New Year's Trip to Nagano, Japan

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Although this is another late blog post (I have excuses! I do!), you might not be able to tell simply by looking at the photos––snow in mid-February looks just like snow in early January. I’m tired of all this snow! In any case, this post covers a trip I made to Bessho Onsen in Nagano, Japan, at the beginning of 2013, directly following oshogatsu, which is the Japanese New Year.

I had spent Christmas with my family in Santa Barbara, California, which by all accounts is a nice, warmish place to spend a winter holiday. Rather than spend New Year’s there, however, I seemed to confuse my family by scheduling my return to snowy Japan a day or two early. Maybe this blog will clear up that confusion––something special awaited me back in Japan: a nice stay at a traditional hot spring inn.

--> The inn where I stayed was called Risenro Kashiwaya Ryokan, located high on a hill above Bessho Onsen train station. The inn is well known for having accommodated many of Japan’s literati over the years, including the Nobel Prize winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata. It is also known for its old, small sake brewery on the grounds and beautiful four-story design.  

The entrance to the Risenro Kashiwaya hot spring inn.

Moss covered stone frogs near the entrance to the inn, ready to grant your wishes for just a smattering of your pocket change.

Upon entering and checking in one is served dried and sweetened local persimmons with green tea and a small serving of black jelly.

It's incredible how simple a room at a Japanese inn looks, and yet there's something very luxurious and warm about it.

From the sitting room one could see snow-dusted pines and a small garden below.

The town has historical significance––between the late 12th and early 14th centuries it was the headquarters of a regional governor––but it is now better known for its temples and hot springs. Below are photos of Anrakuji Temple, which is the oldest Zen temple in the Shinshu region of Japan.

But what it’s even more famous for are the architectural features of the temple’s wooden pagoda. Its octagonal shape is replicated nowhere else in Japan, and the pagoda is considered a national treasure.

If you look closely you can see the snowmelt running off the eaves and being blown by the wind.

The temple design, which employs no metal, is incredibly complex and sophisticated.

Anrakuji Temple is open from 9 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. every day—depending on the season—and costs ¥300 to enter. http://www.anrakuji.com

Nearby are many other temples and shrines, as well as traditional hot spring inns, restaurants, street vendors, and souvenir shops. English on the signs makes it easy to get around for those who don’t understand Japanese.

Jorakuji Temple is another well known area destination. The most striking features of this 13th-centry temple are a thatched roof, a rare stone pagoda, and a small museum inside that houses small wooden prayer boards painted by Hokusai (1760-1849), one of Japan’s most famous painters and woodcut artists.

Walking around one finds other attractions, large and small. Below are rows of old tombstones, covered in snow and moss
 

Also, from almost any of the area’s temples one gets fantastic views of the valley and mountains.

Surprisingly, well off the main road and tucked into the mountainside was a handmade soba shop. Apparently it’s in a lot of guidebooks, because there was a wait to get in.

Once in, however, there’s a nice selection of soba (buckweat noodles) and other locally sourced menu items. I went with a tempura udon set, which came with pickled veggies (takuan) and hot green tea.

One of the soba-ya’s specialties was soba dumplings, served with two types of miso paste. Definitely a good way to warm up after spending time in the wintry outdoors.

After lunch it was time to check in (finally), and I immediately changed into my inn-issued bathrobe and headed to the hot spring. As you can see below, one of the baths was indoors and one was outdoors. The one outdoors was full of a white substance floating in the water so that I felt a little like I was sitting in egg-drop soup. It was a bit strange to me, but supposedly those floaty bits add to the mineral content of the spring water and are healthful. The inn also offers a private hot spring bath for ¥3000 for 45 minutes, which is a nice alternative for couples and families that would prefer to enjoy the hot springs together rather than in gender-separate facilities.

I came out here once at night, too, and had the entire bath to myself as snow was falling.

Like any traditional inn in Japan, full-course meals are available and are often done in a kaiseki or kaiseki-ryouri style. Sometimes inns will serve you course-by-course in your room, but many inns have separate dining rooms in which guests eat. Normally one gets dinner and breakfast, but it’s not cheap.

The inn served a variety of fresh seafood (though it’s located in the mountains) as well as mountain vegetables. As you can see, presentation is as important as the quality and freshness of the food. I actually wasn’t able to finish my meal, though I made it to the final course and the rice served at the end. Somehow, though, I found room at the end for dessert.

The next morning, despite the early hour, Kitamuki Kannon Temple was packed with visitors who wanted to bring in the New Year with their prayers. One of the main attractions at this temple is the statue of Kannon inside, which is the Buddhist goddess of mercy.

Normally a temple’s Kannon statue is said to hear prayers made for the next life, but this one is reputed to answer them for this life. It was easily the most crowded temple in Bessho Onsen, but that might have been due to the fact that it was the New Year.

Later that morning, at breakfast time, the inn served a simple yet delicious meal of ayu fish, Japanese omelet, sliced fish cakes, pickled veggies, lotus and carrot slices, rice, miso soup, and yuzu juice. 

This ryokan was one of the nicest ones I’ve stayed in, and I loved the fact that it was famous for accommodating so many famous Japanese writers last century. While there’s not so much to do in Bessho Onsen, you really can’t beat this place for relaxation. In the warmer months, too, it must be incredibly pleasant to stroll around in the evenings. One feels closer to "old Japan" in places like this, which makes the trip and the cost of staying here worth it.

Risenro Kashiwaya Ryokan offers various stay plans and the cost depends on various factors such as the size of your room, the number of guests, the types of amenities you want, and whether or not you will order the kaiseki ryouri cuisine. For more on this inn, please check the following website: http://www.rinsenro.com/

Novel Publication!

(Photo by Emma Lynch, BBC)

Getting used to winter in Fukui has been a challenge for me. Much of this comes from my stubbornness—a refusal to pay Japanese prices for winter clothes, and a refusal, too, to purchase my first-ever pair of snowboots just to walk to and from the university where I teach. As I’m now in Santa Barbara for the holidays, I hope to buy all I need here for the long winter season. Thank god my shipment of Trung Nguyen coffee arrived in California safely, so at least I’ve got a few kilos of black gold to help me survive.

But my big news is that I found a publisher for my novel, Lotusland. Although the publication date is scheduled for two years down the road, it’s a big relief and an even bigger source of happiness that Lotusland will eventually reach a wide audience. The publisher, Guernica Editions, is one that I respect very much. I couldn’t be happier with this development. The feeling of validation is extremely rewarding.

What this means in practical terms is that over the next two years I’ll have much to do in preparation for my novel’s publication. I’ll need to figure out how I want to promote the novel and where—not only in North America, but also in Europe, Asia, and Australia. A book tour sounds daunting—public speaking is not my forte—but I’ll need to plan on something like that as well. It will be interesting to see if I can remain in Fukui, or even in Japan, when it comes time to promote my work.

I hope, too, that this will bring me back to a more productive writing routine. I’m working on a re-write of my first novel, which is set in Vietnam and Cambodia, and hoping to have it finished before Lotusland comes out.

What this means for my blog is uncertain—I’ve been too busy with work and five major moves over the last 18 months to blog regularly—but hopefully I can get back to it soon.

For anyone reading this––Happy Holidays!

Obama City and Wakasa Bay

Wakasa Bay, Obama City, Fukui.

Last weekend, in addition to visiting Eiheiji, I traveled to Obama City on the Japan Coast of Fukui prefecture. It seemed easy enough to get there by train, and the information I found about Obama-shi on the Internet made it sound like an interesting destination. For example, Obama is where North Korean agents abducted Japanese citizens 34 years ago. And several centuries ago, Obama was a passing-through point for people traveling between China and Kyoto (Japan’s old capital). It also holds a water carrying festival (Omizuokuri Matsuri) every March that’s been going on for more than 1200 years.

I departed from Fukui station on the Thunderbird Express at around 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, and then transferred at Tsuruga for a JR line to Obama. From Tsuruga to Obama, there’s only local train service and Obama is the 16th stop on the line. The train had only two cars, and the tracks cut through a little-populated countryside, with occasional views of the ocean near the end of the 40-minute trip. The fall foliage made the trip picturesque, though there didn’t seem much worth stopping for.

Obama station is tiny, but it does have a tourist information office inside and offers a variety of maps, some of which are in English. From there, it’s about a 15-minute walk to the bay, but there are some interesting places to visit along the way. One place I stopped at was Fisherman’s Wharf. If the weather had been better I would have taken the Sotomo Scenic Cruise, which leaves from the wharf for what it widely regarded as the Japan Sea’s most scenic tour, but instead I spent more time at the municipal fish market.

As you can see by the painting on one of the market’s walls, the city has embraced Barack Obama––or at least images of him that might bring in customers. In this painting, he’s wearing a traditional conical hat and fisherman’s coat, and holding a package of one of Fukui’s specialties: heshiko (saba that has been pickled in nuka, or rice bran). I have no idea what Obama’s pointing at, but whatever it is he seems as happy as the giant cat behind him.

The fish market itself was smaller than the building might have you guess (though it’s probably much busier and livelier in the early morning), and since winter is crab season there were plenty of crabs on hand. There were plenty of freshly caught fish and shellfish, too, along with fish drying on racks outside.

Once at the bay—or one small corner of it—which was besieged by hawks hungry for fishermen’s throwaways, it was time to fill my belly with some of the seafood I’d seen at the fish market. With this in mind, I headed for a beautiful little restaurant called Hamano Shiki.

For only ¥1150 (less than $14) I ordered fried saba, which came with a small salad, pickled veggies, miso soup, white rice, green tea, and a citrus jelly dessert.

Directly across from the restaurant is Miketsukuni Wakasa Obama Food Cultural Center, a museum devoted to Japanese food culture, and there are numerous displays on the first floor of Japanese food according to season and also by historical period.

Amazingly, the food of old Japan hasn’t changed much over time, so when we eat a traditional Japanese meal we also delve back gustatorily into Japan’s long culinary history.

From there, it was another ten or fifteen minutes by foot to get to the Sanchomachi district of Obama, which is known for its well-preserved homes and buildings dating to medieval times when the area was a red-light district.

Perhaps I missed the turnoff to the main street with all these old houses, but what I found was quite limited and virtually nothing was open. What I saw was interesting to me, but I was able to pass through the area in about 10 minutes. Supposedly there are a few geisha houses here and also restaurants that employ geishas to entertain customers. But I didn’t see anything like this.

There was a freezing rain falling by that point, so I went and found a café where I ordered hot cocoa and sat by an electric heater. At around 4 p.m. I asked the café owner to call a taxi, and from there it was about 15 minutes to Itaya Ryokan, which is set in a quiet cove of Wakasa Bay.

This is the view from my room.

The main building is made of wood and has four stories (beside it is a three-story annex), with nine rooms. The building used to belong to the village headman during the Edo period (1603-1868), and much of its original architecture remains. It also has an Edo-period storehouse and garden, a beachfront, and onsens.

This was the front room across from the registration desk. Big groups have dinner here, and it leads into the inn's spacious garden.

A giant wood carving of bears.

Upon check-in I was served a sweet and salty plum and hot green tea with plum mush at the bottom.

This is the breakfast room. It’s meant to recreate the feeling of being on a boat.

It may look like a jail, but that’s just the sliding wooden door at the entry to the room. 

The onsen looks over the bay, where numerous blowfish (fugu) nets have been laid. One of the hot baths had a Jacuzzi, and there is also a sauna behind where I took the picture below. The onsen were open 24 hours, too, and I went back there nice and early on Sunday to watch the sun rise.

Dinner was served in the room, and it was a full course of crab from the Sea of Japan. The appetizer was heshiko, mountain vegetables, crab roe, salted and packed roe, pressed sea bream sushi, and fish cake slices.

After that I tucked into fresh, already cracked-open boiled crab.

Sashimi, including crab sashimi, followed.

Minced crab meat with a fried egg came afterward.

And finally, a crab hotpot with tofu, mushrooms, watercress, and leeks.

With a dessert of red bean and cinnamon jelly.

Somehow, in the morning, I made room for this healthy breakfast.

Before leaving and returning to Fukui, I took advantage of the rare appearance of the sun and walked around the premises. There were numerous cats in the alleys and even around the beach, including this guy in the photo below who complained vociferously as I approached with my camera.

Quite a few people could be seen fishing on the pier to one side of the beach, and in warmer weather there are small rowboats one can use to explore the bay.

For anyone interested in staying at this traditional Japanese inn, Itaya’s website is here: http://www.itaya.biz. It’s all in Japanese, but the photos are nice!