JAPAN

BRIEFLY NOTED

- You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to find an international ATM machine at Tokyo Station (a transfer point for me today) on the busiest travel day of the year (May 5th, end of Golden Week), loaded down with a broken suitcase, a computer and an “owl, protector of the forest” sack, while the country is on a Rail high alert (terrorist fears). Disneyland on the 4th of July could not compare.

- Before leaving Nagano, I watched a small band perform outside in celebration of Children’s Day. It was drizzling steadily so it couldn’t have been fun for them. The kid musicians had an interesting English name plastered over their drums and tubas: the Ducky Marching Band. Made me wonder if they were fashioning themselves after the Bucky Marching Band.

- On the trains that connect major cities, the English-language announcer asks passengers to put their 'moblie phones' on vibrate or silent mode. If you decide to take a call, etiquette demands that you go to the end of the car. Interestingly, on the Van Galder Bus to Chicago’s O’Hare, the driver also asked cell-phone users to please be courteous in phone conversations. He explained that this means talking in a voice that you’d use while conversing with your seat mate. (Do people typically shout without restraint otherwise?)

- Mistakes made by me continue to punctuate each day: Yesterday I hastily drank my coffee and ate my left-over soba cookies (what do you mean ‘that’s not a proper breakfast?’ I call that a good breakfast!) on the run, trying to catch my Highland bus early in the day. I’m sure I caused great consternation and discomfort among those around me. I’d forgotten that eating while walking is a shameful act here (ice-cream is the exception).


SO HOW IS KYOTO??

I could not tell you on the basis of my stay here thus far, though in this exceptionally confusing city, it helps that it is a return visit for me. Today, I arrived in the late afternoon and spent the next hours trying to understand the computer set up in this particular hotel. It is yet another permutation of technological resources: fast Ethernet service is available, but I have to take my computer down to the business center (a funny description: it is a closet with three computers in it) each time. No matter, at least it’s not dial-up.

Kyoto in the early evening (pictured here along its river bank) is the Kyoto every foreign traveler wants to experience. It is at once charming and seedy and dirty and expensive and colorful and full of the old Japan you’d worried doesn’t exist anymore. (Though should it? For your pleasure alone?) You can see rare glimpses of Geisha women still shuffling stiffly to spend an evening pleasing their sponsoring men. Kyoto during the day is all about temples and shrines (there are hundreds of them here and each is different). In the night, it is about a more sensual pleasure.

DINNER: It is back to the LP guide for food suggestions. And there are many in this town! I pick the wonderful, the fresh and honest Ganko Zushi.



Oh, I feel so fickle! My Nagano chef has been replaced by this Kyoto one (who in addition to being a great cook, has a modest kind of charm that is downright infectious).




I asked that he prepare a small selection of sushi for me and then, for my main course, I chose the crab and vegetable broth dish: I got a pot of hot broth and a plate of raw crab and veggies to cook in it. It sounded easy enough, but of course there are ten thousand tricks involved (for instance, would you know what to do with the little square of tofu in the broth? And how about once you cook a veggie – what then? And, the red peppery horseradish – where does that fit in? on and on…).





At the counter next to me, a couple, Kazumi and Masahiko, were eating their dinner and watching me flub everything in sight. They were, I am certain, amused no end. Ever so discreetly Kazumi would suggest the proper next step (for instance, to avert an imminent disaster, like having the pot boil over because I didn’t know how to regulate the heat). Occasionally, her friend Masahiko would offer tips – at first on the topic of the proper consumption of Japanese food and eventually in other domains as well.


Kazumi and Masahiko aren’t from Kyoto. They live some ways away, though they come to this city frequently. In their ‘real life’ they work, I think, in the arts – she teaches piano, he does sound engineering (there are so many leaps involved in getting to that level of understanding, but an exchange of cards helped in at least professional identification). Masahiko’s English is pretty much non-existent and Kazumi struggles with even basic expressions. Still, in the course of the evening they proved themselves to be sweetly generous. And it seems we have a friendship in the making since on Sunday Kazumi suggested that she and Masahiko come in to Kyoto to take me to places that are their personal favorites here. I’m looking forward to that. Even with all sorts of language issues that are bound to arise, I can tell that spending a day with them will be well worth the communication struggles.

As for the verdict on the food? I have absolutely no complaints. Even about the final bill, which says a lot.