Saturday/Sunday

It’s now 4:30 p.m. Sunday, and we’re chilling in the hotel room indulging in Will’s newest obsession – sumo. No, the room isn’t big enough for a sumo match between him and Daddy (there’s barely room for our luggage), but there’s a tournament on in Osaka, so from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. all week, sumo is broadcast on TV. Needless to say, we are planning our days around it, which works quite well because we start our days so early we are exhausted by 4 p.m. Yesterday, we did the Harajuku-Shibuya fashion tour, walking down Takeshita Doori with its crazy young crowed, and hit Omotesando to visit Kiddyland, the 5-story toy store where Will’s favorite stuffed animal, Snowby, was born three and a half years ago when we were last here.

Things seem so familiar here, yet look on the surface very different from when I lived here more than two decades ago. Yes, many people still wear white masks over their faces to protect themselves and others from germs; yes, people still seem to prefer to keep their distance from gaijin in subways and restaurants; but there is much more English spoken now and foreigners don’t really stand out that much; the variety of clothing and hair color is vastly more varied; things seem more relaxed. But it’s hard to say. I just wish there weren’t so many Starbucks, Tully’s Coffees and Makudonarudo Hambaagaas.

After visiting the statue of Hachiko — the loyal dog to waited for his master to return from work long after the master was dead, and an essential Shibuya meeting place for people in the pre-cell phone era — we were rather beat and headed back across Tokyo on the subway to relax in our room and watch sumo and eat Japanese crackers and some surprisingly good Gouda cheese and California wine that Rick had sweetly bought for our arrival. Evening, we ventured out to a sushi bar recommended by Rick’s interpreter – it was delicious, though by the end Will was totally sagging. He is an unbelievable trooper. Will slept all the way to 5:50 a.m. today, much to my relief, given that I woke at 4 a.m., still not adjusting to the time. Out of our hotel window, we could see workers setting up the Tokyo Marathon route a block from our hotel. We ventured out and watched the start of the marathon, with the wheelchair racers zooming by first, followed by the runners. It was extremely windy, and the neat rows of cardboard garbage cans kept blowing into the race route, along with the matching hats of the hoards of race volunteers. Will thought it was all hilarious.

We then took the train to north Tokyo, where we wandered around a very old section of Tokyo, Yanaka, one of the only, if not the only, sections to survive both the 1923 earthquake and subsequent fire, but also the bombings of World War II. It’s a hilly area, with narrow winding streets, old wooden buildings and many temples and shrines, along with tiny shops offering beautiful Japanese paper, bamboo carvings, and “College Potatoes” – a sweet confection of sweet potatoes eaten by students at a nearby university – and by our own Rick Attig, who today accepted an offer to became a graduate student of fine arts at Pacific University. Boy, I buried that lede, didn’t I? We are proud of him.

It started to rain, so we grabbed a taxi to Ueno, where we searched for a tiny soba shop through the seedy, garbage filled alleyways near Ueno station. We had to wait in line for about 20 minutes with a half dozen well-dressed Japanese who laughed at Will’s antics jumping from flagstone to flagstone outside the restaurant, and then ducked inside for delicious buckwheat noodles. Next was the National Museums at Ueno, where Will oohed and aahed over the ancient clay “Haniwa” figures, rusted bronze swords, Buddhist sculptures, and of course, armor. Rick was most excited about the beautiful writing boxes, with their ink stones and beautiful lacquered surfaces. He loved that so much care would go into the ritual of writing. I, of course, loved the Buddhist sculpture, a throwback from my college days at Waseda University, but was disappointed that much of the collection was closed for the month of March. It’s funny: Will has come to really enjoy museums, much to our delight, and for the first time in his life, he was OK with not buying something at the gift shop!!!

We also glimpsed the spring’s first cherry blossoms in the garden outside the museum — and today was declared the first official day of cherry blossom season in Tokyo — a full week early this year. We are looking forward to being here for Ohanami, an important cultural ritual of enjoying the beauty and ephemeral nature of sakura blossoms. 

Finally, the most important stop of the day: we took a subway halfway across Tokyo to find Neyn, a gourmet, semi-cult donut shop Rick had found online in Akasaka. We caught a subway back to the hotel with a dozen donuts in hand; we sat next to a dozing young Japanese woman, who like us, had a big bag of Neyn donuts at her feet. And we made it back to our room in time to catch the sumo tournament. The tournament started with some “nostalgia” clips from long, long ago – much to my delight, because it was the era when I came to love sumo, 20 some years ago. So here we sit, Will drawing cartoons of sumo wrestlers and marathoners, including one about a sumo wrestler who visits a donut shop and knocks a bunch of stuff over, Rick is doing laundry in the bathtub, and I’m typing this. We’ll venture out later for yakitori – Will’s choice tonight.

Saturday, March 20, 2009

We woke this morning to the chirping of Will, who declared it was 6:45 and time to get up. I felt a glimmer of hope he was right, but knew it my heart he wasn’t. Indeed, he’d read the glowing lights of the room thermostat, which declared it was 64.5 degrees in the room. Actually, it’s 3:25 a.m., though it feels like 11:30 a.m. Portland time. Ah, the joys of jet lag.

 While Courtenay struggled to make “Drip-On” coffee using an origami-esque folding technique that was WAY too difficult at 4 a.m., especially because it involved boiling hot water, Will wrapped his stuffed animals Snowby and Iceby in mock-kimonos using the sashes that came with our robes. We are now preparing to go to the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest seafood market in the world. Why? Because it is the only thing in Tokyo open at this hour, except for the hookers around Shimbashi Station.

 It’s now 12:45 p.m. and what feels like three days later. We ventured out to Tsukiji at 5 a.m.; it was unbelievable. It’s a vast seafood market – the largest in the world. We arrived in darkness, unsure of where to go.When I asked a sake seller where the main fish market was, he pointed in the direction and said, in Japanese, “Be careful. It’s dangerous.”  And it was. What a scene – it reminded us of a James Bond movie where the bad guys are zipping around in little carts through a hyperindustrialized warehouse. But the bad guys here were men in rubber boots and rain coats driving little forklifts  and dragging handcarts here and there; you literally had to watch your back, your sides, your front at all time in the tiny corridors of the mazelike market.

We finally found the main fish market where upwards of 450 different kinds of seafood from around the world is sold. We saw live eels, fish, clams, scallops, you name it. At the tuna auction, we managed to squeeze into a small viewing area to watch the 5:30 a.m. auction, where wholesalers bid on the whole, frozen tuna that lay like torpedoes on the floor of a warehouse. Each auction starts with a man wildly ringing a bell and then shouting ensues and the fish are sold, ready to be shipped to restaurants around the city.

 We luckily made it out of the market without getting squashed by a forklift. We made our way back to the hotel for breakfast since we figured Will couldn’t handle raw fish for breakfast. We then walked around the Imperial Palace, bought some train tickets at the main Tokyo Station, walked around the expensive shopping area of Ginza, had coffee and croissant, and it still was barely 9 a.m. We were killing time because the highlight of our day – the visit to the Pokemon Center – wasn’t open until 10 a.m.

A train stop away, Will knew we were at the rain station because he saw a group of young people wearing Piplup hats waiting to flood the train station to direct visitors to the center.  When we arrived at 10 minutes to 10, Pokemon Center had a line snaking outside the door with anxious Japanese families waiting to get in when it opened. We joined the line, and at 10, burst into the world headquarters of the Japanese equivalent of beanie babies. They sold everything from Pokemon cards, to Pokemon stuffed animals, Pokemon seaweed, Pokemon curry rice, Pokemon chopsticks. Will was in nirvana.

We just had lunch at an amazing tempura shop, where Will wowed the kimono-clad wait staff with his appetite and his polite “Gochisoosama deshita” at the end of the meal. We sat at a counter, as at a sushi bar, and watched the chefs prepare the sushi, piece by piece. We ate way too much – we didn’t want to appear rude, of course!

And it’s only 1 p.m. We’re about to head out to Harajuku, where young people dressed in crazy clothes go to blow off steam and be rebellious out of the sight of their parents on the weekend. The weather is gorgeous and warm today, so we want to take advantage. Hope all you are well!!!

A long, surreal day that began when I snapped awake at 4:30 a.m., and wound up walking the streets of Shimbashi just after dawn, along with some rather aggressive Tokyo prostitutes, and finished with a great dinner of beer, sashimi and other delicacies with four members of the Sapporo foreign relations department.

I flew to Sapporo from Tokyo today with a translator, Yoshida-san, and we toured parts of Sapporo before  visiting a school to meet with students who  went to Portland last year. Portland has a sister-city friendship with Sapporo that will mark its 50th year this spring, one of the longest sister friendships between any American and Japanese cities. The city officials, students and others were excited to welcome a Portland journalist, and my interview with the shy students, under the watchful eye of the school principal, also was photographed and recorded by a reporter from the Haikkado daily newspaper. It took me a while to get the students to warm up; they were intimidated, I think, by the setting. But I told them that so far all that I had done in Sapporo was visit a giant trash incinerator (true) and that unless they opened up about their city, I would go back to Portland and write solely about Sapporo and its incinerator, and that got them finally to open up. They were really charming kids, and they followed me outside after the interview, and shook my hand and wanted to pose for pictures. 

The city officials were abuzz about the mayoral sex scandal in Portland, and had lots of questions about what’s going on, and what’s going to happen. There’s some anxiety about the timing of a big delegation of Sapporo citizens scheduled to visit Portland in June, timed not only for the Rose Festival, but also perhaps for the beginning of the effort to recall Sam Adams. 

There is a lot of curiosity and interest here in Portland, and I hope to write a piece encouraging Portlanders to have more interest in and curiosity about their Japanese sister. There is a lot of pride about Sapporo, a city of 1.8 million that is just coming out of another long winter, with old snowdrifts still piled around town. 

Tomorrow I am scheduled to visit the ski jump built for the Sapporo Olympics, a beautiful concert hall that cost more than $150 million to build, interview the city’s climate change and sustainability experts and chat with the mayor of Sapporo before flying back to Tokyo. This has been great fun so far.