cooler climes

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Welcome to the next travel episode.



While my Australian friends have been dripping in over 40 degree heat I have been showing pictures of bush fires and talking about air pollution to some of my students who can say and understand what a bushfire is. Many students want to know why we can’t stop them!? !



My excitement has been through my lifestyle coordinator. She wore me out the week before last with deciding between two contract jobs – one in a company that is teaching uni students in Tokyo and one in an immersion primary school where she’d be a year level teacher (teaming with a bilingual teacher) in Okinawa. After a lot of discussion, walking in cold barren parks as its winter here, and checking on things like visa requirements, tax levels, air travel costs…… we came to a conclusion. We reread advice that Jacinta had received from many people in Australia and elsewhere. Eddie from Cowandilla primary school helped me a lot with a quote from Alice in Wonderland. Really, either choice would be good.



The choice is Okinawa. We worked out we’d have less stress and more time together than if Jacinta only had three months guaranteed work, had to work 9-6 with 1 + ½ hours commute weekdays and me working split shifts and weekends! We’ve opted for quality time rather than being cramped in a very small apartment and saying hello or good-bye and tippy toeing around while the other sleeps. Living in only one room has its down side when not on holidays I'm sure!



We had to answer a number of questions about our future and what we wanted to do; and we came up with some interesting answers. I won’t bore you with them here, but our idea is that while we have our Australian lives packed up and on hold except through cyber connectivity, and while our health is good, we should go for it.



We have upgraded (gained 3 sq m for an extra $150 per month) the apartment and are now in number 1002. So snail mail will come to:

Skycourt Kanda – nibankan # 1002

2-1-3 Kandatacho, Chiyoda-ku

Tokyo 101 0046

Japan



Jacinta managed to sleep on the Oz futon (thermo rest and sleeping bag) for five weeks. Now she has a bed and there is room enough to have a rent a futon (single) visit briefly but not remain in the apartment.



She has also added a few home touches to the apartment so we have a chair each to sit at table and could fit in our guest from Himeji, Ikuko, who was brave enough to stay here with us for two nights.



I will miss her when she heads back to Middleton in early March.



Here are tales of some of our travels:

Jacinta arranged for us to travel to a little mountain city called Kawaguchiko. We had a leisurely sleep in and caught a 10 o’clock train north east. It was rapid for about half and hour and then it stopped at all stations until we got out at a freezingly windy station in a tiny town and got onto an older train that had been decked out as Thomas the tank engine (literally). I think we were on the first train for an hour and we still saw urban sprawl, interspersed with apartment towers around train stations. Tokyo spreads for a long way.



Thomas the tank engine stopped at many sidings and a couple of stations where people hopped on and off with babies and shopping and even there, business men in dark suits white shirts and dark ties with long black coats and hand held briefcases joined and left the train. The sky was blue despite the cold and after about 45 minutes we came around a bend and saw a humungous cone shaped snow capped mountain and every one in the train just quietly went ooohh wow! It is a magnificent sight. We travelled in its direction stopping at stations with Fuji in their names until we got to Mt Fuji. There the driver in full Thomas livery changed ends of the train and drove us two more stations to our destination.



At this stage I wished I had sunglasses because of the glare of the sun on the snow. We were excited because the forecast was for snow that afternoon. We slurped the local noodle dish called houtou – vegetarian noodle soup with wide flat noodles – and walked to our back packers hostel. Black clouds surrounded the mountain as we walked along small mountain streets. I was thinking we might just have to cuddle up in a futon and watch the snow when the clouds floated away and the snowy peak sat way above our town. So as adventurer’s do, we wandered out to see the sights. We walked around the lake and I have to say, with thick socks, thermals top and bottom, hiking boots, my thickest jeans, jumper, scarf, gloves, hat and puffer jacket on, not only did I feel like a sumo wrestler in size, but I was only just warm enough and had to walk briskly to keep from turning to ice like the necklace where the lake lapped on the black volcanic shore of the lake. The sun went down around 4.45pm and we were just finishing our circumlocution when this occurred.



Kawaguchiko is an onsen or hot springs town. So each night we donned all those outdoor clothes to walk 300m down the road to the hotel with the indoor and outdoor heated pools. We took all the clothes off in stages and washed. We acclimatised in the 42 degree indoor pool and then went outside in the sheltered pools filled with volcanic spring water and relaxed under the full moon. Of course we were very quiet so that we didn’t disturb anyone else, the men next door or any other people relaxing in onsen in hotels around the lake! Revitalisation and relaxation occur simultaneously. Having regained all the layers, we wandered back and snuggled into the futon and slept! Onsen are sex segregated!



A joy of the backpacker was that it had a huge – even by Australian standards - kitchen area for food preparation with all required utensils, pans and crockery and a dining room and room with a kotatsu – low table where the underneath is comfortable and warm and you can sit and pay cards, read emails or just talk quietly. So we could make our own food and meet travellers.



Our second day included a 3 minute rope way (cable car) ride to the top of Mt Kawaguchiko and a 15 minute walk to the end of the last snow fall with a grand view across to Mt Fuji. At ground level we wandered across the road and boarded a boat that took us into the middle of the lake so we could see the majesty of Fuji-san from the water – and take grand pictures of it across the water!. Even at 11 am when we docked the first 10 m from the lake edge was surfaced in ice!



We decided to be driven by the local bus around the next 3 lakes and enjoy the views inside in warmth rather than hire bikes and ride lakeside on bike paths that still had lots of ice across them. Then dinner at a local restaurant because we could, and hot springs! I felt like a queen and worked out that I had been in Tokyo for 5 weeks without a view of the horizon or the sight of much that was not manmade or plastic. Part of the fun was being in the ‘country’.



Next day we luxuriated in lots of space and a kitchen and dining room to ourselves over breakfast (the kitchen was 3 times the size of the Kanda apartment!) and bussed to a fantastic kimono museum. Those of you who have seen the kimono with scenes of Mt Fuji in our kitchen, think spring colours on about 20 hand crafted silk kimono made by a national treasure who left his life’s work for us to see! Four were designed as Takarazuka stage costumes!



I have to say we paid $11 extra dollars and abandoned Thomas the tank engine for a Shinkansen like train into Tokyo in half the time on the way home without having to alight and transfer in freezing stations.



The next week Ikuko came to stay. Prior to her arrival a carrier delivered a large blue bag. A hire futon! We are unable to hire futon ourselves because you have book online in Japanese! But we know it is possible. However, you will see that with the Oz and Japanese futon there were only inches to spare at night. We all refrained from nocturnal trips to the bathroom for fear of hurting each other!



Ikuko took us to a fantastic exhibition in the Edo museum of Japanese woodcuts – from about 1200 to 1920s. Fantastic and mindblowing at once. Japanese people join a queue at the first exhibit and move quietly and respectfully along an ankle high barrier in front of each exhibit until the end of the exhibits. They rarely speak. There is nowhere to sit. They just file through! They would never go back and review something! We of course did and Ikuko became very brave and walked back to the start and showed us her favourite one and we each discussed our favourite quietly and without moving which did interrupt the queue flow a bit.



Then we went to the home of sumo wrestling (handily next door to the art gallery). This is a huge stadium built specifically for sumo (the Japanese drop the u sound to smo). I was absolutely delighted by the kimono that the umpires/referees wore. They were radiantly rich greens, reds, purples and one was white with a golden embossed print. They also wear silk caps.



As a spectacle it was amazing. A huge layered stadium where there was a dais made of sand, tightly kept in an exact square shape with a white circle atop. Lots of action happens on the smallish sandy square – advertising, announcing, ritual drinking and of course actual wrestle, after all the posturing and salt throwing. I don’t know that I’ll ever need to go again, but I enjoyed it. Its nearly as silly as any other sports tournament where people (like dancers) spend hours and hours learning and practicing and then have 90 seconds to actually perform.



The men who swept the sand at the top of the dais wore traditional dress and were diligent sweepers using straw brooms. At times I was mesmerised by two of them because they swept in perfect symmetry and would have been quickly taken on by any synchronised swimming team. Another traditionally dressed man (no women allowed on the sand! ) announced each round and the draw for future matches and other things. Occasionally I thought I could be at Shakespeare and not sumo because the looked and sounded like I imagined ‘bards’ to look and sound like in ye olde England.



Brawn won in the end, over tactics and using someone else’s weight against them. I have never seen so many man breasts and seemingly pregnant tummies let alone buttocks at one time. I have to say I preferred the introduction round where each wrestler wore a beautifully embroidered silk apron to the minimalist garb they wear.



I always knew when a good bout was coming up because men in even different traditional costumes walked the perimeter of the ring with advertising banners. We understood that the advertisers paid about $600 in cash to the winner (who knows what other cost) and the final bout had 23 advertising banners! Note sumo is broadcast live across Japan and replayed at intervals so the banners are seen as effective advertising. The referee points his paddle/wand at the winner of the bout and then the cash is piled on the paddle and provided to the winner!



There was a paparazzi outside waiting to see the famous wrestlers. It was too cold for us to remain. We went home and ate happily after a big day out and prepared for the next day.



Ikuko organised for us to go to Nikko. This is the hill town where the Emperor’s of the Meiji era are buried. We spent about 2 hours training it to Nikko and hopped on a bus to the World Heritage site. I have never seen anything so opulent before in Japan!



The first place we stopped was in restoration - they apparently copied what Himeji did to cover up the castle. Then we went on to further clusters of buildings that related to each different Meiji emperor and his f



The shrines and buildings were a little like the Summer Palace in Bejing in shape colour and decoration, but the restoration had so much gold and such vibrant reds, greens blues on black and white. Talk about being important and showing off before you die. These guys had the same mindset as the blokes who built pyramids and the mob who had terracotta warriors to look after them when they died. I wonder if they had guilty consciences or were just so used to the best it was a habit! Well we walked kilometres up hills, big wooden and stone steps past shrines temples and many side buildings, even a pagoda that swung on a huge beam suspended just centimetres above the floor so it would survive earthquakes.



Words escape me so you’ll have to look at the website and pictures. For those of you who were sweating and worried about bushfires, it was about 3 degrees and all the puddles were ice.



Our final day of Ikuko’s stay we went to see Monet just up the road at Ueno Park. This time it was not only Monet, but his paintings with his contemporaries and his mentors. We had walked through about six large gallery sized rooms and seen many wonderful paintings including Van Gogh, Renoir, Picasso and Monet but no lily ponds. We shared our favourites and headed for the exit – only to go down some stairs, around a few corridors and into a huge deep squarish gallery with the lily ponds!!!!! A dozen of them some four times the size of a sliding door onto a verandah. Here the Japanese were slightly loud whispering oohs. This was a privilege enabled by a private Japanese company, letting us see their art assets. I almost thought I should buy some shares until I realised they were into pharmaceuticals as well as other noxious materials.



Next week we’re off to Himeji, to visit the fairy godmothers who befriended me and anyone else who came to visit Jacinta or me there in 2010. They have just started taking the scaffolding down that was put up over the castle for restorations. But we’re going to visit the castle and garden and walk up Mt Shosha again. I’m really looking forward to the wonderful noodle soup that is made up there after the climb. Snow is forecast for tomorrow – I walked to the station last Tuesday in the snow – so I just hope that it doesn’t snow on the day we climb!



So I’m settling to my new life in Tokyo. I feel like I have a routine.

I’m fit and well despite shift work on Mondays and Tuesdays. Jacinta and I walk and ride around locally and adventure just seeing what is going on in different neighbourhoods. I have found a swimming pool nearby but was dismayed when I came home to find that I had ice where I had not quite dried the back of my hair on my collar on Wednesday.. The floor in the changing room is heated so don’t think of me getting cold! And the next morning my bathers were frozen and stuck together – they hadn’t dried outside overnight! I may be procrastinating now knowing it is below zero for the 10 minute walk to the school with the pool tonight! My reward is to come back to a warm apartment with a cooked Chinese banquet!





I hope you are all doing well in the heat.

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Photos

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Fuji-san on a bright winter's day

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fuji sunrise

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vegetarian meal a rare treat!

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sumo maybe about to wrestle

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wrestler's apron from 2013

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Nikko world heritage restoration

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men at work inside

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unrestored pagoda base

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an outbuilding!

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yet to be restored

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gilded opulence

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the entrance to the grave