Karin Welss's Open Salon Blog

Japan Travel Journal: Tokyo Day 4: Ueno, Edo-Tokyo Museum, a

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:10:23 -0400

Another beautiful day in Tokyo, with sunny, mild weather, and Lori, Nick, and I did quite a bit of sightseeing today.

We’ve discovered that Tokyo is a late-rising city for the most part. Even the cafes open later in the morning, around 8am, and the French patisserie around the corner from the hotel only opens at 10am. With our jet-lag we’ve been waking up early, and it’s lucky that our hotel puts out coffee and pastries because we haven’t had much luck finding early-morning breakfast places in town.

Nick’s been a sweetheart, and has gone upstairs to fetch coffee and pastries every morning we’ve been here. We divide the booty and have a light breakfast in our room, and then usually pick up a mid-morning snack somewhere on our way.

Our major sightseeing plans for today were the Edo-Tokyo Museum and a night tour of Tokyo. The museum wasn’t open until 9:30am, and we were awake, dressed and ready to go by 7:30am, so we decided to hop on the train to Ueno Park and walk around a bit before heading over to the museum.

The park dates from the mid-19^th century, and has a variety of buildings on the grounds: a zoo, several museums and art galleries, and several Shinto shrines. The museums and galleries were closed, and most of the people we saw were either the homeless who live in the park, or commuters or students cutting across from the train station to various destinations on the other side of the park.

Ueno Park has lots of trees and a number of hills, so we climbed up and down for a while, discovering interesting corners—a beautiful old shrine tucked away on the side of a hill, with kitsune (fox) statues clad in faded scarlet bibs guarding the entrance; a vast pond covered with giant water-lilies, each of the leaves the size of an umbrella; an avenue of large stone lanterns placed in the deep shade of tall old trees.

We walked around for about an hour, then returned to the train station (which is located conveniently across the street from the park), and transferred trains a couple of times to reach the museum. The rail system in Tokyo is extensive, easy-to-use, and very convenient. We can use our rail passes to go nearly everywhere (and where the train doesn’t go, the Tokyo Metro does), and both the signage and the announcements are in Japanese and English.

The Edo-Tokyo Museum is a fascinating place, chronicling the history and everyday life of the city from establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 1600’s to the post-WWII reconstruction.

Located inside a huge modern concrete structure that resembles a sports stadium, it contains a number of full-sized model of houses, theaters, and public buildings from different eras of the city’s history, as well as extensive displays on the social, political, and physical history of the city—everything from the 18^th-century aqueduct and sewage systems, to municipal fire brigades, to life-sized models of a Kabuki theater, an 18^th century tenement, 19^th century newspaper office, and early 20^th-century middle-class houses.

We were given a personal guided tour of the Edo half of the museum by one of the volunteer docents, a charming elderly lady who pointed out some fascinating details about the layout of the shogun’s Tokyo residences, including Edo Castle, and the old city.

After finishing our museum visit around lunchtime, Lori, Nick and I returned to our hotel to drop off a few things and change shoes. Then we split up for the afternoon—I picked up an obento (boxed) lunch at the train station, and headed to “Electric Town” in Akihabara, while Nick and Lori enjoyed a nice lunch in the hotel restaurant and then went shopping.

I’m a huge fan of the obento shops, and am determined to sample as many obento as possible while I’m in Japan.

Available in most train stations, they’re inexpensive, beautifully-arranged, and delicious, offering tiny portions of many different dishes.

Today’s obento was a seafood obento—it had a portion of roasted vegetables (pumpkin, lotus root, carrot), sautéed spinach, pickled radish, two small pieces of grilled fish, a tablespoon of sautéed mussels in a tangy lemon sauce, a piece of calamari fried in a seaweed-laced batter, ginger pork sliced paper-thin, and a scoop of rice topped with some kind of minced shellfish in a sweet-and-sour sauce.

Akihabara is known for its many electronics shops and being a destination for geeks of all stripes. I was surprised at what a small area the famous “Electric Town” actually covered—only 2 city blocks. It was definitely geek heaven, though—dozens of tiny shops lining alleys, crammed with every bit of high-tech stuff you can imagine. One shop seemed to specialize in nothing but power cords and surge protectors of various kinds. Another was nothing but MP3 players and earphones. Yet another was “build your own PC” place, with large plastic tubs overflowing with motherboards, fans, memory chips, and other odds and ends.

The district was crowded with young men—the only other women I saw were store employees, and a few elaborately-costumed girls handing out flyers for a “maid café,” where all the staff were apparently pretty young women costumed as maids.

I made a circuit of the area, poked my head in a few stores looking for a couple of accessories for my Sony Walkman, then the loud and competing music blaring from each store started to overwhelm me. So I headed back to the train station, ravenous and footsore.

Once back at the hotel, I ate my bento lunch, and contemplated venturing into the vast, maze-like underground shopping mall that branches off from the train station. I needed to find a bank and exchange some money. The underground mall proved to be a bewildering complex of fluorescent-lit, marble-paved corridors lined with upscale restaurants (all with plastic food displays, including a gourmet pizza shop that featured a pizza topped with an egg, sunny-side up and two strips of bacon) and expensive boutiques for clothing, luggage, shoes, etc.

Mission completed, I met up with Lori and Nick again, and together, we took a train a couple of stops away, to take a Tokyo By Night bus tour. It was quite nice—we started off by driving over the Rainbow Bridge and having a Japanese dinner at the top of a hotel built on one of the artificial islands in Tokyo Bay.

The view over the black water and colorful downtown skyline was spectacular, and it was good food.

We started off with an appetizer, which consisted of various pickled seaweed and vegetables served in tiny dishes placed in black lacquer boxes, served with a tiny glass of plum wine. Then our dinners arrived, also prettily arranged in small dishes and bowls placed on lacquer trays: Lori and Nick had the sukiyaki served in a cast-iron skillet, and I had the sashimi tray, which came with a side salad of shredded cabbage, spring greens, cold steamed broccoli, and sweet corn; red miso soup; two pieces of nigiri sushi; and a selection of sashimi—tuna, hamachi, salmon, and a barely-cooked prawn.

For dessert, we were served a cup of fragrant Oolong tea and a tiny scoop of green melon sorbet, which was delicious and very refreshing.

Then it was on to our next stop, Odaiba, which is another artificial island in the bay. It’s a popular place, with lots of hotels, shopping malls, amusement parks, the Fuji TV station, and a giant Ferris wheel brightly lit with multicolored neon. We made a photo stop near a replica of the Statue of Liberty, which afforded us a wonderful view of the skyline and Rainbow Bridge, plus a number of brightly-lit party boats dotting the dark waters of the bay. It was a very mild, humid night, which made walking around very pleasant.

Our last stop of the evening was at Roppongi Hills, which took us through the brightly-lit Ginza District as well as the nightclub-studded Roppongi District.

Roppongi Hills is a very posh, ultra-modern high rise building with a shopping mall and art museum, among other things, and an 360-degree observation deck on the 52^nd floor that offers an amazing view of the city, spread out in lights as far as the eye can see. It was here that I really got a good sense of Tokyo’s vastness. The observation deck is also apparently the place to take a date in Tokyo—the benches were crowded with couples looking out over the city lights.

Tomorrow morning, we check out of this amazing hotel (the service is absolutely unbelievable, and there were countless small touches, like the fresh fruit placed in the elevator lobbies daily, that really added to our stay here).

We’re planning to take the Shinkansen (bullet train) north to Nikko, which lies in the mountains and has many sights of historical interest. I’m not certain about Internet access at our next hotel, but we’ll be staying two nights at a mountain inn that features an onsen (Japanese baths fed by natural hot springs).

Then, it’s off to Kyoto after that…

Japan Travel Journal Day 3: Tokyo – Sushi for Breakfast

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:10:08 -0400

We all rose before dawn today (not a difficult task, considering that we’re all jet-lagged and wide-awake at 5am anyway) and dined on coffee and French pastries before braving the rush hour traffic on the train to go down to the Tsukiji Wholesale Market, renowned for its fish auction.

It rained overnight, and the streets were still wet when we left, though the day dawned sunny and warm.

We boarded the train right at the beginning of the morning rush hour. It was interesting watching all the working folks crammed on the trains—the men were almost without exception attired in black suits with white shirts, while the young women were more casually and fashionably dressed. And then there was the occasional middle-aged or older woman wearing a kimono and obi, usually with a cellphone in hand texting merrily away.

Lori noted how quiet Tokyo is, considering what a busy metropolitan place it is. Despite the traffic, there’s hardly any honking, and people on the train use their phones to text-message rather than talk. What is prevalent are white-gloved policemen directing traffic with whistles and flags or batons (especially where there are driveways in and out of lots or garages, and there are usually two policemen to direct cross-traffic and pedestrians), and public announcements over the PA systems in train stations, malls, etc.

We walked from the train station to the Tsukiji Wholesale Market, home of the famous fish auction. We missed the auction (which is officially closed to the public, anyway) but toured the organized chaos that is the market. It’s part warehouse/distribution center and part farmers’ market/flea market, with dozens of tiny stalls selling everything from fresh and pickled vegetables to green tea, Japanese omelet, knives, to bulk restaurant supplies like the plastic food displays, disposable chopsticks and plastic takeout trays.

Inside the market buildings, tiny trucks raced around much larger trucks, piled high with Styrofoam containers of fish packed in ice, and in one case, we saw a young, grinning man giving a lift to very prim and proper older lady who stood on the back of his truck, clinging to a rail. We also saw a number of men in business suits and ties but wearing gum-boots--we assumed that they were seafood brokers.

There were a number of tiny hole-in-the-wall sushi/sashimi/yakitori restaurants tucked amidst the stalls, most with long queues of people waiting to eat fresh-off-boat sashimi for breakfast. After wandering the aisles for a while, and dodging a constant stream of tiny delivery trucks, delivery mopeds, and even delivery bicycles, all loaded with Styrofoam boxes of fish, we decided to join the masses and have fish for breakfast.

We found a quirky little restaurant, barely six feet wide, divided by a counter that could seat eight customers at a time. Our host was a bubbly Japanese man with dyed blond hair and eyeliner who introduced himself as JJ. He bustled between the tiny kitchen in the back, where his Mom and Dad were manning the stoves, and the counter, serving up hot tea, rice, miso soup, and main dishes along with language lessons.

Nick, Lori, and I shared a dish of exquisitely fresh sashimi, a platter of mouth-meltingly tender grilled eel, and yakitori (grilled chicken on bamboo skewers). The tuna sashimi was a dark, bloody red, which Lori found rather off-putting, and the chicken yakitori had couple of raw spots, but the eel was wonderful, with crispy skin on the outside, and glazed with a sweet teriyaki sauce.

I enjoyed my meal, but Nick was rather lukewarm about the food, and Lori pretty much stuck to the rice and miso soup. We all enjoyed talking to JJ, though.

With full tummies, we left the hustle-bustle of the Tsukiji Wholesale Market behind, and soaked in the serenity of the nearby Hama-rikyu gardens, which were once a private park belonging to the Tokugawa shoguns in the 17^th century.

It’s a very peaceful place, set between the high-rises of downtown Tokyo and the mouth of the Sumida River where it empties into Tokyo Bay. The gardens are landscaped with artificial hills and artfully-placed boulders set amongst groves of beautifully manicured pines, rolling lawns and several large saltwater ponds arched by bridges. It felt like a million miles away from the chaos of the nearby Tsukiji Market.

I had previously visited these gardens four years ago, when I traveled to Japan with my sister. Then, as now, we stopped in at the beautiful little tea-house built over the lake and took part in a tea ceremony.

The tea-house is a pavilion made of wood, with sliding screens that open the sides of the building to views of the lake and garden. It is surrounded by a tiny rock garden with raked gravel in swirling wave patterns.

Removing our shoes, we knelt on red cloth runners placed over tatami matting, and looked out over the lake, where a large gray heron and several smaller cormorants were fishing. The hostesses served us the frothy, dark green tea in large bowls on black lacquer trays, accompanied by a tiny, exquisite sweet red bean cakes molded and tinted to look like an autumn leaf.

Kneeling gracefully and placing the tray on the mat before us, she placed her hands on the mat and bowed deeply, her forehead touching the backs of her hands.

We returned the bows as best we could, and started with the red bean cake, as instructed by the helpful tea ceremony flyer. According to the instructions, we were supposed to pick up the sweet, helpfully served on a small square of stiff paper, and put it in our left hand, then slice it into bite-sized pieces with the provided bamboo pick, spear each piece, and put it in our mouths. Only when we’d finished with the sweet were we supposed to sip the tea, which was refreshingly bitter.

Since it was still not yet 10am, the gardens and tea-house were relatively deserted. As we were finishing up our tea, a group of elderly Japanese ladies entered the tea house. We exchanged bows and greetings, then left to tour the rest of the garden, before heading back to the hotel to drop off some souvenirs purchased at the fish market.

We took a slightly different route returning to the train station, finding that a series of catwalks connected the district’s high-rise buildings, allowing us to escape the traffic on the streets below. The catwalks were very modern in glass and chrome, but as we rounded corners, we encountered whimsical sculptures, flowerboxes and little greenhouses, and even a miniature Shinto shrine with a red-painted torii gate.

The mid-morning train was a lot emptier than it had been previously, though we did see some interesting people, including a large man, shiny with baby oil, wearing a yukata and with a samurai hairdo. Our guess was that he was a professional sumo wrestler.

We stopped in at our hotel room for a half-hour or so to refresh ourselves, before venturing out again to the train station, and heading up to the Asakusa district, and the famous Senso-ji Buddhist temple.

As I remembered from my previous trip, it was a very lively place on a Monday afternoon, with a long avenue of shops leading between the main gate (hung with a very distinctive giant red lantern), and masses of people shopping for purses, fake samurai swords, kimono, wigs, keychains, t-shirts, fans, chopsticks, obi, and a dizzying array of sweets. There were chestnut-filled pastries in various shapes, unique ice cream flavors such as black sesame, and little waffle-like cakes filled with sweet red bean paste and molded in the shapes of the temple lantern and the protective guardian statues, along with many other brightly-colored items I found impossible to identify.

Lori bought a few of the waffle-cakes, still warm, and shared them. They were delicious.

We finally made it through the gauntlet of shops, and emerged into the main courtyard in front of the temple. There was a huge cauldron filled with sand, wreathed in fragrant smoke from where worshippers stuck the bundles of incense sticks in the sand, and lots of construction going on as workers erected rows of temporary booths in preparation for an upcoming festival.

There were also numerous fortune-telling booths, where people shook out a numbered stick from metal canisters containing dozens of similar sticks, then matched the number on their stick to a drawer containing a ribbon of paper printed with a particular verse. They then tied the paper to a metal frame.

The temple itself was a huge space filled with throngs of people variously praying, sightseeing, and throwing offerings of coins into large boxes placed before the gilded and carved altar.

We walked through the hustle-bustle, then departed the temple grounds for a walk around the neighborhood, which was much quieter, with tree-lined streets and many shops selling the bits and pieces for traditional outfits for men and women—kimono, obi, happi jackets, tabi socks, hair ornaments, and hakama (traditional wide-legged trousers for men).

Making our way down narrow streets to the nearby Sumida River, we walked along the tree-lined and landscaped banks to the water bus stands, where we boarded a tourist cruise for the short trip down the river, passing under many bridges along the way, and stopping in briefly at the Hama-rikyu Gardens once again.

Disembarking, we walked back to the train station, where we braved the afternoon rush hour to return to the hotel. At this point, we’d been walking around for about nine hours, and we were fairly footsore, so instead of venturing out, we elected to try one of the restaurants located in the basement of the high-rise where the hotel is located.

We found a noodle-and-sake restaurant favored by businessmen, and enjoyed a very nice meal of soba, thin buckwheat noodles in dark, salty broth, served with various accompaniments. The waiter suggested a nice sake alongside the soba, and we had it served cold rather than hot.

Japan Travel Journal: Tokyo, Day One-and-a-Half

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:10:06 -0400

It’s a little past 1 PM on our first full day in Tokyo, we’re back in our super-luxurious hotel room suite at the Four Season Marunouchi, and my friend Lori is leading her husband Nick and me through a series of yoga stretches. We’re lined up along the room’s hallway wall, ankles above our heads, stretching out stiff backs and legs after a morning of tramping around the Imperial Palace Gardens, Meiji Shrine, and Harajuku.

We had a smooth and uneventful (but LONG) flight over from San Francisco yesterday. The plane was brand-spanking-new, and had a lot of legroom in the economy-class seats.

After landing at Narita, we staggered wearily through passport control, customs, then downstairs to the train station in the airport’s basement, where we traded in our JR Rail Pass vouchers for the actual rail passes.

Then we hopped aboard the Narita Express, and rode for an hour towards downtown Tokyo. At first, it was a dark landscape of fields and only occasional houses, but the closer we came to the city, the more frequent the malls and houses, which quickly turned to high-rises and neon signs.

Tokyo Station, like most JR stations, is a huge underground maze of seemingly endless corridors, lined with shops and restaurants. After disembarking from the train, we wandered like lost souls for a while, trying to find the correct exit to get to the hotel. Though only 6:45 PM Tokyo time, it was nearing 2 AM California time by then, and Lori had utterly wilted at that point.

Only half-awake, she obediently stumbled along in our wake as we went through passages, up stairs, down stairs, past ticket vending machines, and through “Kitchen Street” a tunnel lined with little cafes, sushi bars, noodle shops, and bakeries—until we took a wrong turn. Then she roused long enough to issue a set of tartly-worded directives. Once satisfied that we were back on track, she relapsed back into her stupor.

The hotel proved to be two buildings down from the train station exit, once we found the correct exit. We were warmly greeted by the staff, our luggage taken, and our room keys issued in short order.

Our room is huge, nearly the size of my condo, with an oversized bathroom in glass and slate, interior maple-paneled walls, and wrap-around floor-to-ceiling windows that look over the Ginza District from the sixth floor of the high-rise.

Nick and I ventured out again to pick up a snack—an obento box with an odd assortment of foods—deep-fried chicken nuggets, Japanese rice, pickled seaweed salad, pickled ginger…and a scoop of potato salad and spaghetti with tomato sauce.

Hot showers and we all fell into our fabulously comfortable beds. It was only 9pm Tokyo time, but we were exhausted.

So of course, we were all awake at 4:30am. I managed to fall back asleep, though and woke up again around 7am. Lori and Nick had been out exploring the hotel and returned bearing coffee and the sad news that the French patisserie down the street didn’t open until 10am.

It was a glorious morning—sunny, blue skies. We set forth, ducking into a café located in the train station to purchase breakfast pastries and lattes. The choices were definitely interesting: in addition to the usual croissants, there were curry doughnuts, rolls topped with over-easy eggs, ham, sweet corn, and broccoli, and sausage-and-egg rolls. We picked up a selection of items, then walked three or four blocks through the wide deserted streets to the gardens surrounding the Imperial Palace.

After having our breakfast while sitting on benches overlooking an interesting set of pools and fountains, we walked around the Imperial Palace’s moat (the closest you can actually get to the palace). After a brief but spirited debate about where to go next, we reached a consensus, then purchased a day pass for the Metro, hopped on the subway, and rode over to the Meiji Shrine.

When we exited the station, and entered the forested park, walking up the wide gravel paths leading to the shrine, we noticed lots of people wearing traditional kimono, including a number of young children.

Reaching the shrine, we paused at the granite basin of the purification fountain to rinse off our hands and mouths with cool water poured from bamboo dippers, then continued on into the shrine’s precincts.

Almost immediately, we saw the reason for all of the traditionally-dressed people—Sunday mornings are apparently prime time for Shinto wedding ceremonies at the shrine. We saw several couples in full traditional wedding regalia posing for photos, and a wedding procession led by a Shinto priest in full Heian-era vestments, followed by miko (shrine maidens) in traditional scarlet trousers and white blouses, then the bride and groom, and the wedding party in a variety of gorgeous kimono.

The main courtyard of the shrine was also hosting ceremonies for the young children we’d seen earlier, all of whom were adorably dressed up and excited about the fact. I remember reading that there are Shinto ceremonies to celebrate when children reach certain ages, and it appeared that the proud parents and grandparents were bringing their kids to the shrine to receive a blessing from the priests.

We hung around for a while, taking lots of photos, then wandered back to the station, and from there, down Harajuku’s tree-lined avenues crowded with fascinating mixture of the older generation, dressed in their Sunday kimono best, hipsters, punk-rockers with elaborately dyed and styled hair, and more conservatively dressed urbanites. At this point, we were getting hungry, and wandered off into side-streets, looking for an inexpensive but interesting restaurant. After looking at rejecting a number of fast food, waffle, crepes, and rice-and-omelette places, we found a quirky American-style diner located on an outdoor patio, with an old Airstream trailer that had been converted to a kitchenette. We ordered burgers—Lori and I had a maple-glazed grilled chicken burger served with a tiny cup of horseradish-spiced mashed potatoes, and Nick had a regular hamburger served with a beer—and ate picnic-style on the patio as clouds began to roll in and our sunny weather disappeared in a gray humidity threatening rain.

Pleasantly tired, we made our way back to the hotel for a mid-afternoon cup of afternoon tea and a rest (and Lori’s yoga stretches).

Now, I’m typing up my journal (though I shudder at the hotel’s extortionate Internet access fee and will search out the rumored free wireless hotspots at local cafes), while Nick and Pirri sprawl on their bed and look through their Tokyo guides, and try to figure what (if anything) our jet-lagged selves are up to attempting this afternoon and evening.

(Later) We heard that the main streets of the nearby Ginza district are closed to traffic on Sundays, so we walked over, and joined a vast parade of people walking down the main boulevard of this shopping district. The temperatures remained mild and humid as we completed a circuit of the district. As always, the people-watching was excellent—the streets were crowded with young and old, the fashionable and the fashion victims, and assorted tourists like us.

As the afternoon lengthened toward evening, we braved a miles-long protest of what looked like nurses and other medical workers, who marched down one of the streets parallel to the train station, accompanied by cars with mounted megaphones that blared out protest slogans (and apologies to the pedestrians for blocking their way). Policemen directed traffic at all the major intersections, permitting the protestors to march at intervals after allowing cross-traffic through. It was one of the largest protests I’ve ever seen—the parade was at least a mile or two long—but it was all amazingly orderly and polite.

We searched in vain for an izakaya (Japanese pub with food) mentioned in our travel books, but alas, it appeared to be closed on Sundays. So, we ended up having a delicious supper at a tiny restaurant near the next train station down the road. I had the ginger pork dinner set, which consisted of miso soup, a generous bowl of rice, a tiny dish of pickled cabbage, another dish of seaweed salad in a sesame paste sauce, and a main plate of tender, paper-thin slices of delicious pork sautéed in ginger sauce, served with a salad of finely-shredded raw cabbage dressed with a lemon vinaigrette.

Now, it’s 7pm, and we’ve just finished dessert at a little café around the corner. They advertised a wireless hotspot, but alas, it was a browse-for-pay site, so I ended up at the Four Seasons’ business center, which has a computer and is free to guests.

We’ll all be going to sleep shortly, since we’re planning to visit the famous fish market tomorrow, and that means a very early start. No problem—we’re all going to be awake at 4:30 AM, anyway, with our jet lag. *g*

Travel Blog: Bursa, Turkey (June, 2008)

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 14:09:53 -0400

The drive north this morning showed us shifting landscapes once
again. Sunburned hills covered with olive and oak turned to rice
paddies and poplars, and the verges of the highway were fringed with
green grass once again.

We arrived in Bursa, known as 'green Bursa' during the Ottoman days
for its many peach orchards. It's a hilly city in its older
neighborhoods, with hair-raising traffic on the narrow, twisting
cobbled streets that are lined with sycamore trees and old wooden
Ottoman houses overhanging the street with long bay windows on the
second story. Tiny shops stand crowded cheek-by-jowl along the
streets, selling pastries, electronics, fast food, wedding and prom
dresses, and appliances, and inbetween tiny gardens and vacant lots
are overgrown with rosebushes and the luxuriant green of grapevines.

As we headed further into the old city, we saw an old man leading a
mule down the sidewalk, large basket panniers slung over its back,
piled high with bright red cherries.

Lunch was at a restaurant built inside a medieval soup kitchen
associated with a nearby mosque (for the feeding of the poor), with
the giant pottery storage vessels still embedded in the floor of the
downstairs dining room, which was once the cellar. The floors were
tiled with the turquoise-colored tiles characteristic of this city,
and the doorways and windows were richly frescoed with floral Ottoman
motives in reds and blues.

The food was excellent--a creamy tomato soup sprinkled with grated
white cheese that resembled Jarlsberg; a mixed salad dressed with
lemon juice and olive oil; flatbread piled high with thin slices of
spiced kebab meat and served with tangy yogurt and tomato sauce; and
for dessert, sweet ripe watermelon slices.

After lunch, we walked across the street, to the grounds of a 14th-
century mosque set in a lush garden planted with palms, magnolia
trees, roses, pansies, and pink hydrangea. The air was humid but cool
under cloudy skies, and threatened rain.

At the entrance to the mosque, we removed our shoes and the women
donned headscarves or hats. A clean-shaven man in his thirties
welcomed us into the mosque. He was dressed in an Oxford button-down
shirt and blue jeans, and had a warm smile. He turned out to be the
imam--the Muslim minister in charge of this historic mosque.

With Erkal translating, he gave us a brief explanation of the tenets
of the Muslim faith and of the exquisite 14th-century blue and green
tiles and Arabic calligraphy decorating the domes and arches inside
the mosque. Then he demonstrated how he calls the faithful to prayer
five times daily, singing the haunting summons in a beautiful tenor
that echoed off the high central dome of the main hall.

After our tour of the mosque, we wandered through the manicured
gardens, and visited the beautiful domed tombs of the early Ottoman
sultans and their family members, each small shrine adorned with
gorgeous tilework and colorful frescoes.

Then it was off to two more medieval Ottoman mosques, each dating
from the 14th and 15th centuries, including the Green Mosque, the
most famous mosque in Bursa. It was an enormous building with an
elaborately carved marble façade.

As we entered the mosque (and I was fumbling with tying my headscarf
into place), a group of elderly Turkish ladies were just exiting.
They surrounded me, patting my arms and shoulders, smiling and saying
something in Turkish and laughing.

At first, I wondered whether I'd tied my headscarf wrong and was
receiving gentle correction, but then I heard what they were saying--
Hoshgeldiniz, hoshgeldiniz: "Welcome, welcome."

Inside, the 15th-century mosque had the same impact as one of the
great European cathedrals (and like the cathedrals, the interior was
filled with scaffolding and repairs and renovations were in full
swing). The polished pine floors were laid with carpets, and there
were crowds of people swirling through the vast space, some praying,
others taking photographs and chasing after toddlers, who seemed to
take entrance into the mosque as a signal to dash off as fast as
their little legs could take them.

At one point during Erkal's explanation of the history of the mosque,
we were surrounded by a crowd of very young children, who were
staring at us, fascinated.

After visiting the mosque, it was off to the medieval bazaar. Bursa
is the center of Turkey's silk industry, and part of the bazaar is
devoted to selling products made from silk. At this point, there were
several mighty (and startling) claps of thunder, and a torrential
downpour began.

We fled for the shelter of a multi-storied medieval
bazaar building, which was an arcaded set of small shops built around
a central courtyard garden. This was the silk bazaar, and safe and
dry from the rain outside, we spent about a half-hour wandering
around the four sides of the arcade, looking at the displays of
scarves, ties, tablecloths, blouses, pillowcases, skirts, napkins,
and shawls, many of them embroidered and all very reasonably priced.

It was a dangerous place to be in possession of a credit card!

Finally, it was time to return to the hotel. After a hair-raising
drive with the bus through the extremely tight medieval streets, the
rain still coming down in sheets and turning the cobbles into rushing
streams, we arrived at a huge and gracious hotel built in the 1920s.
One of the promised luxuries was a Turkish bath, fed by a thermal hot
spring located on the hotel grounds, and tonight, dinner wasn't being
served until 8pm, so we had about 2.5 hours to take advantage of the
bath.

It was heavenly. The bath itself was free to hotel guests, though the
extra services (massage, scrubbing, and shampooing) were charged at
appropriately extortionate rates.

First, I changed into a bathing suit and hotel-supplied bathrobe, and
walked to spa and bath complex, located at one end of the hotel.

Erkal was already there, soaking blissfully in the hot water, and he
explained a few things as I hesitantly pushed open the massive wooden
doors leading into the bathing chamber, and dipped my feet in the
mandatory disinfectant footbath.

The bath was located in a huge domed chamber, pierced by dozens of
tiny skylights, and floored and walled completely in marble. In the
middle of the chamber, right under the dome, was a huge round marble
pool filled chest-deep with hot greenish mineral waters. Along the
sides of the bath were ornate ceramic basins and spigots, with
hammered silver dishes, for scrubbing down and dousing one's self
with cold water when overheated.

At the back of the chamber was what looked like an ornamental
fountain, with a shallow marble basin and steaming hot water pouring
down from a broad, sculpted spout. That turned out to be the
caldarium, and the large pool was the tepidarium. The frigidarium, or
cold-water bath, was adapted into marble shower stalls on either side
of the caldarium fountain.

The Turkish hamam, or baths, are modeled on the ancient Roman baths,
and even the basins and benches looked like the ones we had seen at
the various archaeological sites we visited.

In any case, it was blissfully decadent. I soaked until I was
pleasantly boneless, crawling out of the hot water at intervals to
pour basins-full of cool water over my back and shoulders, and then I
oozed back to my room to dry off and relax before dinner.

Not too many of the other folks on the tour took advantage of the
bath--one couple arrived just as I was leaving, and then I saw our
driver and our assistant driver come in.

Tomorrow, we're off (once again, way too early in the morning) to
Istanbul for the last leg of our trip...

Travel Blog: Kamakura (December, 2004)

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 14:09:44 -0400

(This travel journal entry was originally posted to my Yahoo!Group travel journal list.)

Temple Trudge II: Return to Kamakura

Imagine this: a grove of giant bamboo, wrapped in late-afternoon
shadow and deep stillness. A small tea-house set in the midst of the
grove, looking out over a tiny spring trickling down over a nearby
cliff face. Bowls of deep green, frothy, bitter hot tea served on a
lacquer tray, accompanied by two exquisite spun-sugar sweets in the
shape of lotus flowers and a calligraphed poem with a brush painting
of bamboo.

This was the Zen garden of the medieval Hokuku-ji Buddhist temple,
set like a jewel in the hills at the outskirts of Kamakura, and it
was a far cry from the hectic bustle around the Kamakura train
station and the hordes of schoolkids on field trips to the main
shrine.

There were only a few other visitors to the temple, and a couple of
elderly women diligently raking up fallen leaves and sweeping the
walkways. All was wrapped in contemplative serenity and quiet
reverence for the beauty of the place...until a couple of high-
school boys arrived.

They gravitated immediately to the giant bamboo, but being kids,
instead of appreciative murmurs, they yelped with amazement and
started whacking and pushing at the thickest stems, testing their
strength. The bamboo was mostly unmoved by their efforts, which I
suppose was a Zen lesson in and of itself.

Kevin had to work today, so Elke and I ran a couple of errands in
downtown Yokosuka in the morning, before picking up sushi bento
lunches at the local fish market (which turned out to be of
unparalleled freshness and tastiness--I'm really going to be spoiled
for sushi when I return to California), and heading over to the
train station. We were hoping that Kamakura on a weekday would be
less of a zoo than it had been during our weekend trip. The gardens
at the Hase-dera Kannon-ji Buddhist temple had impressed us, and so
we planned to visit a couple of temples, located further away from
the train station, which were renowned for either their antiquity or
their gardens.

Things went very smoothly--after arriving at the Kamakura train
station, we boarded one of the local buses (following the
instructions in the Lonely Planet), and perked up our ears for the
stop announcements. Though the bus stop signs and the destination
signs on the buses are all written in Japanese-only (unlike the
train stations, which have signs in both English and Japanese), they
do have pre-recorded announcements for each stop, probably for the
benefit of the blind. So we listened hard, and managed to get off at
the correct stop on a very busy, very narrow road on the hilly
outskirts of town.

As with most Japanese streets, we saw bicyclists of all ages, from
first-graders to senior citizens, fearlessly riding on the shoulder
of the road, seemingly unconcerned by the cars and trucks roaring
past. Bicycles are a very popular form of transportation in the
Tokyo-Yokohama area, and one lady was telling us that the decline in
the popularity of kimono as women's garments was due in large part
to the fact you can't ride a bike while wearing one. Many of the
train stations have multi-level parking garages for bicycles-only,
and all the bicycle parking lots we saw on our various expeditions
were always crammed full.

In any case, the streets in Kamakura have excellent sign-posts with
directions and distances to nearby temples and shrines, so we were
able to find Hokoku-ji with no difficulty. It was tucked away in a
charming neighborhood off the main drag, and after touring the
gardens (and snapping lots of photos, of course), we retraced our
steps to Sugimoto-dera, an ancient (1,400 years old) temple next to
the bus stop. Along the way, we encountered quite a few local senior
citizens coming home with their shopping, and we cheerfully
exchanged bows and greetings with them as we passed by.

Sugimono-dera is located at the top of a wooded hill. We climbed
narrow stone stairs straight up the hill, the treads hollowed with
the countless footsteps of the faithful, the way lined with dozens
of banners snapping in the brisk, cold wind from the sea. The shrine
buildings and gates were wooden, elaborately carved, and they had
thatched roofs. Everything was worn, and mossy, and very peaceful,
and the view over the houses and hills was wonderful.

We returned to Yokosuka as the sun was setting, and ventured into a
local grocery store to buy food for dinner. That was an adventure in
and of itself--while my sister moved briskly through the store,
selecting the fixings for a pork chop dinner, I wandered the aisles
in a daze, vainly trying to identify fascinating packages of...well,
stuff. It's tough being illiterate in this country, and having to
guess at 90% of all written materials--or having to ask passers-by
the most basic questions. In this case, we couldn't figure out if
the package of meat we were holding was chicken or pork, so we were
forced to throw ourselves on the mercy of another shopper, and ask
her.

Though the restaurant and take-out food has been very reasonably
priced, I've been having heart attacks at the prices listed at the
greengrocers: $5.00 for four apples. $7.00 for a pint of
strawberries. They're perfect, of course, but even so, my frugal
heart is appalled. Even local produce, in season (such as Fuyu
persimmons, which we see hanging on backyard trees everywhere) is
outrageously expensive when compared to the cost of produce in
California.

Tomorrow morning, I'm taking the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto.
I'm planning on staying at a traditional Japanese inn (a ryokan)
until Friday. I'll bring my little laptop with me to keep writing my
daily journal, but I'm not sure I'll have Internet access again
until Friday evening or Saturday morning.