Japan: From Kanazawa to Kyoto — A Home Visit, Noh Masks, and a Twelve-Minute Train Connection

Posted on by Sandy

Monday, November 9, 2026

Today we left Kanazawa for Kyoto, but not before spending a morning in a Japanese home. It turned out to be one of those visits where we learned so much, and were so busy enjoying ourselves, that I almost forgot to take photographs.

A Visit to a Japanese Home

There were four of us visiting our host and hostess, both retired teachers, who welcomed us into their home and had prepared a little program of Japanese traditions to share with us.

They showed us photographs of their children and grandchildren. Their son is an interior designer, their son-in-law an engineer at Toyota, and their daughter and daughter-in-law are at home raising their children.

Their son’s profession was particularly evident throughout the house. He’d designed a refrigerator recessed into the floor, with a hatch that opened upward. Our hostess is quite petite, and this arrangement allows her to reach everything without having to contend with a tall refrigerator. He’d also devised shades that descend from the ceiling to divide rooms and keep heat contained during the winter.

The house had a dining room adjoining a central kitchen, a television/music room, and a more traditional Japanese sitting room with a low table over a recessed, heated space for one’s legs. This is called a horigotatsu. I’d heard of these but hadn’t seen one in someone’s home.

Our hosts had both traveled to the United States, including San Francisco and Hawaii. A long way from Kanazawa!

Tea, Sweets, and Ichi-go Ichi-e

We began with yōkan, a Japanese sweet made by our hostess from red adzuki beans, followed by o-cha (green tea).

Our hosts explained that they ordinarily drank tea from mugs. His mug was decorated with a crane and a turtle, both symbols of longevity and good fortune. But for guests they brought out gilded teacups, which were to be handled carefully, with two hands.

Fortunately, I had taken some Japanese tea ceremony classes before this trip!

Our hostess set down my cup with its floral design facing me. I picked it up with my right hand, supported it with my left, and rotated it so the flowers faced outward before drinking. She was quite pleased.

I had also brought my own little packet of kaishi, the special paper used when serving sweets during a tea ceremony. I unfolded it for the yōkan and discovered something I had NEVER noticed during all those classes: the paper was decorated with Mount Fuji and a flying crane!

Our hostess noticed immediately and was delighted.

Perhaps the room where I took tea ceremony lessons was too dark. Or perhaps I was so busy trying to remember how to fold and handle the paper that I never actually LOOKED at it.

I also gave them my business card, which has ichi-go ichi-e on it: roughly, “one time, one meeting,” a reminder that each encounter is unique and should be treasured. They loved it. In fact, our host asked for a card of his own.

Then came our gifts.

Lynn had brought a Chicago tea towel, and I brought Ghirardelli chocolates in a Golden Gate Bridge box. I’d wrapped both gifts in furoshiki, traditional Japanese wrapping cloths. I’d spent some time learning how to tie a particularly nice knot, courtesy of YouTube.

Our hosts made quite a fuss over the gifts.

And then they returned the furoshiki to us!

Apparently, in this circumstance, the wrapping cloth is returned to the giver. I’d had no idea. I was delighted both that they appreciated the wrapping and that I would get to use it again.

Mizuhiki: Paper That Looks Like Wire

Next our host introduced us to mizuhiki, the decorative cords used in Japanese gift wrapping, ceremonies, and celebrations.

He showed us a long board displaying elaborate mizuhiki decorations associated, I believe, with their daughter’s wedding.

I’d seen these intricate creations before—cranes, pine branches, pinecones, and other sculptural designs—but had assumed they were made from wire or something similar.

Nope.

They’re made from tightly twisted strips of washi paper!

Our host demonstrated how the strips are rolled into slender cords. Some are covered in metallic finishes, including gold, which makes the finished pieces look even less like paper.

It was another connection to the washi-making experience we’d had the previous day in Gokayama. Here was the same material, transformed into an entirely different traditional art.

Noh, Kabuki, and the Art of the Fan

Our host was also deeply involved in Noh theater. In fact, he was a Noh teacher, and this part of the visit was clearly dear to him.

Noh is one of Japan’s oldest theatrical traditions, with roots going back more than six centuries. Its performances are highly stylized and restrained, often telling stories involving historical figures, spirits, ghosts, or Buddhist themes. Movement is deliberate, and a small gesture can carry considerable meaning.

This is quite different from Kabuki, with its dramatic makeup, elaborate costumes, energetic performances, and more immediately expressive storytelling. Another form, Kyōgen, provides comic theater and is traditionally associated with Noh.

Our host explained that Noh actors often own their own masks, while the heavy and elaborate costumes are commonly maintained by Noh organizations.

He showed us several masks, including a rather fearsome horned one, and explained how important the mask’s position and angle are to conveying emotion. The masks themselves don’t change expression, of course. The actor makes them seem to.

He also introduced us to the ōgi, the folding fans used in Noh. These aren’t simply decorative accessories. They can symbolize objects, emotions, actions, or aspects of the story.

Naturally, we were invited to try some masks and fans ourselves.

As someone who spends time practicing a Japanese martial art in which the smallest movement can have a specific meaning, I found this particularly interesting.

There is something familiar about a tradition that asks the performer to communicate precisely through controlled movement, even though the purposes of Noh and iaido are quite different.

Two Shrines, Two Daily Practices

Our hosts also showed us their household religious spaces.

They had a kamidana, or Shinto household shrine, and a Buddhist butsudan.

Our hostess explained that she primarily tended the Shinto shrine, while her husband took care of the Buddhist one.

The Shinto practice was in the morning, with bows and claps, asking in essence for a good day and harmony with the natural world.

The Buddhist practice was twice daily. The morning prayer was, as they explained it to us, a request for help to live according to one’s best Buddhist nature. The evening prayer was an acknowledgment of the times during the day that one had fallen short.

It reminded me a bit of Yom Kippur—only as a daily practice.

Their butsudan was an intricately decorated cabinet, with gilded fittings, lamps, offerings, and carefully arranged sacred objects. It reminded me of the elaborate Buddhist altar we’d seen in the samurai house earlier in the trip.

Kimono, Wagasa, and a Very Large Height Difference

Next came the chance to try on traditional clothing.

Our hostess helped us into kimono, and we posed with a wagasa, a traditional Japanese umbrella made with bamboo ribs and treated washi paper. Unlike a decorative parasol, this one was designed to keep off the rain.

Our hostess was considerably shorter than I am, which made the business of arranging the kimono rather amusing.

The photograph rather tells the story.

The kimono itself was a beautiful cream-and-gold patterned fabric, with pale blue flowers. And the red umbrella was a rather nice finishing touch.

Sakura, Sakura — and the Koto

Our hostess played the koto, the traditional Japanese stringed instrument.

The one she showed us was made from paulownia wood, hollowed from a large piece of timber. Its movable bridges support and tune the strings, giving it that distinctive sound we often associate with Japanese music.

She demonstrated the instrument and then taught us to sing Sakura, Sakura, the traditional song about cherry blossoms.

If you’ve ever watched a film in which the background music is meant to say “THIS IS JAPAN,” you’ve probably heard some version of its melody.

Our hostess started us at a pitch that was rather ambitious for the four visiting singers.

We tried valiantly.

I still have the tune in my head.

She also discussed the instrument’s construction and the appearance of its bridges, which she associated with familiar forms in Japanese gardens.

We learned a little about regional drum traditions as well, including a type of smaller, hourglass-shaped taiko with a much higher-pitched sound than the large barrel drums we’d encountered in Tokyo. Our hosts also described architectural details at Kamakura Station that reference the shape and rhythms of those drums.

Four Paper Cranes

We then made origami cranes.

I used to make these when I was a child and remembered the process as relatively straightforward.

Apparently, I had forgotten quite a lot.

Under our hosts’ guidance, we folded, reversed, tucked, opened, and generally attempted to produce something resembling a crane. Eventually, we succeeded.

They asked us to write our names on one of the wings.

I assumed the cranes would remain with our hosts, perhaps to be hung somewhere in their house.

Instead, they presented each of us with a string of four cranes: the one we’d made, one made by our host, one made by our hostess, and one representing Japan.

Our hostess explained that we should hang them near a window, where the breeze would move them and bring back memories of our visit.

That was such a thoughtful gift.

Their English was limited, although considerably better than our Japanese. Even so, the meaning was perfectly clear.

A Dream to Take Home

The final item on our little program was to have been shodō, Japanese calligraphy.

We’d run short of time, so we didn’t actually do it ourselves.

As our hostess was playing the koto and teaching us to sing, our host had quietly slipped away to the more traditional sitting room. There, he settled at the horigotatsu—a low table with a sunken, heated space beneath it, allowing you to sit with your legs comfortably down in the “hole” rather than crossed on the floor. He was dutifully doing the calligraphy for us. We’d run out of time to try shodō ourselves, but he wasn’t about to let us leave empty-handed.

He presented each of us with the kanji for “Dream,” written in his own hand, along with their names and the date. Another little piece of the day to take home.

And then, just when I thought we were finished, we learned that he’d been taking photographs throughout the visit—and had PRINTED THEM OUT for us to take away!

We left with the cranes, the calligraphy, photographs, and quite a lot of new information.

What I remember most, though, is how interested our hosts were in sharing their traditions with us. This wasn’t simply a demonstration. We were being welcomed into their home and invited to participate.

Lunch, Shopping, and a Samurai Girl

Back in Kanazawa, we had lunch at a shopping mall near the station, followed by about an hour of free time.

There was a Uniqlo, so naturally I went in.

I bought another HeatTech shirt and three pairs of HeatTech socks—for less than the cost of a single HeatTech shirt back home in the United States.

And then, at 7-Eleven, I spotted a T-shirt with the rather mysterious English phrase “Born From Eggs.”

Sometimes the English you encounter in Japan raises more questions than it answers.

Next, I discovered a little sticker shop.

The young man working there noticed my necklace and exclaimed, “Harry Potter!”

It’s my Deathly Hallows necklace, the symbol combining the Elder Wand, Resurrection Stone, and Cloak of Invisibility.

That was about the extent of our shared English.

But I showed him a photograph of me practicing iaido and tried to communicate that I wanted “samurai girl” stickers.

He understood immediately and took me to a section of the shop where I would never, ever have thought to look.

I found several stickers that reminded me of women in my dojo. They’ll make nice little gifts, perhaps for their iaito cases.

I should have bought more.

And finally: One little detail I noticed at lunch: each chair had a basket underneath it for handbags and other belongings. No putting your purse on the floor! Besides keeping everything clean and out of the way, there’s an old superstition that putting your purse on the floor means you’ll lose your money.

A sensible arrangement, superstition or not.

The Twelve-Minute Connection

Then it was time for the train to Kyoto.

We boarded the Hokuriku Shinkansen for Tsuruga, where we had to transfer to the Thunderbird limited express for Kyoto.

The connection time was twelve minutes.

Twelve.

And practically EVERYONE on the train seemed to be getting off at Tsuruga.

You could see members of our group beginning to worry as we approached the station. We had luggage, a large group, and a connecting train scheduled to depart exactly twelve minutes after our arrival.

Fortunately, Utako-san knew what she was doing.

We made it.

Japan’s trains have been an education in themselves. They’re efficient, carefully scheduled, and apparently quite capable of producing anxiety among travelers accustomed to a more leisurely definition of “connecting time.”

At the station I also spotted something that seemed particularly Japanese: a Baskin-Robbins ice cream vending machine.

Of course.

Kyoto — and Less Room for Iaido

We have arrived in Kyoto!

On the taxi ride from Kyoto Station to our hotel, we passed an enormous temple complex. Immense buildings, huge grounds, and a market outside with sellers offering clothing, ceramics, and other goods.

I asked the driver what it was, but only managed to retain that the name began with an H.

I believe it was Higashi Hongan-ji. I would have liked to stop, but we were whisked past.

Our hotel rooms are getting smaller as we move through Japan.

There is now approximately a foot between the beds.

I’ve been trying to keep up with my iaido practice, which has consisted largely of mentally running through the techniques and occasionally miming the movements in whatever space I can find.

Shattō and the Shihōtō techniques are proving particularly challenging in this room. I’ve tried using a hairbrush or rolled-up papers as a substitute sword, but it’s really not the same.

And the foot I’ve been nursing is getting progressively more troublesome. I’m taping it and wearing a brace, but we’re doing a great deal of walking. I knew this was likely to happen, and I’m managing it as best I can.

Yesterday I attempted one of the Shihōtō movements and had to catch myself on a bed to avoid falling.

So perhaps a little less actual practice and a little more mental practice for the moment.

I’d hoped to visit Lady Nene’s temple and perhaps Tozando, the “all things iaido” shop. But our itinerary is packed, and I suspect those visits will have to wait for my return to Kyoto in January.

Tomorrow we’re off early again. Before lunch, we’ll visit Arashiyama for an hour-long walk through its bamboo grove and the gardens of Tenryū-ji Temple, followed by Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavilion). After lunch, it’s on to Nijō Castle.

For now, we’ve gone from a morning of tea, handmade paper cords, Noh masks, koto music, and origami cranes to the business of trains and finding room for our suitcases.

And somewhere in my luggage is a string of four little paper cranes, waiting for a window and a breeze.

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Japan: Praying Hands, Bear Dinner Bells, Mochi Mayhem, and a House That Time Forgot

Posted on by Sandy

Sunday, November 8, 2026 — Gokayama, Toyama Prefecture

Today we left Kanazawa to venture into the mountains of Gokayama, where people have been living, working, and adapting to some fairly formidable winters for centuries.

Our itinerary promised a UNESCO World Heritage village, mochi pounding, traditional Japanese papermaking, and a visit to a 300-year-old house. What it delivered was all that, plus potential encounters with bears, some very slippery stairs, a lesson in how to make a tremendous racket with 108 pieces of wood, and yet another discovery about fish hiding where fish has absolutely no business being.

But first, the mountains.

Ainokura: A Village of Praying Hands

Ainokura is a small mountain village containing approximately 20 traditional gassho-zukuri houses. The name translates roughly as “constructed like hands joined in prayer,” referring to the extraordinary steeply pitched thatched roofs, which resemble two hands pressed together.

And indeed they do.

But these remarkable roofs aren’t merely picturesque. They evolved to cope with the enormous snowfall this region receives every winter. The steep angle, sometimes approximately 60 degrees, encourages the snow to slide off rather than accumulate until the roof collapses.

The houses were also much more than family homes. Their upper floors provided workspace for industries such as silkworm cultivation and papermaking. In a region where winter could effectively shut down much of the outside world, people made astonishingly productive use of the space beneath those huge roofs.

Ainokura is part of the UNESCO World Heritage designation shared with other historic gassho-style villages. What makes it especially remarkable is that people still live here.

This isn’t a movie set or a collection of buildings moved into an open-air museum. It is a living community, with residents going about their ordinary lives in houses that visitors have come from around the world to admire.

And there were reminders everywhere that these houses are both ancient and very much alive.

Persimmons were hanging to dry outside windows, turning into sweet winter treats. Traditional straw snowshoes and boots hung beside doorways. Bundles of thatching material were stacked outside buildings, ready for use. And, tucked discreetly into the eaves, there were occasional concessions to modern living (see if you can find it, above).

I especially loved the combination of the traditional and the practical. You can preserve a centuries-old way of building a house and still want television.

There was also a legendary curiosity called the Tengu’s Footprint: an indentation in a large stone supposedly left by a tengu, one of Japan’s long-nosed supernatural creatures, as it leaped from one mountain to another.

Apparently the tengu had quite a stride.

Ringing the Dinner Bell for Bears

Utako-san had warned us that bears and wild boars live in these mountains.

Naturally, I decided to take the path up the hillside to the viewpoint overlooking the village.

Along the trail were signs explaining a rather charming system for discouraging unwanted encounters with wildlife. A rope runs beside the path, with little bells attached at intervals. Walkers are encouraged to shake the rope so the bells ring and alert animals to their approach.

The bells, however, did not produce the robust clang I might have expected of a serious bear-warning system.

They tinkled.

Very sweetly.

I couldn’t help wondering whether, rather than frightening bears and boars away, we were actually announcing:

“DINNER IS SERVED!”

Fortunately, no bears or boars appeared to test my theory.

The walk itself was wonderful. The mountain air was cool, the forest full of moss-covered stones and autumn color, and the village below looked almost impossibly peaceful beneath its backdrop of snow-dusted peaks.

Along the way I discovered a tiny, seemingly abandoned stone shrine, nearly swallowed by moss and vegetation. I also stopped to photograph some purple thistle-like flowers, a visiting bee, rice on the stalk, and a vine whose leaves had turned an extraordinary buttery yellow.

It was one of those walks where the little things were every bit as rewarding as the grand view.

Old Crafts, New Craftspeople

Seeing the bundles of thatching material reminded me of an NHK program I’d watched before leaving home.

It was about traditional Japanese crafts that had been in danger of disappearing as their practitioners aged and younger generations pursued other careers.

But something interesting is happening.

Some younger people are returning to these crafts, learning to make roof tiles by hand, repair historic buildings, and thatch roofs using techniques passed down over generations. One former school featured in the program had even been repurposed into a training center where students learned the entire thatching process, from cutting the grasses to bundling and installing them.

There’s an interesting parallel here with developments back home.

At a time when so much attention is focused on jobs that artificial intelligence might replace, there is renewed recognition of the value of work that requires experienced hands, judgment, physical skill, and an intimate knowledge of materials.

AI can do some remarkable things.

But I would like to see it climb onto a steeply pitched roof in a Japanese snowstorm and replace the thatch.

Mochi Mayhem at the Former School

Our next stop was the former Tiara Mountain School, once an elementary school but now closed because there simply aren’t enough children in the area to keep it operating.

Today, however, the building was very much alive with activity.

We were going to make mochi, the wonderfully chewy Japanese rice cakes.

And not by pressing a button on a machine.

Oh, no.

We were going to pound the living daylights out of some rice.

The process begins with a special variety of glutinous rice, which is steamed for approximately an hour until the grains become soft. The rice is then placed into an enormous wooden mortar, called an usu, and pounded with a substantial wooden mallet, or kine.

And when I say substantial, I mean HEAVY.

The procedure requires two people working in remarkably close coordination.

One raises the mallet and brings it crashing down into the rice.

The other reaches into the mortar BETWEEN blows to turn and fold the increasingly sticky mass.

Think about that for a moment.

One person is swinging a very large wooden mallet.

The other is putting her HANDS exactly where that mallet is going to land.

What could possibly go wrong?

Our instructor made this look perfectly natural, although I suspect she possesses a degree of timing, confidence, and nerve that most of us do not.

Soon it was our turn. We chanted and clapped as instructed to egg the pounders on.

Bailey gave it a try, followed by Deborah and Lynn. There was considerable enthusiasm, a little concentration, and a lot of laughter.

Ultimately it was my turn.

We’d been specifically instructed NOT to make a gigantic, exaggerated swing with the mallet.

So, naturally, I pretended to do exactly that.

The looks on their faces were priceless.

I was kidding, of course. (I’m such a jerk 🙂 ) But apparently my little performance was convincing enough to cause momentary alarm.

After demonstrating that I had no intention of actually flattening anyone, I got down to the more modest business of pounding rice.

Eventually the individual grains disappeared, and the mass became smooth, elastic, and shiny. Apparently, that glossy appearance is how you know the mochi is ready.

And then came the best part.

Eating it.

We were served freshly made mochi in two preparations. One had a sweetened soy sauce glaze; the other was rolled in roasted soybean powder (kinako) mixed with a little sugar.

Both were absolutely delicious.

The staff kept coming around offering more.

And I kept accepting.

I mean, it would have been terribly impolite to refuse, wouldn’t it?

They also served a particularly delicious o-cha, Japanese tea, which went beautifully with the warm, chewy mochi.

One other thing caught our attention in that room: the extraordinary pictures displayed on the walls.

The top big ones had been made by children using collaged pieces of handmade washi paper, while the lower one of roosters had been created by a teacher. There was even a competition associated with this art form, with one wonderfully challenging rule:

No scissors allowed.

Linda and I went up for a closer examination, and the level of detail was astonishing. It was difficult to believe that these pictures had been assembled from pieces of torn paper rather than painted.

Which was a particularly appropriate introduction to our next adventure.

Washi: Paper Made from Trees, Water, and Patience

I had been looking forward to our Japanese papermaking workshop, but I really hadn’t understood quite how fascinating it would be.

Traditional washi is generally made from the long inner-bark fibers of plants such as kozo, the paper mulberry.

And getting from a tree to a sheet of paper is a rather extraordinary undertaking.

The branches are harvested and steamed, their bark is stripped away, and the dark outer layers are removed to reveal the pale inner fibers. Those fibers are then cleaned, sometimes bleached using the region’s snow and cold water, boiled, and beaten to separate and soften them.

The result is a fibrous mixture that can be suspended in water.

But here’s where things become especially interesting.

A small amount of a plant-derived substance called neri, extracted from the roots of tororo-aoi, is added to the mixture.

The extract is extraordinarily slippery and viscous, almost like glue. It helps keep the fibers suspended and allows them to spread evenly rather than clumping together.

That photograph gives you some idea of its consistency, although you really had to see it in motion.

It just kept stretching.

And stretching.

It was quite mesmerizing (and a little gross).

The papermaking technique itself looked deceptively simple when our instructor demonstrated it.

We each received a wooden frame fitted with a screen, divided into three postcard-sized sections.

The idea was to hold the frame upright, dip it into the cold, milky-looking water, scoop it toward yourself and up, and then gently shake the frame to distribute the fibers evenly.

The direction matters. The timing matters. The shaking matters.

Get it wrong and the fibers won’t lie properly.

Then you lift the frame out of the bath and continue the delicate shake-shake-shake until much of the water has drained away.

Then you stand there, dripping.

Well, the frame is dripping. You are merely waiting.

And then you repeat the process.

Three times, in our case, to produce paper thick enough for postcards.

There is something satisfying about watching what looks like cloudy water gradually become an actual, coherent sheet of paper.

Once we had created our sheets, we could decorate them with little colorful paper shapes.

I made three postcards: an orange cat for Sharon, an autumn leaf, and a butterfly for Leann.

After we placed the decorations where we wanted them, the workshop staff took over.

They secured another frame on top, turned the whole assembly over, and carefully separated the still-wet postcards from the screen.

The paper was very delicate at this stage.

After a little initial draining, the cards were placed against a very hot metal wall to dry completely.

And there they were.

Three little pieces of handmade Japanese paper, created from plant fibers and water, each with its own small design.

I also bought Dr. Scott Sensei a beautiful handmade washi scroll decorated with painted dragonflies.

It seemed exactly the right sort of gift: traditional, artistic, and connected to a craft that has survived for centuries.

Lunch — and Another Fishy Discovery

Somewhere between all this pounding and papermaking, we stopped for lunch at a soba noodle shop.

You would think that with all the precautions I have been taking about my food allergies, a bottle of soy sauce sitting innocently on the table would be fairly straightforward.

Soybeans. Wheat. Salt. Water.

Right?

Wrong.

Thanks to Google Translate, I discovered that the bottled soy sauce contained two different kinds of fish.

TWO.

In soy sauce.

At this point, I’m beginning to suspect that fish in Japan operates an extensive undercover network.

It was another excellent reminder that even the most familiar-looking condiment can contain ingredients I absolutely cannot eat.

And another heartfelt thank-you to Google Translate.

Iwase House: Three Hundred Years Under One Roof

Our final major stop was Iwase House, one of the largest surviving examples of gassho-zukuri architecture in Japan.

And what a house.

The house was constructed approximately 300 years ago by Choemon Fuji, reportedly taking eight years to complete. Ownership passed to the Iwase family around the beginning of the Meiji era, and in 1958 it was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan.

It is enormous: approximately 26.4 meters long, 12.7 meters wide, and 14.4 meters high.

At one time, some 35 or 36 family members and workers lived here.

Imagine the family dinners.

And the laundry.

But this was much more than a residence.

The house was a workplace, a manufacturing center, a place for raising silkworms, and an important part of the local economy.

One of its principal historical functions was connected to the production and collection of saltpeter, or potassium nitrate, an essential ingredient in gunpowder.

The powerful Maeda clan, rulers of the Kaga domain, needed saltpeter for firearms, and Gokayama became an important center of production. The Iwase family played a significant role in that industry.

The house was designed to accommodate many people working and living under one roof, sometimes in shifts.

The structure itself is quite extraordinary.

Rather than relying on nails and metal fasteners, the upper framework was assembled with carefully fitted timber and lashed connections using natural materials, including vines and straw ropes.

Massive beams of keyaki, Japanese zelkova, support portions of the structure.

This is the same wonderfully durable wood we encountered earlier in connection with taiko drums.

Our host showed us how the wood’s appearance had changed through centuries of exposure to smoke from the open hearth.

Originally much lighter in color, it had become almost completely black.

And not merely blackened with a superficial coating of soot.

The darkening seemed to have penetrated the timber itself.

View from the 4th floor
In the middle of the main floor: chestnuts roasting above

Four Floors Up, and Watch Your Step

The upper floors were once used extensively for silkworm cultivation.

Silkworms were raised on trays arranged on tiers, sometimes stretching nearly to the ceiling. The arrangement exploited one of the house’s most ingenious features: warmth from the central hearth below could rise through gaps in the wooden floors and heat the upper work areas.

These racks are on the planked floor, but when in actual use they were moved over to the floor with spaces between the slats.

We climbed through the upper levels, where the spaces became increasingly narrow and the historic construction was visible all around us.

In the above photo on the left, I’m standing on the ladder between the 3rd and 4th floors. You can see the part of the flooring where the planks are separated, on both floors. This is where the silkworm racks used to stand.

The floors and stairways were an adventure of their own.

Some of the boards were deliberately spaced apart to allow heat to travel upward.

And the stairs?

Oh, my.

Hundreds of years of people climbing up and down had worn the steps into noticeable depressions.

You could actually see—and feel—the places where generations of feet had landed.

Unfortunately, some of those worn areas sloped downward, making the already steep stairs a little treacherous.

Most of our group were in socks, which offered relatively little traction.

I was very glad to be wearing the tabi shoes Dr. Scott Sensei had given me.

Coming down required some concentration.

One foot.

Find the worn spot.

Check your balance.

Next foot.

Repeat.

This was not the place to be thinking about what you wanted for dinner.

There were also examples of traditional straw footwear, including shoes made for oxen. The animals were used in the region’s agricultural and industrial work, and the handmade coverings helped protect their hooves.

The Hearth at the Heart of the House

But back to the main living area, where a beautiful open hearth occupied the center of the tatami room.

A black iron kettle hung over the fire from an elaborate suspended chain, and bunches of chestnuts were hanging above.

This hearth was not merely for cooking or keeping warm.

It was the heart of the entire house.

Heat rose through the open construction to the workspaces above, helping sustain the silkworm industry through the cold mountain seasons.

The space felt both intimate and enormous: a place where many generations had gathered, eaten, talked, worked, and endured winters that must have been almost unimaginably difficult.

And although the building is now a historic property open to visitors, it remains connected to the family that has cared for it for generations.

Our host told us that his mother still lives in a modernized portion of the house, while he and his wife live nearby. His son has agreed to carry on the family’s stewardship.

There was something deeply reassuring about that.

A building like this needs more than preservation.

It needs people who care enough to keep it alive.

The Dance, the Hat, and 108 Earthly Desires

Then our host treated us to a traditional performance.

He appeared in a beautiful golden-yellow outfit, with a patterned upper garment and hakama, the pleated trousers associated with traditional Japanese dress.

Naturally, this caught my attention because of my iaido practice.

He demonstrated how the long sleeves could be gathered by pulling on cords hanging from their ends and tying them around the wrists. The lower portions of the hakama could likewise be secured around the ankles.

The design allowed freedom of movement for activities such as hunting and riding.

He also showed us an extraordinary traditional hat, broad enough to shield the face from both sun and rain.

The tall feather projecting upward came from a male pheasant. We were told that its length was associated with the hunter’s accomplishments.

But perhaps the most fascinating object was the musical instrument he used.

It looked almost like a long, flexible wooden ladder—or a very elaborate collection of narrow wooden slats.

This was a sasara.

A traditional sasara used in the region’s Kokiriko folk dance is made from 108 small pieces of hinoki, Japanese cypress, joined together by cords.

Why 108?

In Buddhist tradition, 108 is associated with the earthly desires or attachments that bind human beings to suffering.

Our host’s wife explained the spiritual symbolism of the instrument and its clacking sound, connected with dispelling or overcoming those worldly desires.

We were also told that Buddhist sutras were associated with the wooden pieces.

The instrument produces its sound through a surprisingly simple motion: hold the handles, flex the arrangement, and flick one wrist.

The wooden slats snap against one another in rapid succession.

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!

Or, with a more practiced flick, one wonderfully emphatic, rattling flourish.

And then he performed a traditional Kokiriko dance for us.

Suddenly, everything he had demonstrated—the enormous sleeves, the gathered hakama, the elaborate hat with its pheasant feather, and that extraordinary clacking instrument—came together.

The movements were deliberate, the costume becoming part of the dance as he moved and manipulated the sasara. And the setting made it even more special: a traditional folk performance in a 300-year-old house, surrounded by the very history it represents.

Afterward, we were each given a smaller version of the sasara to try while our hosts sang. The trick was in the wrist movement, which made the wooden slats snap together in a rhythmic clatter.

Whether we managed to eliminate any of our 108 earthly desires remains uncertain. I suspect I still have most of mine.

A Butsudan Worthy of a Temple

There was one more remarkable sight inside the house.

A butsudan—a Buddhist household altar.

And not just any butsudan.

This one was absolutely spectacular.

I have seen beautiful Buddhist altars before, including H’s own Nichiren butsudan, but the workmanship of this one was extraordinary.

The intricate gold detailing, carved columns, miniature architectural features, elaborate doors, hanging ornaments, and layered interior gave it the appearance of an entire temple in miniature.

I apparently said “WOW” rather a lot.

Our host’s wife seemed very pleased by my enthusiasm.

And I meant every single WOW.

There were also two wonderful ranma, carved wooden transom panels positioned above the interior doorways.

One depicted an exquisite landscape with a bridge, pavilion, and trees. The other featured a complex architectural scene.

But what made them particularly remarkable was that the carvings were two-sided.

These were not merely wooden pictures intended to be viewed from one direction. They were intricate openwork compositions that could be appreciated from either side.

The patience and precision required were staggering.

It was yet another reminder of something this day had been teaching us repeatedly: in traditional Japanese craftsmanship, beauty and function are often inseparable.

A House Built to Last

One of the stand-out things about Iwase House is that its huge thatched roof still requires regular renewal.

The thatching material is kariyasu, a type of Japanese grass. Each side of the roof is replaced separately, generally on a cycle of approximately 25 years.

We were told that the most recent work on one side cost approximately $250,000.

Yes, you read that correctly.

A quarter of a million dollars.

Fortunately, the building’s protected historic status means public funding can cover much of the cost. Our host told us that approximately 90 percent of the recent roofing expense had been subsidized.

The need for skilled thatchers brought me right back to the NHK program I’d watched before leaving home.

These crafts may be ancient, but they are not obsolete.

Every carefully tied knot, every thatched bundle, every hand-cut wooden joint, every sheet of paper made from mulberry fibers represents knowledge that has to be learned, practiced, and passed along.

The buildings can survive for centuries.

But only if the skills survive with them.

The Bus Ride Home, Then Tomorrow, Kyoto

One more architectural detail I noticed throughout the region, and was able to photograph on our coach ride back to the hotel, were the black-tiled roofs on many of the ordinary houses.

Utako-san explained that the dark tiles absorb sunlight, helping warm the roofs and melt accumulated snow. So even these handsome, almost glossy roofs have a practical purpose.

Different from the enormous thatched roofs of Gokayama, of course, but another example of Japanese architecture adapting to the challenges of winter.

And rather lovely against the autumn countryside and distant mountains.

By the time we returned to Kanazawa an hour later, it had been an extraordinarily full day.

We had wandered through a living World Heritage village, considered the possibility that bear-warning bells might actually be bear-attracting bells, pounded rice into submission, made paper from trees, discovered yet more clandestine fish, explored a 300-year-old house, played a 108-piece musical instrument, and admired craftsmanship of astonishing beauty.

Not bad for one day.

Tomorrow we say farewell to Kanazawa and head for Kyoto.

Before leaving, we’ll have a home-hosted visit with local families, then travel by train, changing at Tsuruga for the Thunderbird service to Kyoto.

Our larger suitcases are going ahead separately, so we’ll be traveling with overnight bags until they catch up with us.

I just finished wrapping a little gift for our host family of Ghirardelli chocolates in a box featuring the Golden Gate Bridge, complete with a pretty knot I learned to tie by watching YouTube. I also tied Lynn’s gift of a tea towel in a standard furoshiki knot – she had received the pretty floral cloth last year in Japan, so it was making a round trip!

Whether the knots survive the journey remains to be seen.

But after today’s lessons in traditional craftsmanship, I feel that even a small, reasonably successful piece of fabric-tying deserves to be celebrated.

And as for the trip itself?

Once again, Japan has managed to fit about three days’ worth of experiences into one.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Japan, Full Day 9: Ancient Trees, Samurai, Gold Fingernails, and a Rather Disturbing Thank-You Note

Posted on by Sandy

November 8, 2026 — Kanazawa

For those of you keeping track of the days (and wondering whether I’ve forgotten how to count), a little housekeeping!

Full Day 6 was our travel day from Tokyo to Hakone, and Full Day 8 was our journey from Hakone back through Tokyo Station and then on the Shinkansen to Kanazawa. Both were full days in Japan, but neither got its own blog post.

So, yes, we’ve reached Full Day 9. No days have gone missing, although at this point I occasionally have to check my calendar to remember where I am!

And what a day this one turned out to be.

Today managed to combine extraordinary beauty, centuries of history, traditional craftsmanship, a little shopping, some decidedly unusual food, and a rather macabre glimpse into the life of a samurai.

Oh, and I ate gold.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Kenrokuen: A Garden That Refuses to Give Up on Its Trees

We began at Kenrokuen Garden, considered one of Japan’s Three Great Gardens.

The garden was developed over generations by the Maeda family, the powerful daimyo who ruled the Kaga Domain from nearby Kanazawa Castle. Its origins go back to the seventeenth century, and successive lords expanded and refined it.

Kenrokuen is famous for combining six qualities traditionally considered essential to a perfect landscape garden: spaciousness, seclusion, artifice, antiquity, abundant water, and broad views.

What struck me, however, was something rather different.

The extraordinary lengths the Japanese go to in order to keep their trees alive.

Kanazawa gets a great deal of snow. Heavy, wet snow. The sort that can snap the branches of even very large trees.

Rather than allow that to happen, gardeners erect enormous wooden poles above the trees, with ropes radiating down to support individual branches.

The technique is called yukitsuri, or “snow suspension.”

The result looks rather like a collection of enormous rope teepees.

Except that each one is protecting a living tree.

And here’s the remarkable part: these aren’t permanent installations.

The central support poles may remain in place, but the elaborate arrangements of ropes are installed afresh each autumn and removed when the danger of heavy snow has passed.

In fact, we arrived just after the annual installation work had begun on November 1. Some of the enormous rope arrangements we were admiring had been completed only days before our visit.

Imagine doing all that work every single year!

What impressed me was that something so practical — protecting trees against winter damage — had itself become a beautiful seasonal tradition.

And then there were the other supports.

Many of the older trees had branches held up by wooden posts. Sometimes a single branch was supported. Sometimes an entire tree appeared to have its own architectural support system.

At home, I suspect someone would simply announce, “Well, that one’s getting old,” and cut it down.

Not here.

Here, they build it a crutch.

Or ten.

There was a particularly remarkable pine tree called Neagari-no-Matsu, or the Raised-Root Pine.

Its roots had been deliberately exposed by removing the surrounding earth, creating an extraordinary sculptural structure at the base of the tree.

This sort of root exposure is also used in bonsai, but seeing it on such a large tree was something else entirely.

The garden is filled with sculptural pines, little streams, ponds, stepping stones, stone lanterns, and beautiful moss.

One of the ponds even had a duck apparently enjoying a peaceful morning all by itself.

The Bridge of Flying Geese

One particularly unusual bridge caught my attention.

It was made of eleven flat stones, arranged in a shape that looked rather like a shallow V.

This is Gankō-bashi, or the Flying Geese Bridge.

The stones were deliberately arranged to suggest a flock of wild geese flying in formation.

They are also shaped rather like tortoise shells, giving the bridge another name: the Tortoise Shell Bridge.

In Japanese symbolism, tortoises are associated with longevity. In fact, it was once believed that crossing this bridge could help one live a long life.

Unfortunately, so many people walked across it that the stones gradually wore down. The bridge has been closed to pedestrians since 1969 to preserve it.

So you can admire the flying geese, but you can’t join them.

I also discovered that moss is a photographic subject in its own right.

Up close, some of the tiny plants looked like miniature green starbursts.

Another tree wore what looked like a protective wooden corset.

Utako-san explained that when the garden’s tree doctors discover a bacterial or other problem affecting a tree, they sometimes apply protective wooden slats around its trunk as part of its treatment. The covering can also help protect the tree during the cold winter months.

Once again: don’t cut down the tree. Figure out how to help it survive.

A Legendary Warrior in the Garden


We also came upon an impressive bronze statue, although the sun was shining so directly behind it that getting a decent exposure was a challenge.

At first, I thought the figure was Kannon, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion.

But it turns out the statue represents someone quite different: Yamato Takeru, a legendary Japanese prince and warrior.

The statue was erected in 1880 as part of the Meiji Memorial, honoring soldiers from Ishikawa Prefecture who died during the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.

That rebellion was a final, bloody confrontation between the new Meiji government and disaffected former samurai, following the dismantling of Japan’s feudal order.

So this wasn’t simply a decorative figure in a garden. It commemorated a pivotal moment in Japan’s transition from the age of samurai to the modern nation.

The bronze is also considered Japan’s first outdoor statue of a human figure.

And here’s a curious little detail I discovered: for years, people apparently noticed that birds seemed reluctant to perch on the statue. A researcher investigated and found that its metal contained an unusually high amount of arsenic, which might explain the phenomenon.

That research even received an Ig Nobel Prize!

So apparently Japanese birds can distinguish between an unwelcoming bronze statue and the perfectly comfortable anti-bird spikes I photographed later in the day.

And there was a quince tree covered in enormous, yellow, rock-hard fruit.

Which made me think:

Who was the first person to look at one of these things — hard enough that you could probably kill someone by throwing it — and decide to boil it for an entire day to see what happened?

Because the result, improbably, is delicious quince jelly.

I think that person deserves a medal, too.

An Old Fountain with No Pump

One of the garden’s other curiosities is a fountain considered the oldest in Japan.

Dating to the nineteenth century, it uses the difference in elevation between the upper pond and the fountain below to propel the water upward.

No mechanical pump required!

The water rises approximately 3.5 meters, powered entirely by natural water pressure.

There was also an old photograph showing the same fountain in an earlier era.

I love those moments when you can look at something standing in front of you, then look at an old photograph and realize that people were enjoying essentially the same scene generations ago.

Before leaving, I visited the gift shop, which had some extraordinary ceramic work.

I managed to escape with only two pieces: tall, rough-textured ceramic drinking glasses, each decorated with a gold-inlaid tree.

They’re intended for plum wine and similar drinks, rather than being the small cups usually associated with sake.

I loved their texture and their combination of earthy ceramic and delicate gold.

A lovely remembrance of a garden where caring for trees seems to be something approaching a sacred duty.

Kanazawa Castle: Samurai, Daimyo, and Shogun — Who’s Who?

From the garden we continued to Kanazawa Castle, the seat of the Maeda family.

The buildings are striking: brilliant white walls, dark tiled roofs, massive stone foundations, and enormous wooden gates.

What particularly caught my attention was the construction of the gateways.

The lintels and beams were tremendous, as were the huge wooden doors.

There is something about Japanese castle architecture that manages to look elegant and formidable at the same time.

The white walls and sweeping roofs are beautiful, but the size of the stone foundations and the weight of those doors leave no doubt that these were defensive structures.

And since the terms samurai, daimyo, and shogun have been getting a little muddled among our traveling companions, perhaps a short explanation is in order.

A Little Samurai 101

In Japan’s feudal system, the shogun was the country’s supreme military ruler, exercising national authority in the name of the emperor, who remained the traditional sovereign.

The daimyo were powerful territorial lords, controlling domains with their own administrations, castles, and military retainers. They were subject to the shogun’s authority, although their relationships with the central government varied considerably over time.

And the samurai were the hereditary warrior class who served these lords. Although we tend to picture samurai as swordsmen, many also performed administrative and governmental duties, especially during the long peace of the Edo period.

So, in simplified form:

Shogun → Daimyo → Samurai.

And then there were the ronin.

A ronin was a masterless samurai.

If a daimyo lost his domain, was dispossessed, or otherwise ceased to maintain his retainers, his samurai might suddenly find themselves without a lord, employment, or the position that had defined their lives.

That was no small matter in a society where identity, status, and loyalty were so deeply connected.

I tried explaining this to some of our group.

I believe I actually saw their eyes go TILT.

But I find the whole system fascinating, especially the question of what happens to a warrior whose entire identity depends on serving someone who suddenly isn’t there anymore.

And the Maeda family, whose castle we were now visiting, occupied a very important position within that hierarchy.

Market Mayhem: What Can You Buy for ¥1,000?

Next came Ōmichō Market, Kanazawa’s famous food market.

And Utako-san had a challenge for us.

She divided us into three groups, gave each group ¥1,000, and instructed us to find something unusual — preferably something we’d never seen before.

We were then to present our discoveries.

This was great fun.

One group came back with delicious little cookies shaped like torii gates, lanterns, and other Japanese objects.

We ate them later at lunch, and they were excellent.

Another group found dried persimmons, prepared in the traditional manner we’d seen earlier at the farmhouse during our tea-farm day.

I was particularly interested in those, because I remembered seeing a segment years ago — possibly on Bay Area Backroads — about a Japanese farm in Sonoma County making them the same way.

I wonder whether they’re still doing it.

That group also found something that looked remarkably like bagel chips.

Except they weren’t bagel chips at all.

Utako-san explained that they were meant to be soaked in soup.

They were fu, a Japanese wheat-gluten food that absorbs broth.

That group won.

Apparently their selections were considered particularly seasonal.

Which was all very well, except that seasonality wasn’t one of the announced judging criteria!

I believe a protest would have been justified.

Because OUR group had found something much more interesting.

A local seasoning made with nori and, according to Google Translate, flying-fish jaws.

Flying. Fish. Jaws.

How could we possibly lose?

And we even managed to have enough money left over to buy a little packet of coffee with gold leaf in it.

Utako-san gave the coffee to me, and I’m bringing it home for Melissa, who likes black coffee. I think she’ll get a kick out of it.

So, really, one could argue that we had the most interesting item AND a bonus gift.

One could.

I’m just saying.

A Few Black Birds Who Didn’t Read the Instructions

At some point during our travels, I spotted several black birds perched on overhead wires.

Not unusual in Japan. Crows seem to be everywhere.

But these particular birds had chosen to perch directly on the little spikes installed to PREVENT birds from perching.

There they sat, perfectly content.

Perhaps the spikes provide a pleasant foot massage?

A little avian acupressure?

Or perhaps black birds simply enjoy demonstrating the limitations of human ingenuity.

Black birds always make me think of H, and I love encountering them during my travels.

This particular group seemed to have inherited his sense of humor.

Higashi Chaya: Old Wooden Houses, Sake, and a Goshuin Detour

We next explored the Higashi Chaya District, which Utako-san described as Kanazawa’s geisha district.

Historically, the neighborhood was home to traditional teahouses, or chaya, where geisha entertained guests through music, dance, and conversation.

The narrow streets are lined with old wooden buildings, many with distinctive latticework.

There is a wonderfully atmospheric quality to the place, especially when you turn down one of the smaller streets away from the main flow of visitors.

One building had a large brown ball hanging outside.

This is a sugidama, a ball made from cedar branches, traditionally associated with sake breweries.

When the season’s new sake is ready, a fresh green cedar ball is hung outside.

As the sake matures, the cedar gradually dries and turns brown.

A kind of seasonal announcement system, made entirely from a tree.

But look carefully at the upper right of that photograph.

There’s also an ear of corn hanging there.

We were told this was intended to ward off evil spirits.

Which reminded me of an old European superstition I’d heard: if you put a pile of salt in the corner of a room, a witch entering the house would be compelled to count every grain. With luck, she wouldn’t finish before dawn, when she’d have to leave.

I wondered whether the corn served a similar purpose.

Perhaps evil spirits would be forced to count the kernels?

Utako-san didn’t know whether the traditions were related, but I loved the idea.

Apparently, even supernatural troublemakers can be defeated by tedious arithmetic.

We also passed a beautiful little shrine, Higashiyama Sugawara Shrine, tucked among the traditional buildings.

And then, somewhere farther along our walk, I spotted something.

A sign for goshuin!

Now, for those who haven’t been following my continuing adventures in the acquisition of Japanese temple and shrine calligraphy, a goshuin is a special commemorative seal and inscription traditionally obtained when visiting a shrine or temple.

Some are written directly into your goshuincho — an accordion-paged book specifically designed for collecting goshuin — by a calligrapher. Others are prepared in advance.

This particular shrine had a self-service arrangement.

I had to work out which box contained the goshuin, where to put my ¥600, and — importantly — which was the payment box rather than the prayer-offering box!

I successfully acquired two beautiful, already-calligraphed goshuin.

There was just one little problem.

The group had kept moving.

And for a moment, I was afraid I’d lost them.

The narrow streets and alleyways were not particularly helpful.

Fortunately, I knew what I was looking for:

Utako-san’s ubiquitous red beret.

And eventually, there it was.

Utako-san hadn’t even noticed the goshuin sign.

When she saw what I had in my hand, she simply shook her head and laughed.

Apparently, my ability to locate goshuin has now become something of a running joke.

I may not always know where the group is going, but I certainly know where to find temple calligraphy.

In writing the above, back at the hotel many hours later, I opened my goshuincho (my accordion-paged goshuin-collecting book) all the way out for the first time, to photograph it.

WOW.

It took three photos.

I’d been so busy collecting individual goshuin that I hadn’t appreciated what they looked like together. The bold black brushwork, brilliant red seals, little illustrations, and beautifully varied designs had become a continuous work of art.

And to think that I’m not even half way through this trip!

(I guess I’m glad I did buy that other goshuincho at the marquetry shop!!)

Karaoke, Rent a Car . . . and Laundry?

Driving to our next destination, I spotted this sign at a mall . . .

Well, of course.

Because those two activities are such a natural combination.

And next door was a coin laundry.

So apparently you could sing, rent a car, AND do your washing, all in one convenient location.

Perhaps you need the rental car to escape after an especially unfortunate performance?

Kanazawa Gold Leaf: The Art of Pounding Something Almost Out of Existence

Our next stop was Hakuichi’s Hakukokan, where we learned how Kanazawa’s famous gold leaf is made.

Kanazawa produces almost all of Japan’s traditional gold leaf, and the craft has been practiced here for centuries.

I had always thought of gold leaf as something rather delicate, which of course it is.

What I hadn’t appreciated was the astonishing amount of POUNDING required to make it.

We watched a craftsman working at a large machine that repeatedly hammered packets containing tiny pieces of gold.

He was in a soundproofed room.

And then, briefly, they switched off the soundproofing so we could hear the machine.

DEAFENING.

I cannot imagine working alongside that racket all day.

The process begins with gold alloy, traditionally containing small amounts of silver and copper.

The metal is rolled into thin strips, cut into pieces, and placed between sheets of specially prepared washi paper.

The paper itself is critical.

Traditional washi is often made from the fibers of kōzo, or paper mulberry. But the special paper used in gold-leaf production isn’t simply ordinary mulberry paper.

It undergoes additional preparation and treatment, traditionally involving ingredients such as persimmon tannin, ash-derived liquid, and egg.

The resulting paper has to be extraordinarily smooth, resilient, and strong enough to survive repeated hammering.

And THEN comes the pounding.

We watched a video showing how the small piece of gold spreads under repeated blows, moving outward toward the edges of its paper enclosure.

It’s removed, cut into smaller squares or transferred to new sheets, rearranged, and pounded again.

And again.

And AGAIN.

At different stages, the gold is transferred between different grades of paper as it becomes progressively thinner.

We were told about a cycle of pounding and resting because the process generates heat.

Eventually the gold becomes approximately one ten-thousandth of a millimeter thick.

The round dot on the placard is the Japanese coin.

Think about that for a moment.

That is roughly 0.1 micrometer.

Practically nothing!

One of the displays demonstrated this in an absolutely extraordinary way.

There was a tiny Japanese coin, and behind it an enormous sheet of beaten gold, approximately the size of a tatami mat.

We were told that just three coin-sized pieces of gold could be beaten into that great sheet.

I didn’t catch the denomination of the coin, unfortunately.

But the comparison was astonishing.

The traditional decorative gold alloy contains small amounts of silver and copper, while the edible version we were shown omitted copper.

The decorative material may be described as non-toxic, but as we discussed, that doesn’t necessarily make it something one ought to eat!

And the finished material is so delicate that even a little puff of air can cause problems.

Which explains the extraordinary patience and dexterity required to work with it.

There were rooms full of beautiful gold-leaf artworks: screens, calligraphy, kimono decorations, paintings, and ceramic pieces.

Some of the vases particularly caught my attention. One had a marvelous mottled green-and-gold finish, almost like an ancient bronze vessel.

There was even an impressive suit of samurai armor displayed in a room whose walls were entirely covered in gold leaf.

As was the armor.

Very dramatic indeed.

It was quite an extraordinary contrast.

Tremendous force, deafening machinery, and endless pounding — all to produce something almost weightless.

My Great Gold-Leaf Artistic Career

We then had an opportunity to try working with gold leaf ourselves.

Our project was to create postcards decorated with gold leaf.

I chose a relatively small design.

Which meant that I had some gold leaf left over.

Now, I ask you: what is a person supposed to do with extra gold leaf?

Obviously, PUT IT ON HER FINGERNAILS.

So I did.

This caused considerable amusement among the group.

But why waste perfectly good gold?

Besides, it looked rather festive.

And I suspect it may be the only time in my life that I’ve had genuinely gold-plated fingernails

And Then I Ate Gold

Of course, I couldn’t leave without trying the famous gold-leaf soft-serve ice cream.

The woman behind the counter carefully lifted an entire sheet of edible gold leaf with special bamboo tools and laid it across the top of my vanilla ice cream.

It was quite a production.

And there it was.

A vanilla ice cream cone wearing a shimmering golden cape

Naturally, photographs were required.

Including photographic evidence of me actually eating the gold.

And the verdict?

Gold tastes like absolutely nothing.

Which makes sense, I suppose.

But it certainly improves the appearance of an ice cream cone.

And between my fingernails and my dessert, I was probably the most gilded person in our group.

The Nomura Samurai Residence: A Beautiful House with a Rather Dark History

Our final major stop was the Nomura Samurai Residence, in Kanazawa’s Nagamachi samurai district, within walking distance of our hotel.

The Nomura family served the Maeda lords for eleven generations, holding important positions within the domain.

The property has an interesting history of its own.

After the collapse of the feudal system, much of the original residence was lost. The house we visited has been restored and reconstituted, incorporating historic architectural elements relocated from another substantial residence.

In other words, it isn’t entirely the building that stood here during the Nomura family’s heyday.

But it preserves the atmosphere of a substantial samurai household.

And substantial it was!

This was no tiny little cottage.

The rooms were beautifully appointed, with polished wood, tatami mats, sliding doors, and lovely tokonoma alcoves.

These alcoves held calligraphy scrolls and small flower arrangements, each carefully placed.

There was also an extremely elaborate Buddhist family altar, or butsudan.

Its black lacquer, gold ornamentation, and intricate carvings suggested considerable wealth.

I found that particularly interesting, given my recent experiences with traditional Japanese Buddhist altars.

In one room, I noticed a little decorative metal fan mounted above the lintel.

There seemed to be one above each doorway.

I wondered whether they were simply ornamental, or perhaps intended to draw attention to the lintels so that visitors wouldn’t clobber their heads.

Although if you DID clobber your head, I suppose you’d at least receive a decorative imprint as a souvenir.

A Garden Within a Garden

The residence also has its own extraordinary garden.

Although much smaller than Kenrokuen, it was every bit as carefully composed.

There were little streams, mossy rocks, stone lanterns, trees supported by wooden poles, and an intimate pond visible from several of the rooms.

One especially lovely feature was a small stone water basin with a bamboo ladle and delicate flowers.

And nearby was a curious little stone tied with black cord.

Utako-san explained that this is called a sekimori-ishi, a traditional barrier stone.

It means: Do not go this way.

That’s it.

No sign.

No fence.

No threatening warning.

Just a little rock tied with cord, politely informing you that the path is closed.

And apparently everyone is expected to know what it means!

Utako-san said we’ll probably encounter quite a few more of these in Kyoto.

I’m very glad she told us.

Because I can easily imagine tourists seeing a cute little gift-wrapped rock, deciding it’s charming, and proceeding directly into someone’s private garden.

D’oh!

The Very Unusual Route to the Tea Room

The house also had a second-floor tea room, called Fubaku–an, with a separate waiting room for guests.

But getting there was an adventure in itself.

I originally thought to describe the approach as a staircase, but that really doesn’t do it justice.

It was more like an inclined stone pathway, made of very large, irregular, natural stones, with gravel filling the spaces between them.

The route bent around in an L-shape and climbed quite steeply through a partially enclosed passage to the tea room above.

These weren’t conventional stairs, with neat, evenly spaced treads and risers.

The stones were BIG.

Some were large enough that someone coming down could occupy the same stone as someone going up.

And the surfaces had been worn smooth by generations of visitors.

It was atmospheric, certainly.

But coming DOWN?

Oh, my.

Between the incline, the uneven surfaces, and those slippery, worn stones, I found the descent decidedly more challenging than the ascent.

Not a place to be distracted by the scenery!

I kept thinking of the samurai household’s guests, making their way along that same unusual route to the tea room and its waiting area.

It’s one thing to imagine tea ceremonies as graceful, serene occasions.

It’s quite another to imagine getting there without slipping on the approach.

Swords, Armor, and the Business of Being a Samurai

Naturally, I was particularly interested in the swords on display.

There was a katana and a shorter sword, both beautifully presented.

There was also a suit of armor associated with the Nomura family.

Unlike the dazzling gold armor we’d seen earlier, this one was dark and substantial, with blue cords and a striking helmet ornament.

It looked decidedly more businesslike.

And then we came to the historical documents.

Oh, my.

There were several letters addressed to members of the Nomura family, complete with English translations.

One, attributed to Akechi Mitsuhide, thanked a samurai for his hard work, expressed concern about his wounds, and advised him to rest and recover.

Rather touching, actually. (I particularly liked the apology for procrastination.)

Then there was another letter, dated October 9, 1566, from Yoshikage Asakura to Nomura Shichirogoro.

It thanked him for his efforts during a battle.

Specifically, for killing an important enemy soldier.

And bringing back his head.

The museum’s English translation concluded:

“We are very happy that you brought us his head.”

WELL.

There’s a thank-you note you don’t see every day.

Imagine receiving that in the mail.

“Dear Samurai: Thank you so much for the severed head. Just what we needed. Your thoughtfulness is greatly appreciated.”

It certainly provides a rather different perspective on the romantic image of samurai life.

These were not simply gentlemen sitting around beautifully appointed houses, arranging flowers, appreciating gardens, and practicing tea ceremonies.

There was a much bloodier side to the profession.

And here it was, documented in lovely calligraphy.

I found the juxtaposition rather extraordinary.

Dinner? Not Tonight.

By the time we finished, we’d had a very full day.

Dinner tonight was on our own.

But I decided to return to the hotel and work on this blog instead.

Lynn went to happy hour with the others, but came back afterward and didn’t go out for dinner either.

Sometimes, after a day like this, staying in is exactly the right choice.

Apparently the group has made a reservation for tomorrow night at a hibachi restaurant.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.

After my experience on the first night, when fish was cooked on a shared grill and my asparagus was then put onto the same cooking surface, I’m understandably cautious.

I suspect the restaurant may have a communal grill, which could make it difficult to avoid cross-contact with fish.

And with my allergies, that’s simply not something I can take a chance on.

I’ll see what the arrangements actually are, but I may have to give that one a pass.

There are plenty of other things to eat in Japan — assuming, of course, that I can find them without fish hiding somewhere in the ingredients!

A Few Final Thoughts

One of the things I most enjoy about Japan is the way beauty appears in unexpected places.

A tiny arrangement of autumn leaves in a little window overlooking a back staircase.

A carefully placed flower beside a scroll.

A polished wooden beam with a small decorative ornament.

A stone placed across a garden path to communicate an entire instruction without a single word.

And even the flower arrangement in our hotel lobby — yellow chrysanthemums, arching branches with golden berries, and extraordinary curling pink-orange flowers that appear to be Gloriosa lilies.

And then there is the other side of Japan.

The extraordinary technical ingenuity required to make gold leaf a fraction of the thickness of a human hair.

The enormous labor involved in protecting ancient trees from winter snow — a process repeated year after year.

And the historical documents that remind us just how different the values of earlier centuries could be.

Today we experienced all of it.

From a garden where elderly trees are lovingly supported rather than removed, to a samurai residence where a letter thanking someone for delivering a severed head is displayed with complete historical seriousness.

From gold leaf hammered almost into nothingness, to gold leaf delicately draped over a perfectly ordinary vanilla ice cream cone.

And from an exquisite arrangement of flowers in a tiny alcove to a group of black birds happily perching on the very spikes meant to discourage them.

What a fascinating country.

And what a day.

Tomorrow: More Kanazawa adventures.

Including making mochi, a visit to a World Heritage Site of thatched homes, and an opportunity to make traditional Japanese washi paper — even more interesting, now that we’ve seen how important that paper can be to an entirely different art.

Possibly followed by a hibachi dinner.

Or possibly not.

I suppose that depends on whether the chef can keep the fish away from my asparagus.

I never get a percentage from any links I include – but! – if you are curious about Overseas Adventure Travel and want $100 off, call them at 1-800-955-1925 and request their amazing catalog, tell them you were referred by Sandy Shepard, customer number 3087257, and get $100 off your first trip! The catalog is what all good dreams are made of!

Japan, Full Day 7: Boats, Beautiful Wood, Geishas, and 10,000 Rotten Eggs

Posted on by Sandy

Hakone Day 2 – November 6, 2026

The view from our room

There are days when Japan seems determined to show you just how many completely different experiences it can squeeze into a single itinerary.

Today we had a boat ride across a volcanic lake, an introduction to exquisite traditional woodworking, a lunch that required cooking our own food, an encounter with geishas, a mountain that smelled as though 10,000 eggs had gone very, very wrong, and a spectacular sunset view of Mount Fuji.

And then, because apparently we hadn’t done quite enough walking, there was an uphill hike back to the hotel.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Lake Ashi: A Boat Ride Through the Mountains

My first adventure of the day was getting a piping-hot latte out of a vending machine!

I have wanted to try this ever since I saw it on a TV show, and it definitely lived up to the hype. And at only ¥160, a good deal, too.

If the label under the drink is blue, it’s served to you cold. If red, it’s served to you hot.

The second adventure of the day was a boat ride on Lake Ashi, the beautiful mountain lake formed in the caldera of the Hakone volcano.

The lake is surrounded by forested mountains, with Mount Fuji sometimes visible in the distance when the weather cooperates. It is one of those places where the scenery seems almost deliberately arranged to look Japanese.

We boarded our boat and headed out across the water, enjoying the mountain scenery and the pleasure of seeing Hakone from an entirely different perspective. Oh – and the pirate boat.

The boat had different levels, each with its own “personality.” One had a spot where you could sit on Japanese-style cushions — shoes off, please. Another had “bucket chairs.” There were swings — yes, swings! — on a higher level. And there was even a little garden off the back deck.

We saw the swan “paddle boats” at their dock, and Utako-san informed us that everyone who goes out in one gets divorced.

Naturally, I had questions.

I asked whether, if a husband ever said, “Honey, shall we go up to Lake Ashi and take one of the swan boats out for a paddle?” the wife would simply skip the boat ride and immediately call the divorce attorney.

We have been very lucky on this trip. Fuji-sama is apparently hidden by clouds something like 80 percent of the time, but once again, she was out and beautiful for us.

Perhaps Fuji-sama is a morning person?

Hakone Marquetry: Woodworking as an Art Form

Our next stop introduced us to Hakone yosegi-zaiku, the region’s extraordinary traditional marquetry.

This is the art of combining different natural woods to create intricate geometric patterns. Rather than relying on paint or stain, the artisans use the actual colors of the woods themselves.

The results are astonishing: boxes, trays, jewelry and other objects covered in patterns so precise they almost look printed.

And, of course, there are the famous Japanese puzzle boxes, which require a particular sequence of movements to open.

I love the idea that something can be both beautiful and mischievously difficult to get into.

The craftsman we met is the eighth generation in this particular shop.

He showed us how he first creates a solid block made from the different woods, arranged so that their natural colors form the desired geometric pattern. Then he planes the surface of that block into an extraordinarily thin sheet.

That delicate sheet can then be veneered onto a box, earrings, or any number of other objects.

It was astonishing to watch.

He also showed us how they make rounded pieces — bowls, wine glasses and sake cups — by boring out the inside of a solid block. There really is no other way to create the rounded form, but of course a great deal of beautiful wood is necessarily lost in the process of hollowing out the center.

I found three sake cups: one each for Ron Sensei and Mikhail Sensei, and one for Wilson-san.

I also found sword-bag hangers, each one an individual little piece of art.

Then Utako-san pointed out that they had goshuincho with wood marquetry on both the front and back.

Of course, I already have a goshuincho.

But it will get full someday.

Right?

Shabu-Shabu, a Sore Foot, and the Great Step-Counting Transfer

Next came lunch.

Most of the group walked along the river to the restaurant, which sounded like a lovely way to arrive.

Unfortunately, my foot has been acting up, and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor. So while the others enjoyed their riverside stroll, I accompanied our coach driver.

Sometimes the smartest travel decision is the one that involves sitting down.

There was also a small technological development.

Lynn’s Fitbit had gone kaput.

Now, Lynn is very serious about tracking her steps. And her food. And entering everything into MyFitnessPal.

I, on the other hand, gave up on such things long, long ago. At some point I decided that I didn’t particularly need a computer telling me how many steps I’d taken or what I’d eaten.

I was there.

I knew.

So I gave Lynn my Pixel Watch to use for step counting.

She could continue keeping track of her numbers, and I could continue blissfully ignoring mine.

A most satisfactory arrangement.

Lunch was shabu-shabu, the Japanese hot-pot meal in which very thin slices of meat and vegetables are briefly cooked in a pot of simmering broth.

The name comes from the swishing motion used to cook the meat:

Shabu-shabu!

Of course, given my fish and dashi allergies, anything involving a Japanese broth requires special attention. One cannot simply assume that a perfectly innocent-looking pot of hot water is, in fact, innocent.

Geishas: Grace, Service, Fans, and a Rather Competitive Game

After lunch came an experience that was much more than simply watching a traditional performance.

We met two geisha, and had the opportunity to ask questions about the geisha world and to learn about their lives and training. And it is important to understand that these women are not simply “dancers in beautiful kimonos.” Their training encompasses music, singing, instruments, dance, storytelling, conversation, attentiveness, hospitality — the whole highly cultivated art of entertaining guests.

And this was not simply a matter of “here are two geishas.”

The two women with us were okami — the senior “mothers of geisha” at the top of their respective groups.

A woman may begin working as a geisha part-time. One of the okami explained that a friend suggested she might want to think about being a geisha as she had been juggling three different jobs to make ends meet. After a few months, she earned enough working as a geisha to quit all three.

We asked all sorts of questions — yes, even the “what if a client wants to have sex?” question — and learned, in particular, how the business side works.

The client company pays the hotel. The hotel pays the geisha association. The association pays the okami, who then selects the geisha — or geishas — appropriate for what the client wants.

Singing? Dancing? Accompanying guests to karaoke?

Different geisha have different skills, and the okami chooses accordingly.

There is a two-hour minimum engagement — although, of course, more hours are better. In general, we were told, a geisha might work about four parties a week.

Then came the participatory portion.

Motivated by our sumo experience, Michael and I once again volunteered.

The geisha served us first.

And then we served them.

There was something wonderfully human about that little reversal: first being carefully served ourselves, and then trying to return the gesture properly.

Only after the questions, conversation and serving did the dancing begin.

One okami wore a magnificent deep-purple kimono embroidered with flowers and gold, while the other wore a pale-blue kimono covered in white blossoms, with a contrasting black obi.

The blue kimono had been handmade by her family, who were dyers. She also told us that she owns more than 300 kimono. When her own okami retired, she purchased that woman’s kimono collection as well.

Against a gold folding screen, the two women were absolutely striking.

The dances were fascinating, particularly because they were so different from one another.

The performer in purple moved with the delicate, controlled gestures I had expected: graceful movements, carefully placed feet, and a beautiful folding fan.

The woman in blue, however, performed what we were told was a male dance.

And what a difference!

There was considerably less softness and delicacy, and much more emphatic movement — including actual stomping.

It was an interesting reminder that Japanese traditional dance can portray very different characters and styles, and that the performers communicate those differences through posture, movement and gesture.

And Then Things Got Competitive

After the dancing came a game.

The geisha sang a little song — almost like a children’s song — while two people faced each other across a table with an overturned cup between them.

The rules sounded simple enough.

Taking turns, each person hit the cup with an open hand in time with the song.

But if the other player grabbed the cup away on that beat, you were supposed to hit the empty table where the cup had been — with your fist.

If you failed to switch from open hand to fist, hit your fist on the cup, missed the beat, or otherwise got it wrong, you lost.

And then, of course, the song got faster.

And faster.

And faster.

Quite a few people tried it.

Michael and I, having apparently regained some common sense after volunteering at both sumo and the serving portion of the geisha experience, wisely stayed out of this one.

Bailey, however, was the undisputed champion.

She was really good.

As the song sped up and the hand movements became quicker and quicker, she somehow kept track of the cup, the beat, the open hand, the fist, and whether the cup had suddenly disappeared from under her.

It became surprisingly competitive — and very funny to watch.

Group photo with the geisha (Utako-san between them)

After the dancing, we all gathered for a group photo with the geisha — a lovely ending to an experience that had turned out to be far more interactive, informative, and just plain fun than I had expected.

Owakudani: 10,000 Rotten Eggs

And then we went to Hell.

Well, not literally.

But Owakudani was once known as Jigokudani — “Hell Valley” — and after about thirty seconds there, I understood why.

Sulfur.

LOTS of sulfur.

The entire valley smelled as though approximately 10,000 eggs had gone very, very wrong at the same time.

Owakudani sits in an active volcanic area of Hakone, and steam still rises from vents in the barren mountainside. It is one of those places where the earth makes it very clear that whatever pleasant landscaping humans may have put around it, underneath everything there is still a volcano doing volcano things.

And, naturally, if you are standing in a place that smells overwhelmingly of rotten eggs, the local specialty is:

Eggs.

Specifically, black eggs.

The eggs are cooked in the volcanic hot-spring water. Minerals from the spring react with the shells and turn them black — genuinely, strikingly black — although inside they are still perfectly ordinary-looking hard-boiled eggs.

There is also a legend that eating one adds seven years to your life.

Well.

This seemed like a fairly inexpensive retirement-planning opportunity.

So, of course, I had to try.

They tasted remarkably like . . . hard boiled eggs.

Which was somehow reassuring.

The exterior says, “Mysterious volcanic artifact retrieved from the underworld.”

The inside says, “Would you like some salt?”

The landscape was stark, steaming and almost otherworldly, particularly after the green mountains and placid waters of Lake Ashi earlier in the day.

I had opted for the Open-Air Museum instead, but was outvoted, 6 to 7, even though the museum is world-renowned. What-whaaaaa. I was . . . not so pleased.

Japan had apparently decided that serene mountain lake, exquisite woodworking, geisha, and active volcanic hellscape all belonged on the same afternoon.

Fuji-sama Saves the Best for Last

From Owakudani, we continued by gondola — the Hakone Ropeway — back across the mountains toward Lake Ashi.

And the timing could not have been better.

The sun was beginning to set.

Below us was Lake Ashi. Beyond it were the mountains.

And there, once again, was Fuji-sama.

This time in the evening light.

After seeing her in the morning, I certainly had not expected another appearance. Fuji-sama had already been extraordinarily generous with us.

But as the gondola moved above the mountains, the sky began changing around her.

Gold.

Orange.

Pink.

Lake Ashi below us, Fuji-sama in the distance, and the last light of the day spreading across everything.

Apparently Fuji-sama is not merely a morning person.

She will occasionally stay up for sunset.

And Then, Kaiseki

After all that — boat, woodworking, shabu-shabu, geisha, volcanic sulfur, black eggs, gondola, sunset, Fuji-sama — we returned to the hotel for another kaiseki dinner.

Because Japan apparently believed the day still needed several more courses of food.

By that point, however, I was very ready for dinner, a bath, and bed.

Hakone had done enough.

Or so I thought.

The Marble That Jumped

This morning, while I was packing to leave Hakone, one of the marbles containing H’s ashes literally jumped out of my suitcase and rolled toward the window.

Ohhhhhhh.

H was a mountain guy.

And suddenly I knew exactly what that marble was trying to tell me.

Hoping that Fuji-sama would once again be in evidence, I went outside before breakfast to look.

Whew. Nippy!

But Fuji-sama is, apparently, indeed a morning person.

There she was.

I wanted a photo of H’s marble with Fuji-sama behind it, and I found myself wishing Deborah and Doug — “D&D” — were around to help me take it.

Of course, I had absolutely no idea where their room was, or even whether they were awake.

Well.

As “luck” would have it, I walked outside and found D&D standing exactly at the spot where I wanted to take the photograph.

And they were looking for someone to take a photo of them.

Okay then.

Apparently everyone’s photographic requirements had been efficiently coordinated.

Photos accomplished, I walked down a stone stairway/path that looked as though it might have been laid there in the time of the samurai.

It had a perfect view of Fuji-sama.

And I knew that was where I wanted to leave H’s marble.

At the foot of the stairs, I noticed that the leaves on the bushes looked familiar, but I couldn’t place the plant.

Then I saw that one still had a flower.

I smiled.

Azaleas.

One of H’s favorites.

We have many of them planted right outside our front door at home.

Well.

That settled it.

So one of H’s marbles is now tucked beneath an azalea bush, nestled behind an old stone step, looking out toward Fuji-sama.

A mountain guy.

One of his favorite flowers.

And Japan’s most famous mountain.

I’m glad the marble decided to jump itself out of my suitcase while I was packing.

And now I am writing this on the Shinkansen as we make our way toward Kamakura. Photos from today – below. Using the Shinkansen’s recalcitrant WiFi has been plenty for me. Time for a nap.

Above – treats for the Shinkansen. I have been opting for the “famous” egg salad sandwiches on “milk bread.” Yep – getting a little tired of them, but believe me, it beats Google Translating every single ingredients list. So – egg salad sandwiches it is.

Utako-san pointed out to us the red triangles on windows once we were back to Tokyo. They indicate where fireman can break the window safely. The moment you see one, you start seeing them everywhere.

I never get a percentage from any links I include – but! – if you are curious about Overseas Adventure Travel and want $100 off, call them at 1-800-955-1925 and request their amazing catalog, tell them you were referred by Sandy Shepard, customer number 3087257, and get $100 off your first trip! The catalog is what all good dreams are made of!

Japan, Full Day 6: Tea Leaves, Grasshoppers, and Getting Into Hot Water

Posted on by Sandy

Goodbye, Tokyo — But First, a Little Shrine

After several wonderfully busy days in Tokyo, it was time to leave the city behind and head toward Hakone.

But before saying goodbye to Asakusa, I wanted to share one little discovery tucked beside our hotel, The B Asakusa.

There, squeezed between modern buildings, was a tiny Shinto shrine, with a brilliant vermilion torii, a narrow stone approach, and a pair of foxes standing guard.

Foxes are traditionally associated with Inari, the Shinto deity connected with rice, agriculture, and prosperity, so we suspected it was an Inari shrine, although we never did learn its actual name.

I love these little discoveries in Japan. One minute you’re walking past contemporary hotels and busy streets, and the next you’re standing in front of a sacred space that seems entirely untroubled by the city growing around it.

A small, quiet farewell to Tokyo.

A Strong Little Boy Along the Way

On our way out of Tokyo and toward Hakone, we stopped at a small grocery store, where we encountered a rather familiar-looking fellow standing outside.

A large, cheerful cartoon boy, one leg raised high in what looked suspiciously like a sumo warm-up stomp!

Turns out this was Kintarō, the legendary Japanese strong boy, famous for his extraordinary strength and associated with sumo wrestling. His pose reminded us immediately of the shiko exercise we’d watched the sumo wrestlers perform just two days earlier.

Apparently, even the grocery stores in Japan are determined to reinforce our cultural education.

A Day in the Life: Among the Tea Leaves

One of the things O.A.T. does particularly well is its “Day in the Life” experiences, where we get to spend time with local people and learn something about their everyday lives. Today’s visit was to a Japanese farmer who grows rice, vegetables, and, most importantly for our purposes, green tea.

And not just any green tea. He had recently won an award in Paris for his tea, so we were about to learn from someone who REALLY knew what he was doing!

The farm, Kaiseicha (Sunshine Tea), was nestled among the hills, with beautifully tended rows of tea bushes stretching across the landscape. We were introduced to the farmer and his helpers, then taken out into the fields to try our hands at harvesting.

The secret, we learned, is to select the tender new growth at the very top of the plant — the top three leaves. These are the young, delicate leaves that produce particularly fine tea.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

But imagine doing that, bush after bush, row after row, day after day. Suddenly, that lovely cup of green tea begins to look like a rather remarkable achievement.

We each gathered a little collection of leaves, which would later make a surprise appearance at lunch — as tempura! (And yes, they were delicious. Nom nom.)

Mechanical Harvesting — and an Unexpected Lunch Guest

Of course, picking tea leaves individually is a rather labor-intensive business, so the farmer also showed us how the tea is harvested mechanically.

Michael even got to climb aboard the tea harvester, a wonderful contraption that travels along the neatly trimmed rows, shaving off the tender new growth. Rather more efficient than a bunch of tourists wandering around with little baskets!

But the machine wasn’t the only one benefiting from this arrangement.

There was a beautiful gray heron standing among the tea bushes, looking rather dignified and entirely at home. I watched him apparently plucking something green from the plants and took several photographs, thinking I had captured a heron eating tea leaves.

It wasn’t until I downloaded the photographs and looked at them closely that I discovered what was really happening.

Those weren’t tea leaves. They were GRASSHOPPERS!

As the harvester moved through the bushes, it disturbed the grasshoppers hiding among the leaves, and our enterprising heron was deftly snatching them up for an afternoon snack.

Apparently, the farmer wasn’t the only one who had figured out how to make the most of mechanization.

B&B Tea: A Lesson in Leaf Manipulation

Having picked our tea leaves, it was time to learn how those innocent little green things become something worth drinking.

Our instructor explained that making Japanese green tea involves several steps, beginning with steaming the leaves to stop oxidation. For our demonstration, she employed a rather modern substitute for the traditional steaming equipment: a microwave, with the leaves covered in plastic film.

Then came the REALLY hard part.

Knead. Knead. KNEAD.

The leaves have to be rolled and worked repeatedly to break down their cell walls and release the compounds that give tea its flavor. This isn’t a gentle little massage. It’s serious leaf manipulation!

Bailey and Bernard volunteered to be our tea makers, and they attacked the job with admirable enthusiasm. After the first round of kneading, the leaves went back for more heating, followed by more kneading. And then another round.

Finally, it was time for the taste test.

First, we sampled “B&B” Tea, the product of all that enthusiastic leaf wrestling.

Well.

Let’s just say it was very vegetal.

Quite green. Quite leafy. Quite possibly still contemplating its former life on the bush.

Then we tasted the farmer’s professionally prepared, award-winning green tea.

WOW.

Smooth, beautifully balanced, rich with flavor, and absolutely delicious. The difference was extraordinary.

Apparently, there is rather more to making excellent green tea than squashing leaves with determination.

I suspect Bailey and Bernard may wish to keep their day jobs.

Tea-Leaf Tempura, Farm-Fresh Lunch, and a Perfect Little Discovery

After our adventures in tea production, we sat down to a lovely meal featuring produce grown right there on the farm: fresh persimmons, kiwis, salad, and other delicious things.

And remember those tender tea leaves we’d so carefully picked?

They returned to us as tempura!

Yes, you can eat tea leaves. And yes, they’re delicious. Light, crisp, and just a little bit green-tasting. Nom nom.

We also saw the delicate white flowers of Camellia sinensis, the tea plant, with their cheerful golden centers. It’s rather remarkable that this modest-looking plant gives us green tea, black tea, oolong, and so many other varieties, depending on how its leaves are processed.

But there was another little discovery that made me particularly happy.

The grandmother of one of the young women helping us in the tea fields had made a collection of things to sell — coasters, purses, little bags, and other handmade treasures.

And there, among them, was the PERFECT bag for my goshuinchō!

My precious shrine-and-temple stamp book had been traveling around in its original paper cover, which was becoming increasingly bedraggled in all this Japanese rain. The new bag had a drawstring top and fit the book beautifully.

I was ridiculously pleased. (Although, considering how much I love collecting these stamps, perhaps not so ridiculous after all.)

And then I found a second little drawstring purse, made from fabric decorated with dragonflies — tonbo in Japanese.

And made of the exact same fabric of the tabi shoes Dr. Scott Sensei gave me!

Well, obviously, that one had to come home with me too.

Sometimes the best souvenirs aren’t the ones you go looking for. They’re the ones that seem to have been waiting for you.

A 300-Year-Old Farmhouse: Persimmons, Hearths, and Harvests

After saying goodbye to our tea-farming hosts, we continued to a completely separate stop: a beautifully preserved Japanese farmhouse approximately 300 years old, offering a glimpse into traditional rural life.

It was something of a living-history exhibit, with its architecture and furnishings preserving the atmosphere of generations past.

Outside, persimmons hung in orderly rows beneath the eaves, suspended from bamboo poles and slowly drying into hoshigaki. As the peeled fruit loses moisture, its natural sugars become concentrated, eventually producing an intensely sweet, chewy delicacy.

It was an extraordinarily pretty sight: rows of glowing orange fruit against weathered dark wood. Functional food preservation, yes, but also an accidental art installation.

Inside the Farmhouse: A Little Window into Another Century

Stepping inside the farmhouse felt rather like stepping backward in time.

The beautiful dark wooden beams, polished floors, and traditional furnishings spoke of a very different way of living — one in which the hearth was quite literally the center of the home.

There was an irori, a traditional sunken hearth, with an iron kettle suspended above it from an adjustable hook called a jizaikagi. I particularly loved the fish-shaped ornament on the hook. Fish, being creatures of water, were traditionally associated with protection against fire — a very sensible bit of symbolism in a house constructed largely of wood!

There were also lovely seasonal arrangements, including chrysanthemums, gourds, and autumn vegetables, displayed in the traditional Japanese manner. Several occupied tokonoma, the special alcoves used to display flowers, scrolls, and other objects chosen to reflect the season.

Nothing seemed casually placed. Even the vegetables had been given an opportunity to be beautiful.

And then I found a particularly lovely spot.

I was able to sit quietly on a pillow kindly placed on the tatami mats, and look out toward one of the waterwheels, enjoying a few minutes of stillness before it was time to return to the coach.

After days filled with extraordinary sights, crowds, temples, shrines, and the constant motion of travel, there was something deeply satisfying about simply sitting.

No photographs to take. No explanations to absorb. No place I needed to be for those few minutes.

Just an old farmhouse, a waterwheel, and a little pocket of peace.

Winding Roads and Remarkable Coincidences

Back on the coach, we began climbing higher into the mountains toward Hakone.

And climbing.

And turning.

And turning AGAIN.

The road seemed to consist almost entirely of hairpin bends, with the occasional short straightaway thrown in to give us false hope. Fortunately, there was good company to distract us from contemplating just how far up we were going.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with Deborah and Doug, a delightful couple from the Seattle area, and as we chatted, we discovered something rather extraordinary.

Deborah’s birthday is September 21. Mine is September 22.

Okay, that’s a fun coincidence.

But then we discovered that Doug’s birthday is February 22. Herbert’s was February 23.

WHAT?!

Two couples, with both partners’ birthdays just one day apart!

We had quite a laugh over that one. Sometimes the most unexpected connections happen halfway up a mountain, while everyone is trying very hard not to wonder about other cars coming down the slim road.

Getting Into Hot Water — Properly

Eventually, we reached our hotel, perched WAY, WAY up in the hills.

One of the pleasures of staying at a traditional Japanese-style hotel is the opportunity to enjoy an onsen, a bath fed by naturally heated mineral water. But, as with so many things in Japan, there is a proper way to do it.

Utako-san gave us a demonstration.

First, you scrub yourself thoroughly clean outside the bath. The soaking water is shared, so you must be very clean before you indulge.

Then, before stepping into the hot water, you scoop up some of that water and pour it over your feet and legs, gradually getting them accustomed to the temperature. This is part of a practice called kakeyu.

A very sensible idea, particularly if the bath is hotter than you’re expecting.

First Into the Onsen!

Now, Lynn and I had already come downstairs wearing our yukata — the Japanese cotton robes provided by the hotel — and slippers. We were READY.

And when Utako-san finished demonstrating the proper procedure, we noticed that only the private onsen baths were available.

So we waited.

Casually.

Until everyone else had departed.

Then we slipped inside, locked the door, and claimed the honor of being the first two people in our group to enjoy the private hot spring!

Ahhhhh.

The water was pleasantly warm, perhaps 94°F, rather than the scalding temperatures I’d half expected. We soaked, relaxed, and congratulated ourselves on our excellent timing.

Sometimes the early bird gets the worm. Sometimes she gets the entire onsen.

Kaiseki: A Little Dinner Theater

That evening, we gathered for a traditional Japanese kaiseki dinner, a beautifully presented succession of small dishes celebrating seasonal ingredients.

For the fish eaters, there was quite a selection, including puffer fish (fugu) — which I was perfectly happy to admire from a distance, thank you very much!

But one of the most entertaining parts of the meal was something we all received.

Each of us had a little ceramic cooking contraption, with a small solid-fuel burner underneath and a shallow bowl filled with chicken and vegetables. Another ceramic bowl sat upside down on top, forming a lid, complete with two little leather cords for lifting it.

The waiter lit the fuel, and we waited while our individual dinners quietly cooked away.

When the flame finally went out, he returned, lifted the lid by its leather cords, and poured beaten egg over the hot chicken and vegetables, allowing the residual heat to cook it as the final addition.

Dinner AND a science experiment!

We finished with a lovely pumpkin custard — a perfect autumn dessert.

Samurai Hats, Paper Cranes, and the Call of the Blog

After dinner, Utako-san gathered those who still had energy for a lesson in origami: folding paper into samurai hats and cranes.

A very Japanese way to finish the evening.

But Lynn and I had other plans.

We headed back to our room, leaving the paper-folding to the more industrious members of the group.

After all, there were photographs to sort, stories to remember, and a blog to write.

And after a day of tea picking, grasshopper-hunting herons, three-hundred-year-old farmhouses, winding mountain roads, hot springs, and a dinner that cooked itself, there was rather a lot to write about.

The blog called.

And, naturally, I answered.

(Although I suspect the onsen was the wiser choice.)

I never get a percentage from any links I include – but! – if you are curious about Overseas Adventure Travel and want $100 off, call them at 1-800-955-1925 and request their amazing catalog, tell them you were referred by Sandy Shepard, customer number 3087257, and get $100 off your first trip! The catalog is what all good dreams are made of!

Japan, Full Days 4 & 5: Sumo, Samurai, Sacred Stamps, and the Search for a Fish-Free Salad

Posted on by Sandy

November 3–4, 2026 — Tokyo

Sometimes, a day in Japan contains an appropriate number of experiences.

And then there are days when you attempt to knock over a sumo wrestler, discover that your hotel makeup mirror has been installed at approximately belt-buckle height, encounter a subway system resembling a plate of multicolored spaghetti, and find yourself giving impromptu lessons in Shinto purification to complete strangers.

All while collecting sacred calligraphy, contemplating the remains of a shogun’s castle, and trying to find a salad that doesn’t contain fish.

Welcome to Tokyo.

November 3: Culture Day, and an Unexpected Sumo Career

November 3 is Culture Day, a national holiday in Japan, Emperor Meiji’s birthday.

And we were going to celebrate it in style.

By wrestling.

Well, not exactly.

Our first stop was a sumo demonstration, where two enormous, cheerful wrestlers introduced us to the rituals and techniques of Japan’s national sport.

Sumo, of course, is considerably more complicated than two very large men trying to push each other out of a circle.

There are ceremonial movements, precise rules, elaborate techniques, and a great deal of training behind what looks, to the uninitiated, like an extremely enthusiastic collision.

Fueled by amazing food (which they cooked for us at lunch) . . . And, if you’re in training, 10 cups of white rice per meal, per day.

The wrestlers demonstrated various holds, throws, and methods of upsetting an opponent’s balance.

They were astonishingly quick.

They were also funny, charming, and clearly enjoyed showing us what they could do.

Then came the invitation for volunteers.

Well.

I was the first person to step forward, and almost the only one.

After all, how often does one have the opportunity to try to knock over a sumo wrestler?

The answer, as it turns out, is that one can try as often as one likes.

Actually succeeding is another matter.

First, I attempted the obvious approach: pushing.

My hands sank into an astonishingly substantial layer of flesh, which was also extremely sweaty.

There was simply nothing solid to push against.

It was like trying to move a very large, very cheerful waterbed.

And the waterbed was considerably stronger than I was.

I pushed harder.

Nothing.

He grinned.

I reconsidered my strategy.

Now, I study iaido, not sumo, but I do understand that balance is important. And if brute force wasn’t going to accomplish anything, perhaps a little ingenuity might.

So I decided to hook his leg.

That caught him off guard!

It didn’t actually bring him down, but it certainly surprised him, and the other wrestler absolutely roared with laughter.

I considered that a moral victory.

I came away with a much greater appreciation for the skill involved in sumo, along with the realization that my future career in the sport is probably limited.

Still, not everyone can say they’ve tried to trip a sumo wrestler.

Meiji Shrine: Chrysanthemums, Archers, and a Holiday Crowd

Next came Meiji Jingū, the great Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shōken.

The shrine is surrounded by an enormous wooded sanctuary, and walking toward it feels almost like leaving Tokyo behind.

Tall trees form a green corridor, and enormous wooden torii gates mark the transition into sacred space.

Along the way, we passed an extraordinary display of barrels.

But unlike the huge rack of sake barrels across from them – similar to what we’d seen at Kamakura – these were barrels of French Burgundy wine!

Emperor Meiji encouraged Japan’s engagement with Western culture, and the wine barrels commemorate that connection.

Culture Day brought special celebrations to the shrine, including traditional martial arts and archery demonstrations.

I’d particularly hoped to see yabusame, the spectacular Japanese art of horseback archery.

Unfortunately, so had approximately half the population of Tokyo.

The crowds were simply overwhelming, and there was no realistic way to get close enough to see the performance.

Boo hoo.

But we did see several archers moving through the grounds, carrying their extraordinarily long Japanese bows, or yumi.

Later, I even encountered an archer carrying a bow on the subway.

There’s something rather wonderful about seeing a centuries-old martial tradition traveling on a modern Tokyo train.

The shrine was also hosting an extraordinary exhibition of chrysanthemums.

Not merely flowers in pots.

These were living sculptures.

Some were trained into miniature trees, with thick little trunks, carefully arranged branches, and blossoms balanced above moss-covered bases.

Others were elaborate arrangements of yellow, pink, red, and white flowers, each apparently determined to outdo its neighbor.

Having visited the Shunkaen Bonsai Museum earlier in the trip, I found myself particularly interested in how these plants had been trained.

There is something wonderfully Japanese about taking a plant that wants to grow in one direction and patiently persuading it to become a work of art.

And doing so without losing the sense that it is still very much alive.

Shibuya: The World’s Largest Pedestrian Puzzle

Somewhere in all of this, Lynn and I also embarked on a quest to find a camera shop.

This sounded straightforward.

Google Maps certainly thought so.

Unfortunately, Google Maps had apparently not received the memo about the extensive construction transforming parts of Shibuya.

We followed its instructions faithfully.

Up onto elevated pedestrian walkways.

Down into underground passages.

Across intersections.

Back up again.

Through buildings.

Out of buildings.

And, naturally, across Shibuya Crossing.

More than once.

Shibuya Crossing is one of the world’s most famous pedestrian intersections, where enormous crowds cross in every direction simultaneously.

It is an astonishing sight.

It is also a particularly interesting place to find yourself when you’re not entirely sure which direction you should be going.

At some point I remembered Baraka, the extraordinary 1992 film by Ron Fricke that H loved.

It’s a film without dialogue, composed of remarkable images from around the world set to music: nature, cities, religious ceremonies, human movement, and even Japanese snow monkeys.

The great urban crowds of Tokyo were also included in a kind of visual symphony.

Although I suspect the filmmakers would have preferred not to include two increasingly exasperated women trying to find a camera store.

By the time we’d finished our expedition, we’d walked approximately 11,000 steps.

And that was just the camera-shop adventure.

I am beginning to suspect that Tokyo measures distances differently from the rest of the world.

And then we had to find our way back.

The Ginza Line.

The doggone Ginza Line.

After another expedition through Tokyo’s subterranean labyrinth, we FINALLY found it.

Once on the subway, feeling rather pleased with ourselves, Lynn and I began discussing the evening ahead.

We had bought wine the night before, and were very much looking forward to returning to the hotel, putting our feet up, and polishing it off.

A lovely, quiet evening.

Well deserved, I thought.

And then my phone buzzed.

A text from Utako-san.

“Where are you? We are going to the welcome dinner.”

Lynn and I looked at each other.

WHOOPS!

The welcome dinner.

The dinner we had completely forgotten.

The dinner that was, apparently, happening RIGHT NOW.

So much for the wine.

We quickly obtained the restaurant’s address, figured out where we needed to go (luckily, the subway stop was on the Ginza Line!), and set off.

More walking.

More navigating.

More Tokyo.

And somehow, after all of that, we arrived at the restaurant before anyone else.

I have no idea how we managed it.

But I feel that should count as some sort of travel achievement.

A Lovely Welcome Dinner, and Thirteen Travelers

Our group was now complete: thirteen travelers.

The dinner was lovely, and it was an opportunity to begin getting to know the people with whom we’ll be sharing the next several weeks.

There’s something rather interesting about the beginning of a group journey.

Everyone arrives with their own histories, personalities, expectations, and reasons for traveling.

For the moment, we’re thirteen individuals.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll become something else.

A traveling little community.

And Lynn and I, despite our spectacular failure to remember the dinner, had managed to arrive first.

Which is perhaps the most astonishing part of the entire Shibuya adventure.

A Golden Beer, a Golden Carrot, and a Healthy Denny’s

Tokyo also has a marvelous ability to surprise you with architecture.

At one point we passed the Asahi Beer headquarters, where the tall golden building is designed to resemble a glass of beer, complete with a foamy head.

And next to it is an enormous golden object.

A carrot?

A flame?

Something considerably less printable?

Officially, it’s the Flamme d’Or, or Golden Flame, designed by Philippe Starck to represent the burning spirit of Asahi Beer.

Unofficially, it has acquired some rather less dignified nicknames.

I think I’ll stick with Golden Carrot.

 then there was Denny’s.

Yes, Denny’s.

But not quite the Denny’s we know.

Apparently, Japanese Denny’s is promoting itself with a wellness initiative.

In America, Denny’s tends to conjure images of enormous breakfasts, late-night pancakes, and food that is not generally marketed as a pathway to optimal health.

But here in Japan?

Denny’s × Wellness.

Who knew?

And while we’re on the subject of Tokyo’s unexpected architecture, I must mention another building we passed.

Its balconies looked like enormous teacups attached to the outside of the building.

Blue, white, and red teacups, stacked one above another.

I have no idea what architectural problem this was intended to solve.

But it certainly made the building memorable.

Asakusa After Dark: A Temple in Technicolor

After dinner, we headed back toward Asakusa.

Lynn had visited the area on her previous trip to Japan and remembered enjoying the shops and streets around the temple.

What surprised us was how close it actually was to our hotel.

Not necessarily a straight line, mind you.

More of a great big L.

But suddenly a place that had seemed like a separate excursion was practically in our neighborhood.

And we had arrived on a very special evening.

Because it was Culture Day, Sensō-ji Temple was illuminated with a spectacular projection-mapping light show.

The enormous Hōzōmon Gate, guarded by two fearsome Niō figures, had become a canvas for shifting colors, images, and patterns.

The ancient architecture seemed to come alive.

Even Utako-san said she’d never seen anything quite like it.

There were crowds everywhere, cameras and phones raised toward the illuminated buildings.

And there we were, watching a centuries-old Buddhist temple transformed by twenty-first-century technology.

Japan seems quite comfortable placing the ancient and modern side by side.

Sometimes literally on top of each other.

We resolved to return the following morning, when we could see the temple properly in daylight.

A Brief Architectural Complaint

Before moving on to November 4, I must mention our hotel room.

Specifically, the mirror.

There is a small, round “makeup mirror” mounted on the wall.

A very attractive little mirror.

Unfortunately, it has been installed at approximately the height of my belt buckle.

This presents certain practical difficulties.

For example, applying makeup generally requires being able to see one’s face.

On the other hand, the shower is magnificent.

It’s tall enough for me, which is already a major accomplishment, and has THREE adjustable sprayers along the vertical stem, plus a handheld wand.

So apparently the bathroom designer was very concerned about the proper distribution of water over the human body.

Just not about the location of the human head.

One must take one’s victories where one finds them.

November 4: Drums, Dragons, and the Ghost of a Shogun

Back to Sensō-ji: An Unexpected Teaching Career

We returned to Sensō-ji the following morning.

In daylight, the temple was every bit as impressive as it had been under the lights.

The enormous red lantern at Kaminarimon, the Thunder Gate, is one of Tokyo’s most recognizable sights.

It was donated by Kōnosuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic, after he recovered from an illness. A remarkable expression of gratitude.

We also saw the five-story pagoda, the richly decorated main hall, and beautiful painted ceiling panels.

Sensō-ji traces its origins to a wonderful legend.

In 628 CE, two fishermen brothers pulled a small statue of Kannon, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, from the Sumida River.

They returned it to the water.

And caught it again.

And again.

Eventually, a local village leader recognized its significance, and the statue became the sacred object around which the temple developed.

We saw a painting illustrating the story.

I had another important mission here.

Goshuin!

Having inaugurated my collection in Kamakura, I was now becoming positively enthusiastic about acquiring these beautiful calligraphic temple and shrine inscriptions.

At Sensō-ji I received two goshuin, including a special two-page inscription.

The process involved leaving my book and receiving a numbered chit so I could return to collect it.

And while waiting, I found myself at the fantastic dragon-headed purification fountain.

Now, thanks to Utako-san’s earlier instruction, I knew how to perform the purification ritual correctly.

Rinse the left hand.

Then the right.

Pour water into the left palm to rinse the mouth.

Rinse the left hand again.

And finally clean the ladle handle, allowing all the used water to fall outside the basin.

Simple enough.

Except that apparently I had acquired an audience.

There were a LOT of Western visitors around the fountain.

And after watching me, people began asking whether I could show them how to do it.

Again.

And again.

And again.

FOUR TIMES!

I had apparently become the unofficial instructor at the Sensō-ji Handwashing Academy.

I was eventually obliged to interrupt my teaching career because I needed to retrieve my goshuin.

Which led to another encounter.

A couple noticed the numbered chit in my hand and asked what it was for.

I explained the goshuin tradition.

They were on their very first day in Japan and had never heard of it.

They were intrigued.

So I took them over to the goshuin counter while I collected my book and showed them how it worked.

Another set of converts!

At this rate, the temples may have to start paying me.

Taiko: Jazz You Can Feel in Your Heart

Our next adventure was taiko drumming.

(Though first, we had to be fortified by small steaming-hot muffins filled with red bean paste.)

Lynn had done this experience on her previous visit to Japan, so she elected to stay behind while I went with the group.

Taiko drums are traditional Japanese drums, played with wooden magnolia-wood sticks called bachi. They come in various sizes, and the larger ones produce a sound that you don’t merely hear.

You feel it.

Our instructor was a young woman who had been playing taiko since she was six years old. Her mother was also a taiko drummer, so this was something she’d grown up with. Nearly twenty years of practice, and she was still a young woman.

She taught us some of the basics: how to stand, how to hold the sticks, how to strike the drum, and how to coordinate our movements with the rhythm.

There is considerably more to this than simply hitting something very large with a stick.

And she gave us a performance.

She positioned herself among three drums, moving between them as she played.

I was transfixed.

The only comparison I can make is to improvisational jazz.

Not the sort of jazz that seems determined to prove how many discordant notes can be played simultaneously.

I’m talking about the kind of jazz that makes you want to close your eyes and simply let the music flow through you.

The rhythms built, shifted, and answered one another. Sometimes delicate, sometimes powerful, sometimes almost conversational.

She moved among the three drums with extraordinary fluidity, creating something that felt both spontaneous and completely assured.

And the sound!

The largest drum produced a deep resonance that seemed to travel straight through my chest.

The music wasn’t merely flowing around me.

It was flowing through me.

Literally.

I could feel the drum reverberating in my heart.

I’ve heard taiko before. I’ve admired the precision, the energy, the spectacle.

But I had never experienced anything quite like this.

It was magnificent.

And it reminded me that sometimes the most extraordinary cultural experiences aren’t necessarily the largest or most elaborate.

Sometimes they’re a young woman, three drums, and nearly twenty years of devotion to an art.

The school also makes beautiful traditional portable shrines, or mikoshi, carried during Japanese festivals.

One of these was on display, richly decorated in black and gold

I found the connection fascinating.

The drums provide the pulse of a festival, while the mikoshi carries the sacred presence through the streets.

Sound, movement, craftsmanship, and religious tradition all woven together.

And another example of how Japanese culture preserves things that are meant to be experienced, not simply admired behind glass.

The Imperial Palace East Gardens: Where the Shogun Once Ruled

Next came the Imperial Palace East Gardens.

Although the name suggests the residence of Japan’s emperor, the history of this particular place begins with the Tokugawa shoguns.

These gardens occupy part of the former Edo Castle, the political center of Tokugawa Japan.

My First Eki Stamp! (Finally!)

There was another small milestone at the Imperial Palace East Gardens.

My very first eki stamp!

Well, technically, it was a kinen stamp, a commemorative stamp from a tourist attraction rather than a railway (“eki”) station. But I’ve been calling these “eki stamps”, and I’m not about to let technicalities interfere with my enthusiasm.

Especially because I finally had a use for the orange book from Dawn.

My friend Dawn, whose son lives in Japan, had given me this peculiar little book years ago, and for some reason I’d kept it all this time. I wrote a bit about it HERE. It isn’t an ordinary notebook. Its pages folded out in an accordion-like arrangement, almost like origami.

I’d never quite known what to do with it.

My collecting career, however, had gotten off to a rather unimpressive start.

At the Tokyo National Museum, there had apparently been THREE different stamps available.

Three!

Two of the women in our group had collected all three, although they hadn’t realized there was any particular significance to them. They’d simply thought they were fun things to stamp on paper.

Meanwhile, I had actually looked for the stamping station.

And missed it completely.

Drat.

So while my goshuin collection had been progressing beautifully, my orange accordion-fold book remained stubbornly unstamped.

Until today!

At the Imperial Palace East Gardens, I finally found a commemorative stamp and made my very first impression.

It wasn’t quite the spiritual experience of receiving my first goshuin at Kamakura, but it was enormously satisfying.

A little ink, a little paper, and a book I’d somehow kept for years finally finding its purpose.

And I am now officially on the lookout for stamping stations.

Preferably ones I can actually find.

Edo Castle: What Fire Couldn’t Destroy

The great castle keep was destroyed in the devastating Meireki Fire of 1657 and was never rebuilt.

But the enormous stone foundations remain.

And enormous is definitely the word.

I was immediately reminded of Sacsayhuamán, the extraordinary Inca stonework above Cusco, Peru.

Different cultures. Different construction techniques.

But the same astonishing ability to fit huge stones together with extraordinary precision.

Some of the castle stones are cracked, and Utako-san explained that the cracks were caused by fire damage.

Imagine the heat required to damage stones of that size.

The corners of the walls flare outward in a distinctive way, creating massive, sloping foundations for buildings that no longer exist.

We also saw a model showing what the original castle keep looked like.

Standing beside the surviving foundations, it was difficult to imagine just how enormous the original structure must have been.

And yet, where the shogun’s tower once dominated the landscape, a beautiful tree now grows.

There’s something rather wonderful about that.

The castle is gone.

The shoguns are gone.

But the tree is doing very nicely, thank you.

Pines, Chrysanthemums, and a Garden Inside a City

The gardens themselves were extraordinary.

Beautifully shaped Japanese black pines spread their branches in carefully balanced forms.

Some leaned over ponds, their reflections almost as beautiful as the trees themselves.

There were camellias just beginning to bloom, with hundreds of tightly closed buds promising an extraordinary display in the coming weeks.

Not dozens.

Hundreds.

The plants seemed to be waiting for just the right moment.

And then there were the chrysanthemums.

Oh, the chrysanthemums!

These were not ordinary potted flowers.

They were extraordinary horticultural constructions, trained into great cascading arrangements called kengai-zukuri, or cliff-style chrysanthemums.

And here’s the astonishing part.

Each enormous cascade can be created from a single plant.

One stem, carefully trained and branched over a framework, eventually producing what looks like an entire waterfall of flowers.

The amount of patience and skill involved is almost beyond imagining.

It’s rather like bonsai, except that the final result is a glorious explosion of blossoms.

And then there was the garden itself.

A pond, sculpted trees, carefully placed rocks, and beautifully composed views.

Beyond the trees, modern Tokyo rose in glass and steel.

That juxtaposition seems to be one of Japan’s great gifts.

You can stand in a landscape designed to evoke centuries of quiet contemplation, while an enormous modern city continues its business just beyond the trees.

And somehow, both belong.

H is Here.

There is something else I haven’t mentioned yet.

At every temple we’ve visited, it seems that just as I arrive, a crow or raven settles into a tree above me.

Every single time.

Those who knew H will understand why this matters.

Ravens have long been one of the symbols I associate with him.

And here I am, halfway around the world, visiting places I’ve dreamed of seeing, and repeatedly hearing or seeing that familiar black bird overhead.

I even managed to photograph one.

I don’t need to explain it further.

H is here.

An Exhausted Foot, a Grocery Store, and Ten Suspicious Salads

By midafternoon, my foot had had quite enough.

Even with wrapping, bracing, and every effort to be sensible, the cumulative walking was catching up with me.

At approximately 3:30, I declared the day’s sightseeing officially concluded.

I was IN.

But first, dinner.

After a taxi ride home from the Gardens with Linda, with a driver that insisted that we were staying at the exact wrong hotel (thankfully Linda had our actual correct hotel’s business card), I collected Lynn, and we made another expedition to the neighborhood grocery store.

This has become something of a ritual.

And I have discovered that Google Translate is one of the greatest inventions in the history of international travel.

Because buying food in Japan when you cannot eat fish is an adventure all its own.

You would think a salad would be safe.

Ha!

Apparently, fish can find its way into almost anything.

Dashi. Bonito. Fish extracts. Fish sauce.

Even a perfectly innocent-looking vegetable salad may have a surprise lurking in the ingredients.

So I stood there with my phone, translating one label after another.

And another.

And another.

I must have investigated ten different salads before finding two that appeared to contain no fish whatsoever.

One turned out to be a cold acorn-squash salad.

The other was essentially a selection of pickled radishes.

Not exactly what I would have predicted for dinner in Tokyo.

But no fish.

SOLD.

I added an egg-salad sandwich, a red bell pepper, an orange, and, naturally, a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

A perfectly respectable international dinner.

And then we went home.

Tokyo, in All Its Contradictions

Looking back on these two days, I’m struck by how many different versions of Japan we’ve encountered.

Enormous sumo wrestlers and exquisitely trained chrysanthemums.

Archers carrying ancient weapons through modern subway stations.

A seventeenth-century castle reduced to stone foundations, surrounded by one of the world’s largest cities.

A temple illuminated with digital projections one evening, then filled with people quietly performing centuries-old rituals the next morning.

And a foreign visitor who came to collect a little sacred calligraphy and somehow ended up teaching handwashing.

There’s also the reality of travel.

Feet get tired.

Maps become confusing.

Hotel mirrors are installed in inexplicable places.

And sometimes dinner is a collection of supermarket discoveries eaten in your room.

But perhaps those are the things that make a journey feel real.

Not just the monuments, the ceremonies, and the extraordinary sights.

The little surprises.

The people.

The unexpected connections.

The moments when something you’ve read about or practiced at home suddenly becomes part of your day.

And the occasional enormous wrestler who discovers that the tall American woman is willing to try a leg hook.

Tomorrow, we leave Tokyo and head for Hakone.

I suspect there will be more stories.

But for tonight, my foot is resting, my Cabernet is poured, my suitcase is in the lobby waiting to be whisked away to Kanazawa, and I’m quite content to let the sumo wrestlers have the last word.

After all, I may not have won the match.

But I certainly surprised the competition.

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Japan, Full Day 3: 1st Beginnings, Small Remembrances, & A Very Large Buddha

Posted on by Sandy

Monday, November 2, 2026 — Kamakura

There is something particularly Japanese about a day that begins with the crush of the subway, contains a gigantic Buddha and a Shinto wedding, and ends with rain.

Of course, there is also something particularly Sandy about a day involving ancient shrines, a rather enthusiastic international game of charades, thousands of small stone figures, fierce Buddhist guardians, and a warning about predatory birds.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Kamakura: Samurai History, with a Chance of Rain

Today’s excursion was optional, and the weather forecast was decidedly unenthusiastic.

Rain. More rain. Possibly rain accompanied by additional rain.

So the elegant haori stayed behind, and my trusty REI rain jacket came out to play.

Our destination was Kamakura, the seaside town south of Tokyo that became the center of Japan’s first warrior government in the late twelfth century.

For someone studying iaido, this is rather like visiting a place where the history you’ve been reading about suddenly stops being theoretical.

The Kamakura period saw the rise of samurai political power, the spread of Zen Buddhism among the warrior class, and the creation of some of Japan’s most extraordinary swords.

I was already interested.

The weather, meanwhile, remained determined to provide atmosphere.

Children, Weddings, and My Very First Goshuin

Our first stop was Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, Kamakura’s magnificent Shinto shrine, founded in the eleventh century and closely associated with the Minamoto clan and the Kamakura shogunate.

The buildings were glorious: brilliant vermilion pillars, elaborate painted eaves, broad stone stairways, and a wonderful sense of ceremony.

And ceremony, as it happened, was very much on the day’s agenda.

We encountered children dressed in beautiful traditional clothing for Shichi-Go-San, the Japanese celebration marking important milestones for children at ages three, five, and seven.

Little girls in gorgeous kimono, looking both splendid and occasionally rather overwhelmed by the attention. Parents and grandparents arranging photographs. Everyone celebrating the fact that these children were growing up.

Then we encountered an actual Shinto wedding.

The bride wore traditional white wedding attire, the groom formal black clothing, and the ceremony included attendants in elaborate robes, musicians, ritual objects, and offerings.

It was a privilege to see something so personal unfolding in such a public, historic place.

Nearby, a young Shinto priest in vivid yellow robes carried a purification wand adorned with white paper streamers. I photographed him repeatedly, fascinated by the formality of the clothing and the deliberate precision of the ritual.

And then came my own tiny ceremonial milestone.

I’d brought along a brand-new goshuinchō, the special book used to collect goshuin—calligraphic inscriptions and stamps received at Japanese shrines and temples.

I presented it to the woman preparing the inscriptions.

She opened it.

She looked at the completely blank pages.

And then she looked at me.

Through a combination of enthusiastic pointing, elaborate gestures, and what I can only describe as heavy international miming, I managed to communicate:

THIS IS MY FIRST GOSHUIN.

Not merely the first one in this particular book.

MY FIRST GOSHUIN EVER.

Her face lit up.

She seemed genuinely delighted that she was going to be the person to inaugurate my collection, and apparently added something special to commemorate the occasion.

I don’t yet know precisely what she wrote, but the pleasure she took in doing it needed no translation whatsoever.

There is something lovely about that.

A little girl celebrating a milestone. A couple beginning a marriage. And a foreign visitor, through the universal language of pointing and exaggerated facial expressions, beginning a collection of sacred calligraphy.

All in the same shrine.

Sake, Sacred Ropes, and Divine Customer Service

There were other things to learn at Tsurugaoka Hachimangū.

Stylized pigeons at the top of the plaque

For one – pigeons! At the main entrance, they appeared in the decoration above us, and Utako-san explained their significance. They are considered sacred messengers of Hachiman, the Shinto deity closely associated with warriors and the Minamoto clan, which established the Kamakura shogunate.

In fact, the characters for Hachiman on the shrine’s magnificent name plaque incorporate stylized ones at the top.

So here I was, an aspiring samurai (well, an aspiring iaidoka, anyway), standing beneath the symbolic messengers of the samurai’s protective deity.

Rather a nice welcome.

For another, an impressive display of enormous sake barrels, stacked in neat rows and decorated with beautiful Japanese labels.

These are kazaridaru, ceremonial barrels representing sake offerings made to the Shinto gods (kami) by breweries and other donors. Sake isn’t merely something to drink here; it also has an important ceremonial role.

Then there were the sacred ropes, called shimenawa, with their dangling zigzag paper strips, or shide.

Utako-san explained the imagery: the rope represents clouds, while the white zigzags represent lightning. The rope marks the boundary of a sacred space, separating the ordinary world from the realm of the gods.

Which made the fact that we were standing beneath actual rain clouds rather appropriate.

Utako-san also gave us a practical lesson in how to behave at a Shinto shrine.

First, purification at the temizuya, the stone water basin.

There is a definite procedure, and it is considerably more complicated than simply washing your hands.

Take the ladle in your right hand and rinse your left. Switch hands and rinse your right. Pour a little water into your left palm, bring it to your mouth, rinse, and discreetly spit the water out. Rinse your left hand again, then tip the ladle upright so the remaining water runs down its handle, cleaning it for the next person.

And, importantly, all the used water goes onto the pebbles outside the basin. NOT back into the clean water!

Having mastered this elaborate aquatic choreography, we were ready to pray.

That, too, has a procedure.

Toss a coin into the offering box. Bow twice. Clap twice. Make your prayer. Then bow once more.

Utako-san explained that it was perfectly acceptable to tell the gods your name and where you lived, so they would know who was making the request.

Or, she added helpfully, perhaps mentally add your phone number so they could find you.

I rather liked the idea of divine customer service.

Although I wasn’t entirely sure whether the gods accepted text messages.

The Great Buddha: Immovable Serenity

Next came Kōtoku-in, home of the Great Buddha of Kamakura.

The Daibutsu is an enormous bronze representation of Amida Buddha, dating from the thirteenth century. At approximately 11.3 meters tall, excluding its pedestal, it is one of Japan’s most famous Buddhist images.

And photographs really cannot prepare you for the scale.

He sits outdoors, surrounded by wooded hills, his enormous hands resting in meditation and his expression utterly composed.

Visitors come and go. Umbrellas bob. Cameras click. Groups arrange themselves on the steps for photographs.

And the Buddha simply sits.

The statue originally stood inside a great hall, but the building was destroyed centuries ago. The Buddha survived, and now sits beneath the open sky.

I particularly loved seeing him from the side, where the immense folds of his bronze robe and the proportions of the sculpture become even more remarkable.

Naturally, we took the obligatory group photographs.

Because no matter how spiritually significant a monument may be, someone must eventually say, “Everybody squeeze together!”

I loved the sandals that local schoolchildren had made for “their” Buddha. (It’s hard to tell from this photo, but they are definitely big enough for this Buddha’s feet – yards and yards and yards of hemp!)

Our final stop, Hasedera Temple, brought us into an entirely different emotional landscape.

Hasedera is a beautiful Buddhist temple set into a hillside, with gardens, stone stairways, bamboo, and views toward the sea.

But one of the most affecting sights was a collection of hundreds upon hundreds of small stone Jizō figures, standing in tightly packed rows.

Some were almost entirely covered with moss and lichen. Others still had clearly defined faces. Some seemed to be smiling; others looked solemn.

At first glance, they were simply beautiful in the rain.

Then Utako-san explained what they represented.

They were memorials for children who had died.

These are connected with mizuko kuyō, a Japanese Buddhist memorial practice for children lost through miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, or death in infancy.

Jizō Bosatsu is a compassionate Buddhist figure particularly associated with protecting children and guiding vulnerable souls.

And the memorials at Hasedera are not simply a collection of ancient statues.

More than 50,000 Jizō figures have reportedly been dedicated there since World War II.

Think about that for a moment.

The little figures we were looking at were not necessarily centuries old. Families have continued to dedicate them in living memory, and the temple periodically replaces older memorial figures as new ones are offered.

Each may represent a child, a family’s grief, a prayer, or an act of remembrance.

The rows are not just an accumulation of stone.

They are an ongoing expression of love and loss.

I looked at my photographs afterward and found them much more poignant than I had realized at the time.

The rain had darkened the stone, and the moss made some of the little figures seem almost to be disappearing into the hillside.

Yet there they stood, shoulder to shoulder.

Remembered.

Nearby was a round-faced, smiling Jizō figure, hands pressed together in greeting.

This is Nagomi Jizō, a comparatively recent addition to the temple, intended to offer visitors a sense of peace and reassurance.

I couldn’t help smiling back.

Perhaps that was precisely the point.

Elsewhere in the temple grounds, hundreds of small wooden prayer plaques hung together, each bearing someone’s handwritten wish.

These are ema, votive tablets on which visitors write prayers, hopes, or thanks before leaving them at the temple.

Some were written in Japanese, others in languages from around the world. Some asked for health, happiness, or love. Others offered prayers for peace.

I found myself thinking how extraordinarily alike we all are in what we hope for, regardless of where we come from or what language we use.

And there was something touching about seeing all those individual wishes hanging together, waiting to be heard.

Bamboo, Stone Steps, and Surfers

Hasedera also has some of those wonderful little passages that seem to lead somewhere important without bothering to announce where.

Stone steps climbed through dense greenery. Bamboo rose in elegant columns. Everything smelled wonderfully alive in the damp air.

And then, from an overlook far atop many, many slippery, uneven sets of stairs, I could see the sea.

With surfers!

Somehow, with all the temples, ancient warriors, and Buddhist imagery, I had temporarily forgotten that Kamakura is also a beach town.

There they were, bobbing patiently in the gray water, waiting for waves, apparently unconcerned that the rest of us were dressed for a minor monsoon.

I rather admired their optimism.

The Fierce Ones—and Acala

In the temple and on the grounds were many amazing statues, including a huge Kannon, and bronze figures of fierce Buddhist guardians.

Armored bodies. Weapons. Terrifying expressions. Elaborate halos of flames.

They were magnificent.

Some stood over subdued figures representing forces they had conquered. Nothing about them suggested that enlightenment was necessarily a gentle process.

And here’s where the day took an unexpectedly personal turn.

I’ve been designing my second custom iaito, the companion to Lady Nene, and have named it Acala.

Acala is the Sanskrit name for Fudō Myōō, the Immovable Wisdom King of Japanese esoteric Buddhism.

Fudō is typically depicted holding a sword to cut through ignorance and a rope to bind destructive forces.

The guardians we saw weren’t necessarily Fudō himself, but they belong to the broader Buddhist tradition of fierce protectors.

Their frightening appearances are not meant to represent cruelty.

Rather, they express the determination to overcome obstacles, protect the vulnerable, and defend the path toward enlightenment.

There is something deeply appealing about the idea that compassion need not always look gentle.

Sometimes it wears armor.

Sometimes it carries a sword.

I must interrupt the spiritual contemplation for an important public-service announcement.

BEWARE OF KITES.

That was the actual wording on a wooden sign.

Kites. Large birds of prey.

Apparently, they have developed a successful business model involving swooping down from behind unsuspecting tourists and stealing their lunches.

The sign explained, rather soberly, that their sharp claws might injure you.

There was even a wonderfully dramatic illustration of a bird descending upon its victim.

Japan: where even the wildlife comes with carefully worded instructions.

This brought on a smile, although I suspect anyone who has lost a sandwich to an airborne bandit might disagree.

The Temples in the Rain — and the Demons on the Roof

By the time we reached Hasedera, the rain was not merely a gentle Japanese drizzle. Water ran from the enormous upturned tile roofs.

The roofs.

Guarded by the fierce, almost comical faces staring down from their eaves. These are onigawara, traditional Japanese ornamental roof tiles, often depicting demons or fearsome protective spirits intended to ward off evil.

And I actually knew something about them!

At home, I’ve been watching a wonderful Japanese documentary series, I believe from NHK, about traditional craftspeople and the extraordinary skills being preserved across generations. Episodes have explored everything from thatching roofs to textiles and other endangered crafts.

One particularly memorable episode followed a man, perhaps in his fifties, who had inherited his family’s traditional roof-tile-making craft.

The program showed him making these very sorts of demon faces by hand, working the clay into extraordinary expressions before firing the tiles.

So there I was, looking up at the finished work of a craft I’d watched being practiced thousands of miles away.

And suddenly those funny, fierce faces weren’t simply architectural decorations.

They represented someone’s hands, someone’s training, and generations of accumulated knowledge.

There’s a Japanese term for the artisans who specialize in making these tiles: onishi, or “demon masters.”

Which is a rather magnificent job title.

I photographed the faces while trying to shield H’s poor camera from the rain.

And it occurred to me that Japan seems to have an extraordinary number of protectors.

Fierce Buddhist guardians carrying swords. Demon faces watching from rooftops. Jizō figures watching over lost children.

Different traditions, different meanings, but all expressing, in their own ways, the very human desire to keep something precious safe.

Even if, in this particular instance, what I most needed protecting from was the weather.

Beginnings and Remembrances

Looking back on the day, I keep thinking about the contrast between our first shrine and the later temple.

At Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, we saw children celebrating the fact that they were growing older, a couple beginning married life, and a delighted shrine attendant commemorating the very first page of my goshuin book.

At Hasedera, we saw thousands of small figures dedicated to children who never had the chance to grow older.

And at Kōtoku-in, the Great Buddha sat quietly, seemingly beyond all these human beginnings and endings.

Perhaps it’s tempting to make too much of that sequence.

But sometimes travel gives you a theme without asking your permission.

We celebrate beginnings.

We remember those we’ve lost.

And somewhere between the two, we try to understand what it means to live well.

The rain made the bronze shine, the moss glow, and the temple roofs look almost alive.

And I came away with a stronger connection to the name I’d chosen for Acala.

Not because a sword should be fierce.

But because there is something deeply appealing about being immovable in one’s purpose while remembering that strength and compassion need not be opposites.

And perhaps the whole day can be captured in the seventeen syllables of a haiku:

Fierce guardians watch
The Buddha sits in stillness
A kite steals my lunch

 

I never get a percentage from any links I include – but! – if you are curious about Overseas Adventure Travel and want $100 off, call them at 1-800-955-1925 and request their amazing catalog, tell them you were referred by Sandy Shepard, customer number 3087257, and get $100 off your first trip! The catalog is what all good dreams are made of!

 

Japan Full Day 2: Cats, Calligraphy, Love Hotels, and a Very Hot Lunch

Posted on by Sandy

Sunday, November 1, 2026

Well, THAT was an interesting night.

Last evening’s welcome dinner was at a yakitori restaurant, where everything is grilled on skewers. Because of my finfish intolerance, I confined myself to skewers with chicken with leeks, and asparagus. What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, quite a lot.

I suspect something fishy had previously occupied the same grill, because my digestive system decided to stage what can only be described as The Big Expel.

I spent a substantial portion of the night in the room’s “little room,” becoming much more intimately acquainted with its facilities than I had ever intended. Thank goodness for Imodium, which is rapidly establishing itself as one of my more valuable traveling companions.

Nevertheless, morning arrived, and so did I. More or less.

Into Yanaka — With Utako Leading the Way

Our destination was Yanaka, one of Tokyo’s older neighborhoods, and getting there involved a subway ride preceded by a rather elaborate journey through the streets around our hotel.

There were turns, more turns, covered shopping arcades (shōtengai), crowds of Sunday shoppers, and at least one moment when I realized that, left to my own devices, I would probably still be wandering around Asakusa looking for the correct subway entrance.

Fortunately, we had Utako-san, our wonderful guide, identifiable by her red beret and her apparently inexhaustible knowledge of how to get from Point A to Point B in a city that seems determined to provide Points C through Z along the way.

Yanaka is particularly interesting because much of it escaped both the devastating Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II. As a result, it retains something of the character of an older Tokyo: narrow streets, small shops, traditional buildings, and a wonderfully human scale.

It was busy — Sunday, after all — but nothing like the crowds around Asakusa.

And then there were the cats.

Yanaka has become rather famous for them, both real and artistic. The neighborhood is also home to the Asakura Museum of Sculpture, formerly the home and studio of Fumio Asakura, who was particularly known for his cat sculptures.

I photographed some delightful cat-patterned kimono fabric for Basia, and then spotted a white cat sculpture perched above a shop, its tail dangling down as though it were surveying the neighborhood and finding the entire business mildly amusing.

A very catlike attitude, really.

Rice Crackers, Courtesy of Utako

At one little shop, Utako treated us to Japanese rice crackers, or senbei.

These came in a rather astonishing variety of flavors: chili pepper, matcha, sesame, seaweed, and sugar-dusted, among others.

I selected the sugar-dusted variety.

What I especially loved was seeing the woman behind the counter who had made them. There is something so appealing about buying a small treat from the person responsible for creating it, rather than picking up an anonymous package from a supermarket shelf.

And, of course, there was Utako, in her red beret, making sure we all had something tasty.

A Cemetery, a Love Hotel, and an Extremely Hasty Retreat

One of our stops was a small neighborhood cemetery, where Utako explained some of the traditions surrounding Japanese burials.

Japanese funerary practices are generally Buddhist, and cremation is overwhelmingly the norm. Families often maintain a grave that holds the cremated remains of several generations, with descendants returning to clean the grave, leave flowers, burn incense, and pay their respects.

It is a different relationship with burial grounds than the one many of us are accustomed to in the United States. Rather than being simply the resting place of one individual, a family grave can become a continuing point of connection between generations.

And then, shortly after discussing death and the ancestors, Utako introduced us to an entirely different aspect of Japanese life.

A LOVE HOTEL.

Specifically, Hotel Ai.

Now, ai (愛) means “love” in Japanese, so the name is rather wonderfully straightforward.

Utako explained that love hotels developed partly in response to the realities of Japanese housing, where several generations might live together and privacy could be in rather short supply.

After all, romance becomes a little more complicated when otōsan and okāsan — Dad and Mom — are on the other side of a very thin wall.

Love hotels provide private rooms, often with soundproofing, which couples can rent for a few hours or overnight.

Hotel Ai’s sign advertised two-hour “SHORT TIME” visits, three-hour “REST” periods, and overnight accommodations.

I particularly enjoyed the terminology.

“Rest.”

Yes, of course.

And then came the moment that made the entire stop unforgettable.

As Utako was explaining the establishment to our little group of curious tourists, a man walked out of the hotel.

He took one look at us — a group of foreigners standing outside, listening with great interest to an explanation of exactly what this hotel was for — and promptly turned on his heel and walked STRAIGHT BACK INSIDE.

WHOOPSIE.

Apparently, our educational field trip was not quite the discreet atmosphere he had been expecting.

I don’t know whether he was waiting for us to leave or contemplating a more elaborate escape route.

But I do hope he eventually managed to get out.

And Now a Commercial Break/a TikTok Production

Part of the entertainment waiting for our dinner last night was another form of entertainment — a young woman in an alley who was clearly filming some sort of TikTok video.

She was entirely absorbed in her performance, apparently oblivious to the fact that an entire group of people was waiting nearby to get into the restaurant.

There she was, doing her thing.

With her cat ears.

And her tail.

And there we were, standing patiently while the production continued.

I have no idea whether we eventually appeared as bewildered background extras in somebody’s viral masterpiece.

But I suppose there are worse ways to make one’s TikTok debut.

Back to Today, and Lunch, or: Lynn Versus the Volcano

Utako had arranged lunch at a local restaurant, and once again she worked her magic with my dietary restrictions.

My special, off-menu lunch consisted of a bowl of white rice and an absolutely ENORMOUS salad.

And I do mean enormous.

It contained green and red grapes, hard-boiled egg, melon, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and a few pieces of grapefruit cleverly disguised as melon. I discovered those by surprise.

Several of the other women regarded my salad with what I can only describe as considerable envy.

Meanwhile, Lynn had ordered something advertised as coming with “hot pebbles.”

This turned out to be a sizzling beef dish served in a stone bowl heated to approximately the temperature of the Earth’s core.

The beef was still cooking against the inside of the bowl. The bowl itself was so hot that Lynn had to wrap the little restaurant washcloths around her hands to maneuver it.

And even then, she kept accidentally touching the sides.

There was sizzling from the beef, occasional startled reactions from Lynn, and the distinct possibility that lunch might require either oven mitts or emergency services.

I am not entirely certain whether the bowl was intended to cook the beef or the customer.

Possibly both.

Ueno Park, the Valkyries, and the Swords

After lunch, we boarded a local bus for Ueno Park.

It was slow, crowded, and full of people, but I was struck again by how considerate everyone was of one another. Even when public transportation is packed, there seems to be a remarkable awareness of the people sharing the space.

Linda (from Atlanta) and I spent the entire ride crouched over her phone, keeping track of the Valkyries/Dream game. We could only get to the live score updates, so it will be amazing to see the YouTube “best moments” later. The Valkyries managed to pull it out, in what (from our Japanese local bus, score only vantage point) seemed like a Heck of a game. Go Valkyries!

After a walk through Ueno Park, serenaded by a steel drum band playing Beethoven (!) at break neck speed, we ultimately reached the Tokyo National Museum.

Now, for someone who practices iaido, the opportunity to see actual Japanese swords — not reproductions, not photographs, but the real things — is irresistible.

Naturally, I made a beeline for the sword gallery.

There were blades hundreds of years old, displayed with extraordinary care. What is remarkable about them is how deceptively simple they can appear at first glance. A long, beautifully curved piece of steel, perhaps with only the faintest suggestion of a tempering pattern along its edge.

And yet every detail represents generations of accumulated knowledge.

One particularly beautiful tachi blade was made by Tomonari in the thirteenth century, during the Kamakura period. According to the museum, it probably belonged to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the warlord who established the Tokugawa shogunate.

Imagine that: a sword already centuries old when Ieyasu possessed it, and still here for us to admire.

The museum explained that Tomonari came from Bizen Province, one of Japan’s great centers of sword production. The blade’s graceful curvature and subtle steel pattern were lovely.


There were also magnificent sword mountings, including one with elaborate gold decoration and striking turquoise-blue accents. Another had a beautifully wrapped brown handle, with diamond-shaped openings revealing the ornamentation beneath, and wonderfully intricate metal fittings.

Given that I have spent rather a lot of time recently designing my own second iaito, Acala, I found myself examining the handle wrapping, guards, and decorative details with more than casual interest.

It is one thing to select fittings from a catalog.

It is quite another to stand in front of examples of the artistry that inspired them.

And of course, while my own swords are used for the practice of iaido rather than combat, seeing these historical blades makes the connection between our movements and their origins feel much more immediate.

The swords we practice with are not simply equipment.

They belong to a tradition stretching back hundreds of years.

But another sword captured my attention for an entirely different reason.

It was also a thirteenth-century blade, probably made by a swordsmith of the Taima school in Nara. Centuries later, it came into the possession of Ōkubo Ichiō (1818–1888), a samurai and statesman who was also a poet.

And what did he do?

He inscribed one of his poems directly onto the tang of the sword.

There it was, visible in the display: delicate gold-colored writing running along the old steel, a personal expression preserved on a weapon that had already survived centuries of history.

A sword and a poem.

Once the blade was fitted into the handle, only he would know it was there. I found that moving.

There was also a naginata blade, displayed without the long pole on which it would originally have been mounted.

A naginata is a Japanese polearm, with a curved blade attached to a long shaft. It is quite different from the swords we use in iaido, although it belongs to the same broad world of Japanese martial traditions. It was generally used by samurai women, to protect their homesteads.

Seeing the blade on its own was particularly interesting because it allowed me to concentrate on the shape and craftsmanship of the steel rather than the weapon as a whole.

Two Scrolls, Two Very Different Voices

From the swords, I moved into the galleries devoted to Japanese painting and calligraphy.

And this was another part of the museum I had particularly wanted to see.

Recently, I acquired a large hanging calligraphy scroll by Nakahara Nantenbō (1839–1925), a Rinzai Zen master who was born into a samurai family and became famous for his vigorous, almost explosive brushwork.

My scroll was painted when he was 83 years old, using traditional Japanese age reckoning.

It consists of five enormous characters expressing a famous Zen teaching:

Every Day Is a Good Day.

The phrase is associated with the Chinese Chan master Yunmen Wenyan, and its meaning is rather more interesting than the cheerful sentiment it might initially suggest.

It does not mean that every day is pleasant, or easy, or free from difficulties.

It means that each day is the day we have, and that we should meet it fully rather than insist it become something else.

Nantenbō believed that large calligraphy should be executed in a single breath, drawing its energy from the hara, the center of the body.

When you look at his work, you can almost feel that energy coming through the brush.

It is bold, immediate, and utterly unafraid of taking up space.

So I was particularly interested in seeing the museum’s own large calligraphy scrolls, some of them over six feet tall like mine, with characters that seemed to leap off the paper.

There is something thrilling about standing in front of writing that is not merely meant to be read, but felt.

And then there was the other kind of scroll.

I also recently acquired a beautiful Japanese landscape painting, almost the opposite of Nantenbō’s explosive calligraphy.

In this one, mountains dissolve into mist. Dark trees frame a tiny dwelling near the water. Two little flocks of wild geese cross a vast, open sky.

Much of the painting is, in a sense, nothing.

Empty space.

Mist.

Distance.

But that emptiness is precisely what gives it its power.

I found myself looking at the museum’s landscape scrolls, hoping to encounter something that spoke to me in the same way.

There were certainly beautiful examples.

But none quite did.

Which was rather a lovely realization, actually.

I have two Japanese scrolls at home, and they could hardly be more different.

One is all force and presence, an old Zen master throwing his entire being into five enormous characters.

The other is almost a whisper: mountains, mist, birds, and the suggestion of a world continuing quietly beyond the edges of the paper.

And somehow, I love them both.

Perhaps they represent two ways of approaching the same thing.

Sometimes we meet the world with all our energy.

And sometimes we simply become still enough to see it.

The Museum Shop — And Lynn’s Timely Intervention

Before leaving the museum, we wandered into the gift shop.

Now, most museum shops are dangerous places for me under the best of circumstances.

But this one had something especially alarming.

A ramp leading up to an entire SECOND FLOOR.

DEVOTED TO BOOKS.

Just books.

Beautifully arranged shelves and shelves of them.

I looked up.

Lynn looked at me.

And Lynn, displaying the sort of practical judgment that has probably saved us both considerable time and expense during our travels, informed me that I was NOT going up there.

Apparently, she was concerned that if I disappeared into an entire second floor of books, she might never see me again.

She may have had a point.

But I still think it was a little harsh. 🙂

A Diabolo, a Camera, and the Continuing Adventures of Technology

On our way back through Ueno Park, we stopped to watch a street performer doing astonishing tricks with diabolo — hourglass-shaped spools that spin on a string stretched between two sticks.

He sent them flying, caught them, spun them, and generally persuaded them to do things that seemed to defy several established laws of physics.

At one point he was balancing on one leg; at another he was practically kneeling, all while keeping the diabolo spinning and flying through the air.

And that enormous grin!

He was clearly having as much fun as the people watching him.

I took a whole series of photographs, and this is one occasion when I think they tell the story better together than individually.

Speaking of cameras…

You may recall that H’s camera suffered another broken protective lens filter, just as it did in South Africa.

The camera itself is fine, thank goodness, and is safely tucked into my big black puffer tote. But I need a replacement filter.

Utako actually found a camera shop near Ueno that carries them.

Unfortunately, in the excitement of the museum and everything else, we forgot to go.

We will be back in the area Tuesday.

At which point I intend to purchase TWO FILTERS.

One to use, and one to have ready for the next occasion when the universe decides that H’s camera needs another little adventure.

After a couple of subway stops and a walk back to the hotel, Lynn headed off to Don Quijote — affectionately known as Donki — in search of a replacement charging dongle for her Fitbit.

Unfortunately, she also discovered that Jim’s Android phone appears to have fallen out of an unzipped pocket.

That was genuinely upsetting.

Like me, Lynn travels with two phones: her own iPhone and the Android that belonged to her late husband. I have my Android and H’s iPhone.

These are not just spare pieces of technology.

They are little connections to people we love.

We talked about the possibility of her getting a Pixel Watch, which I have come to appreciate enormously. Google now owns Fitbit, so the transition makes some sense, and I love having notifications, Maps, Gemini, and fall detection right on my wrist.

I do still miss the elegance of my Withings watch.

But the Pixel does an astonishing number of things, and at least it doesn’t look like a petit-four strapped to your wrist.

There is that.

Tomorrow, Kamakura

Tomorrow’s optional excursion is to Kamakura, and the weather forecast is more than suggesting rain.

So the elegant haori I have been wearing will give way to my thoroughly practical REI rain jacket.

Not quite the same aesthetic, but then neither is arriving at a temple looking like a drowned rat.

Mostly, I am hoping for a good night’s sleep.

After last night’s gastrointestinal extravaganza, that would be a very welcome development.

Still, as I think back over the day — the old streets of Yanaka, the cats, the rice crackers, the cemetery, the love hotel (and its startled customer), Lynn’s volcanic lunch, the magnificent swords, the calligraphy, the quiet landscapes, the diabolo performer, and all the little mishaps along the way — I keep coming back to the words on my Nantenbō scroll.

The day certainly wasn’t perfect.

It began with a decidedly un-Zen amount of time spent in the bathroom.

But it was full of things worth seeing, learning, laughing about, and remembering.

And perhaps that is exactly the point.

Every Day Is a Good Day.

Even when some of them begin with Imodium.

I never get a percentage from any links I include – but! – if you are curious about Overseas Adventure Travel and want $100 off, call them at 1-800-955-1925 and request their amazing catalog, tell them you were referred by Sandy Shepard, customer number 3087257, and get $100 off your first trip! The catalog is what all good dreams are made of!

Japan Full Day One

Posted on by Sandy

Tokyo — Our First Full Day

Well, the camera filter saga continues.

No replacement yet, although H’s camera has been safely tucked away in my enormous puffer purse, awaiting a visit to a REAL camera shop.

At this point, I think the camera and I are having a disagreement about who is actually in charge.

But enough about that. We have Japan to explore!

Tsukiji: Fish, Food, and Fabulous Fungi

Our first stop was Tsukiji Outer Market, the famous Tokyo food market.

The original wholesale fish market, including its celebrated tuna auctions, moved to Toyosu in 2018, but Tsukiji remains an extraordinary maze of narrow streets, shops, food stalls, restaurants, and an indoor market area.

Fish, of course. Lots and LOTS of fish.

But also seaweed, pickles, tea, produce, kitchen supplies, beautiful knives, and all manner of things you never knew you needed until you saw them.

Our guide, Utako-san, was easily identifiable in her jaunty red beret. A very useful thing when you’re trying to keep track of your guide in a bustling Japanese market!

I was particularly fascinated by the mushrooms. So many varieties, shapes, sizes, and textures! Some looked almost sculptural. (The last photo is wasabi roots.)

I also found some special matcha for Dr. Nic, who has recently become interested in it. What better place to find something for a budding matcha enthusiast than Japan?

Lunch was at a fish restaurant, which, given my rather extensive fish allergies, might sound like an interesting choice.

Cleaning the knives after partitioning an ahi.

Fortunately, Utako-san had everything well in hand.

I was served a version of shōjin ryōri, the traditional vegetarian cuisine associated with Buddhist temples and monks.

It was lovely.

Grilled tofu, sushi made with squash and cucumber, various pickles, and other beautifully prepared little dishes.

No fish. No fish stock. No roe.

And no need to spend lunch wondering whether I’d accidentally eaten something I shouldn’t have.

A very good beginning.

Bonsai: Definitely NOT a Slideshow

Next came the Shunkaen Bonsai Museum, founded in 2002 by the internationally celebrated bonsai master Kunio Kobayashi.

Now, Lynn had visited Japan with OAT last year, and as I understand it, her group’s bonsai experience consisted largely of sitting around watching a slideshow about places in Tokyo where bonsai could be found.

Ho-hum.

I am happy to report that our experience was NOTHING like that.

We actually got to see the trees.

And what trees!

The museum is a wonderful combination of traditional Japanese buildings, beautiful gardens, a koi pond, tea rooms, and hundreds upon hundreds of bonsai, some of extraordinary age.

A view of the garden from the tea house

But it’s not simply a museum where you admire finished works of art.

It’s also a working school.

We saw apprentices carefully wiring the branches of trees, training them into the shapes that, over years and sometimes decades, will create the appearance of ancient trees shaped by wind, weather, and time.

And here’s something I found particularly fascinating: our guide wasn’t Japanese.

He was Italian.

He had been studying under Kobayashi Sensei for three years, having come all the way to Japan specifically to learn this extraordinary art from one of its greatest living masters.

Imagine that. Three years devoted to learning how to understand, shape, and care for miniature trees. More importantly, he said that three years was “barely a start.” WOW.

There was something rather wonderful about watching the apprentices at work while our guide explained what we were seeing.

These weren’t simply little trees in pots – though “bonsai” comes from “bon” (potted) + “sai” (tree). They were living works of art, constantly changing and requiring enormous patience, skill, and an understanding of how each tree naturally wants to grow.

And we were especially lucky.

Kobayashi Sensei himself was there!

He was preparing to leave the following day for a major international bonsai gathering in Curitiba, Brazil — the 15th FELAB International Bonsai Congress.

We happened to visit just in time.

Kobayashi Sensei is a legend in the bonsai world, renowned internationally for his work and for training generations of students from around the globe.

I purchased his English-language how-to book, and he personally signed it for me.

Not a bad souvenir from our first full day in Japan!

We were also given a brochure with a QR code linking to a documentary about the museum. I’m hoping to track down the link and share it here.

Three Rooms, Three Ways of Seeing

Instead of flowers, this tokonoma had a rock with crystals that looked like chrysanthemums
A dragonfly in a tokonoma, representing autumn

One of the most fascinating parts of the museum was its traditional Japanese rooms, where bonsai were displayed in tokonoma — special alcoves designed for displaying art, flowers, scrolls, and other carefully chosen objects.

We were shown three different styles: sō, gyō, and shin.

The first, sō, was the most rustic and informal. The wood was relatively rough-hewn, and the supporting pillar still had its bark.

The middle style, gyō, was more refined. The bark had been removed, and the woodwork was more carefully finished.

Finally, shin, the most formal, had beautiful polished surfaces, including dark lacquered wood.

But the really interesting part came when our guide explained how we were supposed to LOOK at the bonsai.

Although the trees were elevated on display stands, they were intended to be appreciated from a seated position on the tatami mats.

In seiza.

Ah.

Seiza.

My old friend. Or perhaps more accurately, my old adversary.

Those of you following my iaido adventures know that seiza, the traditional Japanese kneeling position, and I have something of a complicated relationship.

But I wanted to see what he meant.

So down I went, as best I could manage.

And you know what?

It made an enormous difference.

Standing up, you’re looking down at the top of the tree.

From seiza, you’re looking into the tree. You can see the branches, their arrangement, the spaces between them, and the way the entire composition is meant to be appreciated.

Same tree. Same room.

Completely different experience.

And it occurred to me that this is one of the things I particularly enjoy about Japanese arts: the idea that how you position yourself, how you approach something, and even how you look at it are all part of the experience.

A bonsai isn’t simply an object to be admired.

There’s a relationship between the tree and the person looking at it.

And sometimes, to understand that relationship, you have to change your own perspective.

Literally.

Tea Ceremony: The Memory Is Willing, but…

Next door, in the tea ceremony building, a group was practicing the Japanese tea ceremony.

I studied the tea ceremony at Green Gulch Zen Center last year, and I found myself trying to remember how to fold the special cloth — the fukusa — used in the ritual purification of the tea utensils.

Surely I could remember at least that much?

Nope.

Not a chance.

Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, there is probably a perfectly good set of instructions.

Unfortunately, it appears to have been filed alongside the location of things I put away “in a safe place.”

Sigh.

A Little Breathing Room

We’ve now got about an hour and a half before our official welcome dinner.

I’m using the time to catch up on this blog, download photographs, and generally attempt to keep my travel memories organized before they escape.

As you may recall, I began yesterday’s post because I woke up on the airplane with a memory from eighth grade and thought, “I’d better write that down before I forget it.”

Which I did.

And then forgot I’d written it down.

Fortunately, I apparently know myself rather well.

Tonight we have our welcome dinner at a local restaurant, followed by an evening on our own.

And, as established yesterday, evening is for blogging.

Although after a full day of fish markets, mushrooms, bonsai, seiza, and tea ceremonies, I may have to negotiate that arrangement with my eyelids.

Japan is off to a very good start.

I never get a percentage from any links I include – but! – if you are curious about Overseas Adventure Travel and want $100 off, call them at 1-800-955-1925 and request their amazing catalog, tell them you were referred by Sandy Shepard, customer number 3087257, and get $100 off your first trip! The catalog is what all good dreams are made of!

Japan, At Last! (Or: The Walls Actually Move!)

Posted on by Sandy

Tokyo, October 29-30 2026 — Arrival Day

“The walls actually move! And the ceiling itself is moveable!”

That was my very first line as the (not particularly nice) Lieutenant Pinkerton in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

I was in eighth grade.

Yes, eighth grade.

(I’ll wait while you catch up to the implications of that statement . . . )

Back then, our school had a rather extraordinary tradition: each year, the 8th grade was required to perform one of the San Francisco Opera’s current productions, in English, and then we would go see the actual dress rehearsal. This was before OperaText, when audiences had to figure out what was going on without helpful translations floating above the stage.

I remember remarkably little of my performance, other than that opening line and my first little solo — a toast:

“America forever! The Stars and Stripes Forever!”

And, wouldn’t you know it, I can still hum the tune. In fact, I’ve been humming it while writing this.

That experience began a lifelong fascination with opera — and with Japan.

And now, mumble mumble years later, here I am.

Japan. At last.

Getting There, in Considerable Comfort

The United Polaris lie-flat seats were terrific. They passed out slippers (which we could keep) and pajamas (which we could not), but I had brought my own.

Chad and I had carefully assembled what we called my “threshold kit,” tucked into the bottom of my puffer travel bag, containing everything necessary to transform myself from Reasonably Presentable International Traveler into Woman Who Intends to Sleep.

Among other things, this included my lovely gray Quince pajamas and silk eye mask.

I have to admit, lounging around in my own rather elegant pajamas while everyone else was wearing the airline’s S-M-L-but-really-quite-boxy light-blue versions felt just a tiny bit bougie. 😉

Dinner was good, although it included a beet salad.

Now, I KNOW about beets. I KNOW about white shirts. I even put my napkin ON TOP OF my chest, rather than in my lap.

And yet.

One tiny drop of beet juice.

One white shirt.

Of course.

Fortunately, we’re staying in Tokyo for a while, so off to the laundry it goes. ARGH!

Before settling in, I gave the purser a little box of individually wrapped Ghirardelli chocolates, with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front, as a thank-you for taking care of us on the flight.

She was VERY delighted.

I love these little boxes. They’re attractive, distinctly San Franciscan, and made of nice cardboard rather than metal, which makes them both a little less expensive than you’d expect and, to my mind, easier to recycle.

A small gesture, but a happy one.

Landing in Tokyo

I also watched a very good documentary about cryptocurrency, Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, by actor Ben McKenzie. We’d discussed his book at book club in connection with one of our earlier reads, so I was particularly interested. Definitely worth watching.

Then into the pajamas I went.

I actually started writing this while still on the plane. It was 6:45 p.m. California time, and we were scheduled to arrive around 3:00 p.m. Japan time — roughly midnight back home. (Easiest way to figure the time difference: Take California time, change a.m. to p.m., then add 3. So, if it’s 6 p.m. in Cali, 6 p.m. -> 6 a.m. + 3 = 9 a.m. in Tokyo. To go the other way, swap a.m. for p.m., then subtract 3. So, in our case, arriving at 3 p.m. meant 3 p.m. -> 3 a.m. – 3 hours . . . Midnight Cali time. Until Daylight Savings Time of course . . . Which is this Sunday 😉 )

I had awakened with that Madama Butterfly toast running through my head and decided I had better write it down before another nap erased it.

Funny, the things that come back to you after fifty-something years.

Tokyo! And a Very Long Taxi Nap

We landed, collected our luggage, and headed into Tokyo.

Yep – I purchased a Japan sticker to add to those H & I had fun putting on the hard-sided carry on – and ceremoniously added it this morning.

The airport transfer takes about an hour and a half, which sounds like a long time after an international flight.

I wouldn’t know.

I fell into a deep, apparently snoring sleep for most of it.

Very efficient sightseeing, really. Close your eyes at the airport, open them in Tokyo.

Our hotel is the b asakusa.

The room is a bit odd, especially when you consider that it’s intended for two people. There’s not a great deal of floor space, but there ARE lots of ledges and shelf-like surfaces instead of conventional tables.

Actually, that’s pretty clever. You can put things down without furniture taking up precious room.

Japanese spatial efficiency, lesson number one.

Unfortunately, unpacking brought a rather less pleasant discovery.

H’s camera — which I had carefully carried with me the ENTIRE TIME — had, once again, suffered a shattered lens filter.

AGAIN.

This happened in South Africa, too.

I have absolutely no idea HOW. The camera was never out of my possession!

GRRRRRRR.

Fortunately, the lens itself appears to have survived, but the filter has to be replaced. I mentioned this to our guide, Utako-san, whom we met at breakfast. She’s lovely, and now knows that one of our first little missions is finding a REAL camera shop.

And this time?

I am buying TWO filters.

Apparently I need a spare for my spare.

A Little Shrine, a Kitchen Street, and Our First Tokyo Evening

One of the loveliest surprises was waiting right outside our hotel.

Just to the left of the entrance is a small Shinto shrine, with a large red torii gate. At night, the shrine is chained off, but it’s still a rather wonderful thing to find tucked into the neighborhood.

A few steps farther in the same direction is Kappabashi, Tokyo’s famous “Kitchen Street,” known for its cookware, knives, dishes, and all manner of restaurant supplies.

The weather was absolutely perfect — that wonderful temperature when you don’t need to think about being too hot or too cold.

So we walked.

It wasn’t particularly late, but it was already dark. At this time of year, the sun sets around 5:00 p.m., which makes even an early evening feel quite atmospheric.

After all those hours on the plane, it felt marvelous simply to be outside, moving our legs, looking into shop windows, and taking in the fact that we were actually in Japan.

No grand monument. No elaborate excursion.

Just a pleasant evening walk, a little shrine, and a street full of kitchen shops.

A rather lovely introduction.

Today: Fish, Bonsai, and the Beginning of the Adventure

We met Utako-san at breakfast, and our first full day promises to be busy.

We’re starting with a bus tour and then visiting Tsukiji Outer Market, the famous food market. The wholesale fish auctions moved elsewhere some years ago, but the outer market is still full of shops, restaurants, and food stalls.

We’re having lunch there, which should be interesting given my allergies to fish, fish stock, dashi, and roe. Fortunately, Utako-san has been thoroughly briefed.

Afterward, we’re visiting a bonsai museum — looking at beautiful miniature trees rather than attempting to create our own — with some time for independent exploration as well.

Then there’s our official welcome dinner at a local restaurant.

And after that?

An evening to ourselves.

Although, as we all know, evening is for blogging. Ha ha.

For now, though, I’m here. In Japan.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, an eighth-grade Lieutenant Pinkerton is still singing about the Stars and Stripes.

Who would have thought?

I never get a percentage from any links I include – but! – if you are curious about Overseas Adventure Travel and want $100 off, call them at 1-800-955-1925 and request their amazing catalog, tell them you were referred by Sandy Shepard, customer number 3087257, and get $100 off your first trip! The catalog is what all good dreams are made of!