Tag Archives: Japan

CogiCogi: Crashing Hagi’s historic samurai district

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May 20 and 21, 2025—HAGI, JAPAN – We rolled into the historic town of Hagi after a longish drive from Shimonoseki, a short detour over the graceful Tsunoshima Bridge, and a side-trip inland to the Shuhodo Cave and the rocky, treeless Akiyoshi karst plain. We checked into a two-story apartment in a residential area, across the street from a school where a youth baseball team was having practice, the coaches hitting crisp ground balls to the fielders in the all-dirt diamond. 

We walked to dinner at Hagi Samurai, a nine-seat counter restaurant that specializes in okonomiyaki, the savory Japanese pancakes loaded with seafood that Will likes so much. At the Hagi Samurai, the Hiroshima chef wears a traditional “samurai” topknot, or chon mage, where the center of his head is shaved and the dark hair on the sides is oiled and smooth. This description may make the restaurant and its chef sound more exciting than it actually was. In fact, the restaurant was strangely decorated in a mash-up samurai/baseball theme, the samurai guy was a bit strange, we shared the counter with only one other diner, and the okonomiyaki was laden with mayo and sort of mushy.

We woke up early the next day, as we have this entire trip, which was fortunate because it was by far the warmest and most humid day of our vacation. It was already pushing 80 by the time we had downloaded the apps and figured out how to rent electric bikes from the bikeshare, CogiCogi. Neither one of us had ever ridden electric bikes before, and there were no instructions, at least none in English.

We started off at a brisk clip, although my bike had an annoying clanking sound. I was feeling pretty confident as we cruised into Hagi’s historic samurai neighborhood. It’s a surprisingly large samurai district, we are used to visiting towns with only a few blocks of historic buildings, but the thick walls and beautiful samurai houses in Hagi go on and on. The black tile and white plaster of the earthen walls was a symbol of prestige and wealth. These walls, with their distinctive crisscross pattern of tile and plaster, are called namako-kabe, or “sea-cucumber wall. Perhaps I was distracted by this remarkable history, and/or just clueless about electric bikes, but as I was following Courtenay around one sharp corner my CogiCogi bike suddenly accelerated with a thump into the back wall of one of the traditional samurai houses. There were no injuries, to rider or historic home. The good news is that it fixed the clanking sound on my bike.

To gather ourselves, we stopped for a Hagi pudding, and I had a cool, refreshing citrus flavor that the town is famous for.

We rode on to the Hagi castle ruins, past a beautiful curved inland beach, where a few people were out and sunning at the water’s edge. There’s not much left of the Hagi castle ruins, just the stone foundation and low walls along the protective waterways. After lunch, where I had a Wagyu beef hamburger plate, it was so hot that we rode back to the apartment and exchanged the bikes for the rental car. We rode about twenty minutes to a well-known ceramics outlet, a cooperative where many artists display and sell their works. We bought a couple Hagi-style pieces, and on the way back, drove up Mount Kasayama for 360-degree views around Hagi and its coastline, which is dotted with islands.

We were really looking forward to dinner. Courtenay had found the restaurant on line. It was described as a tiny, hard-to-find place run by a couple in their 80s, who served omakase meals, which means the chef determines what is served each night. It sounded amazing. The restaurant was somewhat hard to find, but an old woman met us outside what looked like a garage and led us up a short flight of creaky stairs. There was a strong smell of cat urine. The restaurant has only four seats, with two of them set for us. We would be their only diners. It was quite possibly the oldest, most cluttered, perhaps least appetizing, place that we have ever eaten. However, the old couple was so welcoming, almost overwhelmingly so, and thrilled that Courtenay spoke and understood some Japanese. The old chef plied us with questions, wanting to know where we were from, why we were there, what we did for work, how long we had been married, while his shyer wife stayed in the background, preparing soup and taking away the chef’s used pans. I missed most of the conversation, but heard enough to understand that at one point the chef said I looked “like a movie star, but with a round, bald head.”

The chef got more and more animated, and eventually his wife joined in. He sat down next to me and began paging through a notebook filled with messages from foreigners who had come to Kokura, and had apparently fell for the same online descriptions that we had, with diners from Norway and Australia and Italy and Romania and many other countries. His wife helpfully noted that “No one in Hagi eats here.” The chef told us very excitedly that a “FBI SWAT team member” had visited, and he spent ten minutes fishing in his wife’s purse and looking around the cluttered kitchen before he found what he was searching for: a suspiciously fake looking “SWAT” badge that he proudly showed us. He was extremely excited after Courtenay told him that we were writers, and insisted that I write in his memory book. Like everyone else who had left a message in the book, I wrote how great his restaurant was, how much we had enjoyed the food, and what an unforgettable night we had experienced there. Some of that was true.

Somewhat surprisingly, we felt fine the next morning.  Before leaving Hagi, we drove to the Aiba Waterway, a peaceful collection of homes constructed in the early 18th century for transporting rice and firewood. Fat and colorful Koi swam in the waterways around the beautiful houses, and we bought two tiny sake cups at a pottery store to bring home to remember our time in Hagi.

Shimonoseki: Atmospheric and Downhill

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SHIMONOSEKI, Japan — May 18, 2025 — We spent today exploring this deeply historic city on the edge of the Kanmon Strait, which over the centuries has been the site of some of Japan’s most legendary naval battles, and now is busy with shipping and fishing vessels.

It was a beautiful Sunday, and it seemed like everyone in the city — multigenerational families, young couples pushing strollers, packs of teenagers — were relaxing and picnicking along the waterfront. We started our day among the cannons and statues lining Mimosusogawa Park, the narrow pinch point in the Kanmon Strait, and where many fierce naval battles and bombardments have taken place over the years, including the famous 12th century battle that launched the age of samurai rule. (Our hotel room looked out on two island where the victors, under Minamoto warrior Yoshitsune, hid before defeating the Heike and their child-emperor.)

We walked on to Akama-Jingu, a shrine dedicated to a child emperor who was killed in the battle of Dannoura, in the churning strait, along with his grandmother, who saw how the battle was turning and jumped into the sea to perish with him. The story of the Heike became one of the epics of Japanese literature, its stories reverberating down the centuries. As we climbed the steps to Akama-Jingu, we came upon a wedding party posing for pictures, the blue-green waters of the Kanmon in front of the them, the bright red-orange shrine behind. We also saw the small and moving shrine to a blind Biwa-player named Houichi, who legend says lost his ears to the ghosts of the Heike.

 From there, we strolled through a Sunday outdoor arts and crafts tent market, a nice scene with music and kids running all over the place, and past the Karato Seafood Market, which seemed like the epicenter of Shimonoseki life, absolutely jammed with locals. We weren’t hungry yet, but we would return later to pick up fresh sushi and join the people sitting and eating along the strait.

We went from the fish market to the Kaikyo-yume Tower, a 30-story-high observation tower that rises over Shimonoseki and offers a bird’s-eye view of the city, the islands and rugged nearby mountains, and the Sea of Japan in the distance. We wanted to take a bus to the tower, but were unsure about the routes and bus numbers. Courtenay asked some waiting passengers for advice, and it turned out that they, too, were headed for the tower, and that quick, we had new friends and travel partners. They were three generations of family, there to spend the weekend together. They were so friendly and welcoming, full of questions about us, and they guided us onto the bus and up to the tower, eager to show and tell us about Shimonoseki. The patriarch, who had attended twice-weekly English lessons for years, had spent his life here, and worked in construction management; he proudly told us that his company had been involved in inspecting the very tower that we were ascending. It was great fun, meeting and talking and posing for pictures with them. As we parted, they offered us gifts of fugu-themed rice crackers. (Everything is fugu-themed here – fugu, or the potentially poisonous puffer fish – is the local mascot and appears on everything from mail boxes to sewer covers. It also makes for a mean sashimi – just make sure you don’t try it at home – it has to be prepared by someone who knows what they are doing to avoid fatal consequences. BTW, we survived.)

We spent the afternoon in Shimonoseki’s Chofu Castle Town District, which is studded with shrines, abandoned temples, and samurai-era streets lined with stone walls and beautifully preserved homes. We started at the Iminomiya Shrine, where Courtenay had read might be celebrating a rabbit-themed spring festival today, which sounded like it might be a sweet scene. However, it turned out that the shrine was holding nothing more than a flea market, and a bit of a shabby one at that. (Courtenay thinks Rick is being overly harsh here, given the depth of his disappointment over the rabbits. It was just a regular flea market with dial-up phones, old clothes, some crafts.)

If the rabbit festival was a bust, the rest of Chofu Castle Town was actually quite cool. We wandered through the Chofu Mori Residence, a stunning house where the Emperor Meiji once stayed. We also walked up into the Kozanji Temple, one of the oldest temples constructed in the Zen-style in Japan and a designated national treasurer. I was wearing down after so much walking, but we came up on the Dangu Kawa River, more of a creek, I would say, where the town and its residents have restored the waterway and been trying to bring back the fireflies that were once common there. Courtenay asked me if I wanted to keep walking, and I said, sure, since the street we were on was “atmospheric and downhill,” which struck her as funny, and has since become something of a catchphrase on this trip.

We walked from the castle district on to the Chofu Garden, where we stopped to get our entry tickets and found the attendant absolutely sound asleep, and had to wake her to get our tickets. The garden, as you might expect, was quite peaceful. It was beautiful walking around a koi-filled pond while we heard the sounds of a pipe-player putting on a concert in a nearby building.

We finished our walk by climbing up to the ruins of the old Shimonoseki castle that overlooked our hotel. All that was left of the small castle that had once been here were some walls – the rest destroyed in the early 17century at the orders of the first Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, who wanted to limit the power of his provincial rivals. In fact, this part of the country is known for its independent, rebellious streak, resistant to control from the center. While Courtenay enjoyed the ruins, Rick was absolutely delighted by a giant decaying model of a great blue whale that once stood near the Shimonoseki Aquarium. The whale had seen better days and the aquarium apparently wanted to get rid of it, and so it dropped it on the hill by the ruined castle. I loved the whale; it reminded me of the cheesy Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox models at the Trees of Mystery, in Southern Oregon. — Rick

Sumo and the Six-Minute Shinkansen Transfer

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ON THE SHINKANSEN, Southern Honshu, Saturday, May 17, 2025 – Our time in Tokyo went by as fast as, well, as fast as the 300-kilometer-an-hour bullet train hurtling us southward right now. We had a long, busy day yesterday, starting with the teamLab Borderless digital art museum/experience at Azabu-dai. It was classic teamLab – digital art projected on walls, ceilings and floors, or from strings of crystals or sparkling globes, hanging from the ceiling, surrounded by mirrors. The installations give you a feeling an infinity, like Kusama Yayoi’s famous pieces. We saw the same tigers made up of moving masses of flowers, and hauntingly weird rabbits and other frog-like creatures we had seen projected on the stone castle walls at Kanazawa back in 2023. (It was much more beautiful, and interesting, projected on atmospheric castle walls – don’t miss it if you ever have a chance.) Our highlight experience was probably the room that had children’s drawings of fish and other sea creatures swirling around the walls and ceilings of one room – we finally figured out we too could make drawings to be projected on the walls. So I made a “Hazel Fish,” and Poppa made a “Rory Fish.” Soon, Rory and Hazel were swimming happily around the room with the other fantastical creatures.

From there, we headed over to the other side of the Sumida River, where we visited a new and interesting museum dedicated to the woodblock print art of Hokusai, most famous for his series of prints “36 Views of Mount Fuji,” including his most famous “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.” The Sumida Hokusai Museum, which became quite crowded, had excellent displays on how the blocks were drawn, carved, and printed in many layers. These woodblock prints had a big influence on the art of late 19th century France, including the Impressionists – Monet, Manet etc. – as well as Vincent Van Gogh, who collected them whenever he could find them.

After that, we stopped at a famous soba shop, Hosokawa, where the owner makes the buckwheat noodles by hand every morning. We had heard the lines can be long, so we went early, and immediately got a table with several groups of older Japanese women – two had been shopping and one elderly woman was enjoying her noodles all alone – they were that good. It will be interesting to compare them to the soba we have along the southwestern edge of Honshu, which is also famous for its pure buckwheat noodles. We love soba so seek it out whenever we are in Japan.

Our last stop was the Ryogoku Kokugikan, or the national sumo arena, a short walk away. It was only 1 p.m. and the main sumo didn’t start for two and a half hours, but we didn’t dare take a cab back to the hotel – the worst thing to do when you are jet lagged is stop moving. So we watched some of the rikishi, or sumo wrestlers, walk into the stadium in their yukata robes and flip-flops. We then took our seats, which were very far from the center arena, or dohyo, in a section that was filled with gaijin, as we foreigners are called here. All of those in our row had gone through the same hours-long process of trying to get tickets the second they went on sale. The website kept crashing, but those of us in row 9 had persevered and finally managed to secure tickets. I joked that the website had identified all the IP addresses outside Japan and stuck us all in the same section, but it was fine. Even the lovely Canadian couple sitting next to us were very sweet and didn’t mention anything about, um, things back home.

I had spent some time reading about the wrestlers – who is on their way up, who is on his way out – and had some fun details about which wrestler had a tiny toy poodle and loved gardening, and which was the bad boy who got caught at hostess bars during the pandemic, and. which was the eponymous “Flying Monkey.” In any case, we have followed sumo over the years, first when I was in Japan as an exchange student in college and then when Will was little and we would watch together in the evenings on one epic trip to Japan. So it was really wonderful to finally see it in person. My friend Hope had said it’s best to sit on the floor in reserved seating where she had gone as a child growing up in Japan, but we didn’t even try for those seats – we couldn’t imagine sitting on the floor for four to five hours straight without perhaps losing feeling in our legs and our legs altogether. So we sat in the nose-bleed seats and were really able to see all the action just fine. It was just too far to clearly see the rikishi’s facial expression or really feel the intensity of the wresting or the size of the wrestlers themselves, a few of whom are up to 6-foot-5 and/or 420 pounds. But to see the rituals and camaraderie of the sport which dates back centuries and is steeped in Shinto spiritual practices was really, well, awesome.

As you perhaps know, I am a cautious traveler who arrives at the airport two hours early and never books an airline transfer under 90 minutes, so I was a bit worried about a six-minute transfer from one Shinkansen to another today in Hiroshima. Six minutes? I mean, in the US, that would be insane for practically any transfer. But I trusted that the Shinkansen website would not lead me astray, and it turns out that six minutes is a loooong time for a transfer in Hiroshima. We just walked across the platform, and after a very long four-minute wait, there came our train – a sleek, pink Hello-Kitty themed train that everyone had their phones to capture its adorableness. So now we are speeding south on that pink cat-covered Shinkansen – which is also awesome. Rory and Hazel would love it. My mother would love it. I love it. I’m so happy to be back in Japan!

Kinosaki: A yukata for exploring, a voice for radio

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By Will

Today we went to a small town in the mountins (this blog post will be shorter because we spent so much time eating an enormous dinner that I’m tired and do not have much time to write it). It is called Kinosaki.

We got there and went up in a tram ride to the top of the mountain. There was a strange guy in the tram who seemed to have been doing some drinking. He said: “Some of you speak Japanese and some of you don’t, Ha ha!” and to Mom,  “You have a good accent for radio, not for TV, Ho ho.” We got to the top to see a beautiful view of the Sea of Japan, which I’ve never seen before.

 We came down from there and went to see some sights in town and hit some gift shops. After that we went back to hotel and relaxed for a while before putting on our yukatas and going out. We were in these like… uh… elavated wooden shoe thingys (geta) that were just about as easy to ice skate in as to walk. We went to dinner at the ryokan we had sooo much food. We had: crab,pickles,rice,beef,vegtables,tofu,soup and whatever that was. Our server, a really nice woman named Keiko-san, brought us endless amounts of food. We were ABSOLUTELY STUFFED when ice cream finally came for me.We went back to the room and went to bed.  

(Mother’s note: Will used a lot of his Japanese today and charmed Keiko-san and many others that he met along the way.)

THE END

Buddhist monks in the morning, sacred deer and Monroe, Oregon, by night

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By Will

Today we woke up to the sound of a REALLY LOUD gong. It was 5:30 in the morning and we were going to a monk-chanting thing. (Buddhist ceremony) We got dressed and went down the stairs in our cold slippers that kept on falling off. We went to this cold temple area and the monks started chanting. (For those of you who think monks go “ummmmmmm” they actually do  go”ummmmmmm!!”). It’s cool. That went on for about a hour. After that we went to a VERY traditional breakfast. We had unidentified tofu stuff, pickled something or rather, rice and…uh…what is that! But it was good.

Went to a bus then got in a cable car before getting on a train. Then the next train and on the next train there was some weird guy staring at us then he sat next to us and then he (thankfully) left.

We checked into our hotel in Nara and went to lunch at a curry restaurant. It was pretty good. In Nara they let deer just roam free all over town because they think they are sacred or something. So the first deer you see it is like: “OMG A DEER JUST SITTING THERE IN THE ROAD” After you have seen fifty deer you act more normal when you see them.

We went to see some temples and shrines. After that we went back to the hotel and watched this show where these two guys with helmets and padding tried to whack each other with wooden swords. That was REALLY entertaining.

We went to dinner at this place that was sort of a bar with food. My mom met this guy who made T-shirts for this SUPER small place my mom’s family was from called Monroe, Oregon. Small world. It was cool. After that we went home and went to bed.

Arrival: Tommy the Talking Toilet and The Elevator Guy

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TOKYO, Monday, Nov. 19, 2012, 4:36 a.m. — Hello everybody, it’s Will here and I am supposed to tell you about my day. We woke up REALLY early and my brother drove us to the airport. When we got there and navigated our way through security,customs and whatever you call it. We checked our baggage and mom got all darn WORRIED that her BAG did not go through. She thought the people there would be all like: “Oh there is a bag sitting on the ramp that was checked”. “Great John, let’s just leave it there cause we’re idiots.”Ha ha. We were sitting in our gate for like FOUR HOURS. Cause we had to come so EARLY!!! I read the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. It’s good. We got on our plane and they did not have those movie screens in the back of your seat thing and so I played video games for a LONGGGGGGGGGGG time.

When we got there dad looked up who won in the Ducks game and… NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! QUINCY, YOU DID NOT CHEER LOUD ENOUGH! The Ducks lost and so my mom was all smirky. So then I felt weird and started babbling. I said: “when I am in Africa I want to see Earl the talking elevator.” I felt SO weird and tired. When we got our bags we went to see if we could find our friends Mike and Helen. I was still babbling so I said, “Lets go find Michael Jackson and Helen of the Bob Dynasty We were waiting in this VERY long line and I found these two random people and thought it was Helen and Mike. Then they snuck up behind us.

We were in this very busy under ground train station and waiting in this long line. I was feeling awful. Mike turned my hat inside out and said it was my rally cap. Two hours later we were rushing to the train–we missed the first one because of this stupid security officer. I named him Vaz the Spaz. 45 minutes later we were on the train. I played video games for the whole hour long ride. When we got out we rushed out of this train station and into this department store. It was crazy. I got dumplings and a moon cake. It took a long time for everyone else to find their food. They found these snack boxes of WHAT? We never knew. Then dad randomly bought these fried things. I was just happy I had my dumplings. We stopped at this gum shop and watched them make hard candy and gum. They had samples. It was so good. It was still warm and fruit flavored.

We raced back to the hotel. and checked in. Some Japanese guy was in the elevator we waited for him to go and we pressed the button agian. AAAAAHHHH! THAT JAPANESE GUY WAS STILL IN THERE! We waited again and this time it came up empty. We went to our room and Helen and Mike went into the wrong room with some guy in it. We got in our room and the toilet open the seat when you opened the door. “AAAAHHHHH”!!! I screamed. I named it Tommy the Talking Toilet. We were going too have dinner. MY DUMPLINGS TURNED OUT TO BE FROZEN! So I had a moon cake for dinner because I did not want too touchthe purple rice and the fried whatever. Then I fell asleep. GOODBYE.

Editor’s note: As the grownups were finishing dinner and their beers in the hotel, Will reclined onto one of the beds and announced, “OK, that about wraps it up, folks,” rudely urging Mike and Helen to return to their own room, calling an end to our first hours in Japan ….

The faded elegance and fish eyeballs of Nara

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Thursday, June 24, 2010, Nara, Japan, 4:30 pm –I am typing this in our room in the 101-year-old Nara Hotel, a lovely historic building that a card on my side table tells me is a “Heritage of Industrial Modernization.” I could think of some more poetic tributes, but that’s what it says. Einstein stayed here in 1922 and played the piano in the lounge downstairs. There are pics of emperors and emperors-to-be on the walls, as well. For all that, it’s surprisingly reasonable — you pay less for the old building, which has such great ambiance, and way less than a traditional Japanese ryokan. Our room has a non-working but cool fireplace and high ceilings paneled in gorgeous straight grain fir. Best of all is the air conditioning, since it is hot hot hot outside — not as humid as it has been but still it’s good to be inside in the afternoon.

Will is wearing his red ninja costume we bought yesterday at the ninja museum in Iga-Ueno, a town an hour from here that was home to an important school of ninjas. We toured a house filled with trick doors, escape hatches and hidden swords, and watched a live “ninja” demonstration. Will found it all quite cool. There was also a rebuilt samurai castle with a great view and cool old samurai weaponry and armor inside that thrilled Will. He is so much fun to travel with — he gets enthusiastic about most everything.

It was our first day without the Ahmads yesterday, which was sad, but they are off on wedding adventures. We had an amazing nine days together; it was so much fun seeing Japan through their eyes and sharing a place we love with them. Will and Ibrahim had a blast, and Asma was a delightful travel companion. We managed to blend our two totally different travel styles — Asma got me to slow down a bit, and she was nice to not complain about my “get up at the crack of dawn and go until you drop but not until after dinner” philosophy I inherited from my parents.

We left them on a Shinkansen platform in Nagoya, and I trust they are safely home now. (we got a text they had made the plane….) So since Tuesday, we have been braving the sightseeing on our own.

The past two nights we stayed in an old ryokan that emanated faded elegance — lovely large tatami mat rooms with views of a garden, even a private bath with a garden view. It was early century meets the 60s meets some serious flooding and mildew and perhaps lack of a repair and upkeep budget.

But the service was delightful — a lovely “obaasan” or grandma with a musical laugh took such good care of us, serving us amazing elaborate meals that Will ate with surprising gusto. He has become quite fearless in his eating — he declares fish eyeballs delicious, and tries everything, even when (often) we have no idea what it is. The only thing we’ve passed on is the raw fish ovaries, which Asma the OB/GYN first spotted in a market in Kyoto. Well, we were served those same ovaries two breakfasts in a row and just couldn’t do it. I managed to eat the salted sea creature guts the night before and that did my adventure quotient for the trip. We did, however, try turtle, which was beyond delicious. Will loved it. Thank god we weren’t served whale (maybe we were and didn’t know it) because we probably would have eaten it and broken some IWC regulation.

We had planned on staying two more nights in the ryokan, but the vast quantity of food for breakfast and dinner was wearing us down, so we escaped to the Nara Hotel. When you are staying at a ryokan, you feel obligated to eat everything, which is frankly impossible (especially without Rick :))

Just ask Asma — our last night in Takayama, our ryokan, in what we believe was a misguided attempt to please the boys, served us — after countless “starters” that had filled us up (we’re talking sashimi, tofu, pickles, a dish boiled over a fire on the table, among other things I’ve forgotten) — two, yes two, pizzas, along with four steaks (beef being a local specialty). And that wasn’t all. Last came rice and miso soup — which we told them to save. And finally the dessert buffet. We kid you not. I think my cholesterol shot through the roof — Asma kept saying she thought we would lose weight on the trip, and I assured her it wouldn’t be a problem, but I was wrong — I will be on a diet the rest of the summer!

So anyhow, we find ourself in this old hotel, relaxing after a busy day. We first got settled here, then visited the Kofukuji temple that has an amazing museum filled with Buddhist sculptures between 1,300 and 600- years old. Again, Will declared it the coolest place ever and told me to slow down so he could enjoy each sculpture. You’ve got to love the boy. He also finally persuaded me to buy some deer food to feed the sacred deer for which Nara is famous. The first time I tried to buy food, I got butted (yes in the butt) by a large-antlered deer and told Will to forget it. But Will begged, so I bought him some biscuits. Three large deer with significant racks chased him down — I was fending them off with my sun umbrella — and he tossed the whole bunch of biscuits at them and we ran for our lives. Ok not for our lives, but sacred or not, they are nasty.

Well it is almost dinner time, so I’d better go. Best to you all and see you soon!

Foxes, rice and the phoenix

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Kyoto, Saturday, June 19, 2010, 6 p.m. — This may be our last post for a while — we enter the wifi-free zone of ryokan, the traditional Japanese inn. We had a great day in Kyoto, visiting the Fushimi Inari Shrine, the mother shrine for rice, the most important food in Japan. Because rice was once used as a means of exchange, it is also the shrine for business — and for sake, the rice wine. We wandered up a mountain lined by vermillion torii gates creating shaded tunnels up the hill. It was really fun and picturesque. The boys left wishes on a wooden plaque in the shape of a fox — the guardian animal of the shrine — on which they had drawn funny faces. I wish I could upload the photos.
We also visited the Phoenix Hall or Byoodoin, the only remaining temple from the Heian period in the 11th century. It was beautiful, its red paint faded gray, hovering like a bird over the rock-lined pond in front. The statue of Amida Buddha inside was larger than I imagined (I’d seen it in many art history slides) and very peaceful. And many green tea ice creams were consumed.
We’re now back at the hotel, enjoying a beautiful view of the eastern hills of Kyoto, against a backdrop of clouds. Asma is moving into a room with a view for our last night in Kyoto.
We’re off to Takayama in the mountains of Nagano tomorrow. It’s likely to be hot and rainy there as well, but we’re kind of used to it by now. And we’ve heard it was a whopping 48 degrees and hailing at home, so we won’t complain. We hope all is well with all our friends and family, and we’ll be in touch when we can.

Ninjas and Birthday Magic

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Wednesday, June 16, 2010, Heisei 22, Tokyo — Well we made it to Tokyo and finally have wee-fee so that we can actually post something. i’m not sure we’ll post much because we have very little down time. And what downtime we have seems to be filled with two 8-year-olds fighting with foam swords and generally wreaking havoc.


Will had a truly unforgettable birthday yesterday, starting with a cake in our room with “Happy 8th Birthday Will” written in Japanese and English. We then wandered Ginza, watched World Cup soccer in 3D at the top of the Sony Center, bought foam swords at Hakuhinkan as Will’s birthday gift, had a fabulous tempura lunch at Rick’s favorite restaurant, Ten-tei.


The highlight of the day was the Ninja Akasaka restaurant, a kischty but totally fun restaurant that would never fly in the U.S. because it must break every fire code in the book. The concierge clapped her hands and a black-dressed “ninja” appeared from a secret doorway to grab a menu and lead us down and up winding corridors, complete with a drawbridge and a master ninja doing magic tricks at our table. We then — because Asma is a determined traveler, thank goodness — we ascended the Tokyo Tower and saw the beautiful lights of the city.
Gotta go, Tokyo is calling.