Damp Rid

Japanese homes don't come insulated, so whatever the outside weather is, it affects the inside to a greater degree than in America.  There is also no central air, each individual room has their own remote controlled heat/air conditioner unit.  While very efficient as you only use energy to cool/heat the room you are actually using, it has caused some lifestyle changes.  In the winter I would wake up from a warm bed and shiver as I ran downstairs to shave.  Now it is summer.  In the Kanto plain we experience "super" humidity as the winds shift to bring in moisture from the ocean, becoming trapped here against the mountains ringing the flat lands.  With the air so moist, and having no insulation, our house is nearly as sticky inside as it is out.  We have been using the A/C sparingly, trying to save power as the region has lost significant electrical capacity due to the Fukishima Nuclear plant being offline, but still use it in at least one room at all times to keep AJ cool.  This has resulted in the copious use of damp rid products and whatever the Japanese equivalent is.  Our home has been invaded by damp rid in every room, stair well, and closet.



We know they are working as they started collecting water immediately.  The damp rid we bought on base (in English) said they work for 60 days, but after two weeks the bags are nearly full.  We also have tried Japanese products, and those are working very well, though we aren't sure we employed them correctly.  Cannot wait for dry air again in Fall, but until then we are fighting natures desire to turn us into mushrooms!

Cutest Poodle Raincoat Ever

In preparation for the rainy season (which is almost over now), I bought AJ a new rain jacket!  He is adorable as Stitch!  And while he may look miserable in this picture, his little tail wags when I put the coat on him.  This little poodle hates walking in the rain, so the raincoat really helps.  The little kids in our neighborhood love seeing him walking around as Stitch, and I love looking down at those big blue ears flopping around.  Adorable Jacket….Dry Poodle….Happy Angela….Rainy Season WIN!

Sweet Donations

Being obsessed with Japanese Kit Kats becomes even better when the Kit Kats are supporting a good cause!  In the aftermath of the March earthquake and tsunami, Nestle released the Tohoku regional Kit Kat nationwide in an effort to raise money for disaster relief.  For every Kit Kat sold, Nestle will donate 10 yen to the relief effort.  It is very unusual for a regional Kit Kat to be released Nationwide, and though I had already found this Kit Kat on a trip to northern Japan, I bought a few to support the effort.



This bright green Kit Kat is an edamame (soy bean) paste in what I believe is a mochi ball.  I think this is edamame paste mochi, though I have never had Zunda before, so I am not positive.  I love the bright green color of the chocolate, and I really enjoyed the taste as well.  But most importantly, I enjoyed knowing that my Kit Kat obsession is going to a great cause.  Please remember that while the devastation may not be in the news still, the people of Japan are in great need of help.  It takes a very long time to recover from such traumatic events, and I encourage all of you to continue donating to the relief effort.

Shizuoka Beach Angels

On the first MWR tour Angela and I went on after she returned to Japan took us to Shizuoka prefecture where we learned of a strange ancient legend/myth that must have had something lost in translation.  We traveled to a picturesque black sand beach on a curved bay with a commanding view of Mt. Fuji.  Except it was cloudy, so we saw no Fuji-san, but saw posters of it looking awesome.  Along the beach were groves of coastal pines, apparently ancient, and many of them were tagged.

It was explained to us they were numbered to be either be protected from construction or have been treated against pests, not sure which one was true (our local tour guide spoke good english and was great but we had some trouble believing some of her answers to questions as they seemed THAT far fetched).  As we walked up to the beach we visited a shinto shrine and were enlightened of the local history.  We heard two legends.

The first:  At some point in the past, angels saw how beautiful the beach was and came down from the heavens to bath in the surf. They would hang their holy garments on pine tree branches before getting in the water.  At one such gathering of heavenly spirits a local fisherman happened upon the garments hanging on the trees and took some for himself.  When one angel discovered she had no clothes she was in distress as she should not return to heaven without clothes (obviously).  She came across the fisherman somehow and he made her dance for him to get her clothes back. End of story.  There are statues of a dancing angel near the beach.

Second version: The angels come down and bath, and again a fisherman steals one set of clothes except this time he hides them in his home.  The naked angel cannot return to heaven and turns to a certain local fisherman who happens to be nearby for help.  He houses her, and they promptly fall in love and get married.  They have a child and are living their life when the former angel discovers her clothes hidden in the home.  When the fisherman comes home from work she is wearing her clothes and says goodbye, returning to heaven. He is left as a single dad.  End of story. There is a statue of him holding a bit of angelic fabric and staring into the sky.

Those are the versions we heard, and everything in the area was themed around the legends of the bathing angels.  In fact a fragment of the angelic clothing is said to be enshrined in the local shrine (which reminded me of medieval catholic saint relics).  Our tour guide then informed us of a fact that I cannot believe.  We were marveling at the black, very clearly volcanic sand (you can SEE Mt. Fuji) when she comments that the sand was white until a few decades ago when the shinkansen line was built (which is no where near there) and the associated pollution (electric lines) caused the sand to turn black.  I think she was very environmentally conscious... but wrong.  If pollution had been that bad, the ancient trees would have died...

But we had a good time and enjoyed a unique cultural experience! We never know what we will experience here, so come visit where everyday is an adventure!

Kyoto on Ice!

It’s June, it’s HOT, AJ is waking me up at night slurping his water dish dry… so I am going to post about a snowy winter trip to the ancient city of Kyoto to cool off.  Our first trip to Kyoto was in July 2010, on a one day trip to see the Gion festival about warding off evil disease kamis… I think, and enjoyed the few sites we saw.  To save money and leave days (time off) we have utilized the base tours as much as possible, and while we want to spend much more time in Kyoto, we figured why not get a cheap tour to four famous spots in the city.  The bus ride from the Kanto plain takes anywhere from 6-10 hours depending on traffic, but Angela and I have always enjoyed bus trips (perhaps stemming from all the band trips we took in high school and college).  Leaving in the cold dark of morning, we were woken by a traffic jam on the freeway, caused by a blinding snowstorm.  The bus plowed through and we arrived in Kyoto on time.



 Our first stop was Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺), an ancient Buddhist/shinto complex built along the side of a mountain stream/water fall that has some purification significance.  To get to the complex we had to walk through narrow streets full of street vendors selling shrine trinkets for pilgrims and tourists while in increasing snow flurries.



We walked past the pagoda and through an old building built in the 1600s, with a gigantic wooden stage. The stage was cordoned off as it was explained to us that it was constructed without a single nail… pretty incredible! 

 

Since we don’t really understand the language or cultural subtleties, we always come across something we think is completely random but must make perfect sense to the Japanese.  Located within the complex was a small Shinto shrine dedicated to finding your soul mate, we think.  There were two “lovers” stones with an associated legend we did not grasp, and were instructed that if a couple stands at each stone some indication of their love or compatibility would be manifested.  Again, I am not really sure what we saw, but took pictures of the sign in English!


 

Kiyomizu-dera is known for its pure water pouring out a rock waterfall into three distinct streams.  Each one symbolizes health, longevity, or success, respectfully, and as a visitor you would stand in line to use a long wooden cup to scoop up the water you desired.  Except we were freezing and did not want to get cold, but watched others in our tour group drink to health, longevity, or success!

 

We had some free time so wandered around the commercial district, accepting hot green tea and purchasing regionally flavored kit-kats (success!).  We also tempted fate on some cursed stairs.  According to our tour guide if you slipped down this particular set of stairs you would die within three years.  Angela and I walked carefully and made it without falling, so good for us!

 

After thawing out on the bus we drove quickly to our second stop, the Moon Bridge of Togetsukyo on the outskirts of town.  On an picturesque shallow river in the rolling mountains was a 20^th Century reproduction of a 12^th Century bridge emperors in the past would utilize to get to an important shrine across the river.  Around the bridge was a park and numerous stores and restaurants with rickshaw pullers waiting for tourists.  Except an exceptionally sharp windchill prevented anyone from wanting to spend much time outside, and we really didn’t understand what was so significant about the bridge (it had been rebuilt with concrete and did not seem so special to us, but it was very cold and we didn’t understand its history). 



The pour rickshaw pullers were jumping up and down for warmth.  Angela and I walked the main strip looking for a good place to eat, eventually settling on a noodle place overlooking the river.  We had hot tea, beer, and steaming udon noodles.  The meal hit the spot exactly and off we were to our next tour on the whirlwind day.

 

Our third stop was at one of Japan’s most iconic images, Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺, Temple of the Golden Pavilion).  An enormously wealthy samurai built a house with gold paint on a man-made pond in a beautifully sculptured garden.  Somewhere in history Buddhists turned it into a shrine, perhaps for meditation, I am fuzzy on the history as we got a fly by explanation due the shrines popularity. 



Despite the cold this was the busiest location we visited all day.  Snow piles made the golden building stand out even more, and it sort of glowed when the sun shone directly on it.  Apparently you are supposed to get there right at sunrise to get the days first full sunlight on the building for optimum viewing.  We only had a few minutes to gaze at the building as a long line sort of pushed us through and we had to make our next stop. Angela was playing with her new dlsr camera I had bought for her and was pushed along with the crowd, but managed to get some good pics. We would like to spend more time at the Golden Pavilion, but in a warmer season.

 

Our last stop was at a Nijo Castle (二条城), a Tokugawa built complex with a wealth of history.  We had actually visited hurriedly the gardens of the castle on our previous visit to Kyoto, but Angela and I had stumbled onto it and only had a few minutes.  This time we got a great tour and got to enter the actual castle building.  Nijo Castle was built by the Tokugawa shoguns in the early 1600s to give them a proper place to reside when visiting the emperor (they had moved the capital to Edo, or modern Tokyo which means “eastern capital”). 



When the emperor regained political power with the Meiji Restoration, the last Tokugawa Shogun in the 1800s relinquished power to the emperor at Nijo Castle, and it is well preserved today.  We had a great tour of the magnificent interior, resplendent with “nightingale” floors.  The wooden floors surrounding the palace had iron hooks underneath them so when you walked on them they “chirped” announcing the presence of would be assassins (ninjas).  While maintained, the floors still sang of our presence!



 Large tatami floored rooms for the shogun and his entourage were painted with beautiful tapestries on the ceilings.  We were shown hidden rooms where body guards would hide in case their samurai lord was in danger (apparently powerful people were marked men in the Edo period). And again we encountered samurai dressed manikins, as we have in virtually every historic place in Japan, which I find a little creepy.  But we had a great interior tour we did not get last time, and then set off on a winding garden tour.  It was neat, but frigid.  I wish we had time to buy tickets to the tea house on property, as we could have warmed up to some hot matcha, but we had to press. 

 

Soon our whirlwind day in Kyoto was over again and piled onto the bus. A great thing about Japan in winter is the vending machines found on every corner (even along hiking paths) that contain hot and cold drinks.  We bought several cans of hot chocolate or coffee drinks and used them to warm our hands and neck.  Soon I will have enough leave and some spending money and we intend on riding the shinkansen down to Kyoto to spend more than a few hours there, we welcome anyone interested in visiting one of the worlds most cultured cities!

Sakura Spring

Spring in Japan is bathed in pink, as cherry blossoms (sakura) awaken the dull winter landscape and life begins anew.   Each year weathermen forecast the precise area for peak local sakura viewing with detailed maps, much like the fall foliage tracker in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but much more intense.  Large crowds flock to castle parks and along river fronts to hold a “hanami,” a sort of picnic where one is to contemplate the shortness and beauty of life extrapolating from the brief life of the plentiful pink blossoms.  Of course, that could be the sake talking as these picnics often turn into all day/night parties of a very festive atmosphere where offices will send out a person to hold their spot of ground and party until the moonlight illuminates the sakura.  Commercially, the sakura season does well as stores sell any and everything Sakura themed. Starbucks even makes a Sakura Latte flavored with real petals here.  The springtime Sakura and Hanami are very uniquely Japanese that took on a somber tone this year though.  Sakura had just begun to bloom in southern Japan, on Kyushu, when the March 11 earthquake hit.  Every year the military base here opens its doors to the locals and have a large Sakura picnic, as most of the major streets on base are lined with large, old Japanese Cherry trees.  The base picnic was canceled as most families had evacuated, and Angela left without seeing any blooms.  I didn’t even have a camera to take pictures of our very own Sakura blooming in our front yard, so I bought one and tried to enjoy the beauty.  The trees really were magnificent, just sad this year.  The petals became so voluminous that walking into a breeze it looked like pink snow, and streams soon ran pink with petals.  A few short weeks and the blooms were gone, and a saddened country remained.  Next year the Sakura season will likely be quite an event as Japan marks one year since the earthquake and will no doubt enjoy hanami again and contemplate the shortness and beauty of life (and I can enjoy it with a Hanami of our own with AJ, Angela, and myself contemplating the beauty of life, though AJ will likely spend it begging for food!)

Singing Felines for our anniversary

This June marked Angela and mine FIFTH wedding anniversary… and quite a memorable and exhausting five years it has been.  To celebrate, here living on the outskirts of Tokyo, we went to see a unique a production of an English play performed in Japanese.  Since I met Angela, she has always been a fan of musicals, and have accompanied her to live performances of RENT and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.  While I usually tolerate the show for her sake, I was blown away by the Japanese production of CATS.  In the past year a theatre company teamed up with Canon (the camera/printer company) to fund and construct a building specifically to house the CATS musical.  The Canon CATS Theatre takes up prime real estate in downtown Yokohama, with its own train station, and has at least one showing per day since it opened last Fall.  Since it plays so often, the theatre does not have to be that large and makes any seat you purchase close to the stage.  With the building constructed specially  for CATS, the entire auditorium is decorated like a junk yard (setting for the musical), complete with a circular, revolving stage.  We bought what we thought were expensive but good seats not realizing any seat was good, and was excited to find out we were only a few rows from the stage.  While I usually daydream a bit in musicals, I was very entertained and could follow the story, mostly, though it was all in Japanese.  I had never seen CATS, and did not realize how much ballet type dancing was in it.  Mostly I was impressed by the crowd interaction the performers had, at one point grabbing an audience member for a dance routine.  There was only one point in the show I found myself a little lost as to what was happening, but overall had a good time and recommend seeing CATS in a foreign language.  After the show we went to a quiet Japanese restaurant and had tempura and noodles. 

 

I love my wife and can’t believe all we have been through in five years!