Japanese Kit Kats!

While we wait for the plane, I thought I'd show you the different flavored Kit Kats we found! They weren't as wide-spread as we had been led to believe, but we got strawberry, blueberry cheesecake, and green tea Kit Kats to share with all of you.

Pictures

Maura has done a great job summarizing our trip to Japan in the last few blog posts.  She wrote most of it on her tablet on the 2.5 hour train ride from Kyoto to Tokyo.  I was essentially passed out that whole trip, which is why there were no pictures.  Actually, there wouldn't have been any anyways, because I need my laptop to upload the pictures from my camera.  Sorry about the pictureless posts.  I'll probably do a few mega-photo albums on here for the whole Japan trip sometime in the next few days.

Narita Airport

Tom and I are in Tokyo's Narita Airport getting ready to board our flight home. Flight #8 of 8 this summer. We are leaving Japan Wednesday 11:20 am Japan time, flying for 14 (!) hours direct to Boston and landing Wednesday at 11:05 am Boston time. Time travel is real! Not only will we get to live this day twice, but our flight was overbooked, so Japan Air moved us up to Business class free of charge. For a 14 hour flight at the end of this summer of flying, I REALLY appreciate the upgrade! See you all soon!

Kyoto in a day

First of all, let's say that our plan to do Kyoto in a single day was ambitious. Really, really ambitious. Probably stupidly ambitious, but we figured that we probably won't be back to this side of the world and it has been Tom's life long dream to visit Kyoto, the former capital of Japan, so we were going to make this work as best we could.

Tricky part #1: Kyoto is not near Tokyo. In fact, it is an eight hour drive west. But the world famous bullet train can make the trip in 2.5 hours, so we woke up at 4:30 a.m. and were on the train by 6:30. The bullet trains are really nice, though insanely expensive. The MBTA could learn a thing of two with regards to well run, reliable service, but if it it included such a dramatic increase in fare prices, I'd have to think a bit about that. Anyway, we arrived at Kyoto Station at 9:00, which let to tricky part #2.

Tricky part #2: Kyoto has a TERRIBLE public transit system. It is the third largest city in Japan and it pretty much just has some busses. Not even a lot of busses, just some busses. (Ok, yes there are technically a few subway lines, but they are privately owned and you have to buy separate tickets for them, so most people don't even bother.) Plus it is apparently school vacation week in Japan right now, so everyone and their elementary schooler was trying to use said busses to explore Kyoto. We stood in line for an hour before the bus we wanted even showed up and then it took another hour to actually go the tree miles to our first stop. Suffice it to say, I (Maura) was not thrilled with our first experiences of Kyoto.

Thankfully, it got a lot better from there. Our fist stop was the Golden Pavilion which is a Buddhist temple on a pond. The second and third stories are completely covered in golf leaf. It's pretty amazing to see.

Then we took another bus to the Silver Pavilion on the other side of the city. It was supposed to be covered in silver back in the day, but somehow that never happened. They still call it the Silver Pavilion, though. While it wasn't awesomely silver, it was very pretty and had some beautiful grounds we toured.

Then we followed the Philosopher's Path to the next big temple, Eikan-do. This active monastery was so peaceful. We walked through the buildings and grounds and saw several old, beautiful paintings on the walls and temples within the monastery. The architecture itself was beautiful and the grounds included a two story pagoda with an amazing view of the city.

After that, we took a cab to our final temple for the day, Kiyomizu. Our cab driver said something about congestion and taking us around and them proceeded to drop us off at an empty little road on a mountain and told us to walk 5 minutes down the path. I'm not going to lie, it seemed pretty sketchy and we weren't sure he had even brought us to the right place, but we went with it and it turns out he was a very clever guy. We entered at the top of the shrine and while everyone else had to walk up 10 flights of stairs in the blistering heat to get to where we were, we only had to walk down them. Kiyomizu had several amazing views of the surrounding mountains and the city below. It was also full of people in Kimonos. The Kusanagis had told us the day before that most people in Tokyo don't really wear them, and if they do, it must be a very special occasion. In fact, when we saw some people in kimonos, it turned out they were just tourists! Kyoto seems to be a different story, though. There were so many people, male and female, all ages, even entire families, wearing them. Kyoto seems to really value the old ways and Tom heard that certain places actually give discounts to people in kimonos as a way to encourage the tradition.     

Afterwards, we went to dinner in Gion, an older section of the city. Tom had a restaurant picked out but it wasn't exactly where we thought it would be, so we eventually went into a McDonalds to ask directions. Remember a few posts ago, when we talked about how helpful the people were in Tokyo? Well, no sooner had we asked for directions, then we had most of the staff trying to help us find it on a map and looking it up on their smart phones. After a few minutes, they handed the map back to us and said to go back out to the sidewalk. We thought they just weren't able to help us, but three of them led the way and them fanned out searching for it! The found it just around the corner. Tom thought we should call this post "McDonalds helped us have a wonderful dinner in Kyoto."

We had dinner at a really nice sushi place called Chojiro where you placed your order on an ipad. They we walked through Pontocho, a very old street with lots of shops and saw a real Maiko, a Geisha's apprentice! Maiko means "dance child" and they are paid half the wages of a full Geisha. They are pretty rare now and we were very lucky to see one! 

Overall, Kyoto had the feel of an old world city. We hopped on the bullet train back to Tokyo and we in our hotel before midnight. It was an exciting last day in Japan.

Tokyo day 2: Exploring with the Kusanagis

On Monday, Tom woke up early and went to a famous fish market in Tokyo. There, people can watch restaurant owners bid on the fish that the fishing boats brought in fresh that morning; sometimes the sea creatures are even still breathing! Unfortunately, Tom wasn't there at 4:30 when that happens so he milled around the area and saw the last few hours of the fish market business.

Then we met up with the Kusanagi family. For those of you that don't know, I taught two of the Kusanagi children, Yutaka and Yurika, when I worked at BU. Their parents, Aki and Maki, lived in the Boston area for 9 years while Aki was at MIT, and returned to Japan three years ago. It was so nice to see them and Kyoka, who was born when I was teaching Yutaka. Yutaka is 10 now, Yurika (which is Japanese for Lily, not what Archimedes shouted in a bath tub) is 8, and Kyoka is 6. They looked so big, but still very much like the Kusanagi children I remember. We reminisced about Yutaka's favorite game when he was three - Kompai! - and how Yurika took almost a whole year before she was comfortable using English, and then suddenly started speaking it in complete sentences. They even remembered some of the songs we used to sing in preschool! When they returned to Japan, the Kusanagis had lived outside of Kyoto until a few months ago, when they moved to the Tokyo area. The children hadn't been to too many places in Tokyo yet, so we were all tourists this day! Aki set up an itinerary for us to visit Asakusa, take a river cruise, and go to the Hamarikyu Gardens.

We all got on the train and went to Asakusa. It is an older section of Tokyo with the Sensoji Shrine, a beautiful Shinto temple said to have been built around 600 a.d. Shinto is the Japanese national religion and it's a little hard to understand or explain. It was originally a form of ancestor worship, but as Aki said, it has incorporated a lot of Bhuddist traditions into it. Basically it had no god, no covenant the people follow, and no universally accepted practices. At the shrine, the children each received a fortune ( like with a fortune cookie, but no cookie), and we all did some souvenir shopping in the stalls around the shrine. Next, we had an authentic Japanese lunch of udon and soba noodles, which we slurped as loud as we could, as is the Japanese custom.

Then we hopped on the river cruise and and found out that Tokyo's river has some unusual bridges. Every single one was a different style, and we passed under at least thirteen! The river cruise ended at the Hamarikyu Garden, which was really lovely. It had originally been built for Ieyasu Tokugawa (I think) as a place to go duck hunting with horses and trained hawks (you don't want the ducks to have an unfair advantage, you know). There were several nice ponds in the garden and even a big field of flowers. I'm not sure what kind they were. Mom, maybe you can identify them?

Then we all headed to Tokyo station where we said goodbye. It was so nice to see the Kusanagis again and see the children getting so big! Then Tom and I headed for a place called Shabuya (Go ahead, say it out loud and with emphasis! It's pretty fun). Shabuya Crossing is a famous intersection in Tokyo where several major roads come together and it's fun to people watch as the cars stop and tons of people pour into the crosswalks. When we went it was pouring, so we got to see it from the second floor of a Starbucks, and it looked really pretty with all of the umbrellas. Then we went to Shinjuku, where the Tokyo Municipal Government building has an observation deck on the 45th floor. It was still raining a little so the pictures didn't come out well, but it was really nice to see Tokyo lit up at night. Then we headed off to bed, so we could get up at 4:30 a.m. for our day trip to Kyoto! (The exclamation point is for Kyoto, not 4:30 a.m., but Tom has to get back to his regular school year sleep schedule somehow, so oh well.)

Konichiwa! Japan Day 1 (Pictures to come)

Our first day in Tokyo had a jam-packed itinerary. First, we headed over to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. This was a very cool museum all about the history of Tokyo shown through life size replicas of houses, art from different periods, and artifacts. It had some interested wording about how World War II began and several interesting artifacts and videos on how people from Tokyo experienced the war.

Then we went to the Nezu museum. It is a small art museum that had a special exhibit on Buddhist mandalas which were beautiful, but the highlight of the museum is it's garden. It has a big Japanese garden full of wandering paths, Buddhist statues, tea houses, and koi ponds.

As we left the Nezu museum, it was starting to rain a bit, which was too bad because out next two stops were gardens. So, we bought an umbrella in a convenience store (they are just as big here as 7-11 is in Taiwan, but they have several different companies).  We took the metro to the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. The metro system here is really great. It's a little overwhelming at first, because there are so many lines and they are run by several different companies, but the trains are fast, clean, timely, reliable, and easy to follow once you get used to the map.

The Shinjuku Gyoen garden was really beautiful. It rained for the first 30 minutes that we were there, but we still loved it. It was divided into three large sections: a traditional Japanese garden (with a mother and child forest and beautiful ponds with Japanese bridges), an English Landscape garden (basically a big huge open grassy area), and a French garden (complete with a rose garden and two avenues of sycamore trees which felt just like Paris.)

Then we headed over to the Meiji Shrine and Yoyogi Park. The Meiji shrine is dedicated to the Emperor and Empress who died in 1912 and 1914. They were so beloved by the people of Japan, that the Japanese decided to construct a forest and shrine to their honor. Over 100,000 trees were donated from across Japan and people volunteered to plant them and create a man-made huge forest in the middle of the city. This isn't like an ordinary city park with some large grassy areas and clearly visible skyscrapers around it; all you can see any way you look is trees 100 ft tall.

Then we went to Yoyogi Park where some interesting characters can be found (we saw a group of Japanese people in leather jackets and pompadours rocking out to some Elvis). Then we got back on the train and went to Roppongi for dinner of ramen, pan-fried dumplings and rice before heading back to the hotel. Also, Tom got us a really nice hotel, so good job Tom! 

Unexpectedly interesting lesson from our trip: The Japanese people are super nice and helpful! We often stopped to look at our map and on two separate occasions, people came up to us and asked in very good English if we needed any help. Even though we weren't really lost, they showed us where we needed to go on the map or walked with us to make sure we got there.

Also, we are currently on the hunt for the many different flavored Kit Kats that are rumored to be popular in Japan, but so far ave only found green tea flavored ones. The search continues.

A Quick One While She's Away

One more post before bed.  The very last picture that we took in Taiwan is worth sharing.  Early on in our trip; we were told that you know you've mastered chopsticks when you can eat rice one grain at a time.  Please feel free to congratulate Master Maura in the comments section.