Chubusangaku National Park and Takayama

We got off to a good start but slowed down when we had to make several stops trying to find post offices that were open so we could get more yen.  After yesterday's trip to the lacquer gallery everyone was cash poor. The post office is the quickest, most reliable way to get money. Banks can take up to two hours and 7/11s often won't take our debit cards. Then we had to make extra stops for a bathroom break. Ted was getting frustrated because he had a surprise stop for us that we wouldn't be able to do if there were too many delays.  

The route through the mountains is spectacular.  Most of the way the leaves were at their peak. The road went through tunnels built after the war that are engineering and construction marvels. There must have been 50 of them, some seemingly endless, one that split off in two directions and another that was sloped and serpentine.  We took a detour to the Chubusangaku National Park up near Mount Hotaka. It was high and the leaves had fallen but the mountains and the hiking trails felt like home.  Ted said he had hiked the ridges from hut to hut for a week, we made do walking along the river for an hour.  The best surprise were the small, fast little monkeys. I wished we could have stayed longer. 

We arrived in Takayama in time for a tour of the original Magistrates House used by the ruler of the town. The weather was overcast and while we were there heavy rain was coming down.  The house was built around a beautiful garden and the wet intensified the colours and rained down the maple leaves. Afterwards there was a saki tasting and we had time to explore on our own.  Takayama means high in the mountains and is a post town. There are two folk art museums that would have been better if I knew the purpose of most of the things I was looking at,  Near the end the rain let up and it was easier to take street photo's. We are staying at the Best Western, which is a fine but it doesn't feel like Japan, however we had our best meal so far. It was genuinely Japanese. We cooked our meat with a miso sauce on a horse chestnut leaf over individual fires. It was a fun way to cook and delicious. 

On a side note Japan is on a tourist boom, they expected 14 million this year and it is already 20 million.  They are gearing up for many more in the next few years but are really not ready for such rapid expansion.  By far the most common tourists are other Asians, particularly Chinese. 

 The Magistrate's House

Takayama

Now for something different

 

Matsumoto Castle and Narai on the Nakasendo Way

I can hardly believe how much we did today.  Started early walking over to the Castle for a tour. As you can see from the pictures it is very different in daylight.  We arrived just as it opened to avoid the bus tour crowds, even so it was busy.  Ted told us in high season there are probably as many people going through as the whole time it was used as a last defence fortress. Inside the castle is a depiction of the first war when one side had guns. In seven minutes the best cavalry in Japan was virtually wiped out by the enemy using guns they had purchased from the European traders.

From there we drove to Narai, a beautiful little post town on the Nakasendo Way. During the Shogun era Nakasendo, meaning the way through the mountains, was one of five roads linking Edo with Kyoto.  Every year or two the feudal lords made the journey to meet with the Shogun. They would be accompanied by up to 20,000 of their people. It kept the economy going and helped unify the country. Today it is a quiet tourist town.

We had a wonderful lunch sitting on the floor in a traditional restaurant. I don't know what was harder the getting down or the getting up. Afterwards I had a great photo shoot in the rain until it was time to meet one of the best lacquer ware makers in Japan.  He works in a small woodworking shop using recycled pieces of wood he shapes on his uniquely designed lathe. It felt like I was watching my Dad work and it smelled like his shop.  We went up to the room he does the lacquering in and asked so many questions we were way behind schedule before we even got to the gallery to see the finished work and buy if we wanted to.  His poor wife didn't know how to use the visa machine and they missed out on some sales but I and others had enough cash to get what we wanted.  I had asked our guide to tell him how much my Dad would have appreciated his work and before I left he asked me to sign his book and that made me happy.

It was still raining and cold when we got back to the hotel. We ate in, had good talks and skipped the baths which are too hot for most of us.

Nari

Suyama-san Laquer Craftsman 

Travel Day to Matseumoto

For the first time I'm feeling lonely, not that I haven't missed you all, often a lot, but I haven't felt lonely.  Several of us went to the Matsumoto Castle after dinner to see it lit up at night.  It was so beautiful but there was no one to really share it with or explore photographing it from different locations. My daughter called earlier to say she really missed me and was feeling abandoned being in Edmonton without me.  And I am the only Canadian on this trip and I  while everyone is very friendly I do feel different.  It is also late and I'm tired.

Besides how I'm feeling now it was a great day earlier.  We drove 3.5 hours much of it through tunnels and mountains.  The Roger's Pass tunnels were amazing for their time and these are 3 and 4 times longer and about 10 times as many of them.  An amazing feat built after the war.  We got a glimpse of Mount Fuji before it was lost in clouds and learned a lot about volcanos. Between volcanos and earthquakes we were all glad to be away from Tokyo. We stopped for lunch at an artisinal Miso factory.  It had been owned by the same family for 6 generations and maintained the original process which takes three years to produce the final product.  Lunch of Miso soup was delicious and I don't usually like it.

Matseumoto is just what we needed after almost a week in the bustle of a big city. The drive up was specatularily beautiful. The mountainsides are lush and in full colour, a combination of cedar and mixed hardwoods. It reminds me of the Kangamangus in the Big Whites on steriods  The town has modern areas but is mostly houses and smaller stores.  Lots of older buildings and it  feels like we really are in Japan.  Young people speak more english than in Tokyo and are very friendly, especially the young families who are happy to have their children photographed.

We wore kimonos to dinner. I know why Japanese women took tiny steps, There are also public baths that I will try tomorrow, there is a wedding party here that has taken over the rest of the hotel.  Now their kimonos are beautiful.

From the rest stop tower, Mount Fuji in the clouds

Making Miso

Matsumoto

More about these later

Even the buses look happy

Kabuki Theatre and Ginza

It was an amazing theatre day. In the morning we took the subway to the National Theatre to learn about traditional Kabuki kind of a cross between opera and Shakespeare, lots of drama, love, duty, conflict, intrigue, murder. The plays were written several hundred years ago but timeless in their human message. The stories are well known to audiences. The costumes are spectacular and the each move choreographed.  The actors are older most 50-75 and usually the children and grandchildren of  Kabuki actors. 

In the beginning women prostitutes began entertaining customers with dancing for extra money, later that was considered immoral and women it was stopped. Instead young men started taking on female roles in entertaining and they added a dramatic component. However they also became sexualized and to put a stop to that theatres started using older men as actors for women's roles. White face paint was used for the audience to better see  the actors faces in the dark theatres before gas lights or electricity. 

It is the 100th anniversary since all four acts of the The Miracle at Yaguchi Crossing was staged at the National Theatre. It started at noon and there are three intermissions.  People, including us, had bento box lunches that we ate in our seats or on benches in the lobby after the first act. All very social. Since everyone knows the story line and the actors so well the audience participation is big particularly with the men who call out the name of the actor when he comes on stage and cheer him on when they know there will be an important scene coming up. I could feel the emotion in the room and how engaged the audience is.  
I thought that with the stylized moves and traditional stories it would be a bit boring but it was gripping. We had ear buds with english translation which was very helpful. At the end of the second act the hero, in loyalty to his Shogun, has his own little son's head cut off to save the life of the Shogun's son. I thought to myself this is going to make Shakespeare look tame. 

We had the option of leaving after the second act to walk through Ginza and learn about the history of Tokyo and the future plans with the upcoming Olympics.  It was another beautiful day and I opted for the walk.  To talk about all we learned it too much for this blog and my time tonight but I'm glad I opted for it. 
                                                   The remnants of old Tokyo  


                                      The bells from the first Dutch trading post              

The lights from the Nirobashi Bridge (the main entrance to the business district that grew up around it in the 1600's and then europeanized after 1868. There are two left, now surrounded by elevated train lines and skyscrapers.

A statue of a little girl tucked into a shrub at the edge of 

one of the busiest street crossings

One of the last small stores that may be torn down

In one of the last character areas left

I have been on subway lines every day and every one is different. Most are metro but some are private and apparently they were built years ago by the big department store owners who wanted their own stations. There are women only cars for those who don't want to be groped in the crush at rush hour and all cell phones make a noise when the camera is in use so people are warned that a picture is being taken.  

On a side note There have been a lot of men in suits carrying brief cases at the museums and parks. I wondered about them being there in the middle of a work day. There is speculation that with all the job losses this year they may have been laid off and not told their families,  still pretending to go to work.  At any rate I have never seen so many black suits and white shirts although Washington came close.

Ginza looks like any other big city, with some great architecture but the character of what Tokyo was is being lost. What was interesting were the stories of what it used to be like. Japan was settled by two main groups of people, one from the south and one from the west.  They brought two distinct styles with them one that we think of as zen simplicity and the other more ornate and busy. It is reflected in the different shrines, clothing, decorations and  modern culture of young people forsaking tatami mats for beds covered in little stuffed animals, even business men have little figures hooked to their briefcases and checks have kitty or manga characters on them. I am ready to go out to the countryside tomorrow.

The Courthouse

Some examples of what will replace the older areas

Not my Mom's vision of St. Peter waiting for her at the Pearly Gates 

Emails

For friends and family who are not hearing from me we are having trouble with the email connections, I think your emails are continuing to come in when we reset the connection each day but when I try to respond I just get a server timed out message.  We are travelling tomorrow and hoping we will have better connections at the next hote.  Until then know I am thinking of you.