Kanazawa Day One

We caught the shinkansen by the skin of our teeth, as it was an early morning start. It was certainly a breathless way to start the trip, but I recommend not rolling around for twenty minutes after your alarm rings. Do pack some snacks though; munching sweatily on my food made me feel a lot better after we’d stopped panting!

The sunrise was lovely on the way out though!

We took the Shinkansen to Maibara, a lovely smooth ride, and then switched to the local express. Here’s a tiny tip for those looking to save money – get discounted tickets beforehand if possible, but even if not, leave the station and look for the ticket machines. They’ll only save you a few hundred yen, but you not only feel victorious after figuring out the kanji, but you can go and buy yourself an onigiri for your troubles. You can’t find the machines on google maps, but they’ll usually be close to the station entrance, tucked under an overhang or in a discreet corner.

Manned ticket booths

We reached Kanazawa station just before noon, and were entranced even before exiting the ticket gates. Kanazawa is one of the few places that still has ticketmen (perhaps also women?) manning the gates, and so we were ushered efficiently through the gates and into the very large, modern station.

Kanazawa station is a place to explore in itself, and we were treated to an “eki-con” – station concert, just opposite the track gates. A string quartet began to play a jaunty tune, accompanied by a lone man whose instrument seemed to be alternating between a whistle and a small train pipe. It later turned out that he played the French horn, but wouldn’t it have been great if he had been employed for that sole purpose?

Tootle tootle

An imposing sight

Outside the station, the massive gates, a modern take on the traditional Japanese tori, loomed large under a giant domed roof. At the end of the walkway, a fountain burbled “WELCOME”, “KANAZAWA” and the time of day. It was rather fascinating – a simple idea, but very effective – tourists all around us were caught frantically between. Which to snap a picture of first? Where to pose? The choice was daunting.

We wanted to set our bags down first, so we set off on the 30 minute walk to our accomadation. That took us through the heart of Kanazawa city, so we enjoyed coming across random art sculptures and observing the buildings and people around us. Our route took us through omi-cho, the local fish market, so we got to see the local businesses hawking their wares. It all looked incredibly fresh, for ridiculously low prices. Much of the shellfish was still alive, crabs with claws tied together, shrimps still swimming around in their tanks.

Artwork on the street

The mama-san at Minshuku Ginmatsu was a tiny smiley lady. She speaks a little English, and makes herself understood quite loudly and clearly, and we met both local and overseas guests, so it’s evidently a well-known and international place. Our rooms were about 2,000 yen per night per person, with a decent amount of space once the futons were rolled away – perhaps a five or six mat tatami room.

Once we’d settled in, popped the bags down and unpacked, we walked out to the Higashi Chaya district, which essentially means South Tea Area. Many of the buildings are faithfully restored, as their tight-knit structure meant that any fires rampaged through the town and destroyed many a building. We wandered through the small alleyways to get to the main square, where there was a wedding taking place – the bride resplendent in a white kimono, and men sleekly poised in grey suits. Higashi Chaya is the only one of its type to be named a cultural asset, as it’s particularly well maintained and historical.

A wedding in progress

Waiting on ice cream

All about higashi chaya

Traditionally, tea districts are a place of entertainment, filled with geisha and music. Most of the buildings have been converted into shops selling all manner of things – traditional pottery, chopsticks, golden beauty products, and many shops had little plaques relating the history of their buildings – what it had been used for in the past, how many times it had burned down and been rebuilt – that sort of thing. I really liked the old-time vibe of the area. It wasn’t quaint – it was absolutely bustling with tourists and business, but it had certainly preserved a historical feel for visitors to appreciate. We saw posters for geisha shows on the weekends, too, but since I am fortunate enough to have the same opportunity around my own area, we skipped it for sights harder to find back in our prefecture.

Golden buildings

Since Kanazawa is largely renowned for gold-leaf production, that was incorporated into almost every shop. One even sold a face mask of gold (for a cool ¥5000) and we could get gold leaf ice-cream too. I tried some coffee with gold leaf, but wasn’t overfond of it. Gold leaf has no flavour apart from extravagance, and it was a fun gimmick, but certainly not something I’d go out of my way to get. Still, Kanazawa managed to put it everywhere!

We wandered in and out of various shops and snapped a good amount of photos. Once we’d explored what the place had to offer, we followed signs towards a museum that turned out to be the Sakuda Gold and Silver Leaf Museum. Although we hadn’t made a reservation, there was space for us to try our hand at crafting some gold leaf products! There were a variety of things to choose from – small lacquer boxes, chopsticks, pendants and the like. The cheapest and least time-consuming option were the chopsticks (¥800), so we chose that. The workshop leaders didn’t speak any English, but showed us the process, then let us at it! We had a bouquet of chopsticks to gain inspiration from, and A-Sharp went for a cool striped design, whereas I tried my hand at a wonky “Kanazawa” and “2015” in kanji. I am now well aware that my dates are wrong, but nevermind.

Craft tools

Sample chopsticks

Making our designs

Brushing on gold leaf

It was getting dark by the time we finished with our golden leaf adventures, so we headed back towards omicho market for dinner. All the stalls were closed up, but the restaurants were bustling. We threaded our way through the damp cobbles and randomly chose a restaurant tucked into the corner of an alley after seeing a pair of salarymen stagger ahead of us. They were completely right – we were lucky to snag one of the last free tables. Not ten minutes after we’d entered, a queue of hungry customers began to grow. However, we gleefully sipped our cups of roasted rice tea and looked at the menu. We decided to share a sashimi and rice platter, topped with everything! You could either choose a combo, or go for everything, and of course, what’s a hungry girl to do but choose the most extravagant? Omicho has fantastic seafood and I wasn’t about to miss out on the opportunity to try it out!

Nor do I regret the choice – it was absolutely delicious. And, of course, it being Kanazawa, they sprinkled a little gold leaf on top. I bet organ donations in Kanazawa are worth more money… my villi were probably lined with gold leaf! I was King Midas on the inside (except hopefully less foolish)!

We finished the day with a coffee at Starbucks. I have no way to defend myself except to say that Starbucks represents holidays to me – they don’t exist out where I live, and its genuinely become a treat for me!

Just chillin' with ojipan

The only thing I would add to this first day timetable, if you’re looking for suggestions, is the confectionery museum. I did a little trip research beforehand, but we weren’t going by any solid timetable, so it slipped our minds. Kanazawa is also known for its sweet making, so it’s definitely something to keep in mind!

POLA Annex, Ginza

POLA is a cosmetics firm based in Japan, which was founded in Shizuoka nearly 100 years ago! It started out as a chemical products firm, but quickly branched out. It’s an international brand now, but still mostly popular within Japan, and not that well known outside the islands. There are a lot of branches dotted around, and I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a facial done at one of them but have not yet got round to doing so. However, POLA also has an art foundation; giving scholarships and sponsoring works around Japan.

They also own a well-stocked museum in Hakone; Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso and Léonard Foujita are represented within the museum’s collection. It’s definitely worth a visit, and Hakone isn’t far out from Tokyo at all. I’ve visited once, and was rather impressed both by the indoor and outdoor esthetics; I’d like to go back and do a photoshoot sometime. In the meantime, I’ll make do with the cute gift shop stuff my friends bought for me – a rather crazy looking Monet post-it set, and a badge with a popular Renoir painting. Japan really knows how to market things – I have more stuff here than I know what to do with, all of it cute or memorable or somehow unpartable with.

There’s an art annex above their store in the midst of the upmarket district of Ginza, so we went to have a gander at what it had to offer. It’s not a particularly large gallery – just the one room, but what it had to offer was very enjoyable.

This particular exhibit, Crystal Universe, was a combination of colour-changing LEDs in a darkened room, accompanied by music. The Japan Times provides a little more background on the event:

“Artist collective teamLab was founded in 2001, and its members include artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, architects, designers and editors. Its work, therefore, has always been of a sophisticated artistic and technological nature. For the Pola Museum, it is turning the building’s annex gallery into an atmospheric interactive space, using 60,000 LEDs in a 3-D form.”

I just re-read it myself, and visitors could somehow adjust the lights through the website, so I wish I had knows that! We were absolutely mesmerized by the lights and colours. I wished that the short bursts of music/color were a little longer – each phrase was around a thirty seconds maximum, and I felt that something longer could have been orchestrated to keep the audience’s attention longer, instead of constantly waiting and wanting for more. Still – can’t complain. I’m an absolute sucker for lights and colours – fireworks, fireflies… winter illuminations are the bright spot in an otherwise cold and dank season.

You can check out their upcoming exhibitions here. I’m intrigued by November’s “Hats Off!” – I’ll probably pop by and let you know what they’re like!

Location: Pola Museum Annex; Pola Ginza Bldg. 3F, 1-7-7 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Free admission.

Koyoi Ryokan, Heda, Izu Peninsula

Fuji views from Heda

Is it possible to be exhausted from relaxing? I certainly feel that way after this past weekend. I organized a weekend ryokan retreat for myself and some other people in the area. There were nineteen of us, all ready for some serious bathing time.

Hokkaido

So at the two tips of Japan, we have Hokkaido in the North, and Okinawa in the South. Now, as someone who definitely doesn’t like the cold, and has been to Hokkaido before, you’d think I’d say “hey, let’s go to Okinawa for a winter holiday! It will be warm” That, at least, would be the logical thing to do. But I defy logic. I like to stomp all over it. And then, it stomps all over me.

A group of fellow gaikokujin and I all got together and decided to go to the Snow Festival, a famous yearly event in Hokkaido. Hokkaido is hidden under a few meters of snow every winter, so at the end of the year, they gather up as much snow as possible, shovel it into a few parks, and make it into ice sculptures! When I visited last year around December, it wasn’t quite the season, so all we saw was piles of snow, waiting to be transformed. This month, February, was perfect.

The plane journey from Haneda airport in Tokyo only took an hour, so we arrived in the early afternoon. Rather than staying in a hotel, we opted to go with airbnb, which is like a paid version of couchsurfer. Essentially, people living in the area open up their houses as and when they have the time/space/inclination. Airbnb puts visitors directly in touch with the homeowners, who then decide whether they want to take you in or not. Fortunately, Mr. Sangun decided that we seemed a trustworthy bunch, and eleven of us trooped into his house. It was set up rather like a B&B; a simple breakfast was provided – nothing exceptional, though we did get nabe on the last day!

It was quite centrally located, so after checking in, we quickly headed out to one of the main parks, Odori. There were some magnificent sculptures of all shapes and sizes. There were four or five main, gigantically sized buildings – an Indian Palace, a grand mosaic dedicated to the Sochi Olympics. There was even a (possibly life-sized) replica of the Malaysian parliament! Of course, no Japanese matsuri is complete without the food stalls, and so, next to the sculpture was a dedicated stall to Malaysian food! There were a few bona-fide Malaysians in there, churning out satay, teh tarik and other quintessential Malaysian delicacies. I didn’t give them a try as I was already loaded up on seafood and miso soup, but it was a surprising and fun reminder of my childhood.

The sculptures were absolutely fantastic, but even with a number of pocket warmers I was absolutely freezing, so every so often, we’d pop inside the nearest combini to warm our frozen limbs back to life. There were some repeated themes – Funashi, a really popular mascot, and anpan man, the mascot for a particular brand of bread. We trudged along the entire street and back to ensure that we didn’t miss anything. It was all very cool (perhaps around -5 or so, to be precise…)

We certainly appreciated a nice hot dinner afterwards

Girls and Pancakes

Hinamatsuri is a celebration for the little ladies; “girls’ day”, or “doll’s day” in Japan. There’s also a corresponding “boys’ day” later on in the year, but that’s gradually just become a “children’s day”, so hinamatsuri is a particularly lovely little reminder to appreciate the young ladies.

One of my co-workers made her daughter some colourful sushi, a traditional meal on the day. Other typical hinamatsuri ingestibles include shirozake, which is a type ofsake made from fermented rice and hishimochi, a diamond-shaped colored rice cake. So, while I couldn’t get out to any shrines to see a display of the ningyo (sets of dolls that represent the Imperial Palace’s occupants during the Heian period), I paid my respects by visiting a local Baskin Robbins for ice cream. I’m not being entirely facetious, for although it’s not exactly a traditional food, Baskin Robbins is doing a special set of ice cream “dolls” to capitalize on the festival. The deal was a set of five scoops of ice cream topped with little faces and accessories.

As usual, Japan thinks of all the small details – the set was served in a box that imitates the platform on which the dolls are displayed in a shrine. 

Ningyo, to go into a little more detail, are traditional wooden dolls. Unlike daruma, which are essentially spherical and simply, but brightly painted, ningyo are more elaborate. The typical hina doll will be wearing more kimono than a Japanese person even owns. They’re as realistic as possible – some even have human hair! A complete set of dolls has 15 characters, representing different courtly characters, but as long as one has the basic Emperor-Empress/male-female pair, that’s also deemed acceptable.

Crunching uncouthly on the ningyo's face

I don’t think we could have handled fifteen scoops of ice-cream, though had the opportunity arisen, I’m sure my appetite would have valiantly risen to the challenge. I certainly felt as though I deserved the ice-cream, since I got lost cycling there, and took a good 40 minutes pedaling around before I found the place! Instead, we settled for a doll each, and then I followed it up with a triple scoop of matcha, choc chip mint and oreo chop chip. And a free taster of Amaretto chocolate. Thank you, Baskin Robbins. Thank you.

It can only be bought in sets, it’s ¥1,700 for 5 cups. Check the Baskin Robbins website for the nearest location near you. Kotaku has some more information on it!

Before and after?

Now, the following day was of course the 4^th of March, which will be familiar to many people in the Western hemisphere colloquially as “Fat Tuesday” (oh you Americans), or “Pancake Day” (oh us Britons), or perhaps more correctly, “Shrove Tuesday”. For the less Catholic of us, it’s the day before Lent, a month of restraint and appreciation leading up to Easter. Many people give up desserts, sweets, or bad habits. However, the day before the 5^th (Ash Wednesday) is a free-for-all. In England, this means pancakes. So, I went from celebrating with ice-cream, to pancakes.

A good friend of mine, Amelia, invited myself and a few others over. We went all out – a good twenty eggs, five packs of bacon, mushrooms galore, spinach, whipped cream, a good half kilo of strawberries, and we even had sprinkles! We doubled a random recipe that we found online and still ended up with the same amount of pancakes, but it was just the right amount for the five of us. The amazing Sushi-chan did a fantastic job pancake flipping, ramped up our kitchen skills by making two batches of pancakes, one normal wheat-base, and the other gluten-free.

These gluten-free pancakes are ridiculously easy to make. I sourced the recipe from The Skinny Confidential. While I didn’t have any flaxseed, I think they still turned out pretty well. The edges look burned, but I couldn’t taste the char at all, so I’m wondering whether it’s just the way the ingredients react. Where is my McGee On Food and Cooking when I need it?

With a few deliberately blackened bananas, we tossed one into the blender, added two eggs, and blended the whole thing. This is literally the entire recipe. TLDR? Kind of impossible, but here ya go…

Ingredients:

1 banana

2 eggs.

Blend. Put oil in pan. Heat pan. Cook in frying pan. Makes one face-sized pancake (unless you have a super tiny or huge face, sorry, I lied)

It doesn’t get much simpler than that, really! I think it works best this way for sweet pancakes. If I were to remake it with savoury toppings, I’d add a few herbs in and a pinch of salt. It tastes banana-y, but not overwhelmingly so, so it’s a nice plain base, as long as you’re not averse to a hint of banana complementing whatever you decide to top it with.

One savoury, one sweet.

For the purposes of the photo, I tried to make a bacon face, I don’t think it worked very well though. After this, I piled on the bacon and vegetables like no tomorrow. There’s also a small hoard of cheese melting nicely underneath the pancake. A proper Paleo indulgence!

Quizu over and out~

Keepin movin', always groovin'

Decked out like a hipster, taking snazzy photos

So, my weekend was pretty dope. Hangin’ with an LA homie means that everything I write today’s gotta be read with a Valley Girl accent. I joke; my accent is as British as it ever was, or, as the Americans say “limey”. I honestly didn’t think people said things like that anymore.

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So to recap my weekend: on Friday, I left school a mere half hour after my official work hours, which is nothing short of a small miracle. There’s always plenty of work waiting for me, I learned this the fun way… after marking 300 essays, I politely asked around the staffroom to see if I could help any Well, it turns out I certainly could, and had to make a worksheet to prove it. Serves me right. Not that I mind doing it, but my free time in school goes towards Japanese language study and the past two weeks have been totally neglected because of the essay marking.

A shrine I'll never find again, off a road I can't remember

Zen

Anyhow, I set off to Numazu, the biggest city in the area, on the Eastern part of the Shizuokan prefecture. It’s about half an hour by train if you manage to get all the connections right, with one stop in the middle. It takes a little longer by bus, but the route is terrifically scenic, so it’s worth taking once or twice, or of course if you want to get somewhere in between. It follows the coastal line, so it’s always lovely.

I met with Bong at the station, stomach ready for the challenge. Peruvian food at Mi Peru, a lovely little place just a ten minute walk from the station. I’ve never eaten Peruvian food before, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure whether it’d be any good. I’m still at the stage where I’m perfectly happy to eat Japanese food day in, day out, and from previous experiences in SEAsia, I find that cheap Western food tends to be pretty bland and uninteresting. You have to pay through the nose for the good stuff, and I’m so smitten with Japanese cuisine that I simply just don’t think about other foods very often. However, the food here was the bomb. Bong ordered a whole bunch of stuff – I just ate whatever was put in front of me with impunity.

The beef hearts were delicious. Bong wasn’t going to tell me what they were until after I’d tasted them as he didn’t know what an offal person (or should that be awful?) I am, but I picked out that distinctly organ taste straight away. It was marinated in a really delicious sauce that had penetrated all the way through the meat, and cooked perfectly – no bouncy rubbery heart for me!

So nice, I had it twice

That wasn’t all we ate that evening. We also headed over to a Chinese place; Xiong Xiong (which aptly translates into panda), had peking duck, some gyoza and veg. It was pretty standard; the Mi Peru was awesome, though. The local flavor of people was more interesting – there were a few heavily tattooed guys sitting next to us, who, as it turned out, were Bong’s friends. I was trying to catch local dialects and casual talk, as well as pick up on the waitress’ Mandarin!

We also walked through a local festival, meeting We headed over towards the river, and bumped into some sort of casual festival just in front of the bridge. There were a few ALTs around that Bong knew, so I met more fellow foreigners and chatted a little. The pool of English speakers in this area is pretty active, so everyone knows everyone, and I haven’t met anyone who I don’t like yet, believe it or not!

The night ended with a Game of Thrones/Firefly marathon, and good conversation until about three am. This sounds fun until you hear about the plans we’d made for Saturday. A morning run. Setting off about 6 am if we could. Well – as you can imagine, that didn’t happen, oh no. We went at seven, instead. I’m not even joking. We went for a 10k walk/run in the morning before the sun came out too strong. Bong has this Zombie run app on his phone, which is ridiculously fun. It talks you, a runner for your commune, through zombie infested areas, so you speed up and slow down as it narrates an excellent storyline.

One of my JTEs (my coworkers – Japanese Teachers of English) had told me about a local arts and crafts fair in Gotemba, about half an hour from Numazu, so after the run, we refreshed outselves and headed out that way. We met up with Shihyeng, a local Singaporean ALT who I’ve been in contact with for a while, but hadn’t yet had the chance to meet. She’s lovely, though. Unfortunately she had to head off pretty quickly,

The live music was amazing – I really liked this guitar-playing duo because they had wonderful harmonics. I purchased their CD even though I don’t have a CD player; but I’ll find a way to listen to it somehow. Later on there was a really hippie group who were playing washboards and a double bass, with a toddler on a tiny taiko drum. Their music was bizarre, but Bong loved it so we’re going to have to burn and exchange the music.

I recently misplaced (I won’t say lost, because I still hope it’s going to turn up again) a necklace very dear to me; and it was the only piece of neckwear I bought with me. There were a number of gorgeous necklaces at the arts and crafts fair, but one suited me in particular – a pendant shaped like a stack of books; wood wrapped in leather. It doesn’t replace my other necklace, but it suits me well.

After that, we headed to a nomihoudai and beer festival about half an hour away. Again, more ALTs (where there is beer, there are Caucasians) and friends made. Stomachs filled. Oh, boy, was my stomach ever filled. For ¥3,500, which is about 25 quid, it had better be filling, to be honest. It was much better than standard buffet fair, though of course you’d get better quality food in specialized restaurants where you order to your liking.

Round One

Round Two

After eating, drinking and travelling well, my Sunday was rather chilled. Although I had originally planned to go to Shimada to visit the festival, both the weather and my wallet conspired against me. There’s a typhoon somewhere, which means intermittent but heavy rains. Even the Shinkansen, the bullet train, was delayed because of landslides; that’s how bad the weather was. So, I stayed home, took two naps, read a bit, and cleaned the house, mostly by imagining that it was clean, to be honest.

Ashley, my sempai down in Shuzenji, did something similar, and contacted me last minute to go for some food in Mishima. I jumped in, and we headed up towards the city. Unfortunately, the place she had planned to take me to was closed! I suggested Mi Peru instead, because she wanted something along that type of cuisine, and I didn’t mind eating there again. Because, you know, I’m a glutton for punishment. I had the beef heart. Again. It was just as good. We met up with sempais Bong and Tiffany afterwards for a drink at a local bar, which also happens to be a hairdresser. The bartender cuts hair during the day, and pours drinks by night. Only in Japan.

Come Monday, the national holiday, I slept uneasily, the typhoon winds whistling around my house. It seemed like we were going to be in for a rough day. Even so, I didn’t want to spend my national holiday sitting in the house, so I donned a pair of wellies that my predecessor had left behind (and ft me perfectly), and headed towards Mishima to find Kawashima coffee, a shop that had been recommended by previous ALTs in the area. It was worth it. I got there about half an hour before the shop opened, but it was magic when we got inside. The gentleman running the shop was lovely, and I got myself some great coffee swag. He gave us free marshmallows! I’ll be back biweekly, I think, just to pick up some new coffees and sip on some new brews. My addiction has been rekindled.

I don’t like cooking by myself, but I love cooking with friends and family. So, Bong and I dropped off at my local supa, picked up some groceries and cooked up a storm. It was amazing.

Observe.

A foot long fish, merely 990 yen!

Sashimi

Asparagus, mushrooms, shiritaki noodles

Garlic butter prawns

Kawashima coffee and petit fours

I rounded off the evening by trying darts for the first time up in Mishima Tamachi, at an awesome bar/club called Hustler 9. I met the proprietor, Kosaka-san, and the food there was amazing too. Have you ever tried kimchee squid? No? You’re missing out.

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On Bong’s recommendation, by which I mean, my blatant rifle through and robbery of his personal library, I’ve just read Yakuza Moon, by Shoko Tendo. It’s a rather straightforward autobiography of her rather troubled lifestyle, beginning with her birth into a yakuza household. It was an interesting read – nothing out of the ordinary, but a good hour to while away and learn about the consequences of a rebellious childhood, drug addiction and abusive relationships. Still, she’s obviously out of that vicious cycle now, happily, and makes a living as a writer. I wonder what it read like in the original Japanese.

That said, I’m going to get on with reading 1Q84. Murakami awaits me.