Japan 2013: Shinkansen to Kyoto

Today was a transition day. We packed-up & got a taxi to Tokyo Station (above pic is a street view from the station), then hopped on the shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. During the taxi ride I got some photos of place saround Tokyo:

I wanted to get the the station early enough to have time to choose some ekiben- train station bentou- for lunch. These bentou usually have a rice base (or little rice balls in different colours) & then okazu (side dishes, like pickles & veggies, tamago yaki & tofu), and some sort of fish or meat as well. Brendan browsed the bentou with me, & when he found something that looked good, we stopped & got 2 of those- 1 for Charlie, too. I found a similarly colourful one with lots of yummy okazu & little shrimps. You just tell the kiosk lady the number of the bentou (they're in a window in plastic form :) you want & how many.

We waited & bit, & then went up to the platform in time to get our luggage onto the 11:03 Hikari to Kyoto. There's a space for luggage at the back of each car, so we've learned to enter from the back & stow our bags as quickly as possible before the space fills up. Most folks riding the shinkansen during the week are business men or ladies our for a day of shopping, but there are also folks like us traveling around with everything they own in tow...

outside the shinkansen

 And a sight not often encountered where we come from- a Buddhist monk heading for the car behind ours.

As the train pulled out of Tokyo I got some more photos of the busy streets:

The train trip to Kyoto takes about 2 hours, so Charlie & Brendan played cards while I crocheted:

 Every seat has a map of the amenities on the train:

 ...and a place for your cold drink, too.

Then it was time for ekiben!! I was so excited to open my box. Charlie & Brendan's looked like this outside:

 And here's inside:

Here's mine:

Mine was supposed to be similar inside, but...

Yikes!!! She gave me the wrong one!!! This one has unagi (smoked eel), a couple of sad-looking dead fishies with heads & eyes, & what looked like dead chickens on the left there. Sigh. No colourful cute okazu!!! Clearly a guy's bentou :(

Unagi is not my first choice, but I can eat it, so I dug in. The pickles were fine, & the bed of rice was cooked in dashi (broth) so it was really quite yummy. What appeared to be dead chickens turned out to be little clams, & they weren't fishy-tasting at all, so that was ok. After I ate enough of the rice I could roll the poor, dead fishies out of the way & keep eating the rice & clams. In the end, I was amazed by how delicious this disappointing bentou was :) Plus, Charlie & Brendan gave me most of their okazu!

As we got closer to Kyoto the scenery changed from cities & industrial areas to countryside.

And the closer to Kyoto the mountains showed-up, hazy in the distance:

When we got to Kyoto, we found a taxi pretty quickly (not too shabby, as it's a big station) & headed for the Kyoto Brighton Hotel. It had been described in a review as representative of Japan's "bubble economy" of the 80's & they weren't kidding! Our room is at least twice the size of the one in Tokyo:

There is free matcha green tea & 3 kinds of regular green tea & a beautiful teapot & cups to serve it. The bathroom has a separate room for the shower & ofuro (huge bathtub) glassed-off from the rest of the room. There's plenty of space to move around, a table to eat on! So comfortable :)

After moving in & going down to chat with the concierge about the shuttle bus & such, we decided to take the shuttle to the nearest subway station, & then take the subway to Kyoto station to find some dinner. Kyoto station has a department store as well as an underground mall, & even the little subway station has a small bakery. The subway spit us out in the underground mall, which led to the basement level of the department store, where, like Takashimaya in Tokyo, all the prepared food kiosks are. Yum!!!

We were in the mood to eat in a restaurant, so we went to the 11th floor & looked at the restaurant map, choosing a tempura place. Little did we know the adventure we were in for... 

 In Japan, it's most common to have set meals & they don't generally like to alter the menu, so when I asked the hostess if they had yasai dake (vegetable-only) tempura & she said yes, I assumed it was on the menu. In fact, it was not. We were seated at a long table around the tempura chef (like the places where they cook the food on a hot plate in the table) & the chef asked each of us what we liked. Charlie doesn't like any seafood but scallops- duly noted by chef. Brendan is saishoku-jin (vegetarian)- duly noted. I'll eat practically any fish or seafood (except for poor dead fishes with eyes...) but no meat- duly noted. They showed me a menu & asked me to choose a set meal (which is when I figured-out that they were changing the menu for us) & then we were off! 

The hostess arrived with cute bibs ceremoniously tied on, along with a discussion of Brendan's rattail :) 

A pretty tray soon arrived with all sorts of bowls & things. 

The chef showed us the containers on the counter with dipping sauce & flavoured salt (both popular with tempura here) & then he started cutting & frying things. The tempura arrived piece by piece, hot from the deep fryer. It was amazing. 

He showed me my shrimps before frying them, fresh & leggy, & a few moments later presented me with the tempura-fried legs...

I jokingly asked him if they were yummy, & he just laughed. So I ate them. They were very crunchy, a bit weird, & quite delicious.

Here's our chef at work:

The meal ended with kakiage- a sort of fritter made to order. Mine shrimp (sans legs), Charlie's with scallops, & Brendan's with veggies. Then they took our trays & served us yummy green tea. Since I had been doing most of the talking, I got to pay the bill :)

It was a pretty awesome experience!!!

Then we went back to the department store (for the record, it's Isetan) & bought stuff for breakfast, stopping by the entire floor devoted to sweets first. OMG!!! We are going back there...

And then back to the subway to catch the train to the station where the shuttle-bus stops.

We just missed one bus, but another arrived soon & the evening was very pleasant- & we are in Kyoto!! 

Tomorrow: more adventures in Kyoto!

Japan 2013: Adventure Day

Today was our first day on our own since our first full day here. For me, the highlight of the trip is visiting friends, but there's a certain charm to picking a place & going there all on our own, although it's a lot more nerve-wracking, too :)

The picture at the top is a sight anyone who stays at a hotel in Japan is familiar with. They weren't as common before the 2011 earthquake & tsunami, but now they are ubiquitous. When you enter your hotel room, you are greeted by this little device, & you must heed the sign or your room has no electricity! It's an energy-saving device that must save them a lot, if you consider how many hotels are in Tokyo alone...

This was also a holiday in Japan, although you'd never have known it. July 7th is Tanabata, which is an old festival celebrating an even older myth about the movement of the stars Altair & Vega, personified as Hikoboshi the star-cow-herder, & his wife Orihime, the weaving princess. These 2 stars are separated by the Milky Way, but they converge very closely in mid-summer, needing only a bridge of birds over the Milky Way to have their once-a-year meeting. If it rains, the birds don't arrive, though. Two years ago we stumbled into a fabulous Tanabata celebration at the Zoujou-Ji Buddhist temple & were hoping to find another fun place for Tanabata this year, but for some reason this year had toned-down the celebrations. So other than the decorated bamboo fronds seen in department stores & along some streets (we saw some in Sugamo a couple days ago) there was no festival to be had :(

The morning paper said that the rainy season was officially over- Japan has a distinct rainy season that starts in May-June & lasts until early July- which is why it got so hot on Saturday (& still very humid...). The temp was supposed to go back into the 90's today, so we decided that a visit to Asakusa,  one of the largest temple complexes in Tokyo, with weekend crowds & hot temps, was not a good idea. Charlie had researched the local art museums & we decided to go to the Bridgestone Museum of art, near Tokyo Station. Our other task for the morning was activating our Japan Rail passes, which allow us to ride every train but the Nozomi (fastest bullet train) prepaid for 2 weeks. The passes seem expensive when you buy them, but in the context of taking the shinkansen (bullet train) more than once they save a lot in the long run. And you can use them for any JR train, so once we activated them, we started using them.

But even before pass activation- breakfast at our usual Starbucks :) While eating, we heard the sound of a loudspeaker, & could see a very common sight these days- a van decked-out with political posters & people shouting the name of a candidate over loudspeaker, sometimes the man himself speaking to the street at large. There's a big election in 2 weeks, so we've seen lots of these vans around town. You can see the yellow/white van in the bottom of the photo. They're parked right outside Shinjuku Station- a good place to catch passersby!

After breakfast we grabbed our passports & stuff for the day & went to Shinjuku Station to activate our JR passes. We got there right before the crowd- whew! There were a lot of folks activating passes & it was fun to hear all the languages & accents. JR passes are only available to foreigners, & a lot of the world was there with us :) We shared the window with a couple from Australia. The gal was wearing an Astro Boy t-shirt & Charlie was wearing a Totoro T-shirt, so we had fun chatting with them (& the JR ladies, too :) about anime.

Then we headed right into the station & took the Yamanote line to Tokyo Station. We are about halfway around the train line's loop from Tokyo Station, so we just jumped on the next train without worrying which direction it was headed in- a rare luxury. The maps are well-marked in English, so it's just a matter wading through the list of the stations on the map to figure out which direction the train is going in.

Yamanote Line train with cute characters & summer motifs

 We exited Tokyo Station at the Yaesu Shopping center- fortunately, because it goes under the streets almost all the way to the Bridgestone. On a hot day, things like this are greatly appreciated.

Yaesu Shopping Centre

The exhibit at the Bridgestone was really cool. It was a survey of art before & after the invention of artificial pigments. It started with Renoir & then moved right through art history to the present. The Bridgestone is a small museum, but has some amazing pieces- Picassos, Manet, Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, & a room full of 20th century Japanese artists which was very interesting. It was a great way to spend a hot morning in Tokyo!

 We headed back to the Yaesu Center around noon to look for lunch. Feeling adventurous, we found a little soba place there. The menus has no English on them (sometimes the restaurants near hotels have an English menu, which is very helpful :) but I was able to ask if they had soba with veggie tempura & they did. And it was delicious!

 We took the train home in the same direction we'd come &, indeed, Shinjuku Station is pretty much exactly the same distance from Tokyo Station in either direction :) It took about half an hour each way. I kind of enjoyed the walk down memory lane of riding the full loop. We stopped in Ueno, where we've stayed before, & Harajuku, scene of a memorable adventure 4 years ago when we visited Kiddy Land (awesome toy store) & nearly got squished to death in the packed Harajuku Station on a Sunday afternoon. There were a bunch of other places that brought back memories, so the train ride didn't seem so long.

After resting a bit at the hotel, Charlie & I decided to walk back to the Hanazono Jinja (visited on Thursday) to see if they were doing anything for Tanabatta. They weren't but the walk was fun. The sky slowly clouded-up & so the sun wasn't so intense. Tokyo on a Sunday brings out all sorts of people- families with kids, casually-dressed people, formally-dressed people, ladies in kimono, & I even saw my first, real-life Goth-Loli girl! It's fun to observe the fashions & subtle changes over time. Most grown women in Japan wear neutral colours, as bright colours are considered too youthful. I tend to tone my wardrobe down some when I visit Japan, although I feel more comfortable wearing bright colours in Tokyo than in Kyoto & other parts of Japan. This visit I've been noticing women wearing orange, yellow, & other bright colors. The younger women are wearing even brighter colours- & dyeing their hair. At breakfast there was a young woman with blue hair & a bar code tatooed on the back of her neck! Tatoos are still taboo here (except in yakuza- gangster- culture) so she was really making a statement.

On the way back to the hotel we went back to Takashimaya for dinner food. More yummy corokke, Inarizushi, I found a gorgeous salad- no wilted lettuce at all!- and some pastries, & beverages. As we walked back along the bridge from Takashimaya Times Square, huge raindrops started to fall. We got back just in time before the skies opened-up:

 And then were rewarded with a gorgeous rainbow:

It lasted just forever!!

We did some packing up in the evening before heading for bed. Tomorrow- shinkansen to Kyoto!!

Japan 2013: Momo & Aoi-chan visit Shinjuku

 Our excitement for today was a visit from Momo & Aoi-chan at our hotel!

Thanks to our badly-timed 5-hour nap yesterday afternoon, we were up pretty early, so we had breakfast at Starbucks (can't get enough of those soy matcha lattes!) & then came back to the room to batten down the hatches/baby-proof :)

They arrived at the hotel around 10:00 am & we met them in the lobby, which is on the 20th floor of a high-rise office building, & all took the elevator to the 26th floor & our room. Aoi-chan immediately made herself at home :)

 Charlie had brought out the finger puppets so Brendan entertained Aoi-chan while Momo & I chatted.

We had brought some classic kids' books from the US to Aoi-chan ("Goodnight Moon", "Pat the Bunny" & the like) so Brendan read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to her.

I got the cutest video of him reading, & if I ever figure out how to upload stuff to YouTube I'll post is someday :)

We had thought we might try going to a park so Aoi-chan could run around, but the sun decided to come out today, bringing temperatures of 100 F & 90% humidity!! (Charlie read in the paper this morning that tsuyu, the rainy season in Japan, is officially over as of yesterday, hence the sun coming out.) So we scrapped that idea, put on some music & ket her run & dance around the room while we visited. Then we went across the bridge to Takashimaya to have lunch.

We ended-up at the same soba shop as a couple of days ago. The hot mugi-cha there was soooo yummy I was glad to go back, because last time I'd noticed they had boxes of tea for sale at the register, so I picked up a box when we paid the bill :)

It was pretty kid-friendly, with long bench seats where we could keep her contained :) Momo brought a baby bentou for her & she ate quite a lot of it while we ate our yummy soba noodles & tempura.

When she was finished eating Charlie & Brendan helped keep her busy while Momo ate some lunch. The penguin finger puppet helped, too :)

Beanie decided to cosy-up in the box, too...

And then, when Aoi-chan got too fussy, Momo put her in the baby carrier & went for a very short walk, returning with a very asleep Aoi-chan.

Which allowed Momo to finish her lunch in peace :) Hanging with Momo & Aoi-chan reminds me soooo much of Brendan at the same age! It's hard to appreciate toddlers when you have them, because their energy is just so overwhelming, but it's such a short & amazing time of their lives. I really loved seeing Aoi-chan in full toddler-mode.

After lunch the guys decided to go shopping & Momo & I wanted to check-out the kids' floor of the department store, so we parted ways. The kid's fashions & all were gorgeous & incredibly expensive- reminding me that I was in Tokyo, not Rochester! They were fun to admire, though :) Since it was Saturday, the store was absolutely mobbed with families & moms with kids. I was struck by how many of the moms & kids were dressed like they were going to a tea party. Lacy dresses, matching dresses, starched linen dresses, all gorgeous & kind of over-the-top.

When we were done browsing, Momo & Aoi-chan- still sleeping, bless her!- headed to the train station to go home. We will see them (& Hiroshi-kun, too) next weekend in Kyoto, so it made saying goodbye much easier.

I went back to Yuzawaya to get more yarn for projects & then loaded-up with snacks & drinks in the basement & headed back to the hotel. With our bodies all turned-around from the travel, I find I wake up roaringly hungry (because my body thinks it's dinner time!) but then I'm not so hungry at dinner (breakfast) time. So daytime snacking has become rather important for our energy levels, & the snacks here are sublime, so it's not a hardship at all :)

After snacks, Charlie & Brendan played some card games for downtime.

And then I confess I took a nap while the guys read in the lobby :)

Afterward, we decided to head to Takashimaya's basement to buy dinner. We thought we could find some inari sushi for Brendan (one of his faves) & maybe bentou for us. We had given up on finding vegetarian corokke (potato croquettes) for Brendan, but one of the kiosks had edamame corokke & when we asked (thanks to are intensive prep with our Japanese teacher, these sorts of situations are so much easier to manage because we know how& what to ask for!), there was no meat in them, so we grabbed some, & some yummy cream corokke as well. (Cream corokke are the unimaginable combination of a white sauce & either seafood or veggies, that have been congealed & formed into patties, then breaded & deep fried- total yum!) I found a gorgeous bentou to share with Charlie & we also snagged the last inari sushi in one of the kiosks- some of what we bought was on discount because it was the end of the selling day there :)

Our dinner selections- inarizushi on the left, corokke on top, & the bentou on the bottom.

The bentou had 3 kinds of sekihan- special rice cooked with beans & other yummies, fish cakes, tamagoyaki (rolled omelet), & various veggies & pickles. I love bentou so much! I love the variety of foods & textures & colours & flavours! You'll hear more about bentou tomorrow because my very favorite kind is eki-ben, the kind you buy at train stations.

On the way back to our hotel I took some pictures of blue skies over Shinjuku :)

And my happy guys :)

And our hotel! It starts on the 20th floor of this high-rise office building, as I mentioned, & then you take another elevator to the room floors.

After dinner we lazed-around, then finally headed for bed at 8:30, properly tired & hoping for a full night's sleep!!

Japan 2013: Babies!

Momo & Aoi-chan

We all slept better last night, although I was up for about an hour around 3:00 am, wide-awake, so I did some of my ravalry stuff & then went back to sleep for a while.

Today's plan was to meet our friend Momo & her 16-month-old daughter Aoi-chan & go to visit some more friends who have a 2-month-old baby. I met Momo a few years ago when she was living in Rochester while her husband, Hiroshi, studied & received his PhD in electrical engineering at the U of R. Our Japanese teacher, Shizuka, had introduced us, & when we met neither of us spoke the other's language very well. This changed considerably when Momo started coming over every week- sometimes with Shizuka, sometimes on her own. I taught them to knit & crochet, & they taught me Japanese cooking. Momo & I did this for nearly 2 years before her husband, Hiroshi-kun, finished his degree & got a job back in Japan, 3 summers ago. I missed Momo so much when she moved home, but we have skyped pretty much every week since then, & we saw them 2 years ago on our last family trip to Japan. About 8 months after that visit, Momo had her baby, Aoi-chan! We resumed skyping when Aoi-chan was 2 months old, & it has been amazing to watch her grow up in weekly doses. Brendan & I made a quick, 10-day trip last summer (without Charlie, which was very hard!) to meet baby Aoi-chan, which was lovely :)

Heading into Shinjuku Station

On our last couple of visits Momo introduced us to her childhood friend, Hiroko-san, who did some sight-seeing with us. In Japan, the childhood friend (osana najimi) is a very special friend, almost like a sibling, & many stay close friends into adulthood. We've enjoyed getting to know Hiroko-san & her husband Daisuke-kun very much. Last summer Brendan & I spent a day with Hiroko-san & Dai-kun & visited their small shop in the Kagurazaka section of Tokyo. Their shop sells hand-made items & naturally-dyed clothes, so of course I really enjoyed seeing it! We also introduced them to the Mameshiba (Japanese cartoon characters) that I've been crocheting, & Dai-kun was particularly tickled by them, & by Brendan's Beanie, too :) Well... about 8 months after our visit with Hiroko-san & Dai-kun, they had a little baby boy! Nozomu-kun is not quite 2 months old & Hiroko is still adjusting to having a new baby around, but they were up for a visit & today was the day!

On the train to Sugamo

Momo's mom lives in the Sugamo section of Tokyo, so Momo (who lives in Atsugi-shi, on the very outskirts of Tokyo- about 2 hours from Shinjuku by train) decided to spend a couple nights in Tokyo with her mom, to make traveling with Aoi-chan easier. She came to our hotel this morning, Aoi-chan asleep in the baby-carrier, then we all went to Shinjuku Station to take the train to Hiroko & Dai's apartment.

Tanabata decorations in Sugamo

Although Hiroko-san was going to cook a nice lunch for us, we wanted to bring some food too, so we did some shopping when we changed trains. The rains started in pretty hard, so Momo thought it would be good to take a taxi from partway to their station (which is about 10 minutes walk from their apartment), so she called a taxi & then we raced to get a train to get there on time to meet the taxi. It was a good idea because the rain was really coming down.

Dai-kun met us outside their apartment building & welcomed us to his home. Hiroko-san was just finishing feeding Nozomu-kun, so he was very happy & content when we arrived :) It was just lovely to see them again with their new baby!

 Nozomu-kun with Dai-kun & Hiroko-san

Aoi-chan woke up quite completely when we got there, & she was definitely the life of the party! She's such a toddler- inquisitive, active, into everything, & adorably cute :) Hiroko-san & Dai-kun were also adorable with their little guy, who sat peacefully & watched the goings-on :)

While we all visited, Hiroko-san & Momo finished the lunch prep, & we all sat on the tatami to eat a smorgasbord lunch on the low table. It was the perfect height for Aoi-chan to toddle around & get into everything :) Momo fed her some baby food bentou, but she was much more interested in getting into our plates, trying to feed us (with the rice serving paddle at one point) & keeping us on our toes.

Momo feeding Aoi-chan

Aoi-chan feeding me

Dai-kun getting some experience with toddlers...

After eating we took turns keeping Aoi-chan occupied while we visited. It was lively & fun! Charlie had brought some finger puppets from home to play with Aoi-chan, so Brendan & Mr. Owl entertained her for a bit.

We had brought a few gifts, including a panda Mameshiba that I'd made for Nozomu-kun & some BabyShiba that I'd made from yarns I'd dyed with natural dyes for Dai-kun. At one point they all ended-up with sleeping Nozomu-kun.

At mid-afternoon we decided to leave the Yamaguchi family in peace, so Dai-kun walked us to the station & we took the train back to Sugamo with Momo. When we transferred from the Mita Line to the Yamanote Line, Momo pointed us in the right direction for our train back to Shinjuku & we spent 10 minutes or so getting back to Shinjuku Station, & then a bit longer finding our way to the right exit to where our hotel is. Shinjuku Station is big!!!

We got home around 3:00 pm. We had bought some food for dinner on the way home, so we got some drinks in the hotel shop & put everything in the mini-fridge. By 4:00 pm we were zonking out, so we closed the curtains & decided to take a little nap...

...& woke up at 9:00 pm!!! This is not the best way to deal with jet-lag, unfortunately. We blame it all on the babies...

Tomorrow we get to see Momo & Aoi-chan again!!!