Mt Fuji

Sunday 8/31= Fuji day. The myriad members of the Tomioka International Association met in front of Tomioka junior high school to embark on a day long Fuji site-seeing trip. We had to meet Mr. Imai first at 7 a.m. which was a bit painful. The tour bus was full of more foreigners than I ever thought could exist in Tomioka. Maybe its because I assumed they were all japanese until I heard them talking. There were maybe 20 chinese people, some Indonesians, a little Nepalese girl with her Japanese mom, and some other people who I didn't really get to talk to so i will never know. Then, of course, there were the Japanese teachers from the Japanese lesson aspect of Tomioka International Association. Trey and I were the most obvious, and only non-asian foreigners, but it was nice to know we weren't alone. I was also amazed because my morning Japanese class with Tomioka International Association has 3 students including me. The night class must be packed because there were so many people that I had never seen before.
Anyways, we all got on the bus and headed off to the mount Fuji. The bus was very crowded. The Japanese apparently had this genius idea to build extra seats that were collapsible, but when you needed them they could fold out into the aisle space. It of course takes a bit of forethought and coordination since once the seat is down no one can walk up and down the idea, so the idea never caught on in America. I had brought some Japanese flashcards on the bus to practice. Trey and I decided to ask the guy in the tiny fold out seat next to me a question we had about one of the flashcards. He couldn't really answer our question about the bizarre japanese object, because, as it turned out, he was Indonesian, not Japanese. He is a volunteer Japanese teacher at the night classes. He spoke better Japanese than us and pretty good English. Given those two facts, and the fact that we were all smashed together in the tiny alloted bus space, we decided to force him to be our buddy. We also forced his Indonesian friend to be our buddy too. Indonesian friend spoke less English though.
Our first stop was some mountain village place. You could buy lots of food and souvenirs and food souvenirs there. There were also some ponds with bright blue and yellow fish. One pond was a vary deep well looking thing that was evidently a spring from Mount Fuji. We drank water out of little metal cups. The water is supposed to be good for you. It tasted sweet and clean either way.
The next stop was a visitor center. It was distance away from mount Fuji. I guess the idea was that we would be able to see Mount Fuji and take pictures before we actually drove up the mountain. The best laid plans of mice and men. It was cloudy. The mountain was completely enwrapped in clouds. Every once in a while you could see a tiny slice poke out. I think the height of the mountain keeps the clouds there on a consistent basis. Only very rarely is there a clear view.
Next up was the fifth stage of Mount Fuji. Fifth stage is halfway up the mountain. It is the furthest point that you can drive up. The next half of the mountain is hiking over. There were lots of restaurants and souvenir shops in the area. The place was full of hikers stretching and getting ready for the long hike. There were lines of assembled hikers throwing their fists in the air and shouting the Japanese equivalent of "we can do it". We looked at part of the mountainside and the tiny, distant line of hikers winding up the mountain in between swaths of fog. Trey, our Indonesian friends Tiki and ???, and I ate a 5 minute lunch so we could get back to the bus at the appointed time. Turns out we were a half hour early, so we loitered around with the hikers.
But we weren't finished with Fuji yet. We bussed down the mountain again and went to a big lake. There were pedal-propelled swan boats, which reminded me of Boston. Mount Fuji was in the background. But to us Mount Fuji was just the giant clump of clouds. A few of us got ushered onto a small motor boat. We went on a whirlwind trip across the lake and back. The little Nepalese girl was in the back of the boat, being very cute. We enjoyed the speed and the views of the other mountains that weren't Fuji, which we could actually see. We regrouped with the land-bound ones and re-embarked for our final stop.
We drove and drove until we saw lots of little fields on peaches, strung up on lattices. Each peach has a tiny bag tied around it as it grows. The there were lattices full of grapes that had little napkin-like squares placed on top of each bunch of grapes. We ended up at a wine factory. There was a brief brief tour through the tiny factory. Then there we a tasting room. To be honest, i was really excited about the wine factory. Wine isn't very popular in Japan. Even though wine is my drink of choice in America and Europe, where I had at least a bottle a week habit, I have not been able to drink any wine since I have been Japan. However, I was in for some dreadful disappointment. Pretty much everything in the tasting room was a sweet wine or sweet fruit liqueur. Mind-numbingly sweet. The one or two "regular" wines they had there were pretty bad. They were flat and flavorless. And even though it might have just been a plain old red wine, it still tasted sweeter somehow. The tasting experience is very different too. Instead of someone pouring you sips of wine in wine glasses, you pick up a plastic cup and go to the numerous barrels set out in the room. The barrels are filled with ice and in the ice they set a punch bowl filled with whatever wine. you will your glass with a tiny metal pitcher attached to a rod. The ambiance was nil. Oh well. I guess it will be imported wine for me.
The rest of the story is boring from here. We hit traffic on the way back, making it a 4 hour drive back to Tomioka. Trey, who decided it would be a brilliant idea to only sleep for an hour the night before, slept in the seat next to me the whole way home with his body sprawled all into my personal space. I chatted with our buddies. There was a kareoke stint, with people singing old japanese songs. Our Indonesian buddies sang most of the songs. After we finally got back to Tomioka, Mr. Imai took us to a katsu restaurant. He made us eat lots of food and drink a giant mug of beer. The end.

My last day in Tokyo, though I didn't really spend much of it there. I tried to wake up and get going early, but it didn't quite happen that way. Eventually though, I got all packed up, checked out and headed to Kamakura. Kamakura is a city about an hour away from Tokyo by train. It was briefly the capital of the shogun government- from about 1100 to 1300. Because of this little flash in the sun, Kamakura has many, many temples, shrines, and other historical stuffs. most of the buildings were destroyed at one point or another by fire or storms or earthquakes. Nothing is really original, but as soon as something destroyed a temple, they rebuilt it exactly as it was. Some of the reconstructions are still pretty old. Some are from the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s. I wanted to go there to experience more of Japan's traditional past.
I also managed to somehow avoid the modern efficiency of Japan's present. I somehow got away with only paying $1.30 for an hour train ride. Anyways, I started off at Engaku-ji temple. Engaku-ji is a zen buddhist temple. Its a large complex of buildings. Its got a lot of trees surrounding it, so there is a nice atmosphere. A two-story pagoda-ed main gate lets you know you are entering a holy space... or maybe thats the foot-high wooden floor beam you just tripped over. I encountered some monks up in a high, out of the way garden. There were little statues nestled in the rock face in tiny caves. Some had tiny flower offerings. In the main part of the grounds there were white lilies growing everywhere.
The most important building here is the one that contains Buddha's tooth. yes, Buddha's tooth is enshrined here. The tooth is much too holy to be seen by us secular types, so you could not go inside the building. But I felt all tingly anyways, knowing the Buddha tooth was only a dozen yards away. There was also a collection of stone figures, which I assume were either deities or grave markers of famous people. Some had coin offerings. Some had coins stuck all over them, in any available crevice- the crook of a stone arm, in robe holds, on feet, on heads.
The literature on Engaku-ji touts its temple bell as the best site in the temple. Its a national treasure. It was made in 1301 and pretty much the only original things left of the shrine. The Japanese are very good about letting you know when you are about to see something important because they make you climb a ridiculous mountain or 200 flights of stairs before you can get to it. As you huff and puff your way up you think, man, this must be some awesome thing. It was a nice bell. Big and heavy-looking. I don't know much about bells, but it looked nice enough. In case the sight of the bell wasn't enough to reward the long hike up, they also had a little hut that served shaved ice with flavored syrup and sweet beans. As good as those beans on ice looked, I had lots of other temples to see that day.
Next up was Tokei-ji temple. It used to be a nunnery. Its also known as the divorce temple. Back in the old days, before there was legal divorce for women, mistreated or unhappy women used to come to the temple. They could seek refuge there from their husbands, who couldn't come on the grounds. If the woman stayed there for three years, she would be granted a divorce.
The place itself is small. It had an intimate little garden with a buddha statue. Most of the grounds were taken up by a large cemetery full of old nuns.
Nearby was Jochi-ji. Jochi-ji was also small. Its highlight was a set of three wooden statues. They represented the deities of past, present, and future. I am glad I have pamphlets for these kinds of things because they all looked like buddhas to me.
past present and future buddhas. There was a large Japanese style house with a big garden out front. Lots of butterflies were flittering about. There were also some crazy possessed cats running around, fighting each other in the garden. They had no tails. I think in Japan, bad luck travels on the tail of cats- so no tails, no bad luck. Much to my amusement, the god of happiness was lurking in some cave. He was an old man, and looked oddly deranged, being so happy in this dank, desolate cave. I guess the god of happiness is not picky.
At this point I stopped in a little restaurant and had some cold soba noodles, which you dip in soy sauce soup with onions and wasabi. Then I came to Kencho-ji, the granddaddy of Kamakura temples. Its the first ranked of the five great zen temples of Kamakura (I think I hit the other four as well). It is also the oldest zen training monastery in Japan. It is huge. There were more big gates and more big temple buildings. The coolest thing though, were the cypress trees. They were grown from seeds here, 700 years ago. So walking around in the middle of huge, gnarled 700 year old cypress trees was a nice sensation. There was another old bell from 1255. This bell was also nice, but I was much more excited about the pots of lotuses. Some of the lotuses were beginning to bloom. They were big. The entrance to one building was lined with dozens of big pots, full, of water, and growing lotuses. I took lots of pictures. There were buds, and opening flowers, and lots of the pod things with the seeds. I figured I couldn't spend all my time with the lotuses so I took off my shoes and went inside a big temple building. Around back was a little japanese garden with perfectly sculpted miniature hills, a pond, a few trees, and a meticulously clipped carpet of grass.
My last temple was Enno-ji. This was a teeny tiny one. It only had one building. That building, however, housed some awesome old statues. The main statue is of the god of hell (buddhist hell that is). His ten cohorts are also represented. These guys are responsible for determining what level of existence you will be reincarnated in, after you die. Basically they decide if you deserve to move up the reincarnation chain and start your next life over as something pleasant, or if you deserve an awful next existence. The statues have terrible, scary faces. They are supposed to scare you into being a better person. We'll see if it works.
After having walked across half of Kamakura, I hopped a train and went to another nearby town. This new place is home to the Great Buddha. He is a 40 foot bronze statue of Buddha that looms over pilgrims in his serene, beneficent way. Great Buddha was cast in 1252. The shrine that used to cover him got blown away by a tidal wave hundreds of years ago. They kept trying to build new ones to protect him, but they kept getting destroyed. Buddha himself is pretty resilient. Now they just let him hang out in the sunshine. I think its a good place for him to be. His dark green patina looks very nice against the blue sky. There were lots of people there to admire him. I made some of them take my picture. There were also some offerings of oranges and kiwis and flowers. It is also possible to go inside of the great buddha. His inside is hollow. I however did not go. The cost was high, and I can only imagine that it would be similar to being inside a dark, buddha-shaped submarine without any of the comforts.
After big Buddha, I bolted out of the Kamakura area. i wanted to catch the last bus out of Tokyo to Tomioka. I had allotted myself two hours, which I thought would be sufficient. However after many annoying snafus, including not being able to find the locker where I had left my bags, I missed the bus. I thought I was really in the shitter because I was under the impression that taking the train back using local trains, as opposed to the much more expensive bullet trains, would take around 5 hours. As it was already past 7 pm, I was a tad worried about this. However, I was very determined to get home. Mostly because I had nowhere to stay in Tokyo. The train information guy directed me to the Takasaki bound train. When I asked a guy waiting on the platform if the train he was waiting for was going to Takasaki he said no and then left his place in line, went downstairs to ask when the Takasaki train would come... all just for me. After he left I was a bit anxious about how long the train would take and if there would be any connecting trains still running to get me from Takasaki to my village once I got there. But since Japanese people are ridiculously nice, another man, who I asked about it reassured me that it would only take 2 hours. The first 30 minutes of the train ride I was smashed in among a gazillion other commuters. I am sure they hated me because I had my huge red hiking backpack, my laptop bag, and my huge canvas purse-bag. I took up so much room and my backpack kept getting in the way of the door. After a while though, i muscled my way to a seat and waited my two hours. I arrived back in Tomioka finally. I was exhausted, but glad to be home. 6 days in Tokyo is really exhausting. I waddled with all my bags to my apartment. I piqued the interest of some quasi- english speaking business men on the way. They wanted to know what the hell some american girl was doing with these huge bags slung all over her, walking down the street of some nowhere town at 10 at night. I tried to explain to them that i live here. They didn't seem to get that though because they kept asking me if i was walking to my hotel and were amazed that I had backpacked all the way to Tomioka for god knows why. I finally made it home to my own little child's bed though. It was a good feeling.

Summer Vacation- TOKYO - day five

I started with Ebisu. Its not a hugely popular district in Tokyo, but it has some worthwhile attractions. I started the day early. Mostly because I was in search of pants, as the Japanese call them. Through some strange lack of foresight, I had packed less underwear than there were days in my trip. So I was searching for pants, but no pants, no pants. Pantsless, I hung around waiting around some financial buildings waiting for the photography museum to open.
The photography museum was one of the things that I was most looking forward to in Tokyo. I fantasized about all the crazy,, modern Japanese photography I was going to see. All the bizarre video installations of performance art... But of course, I was sure to be disappointed. When I got to the museum, the front desk girl informed me that two of the three floors were closed in preparation for a new exhibit. Its ok I thought. At least there is still one floor of a Contemporary Asian photo goodness. Then I looked at my ticket. The only exhibit in the whole place was for stupid Early American Photography. I didn't come halfway across the world to see American photography. Also early photography is really not my cup of tea. Photos of civil war generals and old family portraits don't really do a whole lot for me. I cruised around there for a while, and then went to the second floor to maybe catch a glimpse of what they were putting up for the new exhibit. Of course, the string of ironies was not complete. I picked up the poster for the next exhibit that was opening that weekend. Of course it was everything that I had wanted to see in the first place. Morimura, (one of my favorite, and weirdest, Japanese photographers), Julian Opie, Sam Taylor-Wood (a photographer that I wrote part of my thesis one), and a bunch of other pretty awesome looking photographers were going to be represented. It was a maddening little discovery... but I guess its an excuse to go back to Tokyo for the weekend. One redeeming factor if the photography museum was the 15 foot tall reproductions of famous photos on the outside of the building- including my favorite Doisneau.
After the disappointing photography the next logical step was to go to the beer museum. Ebisu has an old factory for Yebisu beer that closed, but the reopened it as a museum for the beer brand. It was free and contained beer, so what the hell. I was followed in by Henri, an out of place french guy, who tried to pick me up. After having to endure being told that I reminded him of his French girlfriend who died in a helicopter accident. I shook him off and looked through the tiny tiny exhibits. Then I headed to the tasting lounge. I enjoyed a glass of cold Japanese beer. I left for Uenoa little happier.
Once in Ueno, my search for pants resulted in a victory at Uniqlo. I ate a ridiculous crepe on the street that was filled with custard, strawberries, bananas, and chocolate. Then I went to the Museum of Western art. I had been seeing posters all over town for the Corot exhibit. I decided to opt for the Corot exhibit in addition to the permanent collection. The Corot part was full of people. I realized that I don't really like Corot. I only like the two paintings of his used to advertise the exhibit. I guess it was good marketing on their part. A bit of a waste of time on mine. The regular exhibit had a lot of renaissance and biblical paintings. I guess thats the exotic stuff for Easterners. There were also some Impressionist stuff including a Monet waterlillies.
To add to the pants success I also finally had success finding an english language bookstore that wasnt astronomically priced. I went back to the hostel for some napping action. Then it was off to Shinjuku in search of Jetee. Jetee is a little bar in the Golden Gai section of Shinjuku. Its run by a film buff and is a tribute to Chris Marker's film La Jetee. I was kind of amazed that anyplace, especially a bar, would be dedicated to a rarely watched, but amazing, blackand white art film. I heard about it back in the states. I decided that I had to go. I wrote part of my thesis on this film and I watched it a lot. Its pretty incredible- a movie made out of photo stills with crazy metaphysical twists and turns. The decision to go was easy. Actually getting there was not. The Golden Gai is notoriously difficult to navigate. Its made of tiny alleys, with tiny tiny places all crowding for space. I did the thing where i stand in front of the big map on the street with my guidebook map in my hand and study both until I figure it out. A very nice, handsome japanese man asked me in Japanese where I was going. I told him I wanted to go to a temple that we near Jetee. I figured that it would be too confusing to try and tell him where it was i was actually trying to go. i thought If I just got the temple I would only be a block or two away and it would be easy to find. Instead of just telling me where to go, the man started walking. He was taking me there himself! Only in Japan. He asked me why I wanted to go to the temple now. I realized that it all msut seem really stupid- I was trying to go to a temple at 9 at night, when the temple has been closed for hours. i explained where I wanted to go and why. We chatted in English on the way there. I think much of the incentive for escorting me to the bar was an opportunity to practice English. Also, he was very helpful. When we got to the area, we still couldn't really find it. My man asked another guy who was standing outside of a theater. He took the two of us right to it. My man told me to have a good time. I thanked him and he went on his way again. That would never happen in America.
Jetee had a heavy black door with simple black letters that said Jetee. That was all there to identify it. The bar was up a very narrow flight of stairs. The place was ridiculously small. It was perhaps the size of a walk in closet. Its maximum capacity was maybe 8 people. it was clean but dingy. When I had heard that the place was decorated with film stills from La Jetee, I swear I had seen a picture of a ceiling literally covered with overlapping photos. I must have hallucinated this image or it must have been from some other place, because here "covered" meant three film stills on the wall. Maybe given the microscopic size of the place "covered" was not too much of a stretch. There were some other posters of art films around. When I came in there were a group of three blue-collar men sitting there smoking cigarettes and drinking. It was a bit of a strange sight. They were obviously regulars, given the mama-chan's banter with them. But these men obviously knew nothing about film, let alone western film, and here they must come every night for there after work drinking. I felt a little awkward in there, in such an intimate spot, all by myself, taking in the atmosphere. The owner though, spoke perfect english and we chatted intermittently about movies and such, The rest of the time I just sipped my drink, looked around, and wrote in my notebook.