Winter Holiday: The Ferry
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Saturday, December 23, 1989
Today is the emperor's birthday (and thus, a holiday), and Murakami-sensei's birthday, and the beginning of our trip to Kyoto with her.
The Ferry
The three of us take the overnight ferry from Beppu to Kobe. I've never travelled by boat before. There is a smoky lounge with videogame machines, enough to entertain JQS for awhile. There is also a large public bath. The water in it rolls with the movement of the ship. We bring some carryout sushi for our dinner.
For the economy ticket we get a blanket and space about half the width of a tatami on the carpeted floor packed with scores of other travellers. I have a difficult time sleeping, the room is so packed and hot. When I get up to wander around for fresh air, I see people less fortunate than we, huddled in the stairwells trying to sleep.
Winter Holiday: Kiyomizu
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Sunday, December 24, 1989
Kiyomizu
We arrive in Kobe at sunrise and walk to the train station. We take a local train to the JR Sannomiya eki and take a train from there to Kyoto. We don't take the JR train, but some other private company which is cheaper. We arrive at Kyoto eki and take a bus and then walk to our inn, Hiraiwa. It is described in Fodor's as having "the ambience of a friendly, Western-style youth hostel with tatami-mat rooms". It caters to foreigners and so is not really what I would have chosen. I think the ambience is extremely tacky. But at least it is cheap--only 14000 yen for three nights, which I put on my MasterCard.
After we are settled, we walk in the rain from our ryokan to Kiyomizu Temple, which is perched on a hillside southeast of Kyoto. Again, according to Fodor's "Roads leading to Kiyomizudera Temple are steep inclines, yet the steepness is hardly noticed because of the alluring shops that line the entire way to the temple." The author apparently did not attempt this hike in the rain with a ten-year-old boy. Had I been alone, I would have succumbed to the allure of the shops. Somewhere along the way, we rested twice. I had a coffee and cake at a very chic cafe that was part of a gallery and JQS ate a Mos burger.
The view of Kyoto from Kiyomizu-dera is supposed to be stunning, but there was none in the rain. Actually, I found the most interesting aspect of Kiyomizu to be the ultraviolet sterilizer in use to clean the tin cups that the pilgrims dip into the well to wash and drink from. No other temple I've yet visited has exhibited such modern concern for preventing the transmission of germs and diseases.
However, this outing taught me and Murakami-sensei to take the bus for the rest of the trip rather than endure forced marches with JQS. The Kyoto buses charge one fare regardless of where you are going, rather than the distance-based fare system usual elsewhere in Japan. This makes getting on the wrong bus less worrisome as at least the fare doesn't mount up before you realize your mistake.
We take the bus uptown and do some shopping and have dinner at the Lipton tea house.
Winter Holiday: Temples
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Monday, December 25, 1989
Villas Transformed
Today we visited, Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavilion, which turned out to be my favorite spot. The strolling garden was beautiful and tranquil. I was very impressed with the moss. JQS and I stood on a little bridge over a little stream and the koi immediately swam to us thrashing about begging for treats.
We also visited Nanzenji, another villa that became a temple after the death of its owner, which had a beautiful waterful. I enjoyed watching the deerchaser fill with water and then empty with a satisfying thwack. JQS took the special tour up the steep stairs to the top floor of the Sanmon (triple gate) which was built in 1628.
Although cold and rainy, the advantage to visiting Kyoto in the off season is that the common tourist stops are almost empty. We actually sat and enjoyed the gardens, often having them entirely to ourself. This slower pace suited all of us. I think Murakami-sensei underestimated the difficulty of travelling with us.
We took the bus back uptown and went to an English-language bookstore. Six floors of books! We were in heaven. I read MacUser (the laptop Mac is out!), Time, and Stereo Review. I also bought two conversation textbooks, the screenplay for "Back to the Future" and two novels for JQS: "The Three Musketeers" and "The Hound of the Baskervilles". I left JQS there, reading contentedly, while I did shopping at my own pace in the shops up and down the Karawamachi-dori (street).
Winter Holiday: The Golden Pavilion
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Tuesday, December 26, 1989
Daitokuji
Today we visited Daitokuji, a compound of 24 temples with many stone gardens. We have the place almost to ourselves.
Winter Holiday: Shopping
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Wednesday December 27, 1989
Double-takes
I was reading Time magazine at the bookstore; it was an article about Japan, in English. Occasionally I'd look up and find myself in the Japan I was reading about. The sensation was like that optical illusion where you look at the picture and see a vase and look again and see two faces in profile. In some ways the Japan I was reading about seemed more real than the one I was standing in. I need other people's words to confirm and validate my observations.
Winter Holiday: Home
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Thursday December 28, 1989
Beppu-shi is bathed in a golden glow when we arrived at sunrise. You might think that this was just a trick of homesick eyes, but it was true. I'm so glad to be home.
Usa and Bungo Takada
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Monday, January 15, 1990
Today being a national holiday (seijin no hi), JQS and I both have the day off from school, Tonai-sensei invites us to go to see the famous shrine at Usa. We drive the now familiar drive north past Hiji through the rice fields. Tonai-sensei has given up trying to chat and drive, so we listen to his wife's cassette (Tomita), each lost in our own thoughts.
Fukuoka
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Wednesday January 17, 1990
At 07:04 we board the express train bound for Fukuoka, the largest city on Kyushu. We, Murakami-sensei, JQS, and I, are headed for a 3-day conference for the teachers in the JET program. Three days off from school, all expenses paid in another posh hotel, and familiar faces from our first week in Tokyo. But the think I look most forward too is the sound of lots of idiomatic-filled English, spoken unthinkingly and fast.
Kobe
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
September 24, 1990
It's hard to believe that I'm travelling again given that I left Austin a mere month ago. But, this being a 3-day holiday weekend, I asked myself, "Why not go shopping in Kobe and Kyoto?" I took the ferry on Friday, after work. It's about $70.00 round trip.
Perpetual Twilight
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
October 11, 1990
When the wind stopped blowing, although it was still raining, I rode my bicycle downtown. The weather was cool enough to require two sweatshirts, but the rain was gentle, so I got damp but not soaked. I splashed through puddles, and laughed hysterically, and streamed along the sea wall standing on the pedals, getting sprayed as the waves crashed over the breakwater and smashed up against the sea wall. The violence of the storm was mostly dissipated, although the sea remained murky and choppy.
Kamegawa
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Thursday August 17, 1989
Kamegawa is very much a neighborhood of the type that exists in Europe, and maybe New England, but not in much in the rest of the USA--at least not any of the sections of the USA that I've lived in--those cities built primarily after the invention of the automobile. Kamegawa is a town built up along the paths people have walked for hundreds of years.
There is one main shopping street and most shopkeepers live above their shops. Although there is one chain supermarket, the street is lined with owner-run green grocers, butchers, fish mongers, bakeries, patisseries and flower shops. There are also some uniquely Japanese shops: the tofu-maker, the pickle-maker, the tea shop, the miso shop, the rice shop, the manju shop, the geta shop, and many kimono shops. And nestled among the universally recognizable banks, stationers, and barber shops, are the little public baths. The one on the way to the supermarket from my house is not a large tourist-style onsen, but a tiny cinder-block and corrugated tin-roofed building over a hot spring which only the oldest and most arthritic residents of Kamegawa seem to frequent.
Beppu, 1988
Posted by Jeanne Belisle Lombardo.
For all of us there may be that one unparalleled place that embodies happiness, desire, beauty. A place forever memorable. A place that clings long after you've left and which intrudes at unexpected moments, when driving your car, say, or washing a cup in the kitchen sink. So many associations attach themselves to this place that you feel you have never truly left. And that if you were to walk down a familiar street tomorrow, the flower vendor or vegetable shop lady would flash the old smile and inquire, as they always did, about your health or your cats. For me, this place is Beppu.
Hita - Pottery Village
Posted by Jeanne Belisle Lombardo.
While living in Beppu from 1988 to 1990, I had the pleasure of going several times to the 18th Century pottery center of Hita, situated two hours from Beppu in the mountainous interior. I wrote the following during a visit there on August 18, 1989 and with a few edits, present it here.
Hita
In Japan, history takes on new dimensions, especially for a woman from the American west, where anything a hundred years old is truly venerable. Now I sit in Hita, a pottery town once under the rule of the Shogunate. Something in the way the streets are laid out with simple structures of wood and packed down dirt roads remind me of ghost towns I've visited in Arizona, except that here there are the ubiquitous choshin lanterns and the distinctive short indigo curtains in the entranceways.
In the oldest section of town can be found a row of interesting little shops like the one that sells nothing but delicate ceramic "bells" in the shape of Neko Maneki or O-Hina dolls or animals or any number of other whimsical shapes, and my favorite, a coffe/ocha/shokuji establishment where I now sit.
In a small room glowing red from an antique lacquered parasol suspended overhead, which matches the smooth napless carpet, a low round carved Chinese table, itself of a rich reddish hue, holds the coffee acoutrements. To the right is a slatted sliding door of the same color wood, leading into a tatamied room of soft greens. The contrast is superb and my favorite color combination, scarlet and moss. Beyond the window of that room there are mossy tile roofs and bamboo, the leaves of which are just beginning to turn. The whole of the outside scene infuses the room with a chartreuse glow.
Back in my small, sanguine room an oil lamp the color of turquoise rests on a low wooden tansu chest. From various surfaces, antique hina matsuri dolls in faded splendour observe me with Mona Lisa expressions. They seem to say, "Just who is observing whom?"
Oh Hita, what a graceful if aged beauty you are.
Kuju Heights and Cosmos
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Friday September, 15, 1989
Today is a national holiday, Respect for the Aged Day. Tonai-sensei proposes another sightseeing trip. We drive inland, into the mountains. We stop for lunch at a udon restaurant. Then we climb through the woods to a small spring (maybe Ozuru Yusui?) which is supposed to have very good water. The Tonai's fill several jugs they have brought and are surpised that I don't want to take any water back with me. Apparently this spring water is superior for brewing tea.
We drive further into the mountains where there is a large field of cosmos (Kuju Flower Park?). This seems to have been planted especially as a photo opportunity. There is a platform that enables the photographer to shoot subjects from above, seeming surrounded by flowers. JQS is tired and cranky by this time and waits in the car. I don't really understand until later that the Tonai's have made this trip especially to snap this important memento photograph of us in the cosmos. What a disappointment we must be after all their trouble.
What I Didn't Know Then
- Ozuru Yusui Spring Water (in English)
- Kami no Mizu Water of the Gods
- Kuju Hana Koen Kuju Flower Park (in Japanese, but best photos)
- Kuju Flower Park (in English)
Autumn Leaves
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
"Japan has four seasons" you'll often hear. Some gaijin get all huffy about this phrase, as if the Japanese were boasting. I think that it's just one of those set phrases, a conversation-starter memorized in school. Besides, I come from a land that doesn't have four seasons, so I'm pretty impressed, especially with the colors of autumn.
Takegawara Onsen
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
I didn't discover Takegawara onsen until my second year in Beppu-shi. Unlike many modern Las Vegas style onsen (Suginoi Palace comes to mind), Takegawara onsen is housed in a huge old wooden building which transports one mind and soul to a more elegant time. According to the blurb at Oita's Main Spa Locations, it is built in the Karahafu style and very popular with tourists.
The main room is a lovely spot to relax after the bath, to brush out one's hair in the breeze while sitting in the semi-dark, scented wood hall. There is an old-fashioned massage chair (only 5 yen!) which mechanically pounds your shoulders with fist-sized rubber balls.
The women's bath is to the right. The room is large and light, essentially two storeys. The changing area overlooks the bath; which one descends stairs to. The water is iron-based and there is a ladle for drinking it from the spring before it empties into the bath (which I do since I'm typically iron-deficient).
The water is very, very hot. Over time, I became acclimated to it. Which brings me to my favorite memory of Takegawara onsen. I was relaxing in the bath when a Japanese woman (a tourist to Beppu-shi) and her very young daughter got into the bath. It was so hot, that the child immediately jumped out and began whining. The mother, kept trying to coax her daughter into the bath. Finally, in exasperation she said (in Japanese, of course), "Look! It's not that hot. The gaijin is in it." I tried not to let my expression reveal that I understood what she'd said, but continued to smile sweetly. Under the smile, though, I was thinking, "I may be a foreigner to Japan, but I live in Beppu-shi. You're the tourist here." Strange how very territorial I became. Takegawara onsen had become my private palace.
Sand Bathing
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
I didn't mention that Takegawara onsen is most famous for its suna yu (sand bath). The staff have you put on a cotton bathrobe, lie down on hot, moist sand, and then pack it all around you. The weight of the sand emanates warmth into every joint and aching muscle. Indescribably...aaaah.
Beppu-shi also has an outdoor sand bath (Beppu Kaihin Sand Bath) along the bay. JQS and I visited once and were buried side by side in the sand like tourists at the beach. Afterwards, we removed the bathrobes, showered off, then soaked in a tub.
Rotenburo
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
So when my younger brother, MJN, visited me, it was during the Beppu-shi Onsen Matsuri (hot springs festival). When we stepped off the train at Beppu Eki that day, we got this photo snapped for free.
We meet up with Jenny and Tomoko (who has a car) and watch the annual burning of the mountain. Afterward we go to an okonomiyaki restaurant. Still in a festive mood, we decide to take a bath(what else does one do during an onsen festival?)
Tomoko drives up into the mountains to an onsen that has a very large rotenburo (outdoor bath). It is segregated by a high fence that cuts the bath in half. MJN goes on the men's side, and we to the women's. We talk over the fence. It's very late and most people are downtown at the festival. Soon there is no one else in the rotenburo. Tomoko suggest that MJN climb over the fence to women's bath. This he does and soon all four of us are laughing and drinking and having a pretty good time. Unfortunately, some other women arrive and freak out. "There's a man in the women's bath. There's a gaijin man in our bath!"
Arita
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
土曜日1991年５月４日
Leafing through the ads of one of the large JR books at work, I am able to puzzle out that two or more women travelling together can get special 3-day Kyushu pass during Golden Week. So M2 and I agree to go to the Arita pottery festival together.
I met M2 at the Mister Donuts in Oita Station. We have reserved seats on the Nichirin 2 from Oita Station to Hakata Station in Fukuoka. We arrive in Fukuoka with 11 minutes to switch to the Sasebo Line which will take us to Arita. The train is absolutely packed. No reserved seats were available and we stand the hour and half ride to Arita.
The festival overflows the streets of Arita with people, stalls, and pottery everywhere. I need to eat and rest before plunging into the crowds and I'm happy to find that M2 is of like mind. We find an quiet little restaurant which is so beautifully decorated that even the toilet is attractive.
Shopping commences. Because pottery is heavy, we decide it's best to scope out the wares and then buy stuff on the trip back from Nagasaki. I do pick up some hashi-oke (chopstick rests) and some toothpick holders.
After about four hours we are shopped out and we rush to make a train and are told to go to the wrong platform. We discover our mistake and rush to the correct platform in time to catch it. Fortunately the train is late (very strange). Unfortunately, it's the wrong train. After I discover my error, we get off at Haiki and change trains. We take a Limited Express to Nagasaki and arrive around 18:00. We eat dinner at the nice restaurant in the station arcade where MJN and I ate last month. M2 wants to try sleeping in a capsule motel. This sounds like a plan, so we are off in search of one.
Misadventures in Capsule Land
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Saturday May 4, 1991
M2 wanted to try a night in a Capsule hotel and I'd been curious, too. So we head out of Nagasaki station and see one directly across the road. We go in and M2 handles the transactions. (She does the speaking and I do the reading and writing. Between the two of us we have one person who can almost manage first year Japanese.) The manager waves his hand in front of his face to indicate that he has no capsules left, but then he recommends we come back 22:00. It's only 19:30 now so we decide to take the trolley to the center shopping district.
Extremely tired, we return to the capsule hotel, and are told that there are no capsules. But, says the manager brightly, you can sleep in the sauna. We think not, and leave. (A few weeks later, I find out that a sauna is not a dry heat sweat bath, but a roomful of reclining chairs--sort of like sleeping in first class on an airplane.)
The next place we try has a sign "No tattoos". In other words, gangsters, keep out. We walk in, and a very stern man standing with his arms akimbo, moves his head slowly back and forth and raises his forearms into an X (batsu), meaning no. "Dame. Dame." (No way.) So we turn around again.
We walk down the street, trying hotels as we pass them, but there is no room at the inn. So, M2 finally calls a halt to our wandering, and we camp out in a hotel lobby while she tries phoning up hotels. As she is doing this, a middle-aged Japanese couple comes in and asks if there are any rooms. The deskman tells them no and that we are looking for rooms, too. So the couple comes over to talk to us. They introduce themselves in English. It turns out that they aren't a married couple, but two English teachers who have come with some of their students to Nagasaki for the holiday. They come up with the idea that the three of us women should sleep in their car; and that the male teacher will take the students (all boys) to a karaoke bar.
M2 and I are so desperate that we need little persuasion to agree. So we walk back in the direction of the station. The good news is that the "car" is actually a van. (We were wondering how all three of us were going to sleep in a Japanese car.) The bad news is that it's in a locked car park. One of the students stands on a moped and climbs over the security fence to let us in. The police come and the couple spend some time explaining why they're breaking into their own car.
A Japanese mini-van is still pretty mini, and we sleep shoulder to shoulder, unable to turn over. We are awakened the next morning when the car park owner discovers us. He is furious and yells at the poor woman for about ten minutes. The entire time she is bowing and apologizing. Eventually, she pays him some money to settle things.
The boys show up. It turns out they weren't actually singing all night at the karaoke bar. They simple rented a private room for the night and slept there. Apparently this is another way to sleep your way cheaply across Japan.
The first thing we did this morning was return to Nagasaki station and go to the assistance desk and book two beds in the Youth Hostel.
The second thing we did was go to the hotel where MJN and I stayed and spent ￥１５００ on the public bath. We did the cold bath, the radon spray shower, the hot bath, the massage bath, and of course the jiggling massage chairs. Ah, that's better. Now for some sightseeing.
Kitsuki
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Monday August 14, 1989
Click for full image
Today was the first day since we arrived in Beppu-shi that we have not been scheduled for something. We've been shepherded around constantly these last two weeks and today I was determined to do some exploring on our own.
Looking through the many brochures we received at Beppu's Foreign Tourist Information Office, we decidee to go to see Kitsuki Castle, Kitsuki being only about a 20-minute train ride north of Kamegawa. We set out early in the morning, but the first thing we discover when we arrive is that Kitsuki station is not in the center of town, but some distance away. (I learn later in the day that one takes the bus into town from the train station, but I had no idea how to read the bus schedule, so we walked.)
Amy in Hita
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens.
Saturday August 19, 1989
Last Sunday Amy, the private school JET in Hita, called up and asked us over. I don't think that Hita is that far away, but it seems far because there is only a local train and that takes more than an hour from Oita.
Amy meets us at the station and we walk to her house. She has an old Japanese house with a garden to herself. I'm so envious. It's an L-shaped house with the kitchen in the corner of the L. One wing is a one-storey and is two formal rooms, an eight-mat room and a six-mat room. The other wing, which is two-storeys has two bedrooms upstairs, the kitchen and another room where she has the TV and her futon. She seems to camp out in this one part of the house and ignore the rest
- Amy in Hita
- Arita
- Autumn Leaves
- Beppu, 1988
- Fukuoka
- Hita - Pottery Village
- Kamegawa
- Kitsuki
- Kobe
- Kuju Heights and Cosmos
- Misadventures in Capsule Land
- Perpetual Twilight
- Rotenburo
- Sand Bathing
- Takegawara Onsen
- Usa and Bungo Takada
- Winter Holiday: Home
- Winter Holiday: Kiyomizu
- Winter Holiday: Shopping
- Winter Holiday: Temples
- Winter Holiday: The Ferry
- Winter Holiday: The Golden Pavilion