Hey guys thanks for following along on another adventure! I am so incredibly fortunate to take another wonderful trip with my very dear friend Yosha. Not only was she willing to travel with me in 2011 for a month, but didn’t hesitate to travel again with me for another month. I am really excited for more wacky adventures, and I hope you will enjoy reading them along the way!
We arrived in Tokyo safe and sound after a great 12-hour flight. Somehow they oversold their seats so we were moved to premium economy, which basically means bigger seats and if you are sitting at the window you only have to climb over one person instead of two to go to the bathroom. We made it to the train to the city to meet up with Makiko. We got to see her place in Urayasu, close to Tokyo. She lives with 7 other girls in a really cool house. Her bed is sort of a bunk bed/loft, which we thought was neato! Once we got settled in to her place we tried to sort out the next couple of days. Because of Golden Week (two back-to-back long weekends where Japanese people tend to travel), we couldn’t get reasonable accommodations in Yamagata so we opted to leave the next day (Saturday) with her friend Nonaco instead to hang out with Nonaco and her family in the Iwate prefecture, not far from Fukushima where the awful tsunami destroyed so much of the country. (I met Nonaco when she came to Canada at the end of February).
We were thankful Makiko was there to sort out a lot of the details with finding accommodation prices in Yamagata, talking to Nonaco, and providing us advice about potential hiccups because of Golden Week. Once everything was sorted out we headed back to where Makiko met us at the train station to have some food. We stopped off at a convenience store. I wish convenience stores back home had this great variety of food! There are rows and rows of different Japanese dishes and snacks. Last night Yosha, Makiko and I had yakitori (yaki = fried, tori = chicken) and some onigiri, which is a rice cake wrapped in a nori sheet that usually has some kind of tasty magic in the inside. I had an egg and fish egg treat. Yum! Then we went out for dinner, where I struggled to stay awake. People can smoke in restaurants here which is a little odd, and there is a doorbell to ring for your server to come serve you. I am a huge fan of the bell, but obviously not of the smoking! Yosha and I crashed on the floor in Makiko’s room in a small futon mattress. Snuggling in a tiny mattress is just like being in Beijing all over again on our first night sharing a single bed to stay warm, only the first night we weren’t wearing all of our clothes trying not to choke on a dusty duvet. Ahhh, trip memories J
After not too much sleep we got up to meet Nonaco at the Tokyo train station. We got there with tons of time to spare so Yosha and I toured around at the food shops. It’s super fun to just see pictures of things with a price and trying to guess what they are. I really should get better at reading Japanese! But that would take out the fun of the adventure. Sometimes we are pleasantly surprised, like we got these cream puffed cupcakes with red bean paste and mochi, and other times slightly disappointed, like this weird dessert ball I got. (there is no shortage of sugary goodness here for those of you who think we are eating 100% healthy!!). We arrived in Shin-Hanamaki (Hanamaki City) to meet Nonaco’s family. It is such an amazing treat to be able to stay with locals! Their place is just as I would picture a traditional Japanese home, with tatami mats on the floor and sliding doors. Her family is very welcoming, even though the bulk of the conversations are taking place with Nonaco’s mom who studied English a number of years ago and Nonaco, who speaks some English. They took us to a cherry blossom festival to see a ton of cherry blossom trees. The trees were absolutely gorgeous and I am incredibly thankful that Makiko suggested we come here so that I can say that I saw cherry blossoms! J We also had some incredibly fresh mochi (rice flour mixed with hot water), with green tea, some kind of black sesame paste and red bean paste. OMG melt in your mouth amazing!! That night we had an amazing sushi dinner with deliciously fresh melt-in-your-mouth fish, then booked our hotel in Yamagata on Monday and booked a hotel near Disneyland on our last night in Tokyo.
The next day we ran some errands with Nonaco and her mom, then spent the afternoon at an onsen. If you take the hot tub portion of Spa Nordic and put a whole lotta naked Japanese women in there, that’s basically an onsen. There was an enclosed area with a couple really hot tubs, a sauna and a rose petal bathtub (I am definitely doing that when I get home!!) and an open air part, on top of a mountain, that was the experience. It was amazing! Afterwards to clean up there we showered. Japanese showers seem to be where you sit on a bench that had a slot in it and use the handheld shower head to clean up. I try not to think of the fact I was sitting where another naked woman had her butt. Yes, I am still Western at heart J
Last night after the onsen and a tasty dinner at the top of the hotel attached to the onsen, we went back home and Nonaco’s mom taught us traditional Japanese calligraphy. I thought I would be awesome since I studied Mandarin a few years ago and vaguely remembered the brush stroke order. There is a whole art to the angle of the brush, how you use the brush and how you end each stroke. It was a beautiful experience! I wrote “love” and “family” to decorate the new apartment when I get back!
Today we got up early and got dressed up in traditional kimonos. Nonaco’s father Yosuo is a photographer and has a proper studio upstairs in the house so we got to play with props (including wearing shoes that were insanely tight). I can’t wait to get the photos back and post them here!
Random observations (I find variations on what we consider normal are always the most fascinating when travelling):
-
- - Most toilet seats in Japan are heated. It’s flippin’ amazing! Why can’t we have this?! It’s like I want to drink more water so I can get my rear end warmed up. Some of them play music, like the sound of a toilet flushing in case you have a shy bladder.
- - I haven’t been overly frustrated by the lack of English but it’s definitely a challenge. Like, buying food and not really knowing what you’re getting. Seeing Japanese writing everywhere you go. Having cashiers speak to me in Japanese and I have no idea what they are saying. Thanks to calculators we make it work, and I am picking up a few words here and there so I am optimistic that with exposure and a bit of work I can pick things up along the way. I am happy to see that a country can continue to move along independently without giving up their own identity in the name of evolution.
- - For a country that is really advanced in the technology department, I am surprised at some of the health and safety stuff I have seen, like at the airport you can take your baggage carrier down the escalator (it’s a normal one not a ramp). When we stayed at Makiko’s, I noticed her dryer drips water on to the washing machine below close to the wires. Hopefully she will get this fixed!
- - There are lines on the platforms for the trains and in front of cashiers to tell you where to line up.
- I haven’t quite figured out the no shoe thing. You can’t wear shoes in the house, but there is a specific way to place the shoes at the door. And sometimes there are slippers at the door to another room. There are often slippers in the bathroom too, which you leave at the door so you wear the slippers from the door to the toilet and back to the door.
- - Bathrooms are disconnected from showers in a house. There is a tap on top of the toilet to fill up the water tank so when you flush the toilet you can rinse your hands with the water from the tap so you aren’t wasting water.
- - When most people think of Japanese food, they think of sushi rolls like dragon rolls, California rolls, avocado rolls, etc. We haven’t had one sushi roll since we landed and I doubt we will. They are big on rice at every meal, usually some sort of soup, but the dishes are variations of fish, veggies and other random surprises. Tempura, edamame and soba noodles are authentic, but sushi rolls definitely aren’t. Not that they aren’t delicious on their own, but being in Japan has definitely redefined Japanese cuisine for me!
This trip is definitely different from my last one though in that I left my super fantastically amazing boyfriend Sean at home. It is really hard to not see him but we are making due with Skype and What’s app, but the problem with both of these is that I need to have a wifi connection, which sort of comes and goes. I am really lucky that he is so incredibly supportive of this trip even though it’s hard for both of us to be apart.
Thanks for following along! I will try to update more with shorter messages so you’re aren’t overwhelmed with text!
Photos: Yosha eating super amazingly fresh mochi at the cherry blossom festival; Nonaco, Yosha and I playing in the cherry blossom trees; a line of carp streamers tied to a cable near the river for children's day (for more info, check out
wikipedia); Yosha and Nonaco in the kitchen after Nonaco taught us how to make onigiri for breakfast (rice cake with various things in it. I think we had tuna and eel); one of the many tasty dishes for dinner: tempura!; and showing off our calligraphy after dinner.