smelled like fish. That was amazing!
Some of the streets in this area were absolutely packed with people. There were little cafes known for cooking up the freshest catch of the day, with lines that stretched far around the corner. There were people sitting on bar stools eating fresh fish as this crowd of people brushed right by their back. This traffic policeman is trying to keep people from getting run over, but it looked like an impossible task.
Compare that crowded street scene to the one below. Only blocks away is the ritzy neighborhood called Ginza. This is Tokyo's answer to New York City's Fifth Avenue with designer shops and opulent window shopping. We are here early in the morning before the shops open, so the streets are virtually empty.
Just as there are mix-masters where multiple freeways come together and and go in differing directions, this above-ground sidewalk is designed to do the same thing. Below is a freeway, but a pedestrian can enter from several different streets below and change directions without having to cross the busy streets below. We've never seen anything quite like it.
There are some pricey options for getting a bird's eye view of Tokyo. Wealthy tourists could go to the top of the new Sky Tree, or Tokyo Tower. Budget travelers have the great option of riding the elevator of the City Government Building to the 45th floor for this view for free. The lights go on to the horizon!
We can't believe that it's already getting dark by 5:00, so all the lights in the nearby skyscrapers are lit by the time we are at the observation deck.
We've had full days of walking, and we approximate we walked between ten and fifteen miles each day. That makes it possible to sleep well even with the rock-hard bed in our hotel. We have learned that folding the bedspread into quarters gives extra layers of padding that we know to appreciate. We will never complain about the hard beds in the United States again!
We started our day with a meal of hot dogs and buns, coleslaw, potato salad, steamed broccoli, and soup. It sounds like an all-American picnic lunch, but it was actually the breakfast buffet at our business hotel in Tokyo. This is a traditional Japanese breakfast, and we were the only non-Asians in the large room. We were glad to see a fork so we could eat faster. Just to remind us that we were in Japan, we also had tuna sushi, plum sushi, and tofu misso on the buffet. The only thing that resembled a western breakfast were the yellow squares labeled "Japanese omelet." We should have taken pictures of the buffet, but we didn't want to look like a couple of tourists. Actually it was pretty obvious that we weren't locals because we weren't wearing business suits.
We walked around Tokyo before catching the shinkansen train north out of the city. It was too early for some of the shops to be open, as the door was still closed on the Pokemon store. Our sons played this game 20 years ago, so it is interesting to know that it is still alive and well in Japan.
We were boarding our first train of the day at Tokyo Station. With its electric signage of train arrival and departures, it looks more like an airport than a train station.
We also saw our first double-decker train at this station. You can see a row of windows close to platform level, and another set one story above the platform. In our seven days of using the Japan Rail pass, we never rode a double-decker train.
We are getting pretty good at making transfers between shinkansens to local trains, and there is a remarkable difference between the two. The shinkansens run smooth and have comfortable individual seats. The local trains have stiff benches along the outside walls and straps hanging from the ceiling for standing passengers to hang on to when it gets crowded. It was a nice ride uphill on that local train through the mountain foliage to get to our destination of Nikko.
We arrived in the mountain town of Nikko--home to another world heritage site. Instead of buying the 500 yen bus pass, of course we walked the 2.2 kilometers through town to the national park where the famous temples are found. We also found some famously lovely red maple trees.
Town is decked out in its finest fall foliage, and it looks like there are record crowds today.
Our main focus is visiting Toshogu temple grounds. That would also be the focus of thousands of other Asians today.
This is the world heritage site, and the most famous of many temples in this area. We are finding that visiting a famous temple is not a trip to one building. There might be closer to twenty buildings on the temple grounds, and that was true for us today with each building more ornate than the next.
Some of the detail was amazing, and the Japanese have learned how important it is to continually restore these detailed paintings.
We saw this group of girls, giggling as they each read the fortunes that they purchased at the temple.
We have discovered that undesirable fortunes can be tied on a wire at the temple, in hopes of getting a better fortune later. We wondered how many of those girls' fortunes would not be desirable, and would end up tied on this wire.
Our map listed several "must see" items. One of those would be the elephants carved into the temple ornamentation.
It mentioned that it was famously obvious that the carvers had never seen an elephant. They also must have thought that elephants were very angry animals.
This is also home to the original "hear no evil/see no evil/speak no evil" monkeys, a traditional symbol of Japanese culture.
The guidebook mentioned that westerners are usually unimpressed with the sleeping cat carving that is highlighted in the temple map we got when we paid our admission. We would have to agree with the guidebook's opinion that the sleeping cat was a yawner.
There are no pictures allowed inside the temple, so Denisa stayed inside and Mark took her picture from the outside.
The detail of the carvings inside and out are beautiful, so we include a close up to appreciate it.
Another item on our map was the roaring dragon temple, known for its ancient picture of a dragon painted on the ceiling. There is a demonstration inside where a monk claps together two sticks at the tail of the dragon and we could hear only the normal clap of wood. But when he stood at the head of the dragon and did the same action, the clapping sticks "ring like a roaring dragon". (That is a direct quote from the temple handout.) Mark would point out that a roar would definitely be an over-statement, and he noticed that the monk held the sticks differently to help the echoing effect. He would also have to point out that these sacred places with no pictures allowed, will have a monk doing an info-mercial announcement for the good luck charms available for sale in the temple. The monks would be happy to take 800-1200 yen in exchange for a charm guaranteeing luck in school, child-birth, finding a job, passing a test . . . Suddenly the temple didn't feel as sacred.
Another part of this temple grounds was the trek to the burial site of one of Japan's rulers. There are 200 steps to climb to the burial site, and that climb didn't seem to discourage any of the Asian visitors today. I'm not sure if all the tourists in the United States could have made this climb.
This is the tomb of Ieyasu, early ruler of Japan. Not that impressive a site for the climb to get there.
We had to look up the information about the burial site, because signs like this at the site really aren't that helpful to us. The only thing more baffling to us are the announcements in Japanese. We always wonder what is so important that it deserves an announcement over a loud speaker, but not repeated in any other language. We have learned that if everyone reacts to a message, we should probably do the same thing. That worked for us at the airport when they made an announcement and everyone left the gate where we were waiting to board a plane. It seems the gate was changed for our flight, but they didn't announce it in English.
Even though most of the temple grounds seem to be strictly ornamental, there are still some ceremonies going on here. In one of the smaller buildings with the doors wide open there appeared to be a wedding ceremony that day.
We are about templed-out, so we preferred wandering the beautiful forest trails instead of paying to enter the other temples of Nikko.
Even without paying to go inside there were still beautiful views of the temple gates and the fall foliage.
We have noticed that Japanese parents are very proud of their children, and this little boy looks like a prince as they pose for a family picture.
We have seen very few animals of any kind since we have been in Japan. There have been a hand-full of dogs on leashes, and a couple of protected deer masquerading as god's messengers. But no agricultural animals and no other wildlife. I guess that is why there was a line of people taking pictures of this little snake. Following our usual plan, we got in that line and took a picture of this little brown snake as well.
We like to sample local street food, and we found an unusual Japanese pancake stand. She explained that the batter had dried shrimp and cabbage in it. She rolled it around a set of wooden chopsticks, filled it with cheese, and decorated it with mayo and ketchup.
Interesting, but not our best purchase of the trip. Two bites and we were looking for those hard-to-find trash cans.
That brings us to another observation. In all the cities and countryside, there are almost no public trash cans. We saw a few recycling bins for cans or plastic bottles, but almost no place to dispose of things like inedible pancakes. But we saw almost no litter in the ten days we visited here. We're not sure how the culture has trained this huge population to carry their trash home with them, but it seems to be working. Another way to limit the litter is that we haven't seen paper towels in even one restroom in Japan. There have been a few electric hand dryers, but Denisa noticed that most women carry a wash cloth-sized towel in their purses for drying hands. We stopped at the 100 yen store (very similar to our dollar stores) to buy a little towel too. This narrative doesn't describe the picture below, but it did provide an opportunity to slip in yet another beautiful picture of the trees we were enjoying today.
After striking out with our pancakes, we did better with our fried soba dumplings, and the strawberry sundae we bought later in the day back in town.
We have been traveling with train reservations, but finished early in Nikko and tried to get on an earlier shinkansen back to Tokyo. Of the 16 cars of the train, 5 of them have unreserved seats that any ticket holder can sit in without making reservations and paying the fees associated with that process. It was a good experience for us to try, but those unreserved cars were packed and we would have had to stand up for the 40 minute trip into Tokyo because no seats were open. So we waited 30 minutes at the station for our very comfortable reserved seats on the next shinkansen.
We got back to Tokyo to see some of its night life, but that seems like a topic for another blog. We are actually back in the United States now, trying to catch up with blogging while recovering from jet lag. Thanks for coming along on our Asian Adventures!
