2002-12-06 - 9:42 a.m.
Let me try to finish this Japan story off. The tale has become tiresome to tell and if someone WERE to read this someday, even more tiresome to read. In this episode our protagonist protagonises some monkeys in the Japanese Alps, joins a cult, meets a tribe of tuna, says goodbye to his travel buddies, and wanders the streets of Tokyo alone.
After Kyoto we stayed in a small town called Takayama for a day. Takayama is a small town by a river a few hours south of Tokyo. It has old pagoda style buildings, street markets, and an assortment of antique shops. It reminded me a bit of an artsy town near where I live, New Hope. Some memories of Takayama include:
- I bought a guitar for Jaime. It was a little one just right for carrying around. She showed an interest in learning and the price was right, so it seemed a good gift. I spent the remainder of my vacation with it strapped to my back like a samurai vagabond minstrel.
- Our gang of 12 "invading" this tiny bar called the Red Herring (or something). It was listed in someone's guidebook as a place for "beers of the world". After an hour of searching we finally found it tucked into a side street. As it turned out, they were out of most of the beers of the world, but it was still a cozy night. We sat and chatted and listened to Radiohead on the stereo.
- The Takayama local brew. The first hearty ale we had since being in Japan. It was a welcome change after the redundancy of all the Japanese Budweisers.
- The visit to the Sukyo Mahikari cult's shrine. The leaders of some new religion started in the 1960's built this gigantor hideous palace on the hill of Takayama. It was the size of a sports stadium! Apparently there are also chapters in California and New Zealand. Believers apparently sell all their possessions and go through training in order to become members and earn a protective spiritual light amulet. The end goal is to master the Light of God, which is in us all. You should think about this. You will think about this.
- A visit to the rascist Teddy Bear museum. For lack of anything better to do, a few of us visited the Teddy Bear museum of Takayama. It is a hodge-podge collection of old teddy bears and teddy bear related materials. Apparently they didn't have enough bears for their collection because sprinkled amoung the bears were a few other animals, and shockingly some black face dolls! No explanations or anything! Really crazy.
- Good food at our ryokan. Lots of veggies and some tasty salmon.
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We jumped a train and then a bus, and headed up into the area known as the Japanese Alps (aka Kamakochi). We spent the next day there in a cabin in the woods. It is one of my more beautiful memories of Japan. The mountains are absolutely gorgeous! All the leaves were changing colours, and the moutains had snow on the tops. The water in the river looked soo clear. The air was crisp. I loved it!
We took a long walk along a mountain trail. It took us through a dry riverbed, and through the trees, and along the river. My feet were aching, and it started to rain, but it was great. And at the end of our hike, near our cabins, we had to cross a small bridge. On the other side of the bridge there were groups of excited people. As I crossed, I could see a tree with some kind of berries in it. Up in the tree, munching on the berries were a hoard (group? gaggle? murder?) of monkeys! They were jumping around from branch to branch and after they had their fill, would jump down and run across a tension wire attached under the bridge. I quickly headed over and took about a 1000 picture. I'd never seen a monkey up close before so I was fascinated. I watched them stuff their red faces and swing all over the tree. Some had little babies on their back. It was absolutely bananas!
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It was a long trip back from the mountains. We took 1 bus and 2 trains to get back to Tokyo. We arrived there Sunday evening. After dinner and a beer I went to my room and slept. The next day I got up at 4AM! to go down to the Tokyo fish market. It was interesting and disturbing. I wandered half-asleep around this busy wharf area. There were aisles and aisles of fish laid out for sale. Some of them looked newly deceased. Octopus, shellfish, and Red fish with beady little black eyes lying in bloody ice water. Ugh! Little forklifts darted around me. Lots of people bustled about too. Everyone was very polite, as usual, despite the fact that I was probably getting in the way of his or her work.
Then the "highlight" of the market, the infamous tuna auction. I had never really seen a tuna before this and didn't realize that those suckers are as big as dolphins! There were rows and rows of them… maybe hundreds! Each had a number tag on it. At the end of the warehouse, there were auctioneers with swarms of people bidding on their favorite fish. It looked like one of those scenes from the NY stock exchange!
I don't remember what I did for the rest of the day. I probably took a nap, then wandered around with the group for one last day. That night we met for our final dinner together. We ate at a place called the Spicy Café which served all kinds of Eastern foods (Tai, Cambodian, etc..). The waiter was a funky cool looking dude with big hair. We all ordered a dish and everyone shared. We all ate, drank, and talked a lot about the trip. I realized that I'd be sad to see everyone go.
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My last 5 days in Tokyo were spent mostly alone. I did some museums, shopping, and a lot of people watching. A few memories of those days:
- Tokyo Museum of Modern Art. I saw some really great exhibits there. Including:
1. Giant lifelike freaky baby with big black saucer eyes
2. Prints made from bubble soap and ink blown onto canvas.
3. Almost empty room humming with the sound of low frequency electricity. It was not unlike monks chanting.
4. Giant mural along the wall with sea sounds playing. As you walked along it, very slowly, things like the ocean swirls seemed to shift and move.
5. Awesome!, 10 minute time lapse movie of this couple in a red room manipulating a GIANTIC blob of clay.
6. My favorite and hard to describe, but something from my dreams. A room painted a solid colour, with a TV set on either side, each looping a piece of video of Karen Carpenter singing "Close To You". One TV would loop "Youuuuuu", the other had a "I" part. When you stood in the middle of the room the two sounds would meld together. As you walked around the room you got different effects. It was totally Ginza! (They also had an Annie Lenox, Olivia Newton John, and Whitney Houston room.)
- Tokyo Disney Sea Park. I decided to head out here on my second day. It ended up pretty much being a big disappointment, although I'm not sure what I really expected. It is a new theme park next to Tokyo Disneyland, with the theme supposedly being water. There were different sections – Arabian Coast, the Mediterranean, and Scary Island. They incorporated that little mermaid movie into some of the stuff, but for the most part there was nothing that looked/felt very "Disney" at all (except the gift shops). There were a couple mini roller-coaster rides that had some good drops (Indiana Jones ride, and Journey to the Center of the Earth ride), but other than that it was nothing to write home (or diaryland) about.
- Sapporo beer museum. Not very thrilling, it was basically just a couple of rooms exhibiting photos and copper kettles. They did have delicious samples though. I tried a dark, and a grapefruit beer. Oshi!
- The drum museum. A big room filled with various drums, many of which you can play. I got there early and had the whole room to myself. I spent and hour just banging away.
- Sunday in Harajuku park. It's the place where a lot of high school and college aged people hang out. Bands set up around the park, each only 20 feet or so from the next. I gave one of them, called Amusement Park, a tape of Tom and my music. It's a great place to people watch. A lot of the people dress in their coolest outfits. I didn't see anything that crazy but some of the styles included:
1. A lot of gothic and glam. Some girls wore 19th century looking frilly gowns. Hair died grey, white, pink, and red. Pale faces. Boots. Skirts, skirts, skirts!
2. A lot of hats. NO BASEBALL hats, thank gawd. They were mostly 20's looking caps, and wollen hats.
3. Layering of different decades. An 80's tie, a 70's sweater, a 50's jacket or vest, and a 60's patchwork pair of pants.
4. The coolest shoes in the universe! There were funky styles of Vans and Chucks. There were sleek dress shoes. There were space-age woven futuristic kickers of all kinds. I could've bought 20 pairs but I only ended up getting 2.
5. Bright colours. The same ones found in candies and wax fruit.
- A tiny Godzilla statue which amused me because it looked much larger in the guidebook picture.
- A possible junior sumo that I saw on the subway.
...I could go on and on and on about the things I saw and did in Japan, but I am going to bring it all to a finish here and now. I'll just say it was a greattt trip. I'd like to thank gawd, the Academy, my Fans, and IJ tours for the wicked okashi time.
-bP
p.s. My top 10 list of things I missed or regret about my trip…
1. Jaime and my friends were not there.
2. Didn't see a sumo match
3. Didn't see the Japanese Beatles cover band ("rub rub me do") that was playing at a bar in Tokyo.
4. Didn't see live music of any kind.
5. Didn't travel up to Nikko, which was supposed to be a nice area with beautiful nature and the "See No, Hear No, Speak No Evil monkeys".
6. Don't have the fashion sense to know what would look cool on me, so didn't buy any clothes other than a futbol (soccer) shirt.
7. Didn't check out a film at the Tokyo International Film festival, which was going on while I was there.
8. Forgot to bring a tape recorder to the drum museum
9. Didn't buy more cool shoes
10. Forgot to try plum wine
