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Publication Date: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Destinations: Royal treatment in Japan
Destinations: Royal treatment in Japan
(March 30, 2005) Barbara Wood and her mother are treated as honored guests during 10-day Sister Cities visit
By Barbara Wood
Special to the Almanac
Why do we travel? To escape from our ordinary lives; to see great beauty in art, nature and architecture; to learn about another place and culture and people; to relax, to enjoy, to learn.
Rarely are all of those goals met in a trip, but in October, traveling with my mother to Japan as part of an exchange program in which we spent 10 days in the homes of, and traveling with, Japanese people, I believe we did all that and more.
We were in Japan as part of a Sister Cities exchange visit between Roseburg, Oregon, the southern Oregon city where my parents have lived for 35 years, and Shobu, Japan.
Shobu is a rural city, located fewer than 100 miles north of Tokyo. Both Roseburg and Shobu have about 20,000 residents. Since the Sister Cities relationship was formed in 1993, delegations of Shobu and Roseburg residents and middle school students have exchanged annual visits.
We were spoiled and coddled and treated as honored guests from the time we were met at the Narita International Airport near Tokyo to our departure 10 days later.
We dined in lovely restaurants, were not allowed to go hungry or thirsty for a moment, were showered with gifts and souvenirs, saw interesting and beautiful sights, and were almost always with a translator.
Our first night was in a Western-style hotel a few hours from the airport. The next day, after being greeted by preschool students who waved American and Japanese flags and performed synchronized drumming for us, we were taught how to practice Zazen mediation and make Buddhist prayers before meeting with our host families.
We spent five nights in our hosts' homes and three days traveling on a bus with 16 Americans and 11 Japanese, staying in traditional Japanese hot spring resort hotels.
My mother and I stayed with Yasuko and Chiaki Koyama and their adult daughter Kimiko. Yasuko is a retired fashion design teacher; Chiaki, a semi-retired horticulture teacher; and Kimiko, a physical education teacher.
Theirs is a traditional home, where shoes are left at the front door, and only bare feet or slippers allowed in the rooms, with rice straw tatami mats covering the floors. We slept on the floor on futon mattresses, which are stowed away during the day.
Dinners were at a low table, where we sat on floor cushions. Breakfasts were at a western-style kitchen table.
Meals were usually a feast of many small dishes -- fish, meat, rice, vegetables, tofu, sake, coffee and green tea, all of which were pressed on us until we protested we couldn't hold any more.
Chiaki and Yasuko vied to prove they were the best at preparing green tea.
One evening early in our visit I explained that one of my family's favorite foods is corned beef and cabbage and described how I cooked the meal. I was astonished the next morning when we were served potatoes and cabbage boiled in consomme for breakfast. "Calefornia," our hostess beamed as she served them.
The Japanese seemed to eat, and drink, all the time, yet no one in the country was overweight. On the bus we were offered alcoholic drinks starting at 9 a.m., including beer and fortified fruit drinks and sake, along with green tea and sodas. Snack foods included seaweed and pickled octopus tentacles.
The Koyama home, like most in Japan, has only a small plot of land. A landscaped yard about 12 feet wide surrounded the house on three sides. The tiny garden was immaculate, with precisely pruned trees and plants, metal rain chains for water to run off the roof, and a hand-washing rock for the tea ceremony. Yasuko grew some plants in the garden that she used to hand-dye fabrics.
Our visit was packed with sightseeing and educational activities. We visited an agricultural cooperative, a museum that was the Japanese equivalent of Filoli with a large traditional house and extensive gardens, an old trading town, and a temple/museum with a garden containing 538 statues of disciples of Buddha, carved in the late 1700s. We stopped for lunch in a restaurant where everything from the beer to noodles was made with sweet potatoes. And that was all in one day.
We saw awesome natural beauty in the Fukishima province, where autumn was coloring the steep mountainsides with intense reds, oranges and yellows. We hiked around a lake with turquoise waters, a mountain peak in the distance, and gigantic koi at the shore. We visited a sake factory, candy store, museum devoted to paulownia wood carving, and a "tourist farm," where we smelled but did not see any animals, and ate green tea ice cream.
We saw awesome man-made beauty in Nikko, where an elaborate shrine honoring the first shogun was built by his grandson, and where there is a later shrine honoring the grandson.
At the hot springs hotels we all wore hotel-supplied sandals, socks with toes called tabi and cotton kimonos called yukatas. Our Japanese roommates made fun of me because my kimono tie fit around me only twice while they had to wrap it two or three times around themselves.
A 10-course meal, beautifully presented and served by kimono-clad waitresses, was accompanied by bottomless glasses of Japanese beer or warm sake. Mid-way through the meal, karaoke started onstage, with our Japanese hosts joining our group members in singing in English along with a video monitor.
After dinner, most of us tried out the hotel's communal baths. In sex-segregated rooms, everyone disrobed completely, squatted on a small stool to soap off with a hand-held shower, and then slipped into one of several large pools of differing temperatures. Modesty was not an option, with a small hand-towel the only cover-up.
While there was no modesty in the baths, I learned there is at least one thing the Japanese are sensitive about. After being mystified as to why a button next to a toilet in an upscale hotel played the recorded sounds of a toilet flushing, it was explained to me that Japanese people are embarrassed to make loud noises in the bathroom, so flush to cover them up. The recorded flushing allows them to mask noises without wasting water.
Our translator and I made a side trip to Tokyo on one of our free days. It was my least favorite place, although it was uncrowded on a Sunday. We took an elevator to the top of Tokyo Tower, modeled after the Eiffel Tower (but a few meters taller), had lunch at a hotel, and saw the Imperial Palace, which can only be viewed from the park surrounding it.
We had fun, too. At a rice cake party, we smashed rice with a heavy mallet into a dough, then wrapped it around bean paste and ate noodles others in the group had hand-rolled earlier in the day.
One evening I gave English lessons. Many Shobu residents now know how to say "Holy smoke," "Gee, thanks," Miss Piggy's line -- "Moi?" and "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream."
After a bit of sake one night, our host, Chiaki, reached over and yanked a few strands of hair off my head, which he then fashioned into a moustache for himself. After we all laughed so hard we cried, he carefully folded the hair up and attached it to the back of a photo I had given him of my garden.
I was honored to know I will be remembered in Japan.
Barbara Wood lives in Woodside in an old house filled with redheads and animals. Her column, "Dispatches From the Home Front," runs the third week of the month.
Quake doesn't shake Japanese
My mother and I and our Japanese host family were headed back after a long day of touring the temples, gardens and other cultural treasures of the old Japanese mountain town of Nikko when the train stopped and an announcement was made. I asked Sumiko Komatsu, our translator and friend, what had happened.
"Earthquake," she replied quietly.
"They have to check the tracks before the train can move again."
No one panicked, no noisy cell phone conversations began taking place; in fact, the aura of calm exhaustion that had filled the car before we stopped continued, right through the three strong aftershocks we felt during the hour before the train moved again.
The nervous fidgeting that seems to overcome Americans when they are delayed from their ever-so-important next activity never materialized.
It turned out the quake, centered a few hundred miles away, had measured 6.9 on the Richter scale, killed 23 people, injured hundreds, dropped roads into the ocean, and knocked an ultramodern shinkansen "bullet train" off its tracks.
To me, the lack of reaction from the train passengers said volumes about the Japanese and how they have adapted to living in unique circumstances.
More than 126 million Japanese people live on a chain of more than 3,000 islands with a total area slightly less than that of California (which has 90 million fewer inhabitants). Most live in urban areas. Tokyo alone has more than 12 million residents.
The Japanese are remarkably homogenous -- one guidebook I read said that less than 1 percent of Japan's inhabitants are not ethnic Japanese. Adult literacy is also estimated to be at 99 percent.
But the land itself is not stable. Earthquakes are common. Each year more than 1,000 are strong enough to be felt. Typhoons are also a fact of life; the one that struck the night of our arrival killed 61 people, most in massive mudslides. Even active volcanoes are common in Japan -- the country has 60 of them.
The calm in the face of disaster that we saw was echoed in smaller ways in everyday life. Although traffic can be heavy and streets narrow, honking car horns are rarely heard.
Cell phone use is not allowed on public transportation. There is no litter in the streets, no graffiti, and crime is rare. Bicycles are left unlocked, young children travel alone. Alcohol, cigarettes and myriad other products are available in street-side vending machines.
We visited a large museum that had no staff -- just a few simple signs for visitors. At another museum, several of the Americans, accompanied by our Japanese hosts, took many flash photos before one of our guides said the nearby signs forbid photos. Apparently our other Japanese companions did not want to embarrass us by pointing this out.
We were also never embarrassed by being stared at or pointed at, even by children, despite often being the only non-Japanese around.
-- Barbara Wood
Free goodwill guides to Japan
While not everyone will have a chance to visit Japan as part of a Sister Cities exchange, there are a few ways to recreate at least part of the experience.
Free volunteer English-speaking guides, called Goodwill Guides, are available in cities throughout Japan, including Nikko, Hiroshima, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Tokyo, and Yokohama.
Reservations should be made in advance for tours; guides who can answer questions or give information can also be found in major tourist attractions, wearing Goodwill Guide badges.
A brochure, "Goodwill Guide Groups of Japan Welcome You," should be available at Tourist Information Centers at airports and major cities.
Online, go to the Japan National Tourist Organization Web site:
** www.Jnto.go.jp, or
** www.Jnto.go.jp/eng/GJ/travelSupport/list_volunteerGuides.html, for volunteer guide organizations in a number of cities.
Many require reservations up to a month in advance but can be contacted via email or phone.
Japan also has a program in which tourists can visit a Japanese home for a few hours. See:
** www.frommers.com/destinations/japan/0229032792.html, for a list of contact phone numbers for the program in 14 cities. Reservations are required.
Try Randy Johnson's Japan Page, ease.com/~randyj/japan.htm, for lots of general information about Japan.
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