Twelve Days of Beautiful Contrasts
About a month ago, I returned from my very first trip to Asia—twelve days in Japan, starting and ending in Tokyo. I traveled with my college roommate, Don, who moved to Takasaki after graduation and taught English for ten years, becoming fluent in the process — enough to sing a few of his favorite Japanese pop songs our one night at karaoke. He’d been wanting to return to some old haunts, see friends and students, and, after five years of living full-time in San Francisco, I wanted to explore what was west — but really, Far East.
We cut a swath across the center of the country. Our first three days in the Arakawa neighborhood of Tokyo were in a great non-touristy landing spot, with a terrific yakitori joint around the corner from our no-frills Airbnb. We had a day trip to Kamakura and Enoshima, and took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Takasaki and had one night there. The subsequent days were of a cadence Don and I were accustomed to in our trips to Spain, which will be familiar to many road trippers: wake up, get a meal / tank up, drive to the next town, see some sights, eat lunch someplace, find the place we’re sleeping for the night, settle in (but not unpack), then a brief rest while researching the dinner options; get dinner, stumble home, repeat. With this cadence, we had one night each in Kusatsu, Matsumoto, Takayama, and Ainokura, two nights in Kanazawa, then another train back to Tokyo for two more nights.
It was an extraordinary introduction to the culture and landscape, the immense intensity of Tokyo which manages to maintain its intimacy in neighborhood scale, the unassuming hipness of medium-size cities which straddled quietness with reach, and the expansive quietude of mountain towns and Buddhist shrines. I already know I want to return and explore more of the most northern and southern parts of the country, trek more around Tokyo’s neighborhoods, and eat more delicious food. Speaking of:
One of my goals for the trip was to experience new flavors; this is easily accomplished merely by being there, further enhanced when you don’t order from the English menu (even if it’s handed to you). Among the many delectable, intricate, nuanced dishes I had — and one of the three things I would not have eaten state-side — was horse sashimi. It was prepared very simply, eight slices on a plate, with fresh raw ginger and raw garlic. With instruction from the chef (above, second row, center), we put the ginger in the soy sauce for dipping, and folded a slice of garlic within the 1x4" slice of meat. My first bite made me laugh out loud, it was so deliciously buttery, fresh, and special. The flavor wasn’t too dissimilar from a beef carpaccio, but the texture was smoother. Somewhere along our route—likely fueled by a few carafes of junmai sake since I can’t recall where exactly—we ordered slightly seared chicken, almost like you’d treat a tuna steak: raw inside. It, too, was deliciously buttery and warm, not fleshy as you might expect. There was life-changing duck soba with a slice of yuzu (third row, left), many pickled things, and one night at a tapas restaurant where everyone — including the Japanese — was speaking Spanish.
Walking around a place where you don’t speak the language leaves lots of room to appreciate other interactions, and heightens other senses. I had lots of time and headspace to contemplate the simple intentionality required to use chopsticks: picking up one grain of rice requires a harder tension than scooping up a small cluster. My depth of field adjusted to match the object I was picking up; there were hills and valleys inside a small bowl of pickled fiddleheads, mountains on a slice of mackerel in vinegar, impossible worlds in a tempura piece of broccoli. This state of mind was meditative, appreciative, humble, present.
I was struck by the sounds of places, the aural texture, the din that typically passes unnoticed—disappears, in fact, the more you adjust to being there. But not so for me. A rainy Sunday morning streetcar ride was a veritable symphony: female pre-recorded announcements in Japanese then English, followed by male conductor announcements in Japanese—his -des word-ending sound dovetailing perfectly with the esssshhhh of the streetcar’s airbrakes; fake doorbells requesting a stop paired with actual metal bells which dinged twice to signal the stop’s arrival; the undercurrent nnnnnnnn of electric lights punctuated by the one passenger speaking, repetitively, which might have been a verbal tic yet was nonetheless so perfectly orchestrated it all fit beautifully.
While I was there, I was trying to understand the coexistence of a very deferential and hierarchical culture—in which everybody has a role and responsibility and sees to it without resistance—contrasting intensely with the super-hyper expressiveness of cartoony characters. This widespread cuteification campaign applies to inanimate objects, avatar tellers at touchscreen ATMs, aural notifications on trains and other sounds, and even human tones of voice. It’s arguable that in a culture that discourages individual expression, objects assume doing the work for you.
Some of the most contrasting experiences came from thinking about place, architecture, and space. There were mountain towns with six houses; in cities there were buildings sandwiched between others that were no greater than six feet wide. There must be a different approach to zoning, and I loved its effects even on a city block:
It was in Ainokura that I wrote one of three pretty okay haiku:
i can understand
praying to a mountain god
so big and so close
We planned the trip to arrive during peak sakura season, and we totally lucked out with how fantastic the bloom was this year. Sakura flowers were wafting in the air, still on the trees (and budding), quickly swept from the ground, but persistent in some of the food — ice cream and sweets, mainly.
One day, in Kenrokuen Park in Kanazawa, I wrote another pretty okay haiku:
she knelt by a pond
clapping for carp to surface
turning heads below
I spent some time on a bridge:
Some of the temples we saw were spared from bombing during wartime. The solo Buddha statue (below) survived a tsunami in the 1600s; the temple structure previously enclosing it was claimed by the ocean.
There was some pretty terrific modern architecture, too:
Here’s six seconds of water reflecting on the ceiling of a temple in Myojo-ji:
Everywhere we went, there was harmoniousness and integration with nature. Nearly every building entrance had some potted plant, or a much more vigorous expression of bringing the outside in. I loved the contrast of architectural and building grids with the natural forms of flora and fauna:
Even the public restroom (above right) had enthusiasm for it. And so:
that “all-flower” smell
of a flower shop? Tokyo’s
similarly dense
In the vernacular, To-kyo is two syllables.
In 1989, when I started college at Clark University in post-industrial Worcester, MA, I became fascinated with the texture and variety of manhole covers. Perhaps it was elevating a common and forgotten object, or perhaps it was actually taking note of things you see every day but don’t pay any attention to, but I researched and even did a short video on the matter. Since then, I’ve always enjoyed looking at them, and the ones I saw all over Japan were beautiful in their variety, size, type, and color:
Finally, and because I am a designer, I took a series of signage old & new, sometimes both in the same sign.
I’m happy to share these reflections, thoughts, feelings, insights, and photos. Last night I had a dream of fresh crab bread (with legs a-kickin’), so I knew I had to finish this post to free up the capacity to go back.
