April 2017 II

Part two of two. 

My flight arrived in Japan at 1:30am but the bus didn't depart until 8.

So I curled up on a bench and slept.

How many airports have I slept in?

How many parks and how many alleys and how many floors of strangers' homes? How many times have I been lucky enough to have someone intervene to lend me a tent on a particularly cold or wet night outside? 

The picture right is actually of a study lounge at the Incheon Airport in Korea. So cozy! Personal lamps, outlets and usb ports. Extremely well designed!

Eventually, after fitful naps at the airport and on the bus, I made it to Hakone, a hot springs destination a few hours south-west of Tokyo.

The day I arrived, the sky was overcast, but pleasant. Later, we heard from a Japanese friend that the weather here is always rainy, so we got lucky with our timing! 

The town of Odawara where the bus drops you off is cozy. The small downtown is on one side of the hill while the quiet residences are on the other side. Most of the shops, restaurants, bus and train stations are in downtown, as are most of the larger ryokan, traditional Japanese hotels.  

We only spent one day in Odawara, but it was cute! My absolute favorite part of the touristy half of town was, hands-down, the fish market!

The market had at least five cats hanging around. They were free to walk into the shop and nap in all sorts of corners. 

In addition to its adorable and friendly mascots, the market had an actual grill in front that you could use to cook your own samples! Plus free tea to gulp it all down with!

Looking at this freeloader, I quickly realized why these cats lived here and how they had gotten so fat. They clearly had a routine going on.

I spent more time than I should have at the market.

And spent way more time than I should have playing with the cats!

But I have no regrets. 

This machine churns out these delicious custard/red bean-filled cakes. I bought a few and ate them as I watched more of their sweet, bread-y brothers and sisters get produced.

Is that weird? It's kinda weird.

But seriously, it was super satisfying to watch. 

Downtown is only a few blocks long with much of the typical tourist fare. After not too long, I made my way over to the other half of town.

I found a temple and cemetery which featured a Tri-Force its its metal fence. I'm kinda ignorant, so maybe it's a religious or cultural symbol, but all I could think of was Breath of the Wild.

Even though I've visited a million temples already in Japan, I still appreciate a good temple.

I love their serenity and their gentle beauty.

They're well designed with intention, but rather than showing off with colors and expensive metals, they flaunt through landscaping and architecture. 

It's peaceful. 

In Korea, you drink the water from these types of wells using the ladles provided, which I absolutely love. They're always filled with fresh flowing mountain water, cold and refreshing.

I hope the water in these Japanese wells is also meant for drinking because I did it anyway (there was no one around at the temple!). 

But I guess it doesn't really matter, because that was months ago and I feel pretty healthy now, so nothing too bad must have happened!

It's interesting, really.

When we think of Japan, we imagine Tokyo, with its endless fields of skyscrapers, its commuter trains shoved full of people, its super fashionable youths and sake-drunk businessmen.

A lot of Tokyo, the last time I visited, actually turned me quite off. I've never been a big city person, so it's not surprising.

When I lived in Korea, I lived on the quieter outskirts of Seoul, because thinking about living in Seoul proper gave me anxiety. As a child, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, next to Los Angeles. And today, I've still never lived in San Francisco, only in cities around it.

I've always been around big cities, but never had the urge to immerse myself deep into them.

In this little town, I hardly saw anyone in the residential side in the hours I wandered.

And everything was green, green, green.

Endless shades of green everywhere you looked. 

I love these sleepy towns. 

You can get lost in the quiet. 

And they do things like put these awesome holy ropes over impressive looking rocks, because, you know, why not?

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Our ryokan provided delicious tea and tea snacks for us! 

I was actually super excited about this. In my travels, I've only ever stayed in hostels or Air BnB's at best. But this time, being in Japan and not knowing when we'd come back, we decided to splurge and stay at a nice ryokan than provided a private multi-course dinner and full access to their hot springs.

So worth it!

The room itself was super spacious with a wonderful view of the forested mountains. They have western options with beds and mattresses, but we opted for the more traditional futon option-- they actually rolled out the bedding material for us while we had dinner! I actually super love Asian-style futons (not the American couch-bed versions) and much prefer sleeping on the floor over a bed.

When we checked in, we selected a time for dinner which was held in a private room. 

At the beginning of the meal, each of us was given a red pot which cooked rice for us as we ate our appetizers. The timing was amazing-- the rice was perfectly ready to eat when it came time for the beef curry cooking in the black pots!

I didn't take a picture of each course, but you can just imagine that they were tiny and beautiful and delicious and numerous, including things like soup, noodles, various tiny veggies and tofu and sashimi in addition to the curry and rice. 

While America focuses on huge portions and tons of meat, Japan prefers tiny, distinct bites of food with very little me. This style fits me quite well. 

If you ever eat with me, you'll quickly realize that I eat incredibly slowly. This is because I
1) take super small bites out of things,
2) chew my food more than most people, and also
3) physically chew really slowly. 

Number 3 was a weird and recent realization that my jaw actually just doesn't move that fast when I chew... this is much like my climbing, running, writing and general thought processes.

The ryokan provided a plain set of robes, but they also rented out more colorful yukata. When we went to the front desk, the employee didn't ask us what colors we wanted. She knew. She sized us up with her eyes and gave us the appropriate ones!

We dressed ourselves but had no idea how to do it.  Later, an employee stopped us to re-tie our bows! I imagine she was horribly offended by our attempts and saw a wrong to be righted, which we appreciated-- her bows were much cuter!

The hot springs themselves were phenomenal. Watching the cool, early morning mist float between the trees in the mountains while we soaked in the stone laden spring was perfect. 

We only booked one night in the ryokan, but if I did it again, I would do two! Between the 3pm check-in and the 11am check-out, there wasn't as much time to soak in the baths as I wanted! 

We missed cherry blossom season by just a few weeks, but we were able to catch a few late-blooming trees here and there! 

Even without the cherry blossoms, Japan's countryside is beautiful. I love the spectrum of yellows and greens and browns, sprinkled with the dark purples of the maples. 

And of course, the bamboo.

Bamboo in Japan is really just like in anime. These dense fields of thin shoots rising endlessly.

We took a bus out to Lake Ashi and hiked around the further parts of the Hakone region, up this unmarked path that was clearly no longer in use. The steep wooden steps were rotted through and overgrown with foliage.

When we got to the top, I poured out some sake for the mountain gods. It felt appropriate.

In Korea, every spring, our gym dedicated a day to the mountain gods, complete with speeches and ceremonial robes, and the traditional pig-head-stuffed-with-money.

And soju and makkeolli, Korean rice wine. 

We ended up at an old tea house filled with older hikers. The hot grain-based drink was delicious and reminded me of Korean misuskaru. The rice cakes sprinkled with crushed black sesame were simple and good, but the purple things on the right had a strange texture and pungent flavor.  

They were the only things on this trip I didn't enjoy!

More pictures of green, followed by more words.

The rest of the trip was spent in the actual city of Tokyo and followed more standard travel fare of restaurants and bars and strolling and clubs which was also fun. Meeting with friends and friends of friends, eating delicious foods for oh-so-cheap, and basking in the glory of being able to drink on the street. 

One of my favorite things though was the Ghibli Museum! I'd say it's actually my favorite museum anywhere, in America or otherwise!

Tickets sell out fast online, and we actually had to buy our tickets 2 months in advance, but it was 100% worth it! I typically don't like tourist attractions, but the amount of detail and art and love they put into the museum is unmatched. We spent hours wandering the museum, absorbing everything but still wanting more!

I tried harder to take pictures of food in Japan, though I still missed most of them, like the yakiniku and yakitori and the gigantic boat of fried chicken!

I definitely took a picture of hambagu and omurice though. Two Japanese improvements on American food! Hambagu is a super tender and softer version of a hamburger patty, and omurice (literally omelette rice) chicken fried rice wrapped in a thin omelette layer served with ketchup.

Yum!

The thing that blew my mind is how well people in Japan ate! No matter how big the portions, every girl, no matter how small, completely cleaned her plate. When we got omurice, I had to steal a peek at the plates of other customers, and they even did a good job of finishing up the sauce off the plate! 

We also got conveyor belt sushi. It was so fresh and delicious and cheap compared to in America! And they had self-serve matcha green tea!

The meal was marred only by the bitter taste of defeat we felt when we tried to fight our Japanese friend for the bill. I actually tried to physically wrest her credit card from her fingers but failed. 

Ultimately, I ended with a 2 win-3 loss record.

My two wins were because one time I grabbed the bill first and tossed it to my American friend to pay.

The second time I tackled our other Japanese friend and chucked his wallet across the room. 

Paying for bills in Asia is serious business that requires deception and physical manhandling. 

The only other touristy thing we really did in Japan was visit Shimokitazawa, a hipster neighborhood not too far from Shibuya. Definitely worth a visit! Vintage clothing, adorable cafes, handmade jewelry abound! I actually really loved this neighborhood and would've liked to have spent more time here.

One night in Shibuya, we got lucky and were able to see this amazing jazz band! Their band name is Phat Pack but their Twitter handle is TsutayaMae, "In front of Tsutaya", Tsutaya being the name of the building they were playing in front of!

I can't describe how good they were-- you've just got to watch them on youtube!

Part of it was their actual talent, but part of it was their energy. It was easy to identify the leader of the pack because of the huge smile on his face! When individual members had their solos, he really couldn't hold back the pure joy he felt for them. I couldn't stop watching!

Ultimately, my favorite thing while travelling is just hanging around, drinking and playing with locals because all we want no matter who we are is to have fun and live fully.  

The Koreans who danced and moo'd for us in the streets of Hongdae. The Japanese bartenders who drew pictures and talked about music with us despite our limited cross-language abilities. The amateur DJ who laughed at our shitty sake selection. 

Even that punkass in Korea who walked away wordlessly when I told him I was 30--

Actually no. 

Fuck that punkass. 

I'm may be hitting 30 soon, but you can bet I'm gonna do it with style!