Preparing the trees for the heavy winter snow.
Kanazawa Fish Market.
Michele having breakfast in the Kanazawa fish market.
Kanazawa
Category Archives: Travel
Driving From Yuzawa To Joetsu To Kanazawa
Yuzawa is a resort town in the Japanese Alps. Well, the Chamber of Commerce says that Yuzawa is in the Japanese Alps, so I should believe them. However, I think the signature feature of the Swiss Alps, which tops out at 14,691 feet, is its glaciated topography. The Japanese Alps top out at 10,475 feet, so they may have had lots of glaciers, but Yuzawa is at only 3,875 feet, and there was not a sign of glaciation anywhere.
Still, there were ski slopes and chairlifts, and I was reminded that it snows at sea level here. We stayed in a large stand-alone hotel that kind of reminded me of the hotel on the Indian Reservation near the newly formed Tulare Lake. We were here to see at least part of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and, especially, the Kiyotsukyo Gorge Tunnel.
The next three nights, we spent in Joetsu, an off-the-tourist road city, so we could double back to the eastern part of Triennal and then drove – mostly along the coast – to Kanazawa, at the center of the tourist road. We are now in Kanazawa, surrounded by American – or, at least, European-American looking – young people.
This part of Japan is known for its rice and its sake. Michele says that the rice is very good, but my taste buds aren’t refined enough to taste the difference between this rice and, say, Luna Koshihikari Organic Rice from the Sacramento Valley. The Sake was different; the local stuff was terrific.
As we leave the shoreline, we come back into rice country. I’m amazed at how the rice fields seem to fill every empty space, but on reflection, I think it is probably the opposite. As family fields get divided between heirs, some sell their plot and it then gets filled with buildings.
Driving To Yuzawa In The Rain
We got a car in Nikko, and Michele, who has lots of experience driving on the left from driving around Ireland, drove us to the ski resort of Yuzawa for the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2024. Michele thought that the drive from Nikko to Yuzawa would give us a chance to see some Fall color, which we were otherwise too early to see at lower elevations like Kyoto.
It was a beautiful drive, most of it through heavy rain.
We ran for a while in semi-farm country and stopped to admire an old apple tree with impossibly large fruit; we ended up buying four apples. And ended the day under our first Christmas Tree of the year.
Nikko National Park
Don’t say you are satisfied until you have seen Nikko “日光を見ずして結構と言うなかれ A Japanese saying.
Nikko National Park is in the mountains and is about an hour and forty-five minutes by train from Tokyo. It is probably the place I most remember from my last trip to Japan, sixty years and four months ago. I don’t think it has changed in the interim. It is staggeringly crowded; Strasbourg/Disneyland level crowded, mostly with Japanese tourists and school kids on tour.
In at least two subtle ways, Nikko is designed to bring the viewer present. Japan is a drive on the left and walk on the left country, but at Nikko, tourists and pilgrims walk on the right. The round river rock courts take a conscious presence to walk across.
A Couple of Random Observations
I’ve been overwhelmed by Japan; it is hyper-dense and a place of almost impossible contrasts. We have had almost no downtime when I could blog. Rather than trying to keep current, my new plan is to post a picture and a comment daily and then double back for a deeper look when I have time.
The art is a good place to start: much of it is graceful and minimal – especially landscapes – and just as much is pure chaos like this Keiichi Tanaami at a show in the National Art Center, Tokyo.
Bathrooms are another example: they are almost comically small – so small that the door has to swing out because there is no room for it to swing in – yet they are super deluxe with heated seats and both front and rear washing. The washing feature includes adjustable water pressure, and the rear washing feature, which I’ve used and can recommend, somehow the squirter is able to find the exact location of my butt hole every time. The only two ways that I’ve come up with that the squirter can do this is either everybody’s butthole is in the exact same place relative to the heated seat or the toilet has a butt hole locating device. I find both options equally improbable. As an aside, I had no idea that I needed a heated toilet seat, but now I know I do.
To stay on the bathroom theme, at the Nikko UNESCO Heritage site, there is a public toilet in the Tōshō-gū Shrine. In the Shrine, the floor is lacquered with a deep red lacquer, so you have to take your shoes off to go. As I was taking my shoes off, the woman next to me said to me, “I will not take my shoes off to go to a public toilet. It must be filthy in there.” It turned out that she was Vietnamese and from LA, BTW. Anyway, the toilet floor was immaculate, unsullied by us users, with the red lacquer floor in the middle of the room and a black marble inlay under the urinals and wash basins. In the courtyard outside, paved – for lack of a better word – with loose black river rocks, a woman was picking up fallen leaves with a giant tweezer. Japan is that clean.
One of the first things I was told in Japan was, “No napkins. ” In California, at Japanese restaurants, we get a hot towel before dinner, and then we discard it for a clean napkin. Here, we are given the hot towel before dinner, and we then roll it back up and put it beside our place setting. If we need to clean our mouths or wipe our fingers, we use the wet towel.
At every hotel we’ve stayed in, as the elevator door opens, a message plays. It was made by some woman – probably more than one – with a high, tiny, but cheerful voice, and I’m sure the message is important, like what floor we are on or the door is opening, but it sounds like a child is talking just behind the opening door. I’m proud to say that, after somewhere near thirty elevator rides, I am no longer fooled.
Japan is sort of famous for its trains, but so far, we’ve only been on two: one obligatory train from the airport and a very high-tech train, the Spacia – winner of the Blue Ribbon Prize 2024, for what I do not know – that Michele found through long-distance research. But, from that sample of two, what I did find most charming is that as the conductor leaves the car, he turns 180°and bows to us, a full bow from the waist with his arms and hands at his side.
