Tokyo, Day 1

Today was another day of traveling. My travels, however, were complicated by the fact that I couldn’t find a hotel to stay in – in three different cities! I was going to spend another day in Kanazawa, but because the 20 more or less affordable hotels I tried didn’t have any rooms available, I decided to look elsewhere to park my weary body for a day or two. Since I’d be leaving Japan from Tokyo, and because I needed to take a train from Kanazawa to Yuzawa in order to get a connection to Tokyo, and because Yuzawa is the unnamed town where one of my favorite novels, Snow Country, was set, I thought I’d try to stay in a ryokan there for a day or two.


However, the same thing happened – I checked about 10 different places and found they were all fully booked. So I decided I’d just go to Tokyo and spend my last three days there. Again, though, it took me over two hours of searching hotels to find a decent and affordable place to stay! I ended up reserving one night’s accommodation in a charming Tokyo neighborhood called Sangenjaya, in Setagaya district. I was a bit worried that it was too far outside the city, but in fact I was quite happy here for a night.

It's amazing how a life-size King Kong figure atop a convenience store roof increases a street's charm factor...

Once I arrived and checked in to my hotel, I decided to wander the streets in hopes of finding a bookstore with a decent selection of English-language novels. I did find several bookstores, but none that had what I was looking for. I grabbed a quick coffee, inadvertently sitting in a room reserved for smokers, and as dusk soon fell upon Sangenjaya I stumbled back into the fresh air and wandered down an alley full of streetlamps to see where they would lead.

About an hour later I decided I should get dinner, so I came back to the street where my hotel was and tried to find some homey-looking restaurant. I found an inconspicuous noren with the word tonkatsu on it, and so I climbed the stairs behind the noren and came into a room with three people who probably weren’t expecting to see anyone like me enter.


By speaking a bit of Japanese to them, though, they seemed to relax, and then pointed me to a table by a window with a view of the street.


I ordered chicken tonkatsu and a beer for ¥840 ($9.93), and was happy to see it came with steamed rice, miso soup, pickled veggies, and a small square of tofu. Aside from the deep-fried chicken, which was very good (especially after slathering it with tonkatsu sauce), this was a light and healthy meal. I sat there half-stunned at having stuffed myself so much, and for a while I could do nothing more than watch a TV program about Japanese seasonal vegetables that had the restaurant workers in absolute thrall.


Across the street was a small bakery, so I went inside and ordered an orange muffin (¥200/$2.36) for breakfast tomorrow – or, if I don’t have it for breakfast, then as a snack for later in the day. Again, not a particularly exciting day, but I was just glad I had a place to spend the night...

Kanazawa, Day 8

So, after a rather unglorious and unproductive time in Kobe I decided to go back to Kanazawa, if only to get a final look at the city and perhaps some idea of what I might do if I were to come back here again…perhaps more permanently, for example.


The train ride, the same one I took yesterday but in reverse, was notable only for the car’s higher occupancy and general busy-ness. The trip back felt longer than the trip to Kobe, probably because of this.

At about two o’clock, I decided I should probably eat something, even though, similar to the last few days, I didn’t have much of an appetite. A woman pushing a food and drinks cart went down the aisle, and I stopped her and paid ¥1090 ($12.89) for a block of rice with a layer of mackerel (saba) on top of it. It was surprisingly satisfying – the mackerel was that good – though it would have been nice to chase it down with something green, and I don’t just mean green tea.


I checked back into the poorly named Dormy Inn Hotel, which isn’t the least bit dormy, and immediately went upstairs to make use of the rotenburo. Afterward, I came back down to the check-in desk to ask if I might stay at extra day, since if I had to leave tomorrow I wouldn’t have much chance to see Kanazawa a final time. Unfortunately, the hotel was fully booked. I got on a waiting list, but they said they didn’t expect a room to become available, which sent off a loud internal “you’re such an idiot for not considering this possibility” bell.

But it wasn’t anything that a decent meal couldn’t take care of, I thought, and an hour or so later I decided to try to wash away this particular trouble at a restaurant two doors down from my hotel called Yarukichaya (Yaruki Teahouse, which is a bit of a misnomer).


I was given a “box room” – the name conjured a bad experience in a capsule hotel in Morioka fifteen years earlier, but the memory was short-lived, in part because the box room was about three times bigger than that capsule hotel, the room wasn’t fitted with a TV that only got porn, and outside the door weren’t businessmen staggering drunkenly and emitting vomiting sounds.


Ah, yes, let me get back to the food…

I was immediately given a complimentary starter of veggies in sticky, grated yam, which was refreshing after the long train ride, as well as a local brand of sake, which was not complimentary but was still refreshing in its own right. I had a long look at the menu, which was as usual in Japanese I could 50% understand, and ordered umeboshi ochazuke and buri daikon nimono (despite the waitress’s insistence that foreigners don’t generally like yellowtail served this way).


The ochazuke was very simple but delicious, and came with a slice of pickled radish and greens, along with a dollop of wasabi that I studiously avoided.



The buri and daikon came in a rich, brown, hearty sauce that I wasn’t expecting. It was almost smoky in flavor, and it was very different from the buri daikon nimono that I used to make in Hawaii. I ate all of it, but, as the waitress had suggested, I turned out not to be a huge fan of this. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I expected.


Overall, though, this place was very good. From what I could read of the menu there were a great many things I also would have liked to order, the prices were affordable (my dinner only cost ¥1440/$17.02), and the service was great. Very friendly, helpful people here!

Kobe, Side Trip

Typical countryside as the train neared Osaka.

Today I headed on a side-trip to Kobe, mostly to see a school there where I had a teaching contact. I ended up buying a ticket the night before and then going directly to the train platform to wait for my train to arrive.

The view from my train seat as we passed through Kanazawa's outer suburbs.

The train wasn’t even 20% full, and although I had a reserved seat, in fact I had my choice of wherever I cared to sit.


I basically scooted from one side of the train car to the other, depending on which one offered the prettier view.




I wasn’t expecting to see so much countryside – farms in the beginning, and then small collections of fishing villages as we neared Osaka Station (where I had to change trains to go to Kobe).


As usual, once I arrived (one station too early, unfortunately, which meant dragging my luggage for about 2 km through the streets and a covered mall) I had to wait for the hotel’s 3 p.m. check-in time, so I decided to grab a quick ramen down an alley off the street where my hotel was located.



Sparked by a memory of char-siu ramen in Hawaii, I ordered a medium-sized bowl of ramen with red miso, onions, seaweed, and char-siu.


The broth was creamy but light, and the char-siu, which looked mostly like fat, dissolved on my tongue the way that expensive chocolates might. It was a bit rich in the end, but absolutely worth the ¥650 ($7.60) it cost.


Shortly after lunch, a quick stop for coffee, I was able to check into my room, where I fairly collapsed for an hour, dipping in and out of sleep between sumo matches on TV.

As you can see if you scroll down from the first sumo shot, this match didn't last long -- only long enough for one guy to lunge at the other, miss (whoops), and land on his face.

Aside from taking a walk around the area where I was staying, and grabbing a shower at some point, I didn’t do much with the remainder of my day. I did, however, walk down the street and ordered a kind of dinner bento (¥900/$10.52) and beer from a machine at the restaurant’s entrance. (Basically, you press a button with the name of the meal you want, put in however much money it costs, then take the ticket it coughs out and hand it to a waitress, who proceeds to bring your meal to your table.)



Again, I wasn’t very hungry, and it was all I could do to finish my meal.

What do we have here? There are boiled veggies, mackerel, pork tonkatsu, cabbage, a small salad, oysters with bok choy, and tofu with bonito flakes. Oh, and miso soup, all-you-can-eat rice, and a glass of draft beer.

After that I walked around the back streets some, then came home to nurse my aching stomach and get some work done. I know, it wasn't an exciting day from a blogging standpoint, but I did get to enjoy a nice train ride through the countryside and ate pretty well along the way...

Kanazawa, Day 7

Feeling as though I’d seen most of the places I’d set out to see in Kanazawa, I decided to spend the morning and early afternoon walking around one of the temple districts.

I took the tourist bus, which was one of the best friends I made in Kanazawa, to stop number 12, backtracked a bit to Sakura Bashi Bridge, and crossed it.

I immediately came upon a small children’s park on a fairly quiet road to the side, and from there I climbed a stone stairs to an overlook above the Saigawa River.




It was fragrant of flowers here, and I bent over to one and snapped a quick photo.

I'm not sure what kind of flower this was, but it filled the air with its perfume.

I continued walking along the path that connected the stairs to the Teramachi temple district, which extends several blocks over what is otherwise a residential section. There are a number of temples here, the majority of which are quite small and either completely unmarked or with information inscribed in Japanese.


I visited quite a few of the temples, turning down odd alleys now and then to see if they led anywhere special (they didn’t; they just led me to dead-ends or roads farther from where I wanted to be).


One of the temples I was looking for was Shogetsuji Temple. While I didn’t try to get inside the temple itself, as it was being used for some event and didn’t look particularly inviting from the outside anyway, I did find interesting its collection of stone statues, called jizo in Japanese.


Jizo are bodhisattva figures that offer protection to women, children, and travelers. Those that are decorated with hats, bibs, and other child-related accoutrements are often the work of parents who have lost children or whose children have survived some serious illness.



As you can see in the first jizo photo, there is also an altar here where people can offer prayers and burn incense.

After completing my walk of the Teramachi temple district's main road, I made a left turn shortly before the Saigawa Ohashi Bridge. I soon came across several more temples, the main attraction, and the most interesting of the temples I found in the district, being Myoryuji Temple.


This temple was built in 1643 and once served in part as a samurai hideout. A tour (in Japanese) of the temple’s interior costs ¥800 ($9.63); inside one can see an interior designed to thwart anyone (predominantly ninjas, apparently) unfamiliar with its hidden doors and stairways, secret rooms and tunnels, etc.


Although the temple grounds were small, I found them very explorable and was even invited inside the main hall for free.



There are a number of smaller structures surrounding the main building, which are worth sticking one’s head into and looking around.


From the northern edge of the Teramachi Temple area, I was within easy walking distance of Naga-machi Buke Yashiki district – the old samurai enclave, in other words. I’d visited here previously but had missed the Nomura-ke House, an old samurai home, so I thought I’d make a quick stop to check it out. It was about a 10-15 minute walk, and once I’d entered the old samurai enclave I was stopped on the sidewalk by a fast-talking man trying to get me to go inside some museum that didn’t look very interesting to me. When he asked where I was going I told him, but then he tried to convince me that there were no old samurai houses in Kanazawa. Then he tried to sell me a ticket once more to his museum. Confused but determined to find what I was sure existed, I told him no, walked about fifty more meters, and came across what I’d just been told couldn’t be found in Kanazawa.


I paid ¥500 ($6) to enter, and was greeted, in a manner of speaking, by the samurai outfit pictured below.


This house is definitely worth a visit, though it’s probably better to go, as I did, when there are very few other tourists around. The reason I say this is that the house is small and the rooms and corridors a bit cramped – the house is only a portion of its original size, apparently – and having fewer people around makes it easier to appreciate the peaceful gardens the house contains.




I walked back to my hotel from here – I could have taken a bus, but the walk back is pretty easy, though it did take about thirty or forty minutes. In an effort to save money I opted for a sad little lunch – a packaged sandwich (fried egg, fried pork, and tuna fish) and a bottle of milk tea.


I took it to a giant brass teapot sculpture called yakan tento suru, by Kazumasa Saegusa, outside of Kanazawa Station and ate my lunch there.


Not surprisingly, I was left completely unsatisfied with this “meal,” and as I was trudging through the department store between the station and my hotel, I stopped at a place called nana’s green tea. The menu here is amazing. (Seriously, click on the link, then double-click it to enlarge the photos on the menu.) I’ve never seen so many interesting items made with green tea.


I ended up ordering a green tea latte with mochi, sweet red beans, and whipped cream. It wasn’t as good as it looked – it was bitter and a bit grainy for my tastes, and although I could have added sugar to make it more palatable, I refuse to add sugar to any green tea.



When I got back to my hotel, it was time for a bath. And not the decent bath digs I had in my room, either, but the rotenburo bath on the top floor of the hotel. $63 a night is already a good price for a hotel in Japan, but with a great breakfast buffet and a beautiful indoor and outdoor rotenburo thrown in, this is an outstanding deal. A rotenburo works very much like an onsen does – you enter with a small towel from your room, store your clothes in a small locker, and head first to the bathing area to soap down and rinse very thoroughly.


Once you’re squeaky clean, it’s time to brave the near-blistering hot bath, of which my hotel had two. There’s also a cold bath (which I could only manage to enter to my knees, and even then I thought the cold might give me a heart attack) and sauna, but I much preferred the hot water (don’t immerse your towel in the water, though, since that might result in detergent residue making the water impure).


The outdoor bath was particularly nice, especially at night when the moon is overhead. There was a wind chime outside, which tinkled constantly in the breeze that circled about.


That night, in another misguided effort to save money, and because I wasn’t feeling very hungry, I decided to buy dinner, if I can use the term, at a Lawson’s store not far from Kanazawa station. As you can see, I wasn’t hurting for pre-made meal choices.



Not wanting anything to do with pre-boiled pasta, I opted for pre-steamed rice and pre-tempura-fried shrimp and veggies. I took it home, where I found it to be about as cold and soggy as I could stand. I still ate it.


I probably shouldn’t have, however, as that night I felt terrible and didn’t feel much better in the morning, either. But hey, it was “cheap” (about ¥600, or ~$7), and I might have learned a lesson out of having two convenience store meals in a single day...