Aaaaand We're Back!

The trip this year snuck up on us so fast, we realized on Monday that we were leaving in six days. Between school and the band touring, I haven't really had a day off in months. Luckily for us, we're pretty good at packing for these trips. This year, we will be finally traveling to the southernmost islands of Japan, Okinawa!

But first things first, the trip down to O'Hare and the flight to Japan were surprisingly smooth. Just, you know, 22 hours of travel door-to-door. We're staying tonight at the Hotel Metropolitan Tokyo Haneda, which is a hotel on the same man-made island that the airport is located, just on the southwestern tip of the island. It has an observation room on the 10th floor where you can watch the planes take off and the whole hotel is a weird combination of upscale business and... plane nerd. The hotel restaurant has $150 steaks and everything is hardwood and marble. But then you get to the hallways leading to the rooms.

Sumi and I were so burnt by the time we got to the hotel, all we wanted to do was get some food from a konbini and collapse. Fortunately, as this is Japan, than meant an 8 minute walk to the nearby Family Mart, which was just over a bridge to the "mainland". The bridge was also full-on plane nerd, with artwork depicting a history of air machines in Japan

Starting with 18th century balloons

To early 20th century planes

I love the fact that there is a blimp, too.

Ans up through the Boeing 747

There were also REAL plane nerds on the other side of the bridge taking pictures of the planes taking off

While the other side of the bridge was typical Japan, with river boats and a vermillion bridge. Red bridges are traditional in Japan, vermillion being a color that wards off evil and prevents disasters. Traditional ones, called soribashi, were fairly steep foot bridges that symbolized the transition from the physical to the spiritual worlds in Shinto and Buddhist traditions.

Typical view from a bridge in Japan

Traditional soribashi

As we walked back we saw a plane taking off and realized just how close we were to the airport. One of the runways for domestic flights is literally across the street from the hotel, and the planes are just taking flight when they go over the building.

Anyway, that's it for our first check-in of the trip. By this time tomorrow, we'll be on a tropical isalnd in Okinawa!

P.S. Japan never fails to amuse with their products and their signage.

Think Corn Chex with chili and....cod roe...flavor <shudder>

I so wanted this to be a specialty amphibian waxing salon or something.
It's an airport logistics company.
Very disappointing.

Yasukuni Shrine Mitama Festival Eve!

Today we first braved Akihabara to visit Yodobashi and Book Off, looking for some books (Japanese in-depth strategy guides for games) and possibly a Pikachu rolling suitcase. We found all of the former we were looking for (and by "we", I mean "me") but the suitcase was just too small for what we needed it to do, which is fit our new tachi-okedo stand. We ended up finding a non-pikachu one (though with the same blinding yellow color) in of all places, Don Quixote (henceforth referred to as Donki). 

Donki, as we have mentioned before, is a 24 hour three story tourist trap from hell. But the prices are good, you can purchase tax-free if you choose, and they actually have some good and useful stuff buried amongst the fake throwing stars and ninja outfits. The problem is the other customers. Mostly tourists, mostly asian, mostly obnoxious. It seems to attract the worst type of Chinese tourist, even worse than the typical American tourists (says an American tourist). So we kind of avoid it unless there's something we need. Well, we were getting desperate for a suitcase. We tried looking in Ameyo (America Yokocho), but the very pushy Indian salespeople turned us off so much, we weren't going to buy from them, even though it was cheaper. As it was, we found one just big enough to handle the stand and it came in three colors: Midnight Black, Navy Blue, and Ridiculous Yellow. So we now own a very yellow suitcase, which makes it easy to spot at baggage claim.

We did all this today so we could get back and get cleaned up before heading out to the Yasukuni Shrine this evening for the start of the Mitama Festival. The festival is an Obon, a festival to honor deceased ancestors, and features a lot of dancing (more on that later). It also has a number of processions throughout the event, including mikoshi (portable shrines), Awa Odori dancers, and Nebuta floats (illuminated paper floats). This festival also features over 30,000 votive lanterns that line the way from the torii entrance to the shrine itself. It is one of the most popular festival in Tokyo and draws over 300,000 people. 

We got there a little early to sample some of the food stalls and get a look at the shrine itself before the mikoshi processions began. The first thing we stumbled upon when we got there was some taiko!

Portable stand for the procession

It was one of the procession groups playing their songs for the audience. All those lanterns you see behind them will be lit up a little later on. We headed to the main plaza where there was a large gazebo with some more taiko that would be where the Obon dancing would happen. Next to the plaza were the food stalls. Traveler's Tip: Eat before you go to a festival. We opted for "long potatoes" and a chicken wrap (very traditional, I know). "Long Potatoes" are long french fries.

Edible.

While we were looking around, they were playing some pretty bad Japanese pop songs from the 70's over a tinny loudspeaker that looks like it came from the set of M*A*S*H. One in particular, which somehow has become a staple of Obon, is ビューティフル・サンデー, Beautiful Sunday, originally by British singer Daniel Boone, this one by Seiji Tanaka

The original has real drums and is shorter, so it is better, in my opinion. The video is bad, even for 1972.

The shrime was filling up with people as the Obon dancing was about to start

The shrine was decorated with oversized Teruteru bouzu

The main procession path, now filled with attendees

Covering the taiko for the night in high-tech cases

We need a blanket like this for our odaiko

As the dancing began, I was struck by three things

1. There are a lot of different Obon dances. All to the exact same beat.
2. These were all counter-clockwise Obon.
3. They did not stop dancing, even when the mikoshi procession started

This last one surprised me. As the first mikoshi approached (the one with the taiko players we saw earlier), the Obon dancers (and their music) didn't stop. I have a clip below, but to set the stage, the police had to clear all the festival-goers out of the main processional path for the mikoshi, so there is this chaos of tens of thousands of people being moved to make room for the mikoshi. While this is going on, there are about four hundred people dancing in a counter-clockwise circle to loud music that is older and much worse than "Beautiful Sunday" over a bad loudspeaker accompanied by a few taiko players. The result is the mikoshi procession ends up running into the Obon danceers and the police now have to clear the dancers AND the path beyond that leads to the shrine. And to top it all off, this wasn't the first mikoshi! In other words, the dancing stopped as the first mikoshi approached and left. Then they started another dance while the second mikoshi was approaching and didn't stop. It was very weird.

Taiko players rotated in and out, keeping the same beat going constantly along with the
prerecorded pop songs.

The dancers in the gazebo lead the crowd in what to do

The first mikoshi procession was all young women. This is not common,
so I'm sure there was some reason for it.

They present the mikoshi to the gazebo, where there's a big statue, then they continue on past the gazebo to the shrine, which is another path just as long as the first path. When the second group came up, you can hear the Obon music playing. People are dancing just off screen to the right when they approached.

After all the mikoshi, it was getting dark and all the lanterns were lit.

There were still people streaming into the shrine grounds as we left around 7:30. We got stuck in a human traffic jam as some politician set up a makeshift stage on the sidewalk right in front of the only subway entrance. There were easily a thousand people on the sidewalk trying to walk to or from the station due to the festival, and this idiot blocks half the sidewalk, then people listening to him block the rest, so people had to literally squeeze (and push) past the crowd that were standing in the sidewalk. It took almost five minutes to move the 100 feet (30 meters) from his platform to the station. There were barriers to the street, so we couldn't just hop the curb and tall buildings on the other side, so we were stuck. The politician obviously chose this location and time on purpose, and I sincerely hope he lost the support of everyone trying to actually use the sidewalk. 

All in all, despite my snarky comments, the festival was really neat. It is the first true traditional festival we've been to, and seeing a real Obon, seeing the mikoshi and all the taiko being played and all the people coming out for a festival was really cool. Tomorrow night is the nebuta float and more Obon dancing and an Awa Odori dance, so as long as it doesn't rain, we'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with no politician!

The Original Lucky Cat Temple!

We spent most of Friday getting back to Tokyo and getting settled in to our final hotel, the Stay Sakura Art Deco Hotel. It's a cool little hotel in Asakusa, just down the street from Sensouji. 13 floors, only 3 rooms each on floors 2-8 and 9-13 have just one family suite sized room each. Each room has a kitchen and bath included (more of a suite that a basic hotel room). The chairs in the rooms are so uncomfortable for someone my size that I had to add cushions both to stop from bruising my butt and make myself tall enough so that my knees weren't above my hips. But at least there were chairs! A really pleasant place and I would absolutely recommend it.

On Saturday, we headed out to Tamagawa to have lunch with Steve, who had just returned from Thailand a few days earlier. I'm kicking myself for not taking any pictures, but we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in a mall near the station. If that is vague, it's because that's really all I know about it. I took a picture of the restaurant to make sure I was at the right place, but even that's not too helpful for non-Chinese speakers

Same characters as Japanese, but not Japanese...

It s good to see Steve and we had a good time talking to him over lunch, hearing a bit about his trip to Thailand (mostly for a medical checkup, but a little sightseeing as well) and talking about what we were up to this time around. After lunch, we bid him farewell and headed out to Gotokuji, a temple in Setagaya, a town little ways north of Tamagawa. This particular temple piqued our interest because of it's fabled history as the birthplace of one of the most recognized and iconic Japanese customs outside of Japan.

The maneki-neko, or Lucky Cat

Now, the Japanese people will never turn down the opportunity to create a legend, regardless of how painfully unlikely it was to ever have occurred, if it means it will bring more people to a temple or shrine. In this particular case, there are at least four well-known legends around the origins of the maneki-neko. Out of all of them, however, this one has the highest likelihood of actually happening and has written evidence of much of the historical facts surrounding it. So, we're going to go on the assumption that this legend is just an exaggeration and not completely fabricated. Such are the rigorous academic standards of this blog.

The temple itself has been around since 1480 under various names. In the Kan'ei era of the Edo period (1624-1644), the region was under the control of one of the more powerful clans, the Ii clan. Ii Naotaka, the lord at the time, was returning to his estate and passed by the temple where the temple's cat was supposedly beckoning him to come in. His party visited the temple (because how can you ignore a cute cat waving its paw at you?) and a big thunderstorm came in shortly after, allowing them to safely stay at the temple until it passed. They thanked the priest (and the cat) and the temple eventually became the family temple of the Ii clan, bringing much fame and fortune to the temple. The temple created the maneki-neko as an honor to the cat that brought them prosperity. After the death of Naotaka, the temple was named after his posthumous Buddhist name and became Gotoku-ji.

Aside from the cat waving at them, most of this is supported by contemporary documents, and that time period would be about right for the emergence of maneki-neko across Japan (early-mid Edo). One thing to note that makes this even more likely to be close to reality is that the cat at the temple has a bell around its neck, while later incarnations, including the most popular ones seen outside of stores and restaurants, have a coin to signify wealth. This original is just a depiction of a cat with its right paw raised in a beckoning manner and a collar with a bell with no additional meaning. There are many more modern cats, with different colors, different paws raised (sometimes both), all signifying different things, so having the first design be very basic without the trappings that came later makes sense.

All that said, it's a temple with a bunch of cute cat figurines, so of course Sumi wanted to go there. And when I say a bunch, I mean thousands.

Soooo many cats

There are cats on top of other cats!

The temple itself is a real, functioning temple. One that just so happens to do a lot of fundraising off their fortunate history. You can purchase one of the original maneki-neko figurines from the temple. Amusingly, because they are handmade by the temple and because of the Internet, you are limited to one cat per person per visit. The temple proper has some interesting older buildings, including an older three story pagoda with artwork very similar to the buildings in Rinnoji up in Nikko, Kamakura period detailed carvings and such, but old enough so the paint has worn away.

Carvings of a dragons and rabbits. All 12 of the zodiac animals are present

The pagoda itself

Ema with (of course) maneki-neko

He is everywhere

His final evolution?

The 13th zodiac animal?

After our time at the temple, we took the train back towards Tokyo and stopped at Ikebukuro for some souvenir shopping. I stopped at the Yellow Submarine, which is one of the larger stores, and found a copy of Neko Poker! It was re-released in the USA as Panda Panda, but the cat theme is a better fit for the rules. And it's cuter.

We headed up to Sunshine City, a fairly large "mall" that consists of several high-rise buildings. Our old standby Tokyu Hands is no longer there, but some of the shops down in the basement and first floor of the Sunshine City complex are still worth going to. Also, there is a performance space in the basement where there is always something different going on. As it was a weekend, there was sure to be something happening, and sure enough

I shouldn't be surprised, but I still was

So, apparently there are a great many local Japanese Hula Dance troupes. It seems many middle-aged women do it as a hobby, and so there were a bunch of groups of dancers that would go up and do a 10-15 minute performance.

Afterwards, we were quite hungry after walking around all day. We checked the food court and were underwhelmed with the choices and ended up...

We didn't actually get a Samurai Mac, nor did we get the featured item Thick Beef and Garlic Onion Beef (it's actual name. So much beef it says it twice.). When you are starving and need air conditioning...

A Big Mac meal does hit the spot

We allow ourselves one McDonalds visit each trip, for when we end up in situations like this. No apologies. No regrets! 

There was also an odd display at Sunshine City of bunches of plushies piled up. Hard to describe, but it was just a corner with various piles of stuffed character goods with a "Do Not Touch" sign. They did not say we couldn't take some pictures, though

Clearly an advertisement for the stores selling them

And we did visit those stores...before we saw this.

Finally, we headed back to Asakusa, where Sumi wanted a parfait and was not going to take no for an answer. Parfaits in Japan consist of ice cream, corn flakes, and toppings. Our favorite place to have them, the Wired Cafe in Ueno Station, did not have any on the menu this season. As it was late for Japanese dessert places (7pm?), we had few choices and opted for Cafe Gusto, a family restaurant chain. They did, indeed have parfaits and better yet, had a robot cat deliver them!

Osaka Aquarium and Drum Tao!

After a 14 hour day in the heat, we slept in a bit and missed the "breakfast" the hotel offered. Without an Andersen Bakery as an option, we went to Plan B: Vie de France. It's a chain of bakery/coffee shops in Japan and it's pretty good, though not on the level of Andersen. They did have some interesting pastries, however

Shima-enaga buns

Shima-enaga are one of the cutest birds you can imagine. They are from Hokkaido and they look like flying marshmallows.

They are the new rage in cute animals, along with capybaras in Japan. We didn't have one of those, but had a more normal breakfast

Vegetable Foccacia was so good I started eating before the mandatory picture

It had been a number of years since we visited the Osaka Aquarium, once the largest in the world, now just...well...really big. So we headed down to Osakako (Osaka Port) for a visit

It was not as hot as yesterday, but still very bright and warm. We got our tickets, had to wait 30 minutes before we could get in because they space out how many people they allow in at once. It's pretty important, because it's already ridiculously loud and crowded with tourists and small children (I'm not sure which is worse, and that's saying something) so keeping the number of visitors at any one time to a maximum is a good idea. There is a small shopping mall right across the aquarium plaza, so we stayed in there "shopping" to stay cool until our 15 minute entry window arrived (Yep, Osaka gives you 15 minutes to get in once you buy the ticket.).

The biggest attraction in the aquarium is the central tank, which spans the entire height of the building and houses all sorts of rather large sea creatures:

Like whale sharks and manta rays...

There were at least six or seven different species of shark, including the whale shark, hammerhead shark, black tipped reef shark, nurse sharks, and several others. There are also numerous rays, including the manta ray, spotted eagle ray, and others. The main tank was very impressive, as were many of the smaller exhibits. It's a very good aquarium and worth a visit if you ever find yourself in Osaka with an afternoon to kill. 

After the aquarium, Sumi headed back to the hotel and I made a brief visit to Namba, one of the main entertainment centers in Osaka, and home to a Yellow Submarine location. Yellow Submarine is a chain of game and hobby stores in Japan and one of the only retail outlets for board games. I wasn't planning on getting anything in particular, unless something I couldn't pass up appeared, but I was curious about the shop. Other than about six separate maids trying to get me into their cafes in the short walk from the station, it was an easy trip. Namba has two locations, one is just TCG (Trading Card Games, like Magic or Pokémon) the other is board games, including used games. Very nice place, though I still cannot understand the organization (if there is any) of the games on display. They are not alphabetized by title or designer, they are not grouped by publisher or genre or even box size. It feels like they just dumped whatever came it on a shelf, cleaned it up a bit, and there you go. This is true for all Yellow Submarine stores.

Anyway, I returned without purchasing anything, took a shower and we headed to ABC Hall to watch Drum Tao

They are very good at dramatic

Drum Tao is one of the three big kumidaiko groups that tour the US, the other two being Yamato and, of course, Kodo. Without getting all Taiko-snobby, it's hard to describe Drum Tao's shows. They are good drummers and very good dancers and performers, sometimes sacrificing musicality for flash and visuals, but still playing very well. Their stage shows is great, very impactful, sometimes veering into what I would call "hair metal" levels of circus, but usually not too over the top.

A few examples I can give would be during one song, they climb on top of their oodaiko and straddle it like a horse while playing it. Another would be during their encore, one of the women in the troupe's sole job was to wear a huge and complicated costume and stand on a pedestal in the middle of the stage. No dancing, no playing, just stand there. This is also the group were the women usually are wearing some form of high heels throughout the show. Tonight's show they were toned down, and had sandals with a modest heel (but still not flat). In the US a few years ago, they were wearing boots with heels that were several inches tall and I was genuinely a little nervous watching them dance in them, but they are professionals. 

The show was very enjoyable, the way a Big Mac is very enjoyable. You know it's not great. You know there are better options out there. But sometimes you just want that. And they put on a great, energetic show that never stops for the 75 minutes they perform. I'm glad we got to see them and see them in the ABC Hall, which is a rather small theater, so even our seats that we purchased a week before the show were great. No photography was allowed, so sadly we can't share any of the show with you. But here is a clip from The Stephen Colbert Show from a number of years ago.

I'll leave you with a short clip I took of...a Hello Kitty Popcorn vending machine in the mall by the aquarium.

Speaking of popcorn, there's a pretty famous chain of cream puff shops called Beard Papa

Yup, that's Beard Papa

but in Osaka, there is also

No beard, just popcorn.