JAPAN

FIRST, ANSWERS TO READER Q’S:

Yes, more food photos are forthcoming! Yes, you saw a sailor suit in the photo of the girl riding the train to school. Older kids wear uniforms; sailor suits for girls are quite common. Yes, yes, yes, I am talking to myself a lot each day.

HOW EARLY IS EARLY?

Today (Sunday), by 3 a.m. I am awake and ready to go. Only the world is lagging behind. I patiently wait until I can catch the 6:30 am local rickety bus up into the mountains.

Here’s the issue: it’s Sunday. Nothing, not the hotel coffee shop, nor even Starbucks open before 7. How desperate do I have to be to enter into the one place that has opened its golden doors to the world (i.e. McDonald’s)? Pretty desperate. I’m not there yet. Who needs food and coffee in the morning anyway? I’ll get something in the mountains.

WEATHER ISSUES

It was to be a day of questionable weather resolutions. Maybe some sun, maybe some clouds, maybe some sprinkle, maybe not. The typical report that tells you absolutely nothing. But it doesn’t take great meteorological training to recognize that the day has a bite to it and that there are ominous clouds in the distance, hanging over the mountains. What to do? Rain on mountain hikes can take away any elements of fun.

I decide to venture forth anyway. When you’re all clothed in warm layers, you begin to believe that no bad weather can get through to you. Still, as the bus begins its slow climb up the hills I worry. I am already feeling a bit nippy and I haven’t even left the bus. All my extra sweaters slowly make their way from my Gap plastic bag* onto me. And still the bus climbs and the air gets nippier. I begin to see patches of snow outside. I start to study the schedule for a return bus back. Like one that would leave within minutes.


*I have to mention here how foolish one feels hiking with a plastic Gap bag swinging from the side. Japanese people are all about EQUIPMENT. Backpacks, side packs, outerwear, binoculars, fancy cameras (and I mean FANCY) –I saw them all today – me, with my versatile can-go-from-evening-at –a-nice-place to hike-in-the-woods black purse and yes, the Gap bag. I know, the fashion conscious among you are cringing at the moment.

The bus chug chuggs up the hills and I see nothing but dark gray skies. Am I even in the mountains? What mountains?

AT THE END OF THE ROAD THERE’S A GOLDEN [WEEK]

[Proper lyric identification will reward you with fore-vision as to where this is heading. A digression: when I was a teen I used to look to these (and other similarly situated) lyrics in search of great personal inspiration. Others read Kafka and Shakespeare, I listened to a recording from Carousel. Telling, isn’t it?]


I get off the bus. It is cold. This is a challenge! Even if I wanted to return, buses don’t run that often and there is no shelter nor any place open that would keep me warm. It is, after all, Sunday morning. All wise people are asleep. Foolish hardy souls are out in search of who knows what. (Actually I do know what, at least for some of them: a handful are out and about for bird watching purposes.)

For me, it’s time to institute a BRISK WALK, there’s no other way to feel warm.

My first hike is to a mountain shrine, nestled deep in a forest of redwoods (really: they are tall, they are red). The path is almost empty. There is slushy snow here and there.


I’m climbing now, getting closer, and suddenly (yes, I mean it, quite suddenly) the gray clouds break up and the sky clears (it remains clear for the rest of the day) and the small shrine appears against the backdrop of tall rugged peaks bathed in a faint morning sunshine. The sight is breathtakingly beautiful.

ANOTHER STELLAR MOMENT


Another trail that I then pick up, takes me through a forest where Japanese skunk cabbage plants are blooming (one of the first of the ‘Alpine blooms’ of the season I gather). After a delightful meander through this wet-from-the-melted-snow woodsy area, the trail ends in an Alpine meadow. That is wonderful enough. But to create an ABSOLUTELY STELLAR MOMENT for me, you’d have to then also have, at a bare minimum, a little family-run café there, with some treats and very good coffee (after all, I have now been hiking for some 3 hours and I have yet to have my morning coffee and breakfast), all set against the backdrop of magnificent mountains. EUREKA: there it is!


This may well be near the top of the top morning coffee moments. The place is small – maybe 5 tables? The entire family is fussing about. The two boys get treats, the dad, upon learning that I am willing to spend the extra 20 Yen (that would some 20 cents) for the “no chemical” coffee, is grinding some beans for me. The mother explains in halting English that the cookies are soba cookies (that would be buckwheat: this is Japan’s soba region). I am in heaven.

ANOTHER SUPREMELY STELLAR MOMENT

My third trail takes me through a mixed forest of bamboo and pine. [All thee trails are basically empty. Even though it’s no longer early and it is the big vacation week, I’ve learned that people basically stick to the shrines in their walks.] My goal is a lake that I have noted on a map.




And here comes the moment of moments: I emerge from the thicket and it’s all there: the still lake, the high mountains in a subtle spring sun, and an occasional blooming sakura to make it completely Japanese. I collapse on the grass and just gaze and gaze. It takes more than an hour to get me up and going again. Who would want to leave a moment like that?

A LESS STELLAR MOMENT

It can’t all be great, after all. Stellar moments have to be off-set by less stellar ones because otherwise how can you tell which are stellar and which are just common, everyday type experiences?


Today, the less stellar is the hike to the village. The hike itself is fine. In fact, in a clearing, I come across a group of Japanese women playing wooden flutes. One of them speaks decent English and as I pause, she explains that they are rehearsing in this way for some gig or other. [The one who spoke to me was actually completely blind. I wondered how on earth she’d made it up there. This path is quite rugged and steep. Even I had trouble with the tree roots and odd stones and places where it was flooded from melting snows. Is it the Japanese perseverance in the face of obstacles?]

But as I emerge in the village, I know that bliss is somewhere back there in the paths and Alpine meadows. The place is packed with day trippers. To sit down somewhere for a snack would require waiting and no one is going to have patience for this one person who can’t read a single menu item anywhere. I settle for soba ice cream (soba this, soba that) and people-watching from the curb.

FOOD, IN DESPERATE SEARCH OF FOOD

Perhaps that overstates the case. I was not exactly desperate. But after a good 7+ hours of mountain hiking, I was ready for something more substantial than soba thises and thats. Time to return to Nagano.

I ask someone at the hotel for a dining suggestion. My Lonely Planet is directing me to Italian places and Japanese places that had gone out of business (nice 2004 update!). I want something local and small-scale (meaning, can we keep the cost down PLEASE).


I got the perfect thing (though cheap is not an adjective that can be applied to any Japanese meal, so let’s just say it was comparatively modest in price). In the basement of a building that I do believe housed places where young women entertained older men, there is a spot called Gotoku Tei (I wouldn’t have found it, but one of the young women escorted me to it).

I sit at the counter and watch the young chef, accompanied by a harried apprentice, slice, dice, plate and prepare foods for the handful of customers. I order the “seasonal menu” (so it says in English, explaining nothing else except that it will have 11 little plates of food – as opposed to the bigger or lighter menus which would have one or two more or less). I wont describe it: how boring for the reader to listen to the list of fishes and soups and artful veggies (yes, wonderful veggie tempura and also the crisp raw ferns from the forest which are absolutely delicious—L’Etoile back in Madison, occasionally serves them, but in very limited quantities. Here, they are bright green in their freshness), and to end it all, the soba noodles, swimming in a soy-based broth. A good way to end a Sunday in the mountains.