Heart Washing in Japan

The trip started long before I actually left. Sam was in Japanese language class in Okinawa and had a month off for summer vacation, like all schools in Japan do, and asked if anyone could come visit. I took a hard look at my bank account and said Yes.

The reservations, the plane tickets, some of the hotels wanted to get paid in advance, the scheduling. Buying some Japanese money ahead of time. When I tried to pick seats on the flight over they wouldn’t or couldn’t let me do it so I worried about getting bumped because of overbooking. There was plenty to worry about.

August 15-16

The morning of, I took the opportunity to run four and a half miles at home before I left. It kind of took the edge off my worrying. When I got to the airport two hours early, they had all my seats ready for me and everything went smoothly. No drama at all.

My days got kind of mixed up there. I flew from Central Wisconsin Airport to Chicago O’Hare, and from there direct to Tokyo Narita. Tokyo is fourteen hours ahead of Wisconsin time, so it was magically tomorrow already even before I left.

ANA – All Nippon Airways — took me and a few hundred others to Tokyo. It was a plane full of Japanese folks and a few westerners. Announcements were in Japanese, with later translation into heavily accented English. Everything went smoothly, and the flight wasn’t that bad, although it was twelve hours long. Beer was available with the regular meal service so I had a couple of Kirins and got some sleep.

Incidentally, the great circle route from Chicago to Tokyo goes almost right over central Wisconsin, then over Canada and Alaska.

So now it’s a day later and I was on the bus from the airport to the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku, a neighborhood of Tokyo. The bus cost 3100 yen, or about $31, for the hour and a half trip from the airport to the hotel.

Amazing feeling: I’m in freaking Japan, man! Nothing was a crowded or as scary or as confusing as I thought it would be.

Hooked up with Sam at the hotel. Ah, relief, a friendly face.

August 17 Sunday

Nihon-kara. That’s how you say “because Japan.” Yes, Japan has its own culture, its own history, its own food, its own everything, and that’s just the way it is. When things seem to be weird, sometimes it’s just Nihon-kara, that’s all. Because Japan. Get used to it.

A blond American woman on the plane across the aisle reminded me of Laura Dern or somebody else famous but I don’t know who she was. I had a chance to talk to her briefly on the way to immigration at the airport. This was her second trip to Japan. She recommended I try as many different foods as possible. So okay, Sam provided me with some natto for breakfast.

Natto is a traditional Japanese food item that the kids love. Supposedly. It’s fermented soybeans in a sticky gooey slimy stringy thick sauce. Sounds great, doesn’t it? I found it edible, not delightful, but got it down and must have passed some kind of Nihon-kara test. The rest of the local food was mostly nonthreatening, if sometimes a bit intimidating and mysterious.

We took the Tokyo metro train around and managed to figure out the system. Some of the signs have English on them so I could manage. You check the signs to see how much it will cost to go from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. For example, it cost 140¥ to go from Shinjuku Station to the Akihabara Station, and 200¥ to go from Shinjuku to the Tokyo Station. You use the machine to pay up front for a ticket that has enough yen on it to pay your fare. Then to get on the trains you slide the ticket into a machine that stamps it with your starting station and gives it back to you. You read the signs, and good luck with that, to find the track with your train on it.

By the way, the trains are plentiful and they run on time. The system works. They are sometimes pretty full, but we managed to miss most of that excitement, except for one bus ride in Kyoto, which I’ll get to later.

The Keio Plaza is a short ten minute walk from Shinjuku Station, the busiest train station in the world. Three and a half million people go through Shinjuku Station every day. Kind of intimidating, but the staff is extremely polite and most of them have some English and they are all happy to help the ignorant Americans find the obvious trains in front of them.

We navigated through Shinjuku Station up to the Akihabara region, where everything electronic is out for sale. Even ham radio transceivers, across the aisle from iPhone and iPad attachments. Floors and floors of stores, block by block by block. They close the street so people can get around better, and it’s a real scene on the weekends.

We had sashimi for lunch – the raw fish kind of sushi. The restaurant had Fifties and Sixties American pop music playing in the background. Whiter Shade of Pale. I found using chopsticks to be easy as long as they were all I had to work with and was hungry. With a little practice I didn’t even need to be hungry. Never touched a fork the whole time I was there.

After lunch we checked out Ueno Park, which is kind of Tokyo’s answer to New York’s Central Park. Cicadas were loud, buzzing in the trees everywhere. We watched the street performers balancing on chairs for money, we checked out the Tokyo National Museum, and stopped for soba noodles near the Ueno Park metro station before we headed back to the hotel.

Japan was hot, hot, hot, and humid. Vendors were giving out hand fans with their store advertising on them and people everywhere were using them, even outside. Nihon-kara.

August 18 Monday

Checked out of the Keio Plaza, and walked back to Shinjuku Station to take the train over to Tokyo Station so we could catch the Shinkansen, the bullet train, to Kyoto. Seems like we have the Tokyo metro system figured out, more or less. So we’re leaving now? No fair.

The bullet train is sleek and smooth and fast. Sam had a speedometer app that showed we were going 175mph or 280kph. And by the way, everything in Japan is metric. Kilometers, liters, meters, centigrade, etc. Like all the other civilized countries are in this day and age.

Wait, what? Civilized? Metric system? Oh, never mind.

Okay, now we have to learn how to navigate the Kyoto bus system. At least the train left us off right downtown Kyoto, a fifteen minute walk to our hotel. A fifteen minute incredibly blazingly hot and drippingly humid slog, sweat pouring down my forehead, hauling a suitcase which had just broken its wheels off and was dragging along on the concrete. Well, there’s a bit of shopping that will need to be done before we leave town, and handy to what passes for a huge mall right across the street from Kyoto Station.

We stayed in a traditional “ryokan” style hotel. Take your shoes off before you go upstairs to your room. The room was a six tatami mat room, with six thick tatami straw mats on the floor. Beds were futon mattresses folded up against the wall during the day, and laid out on the straw mats at night. Not a lot of room to spare, but nice enough and comfortable enough.

You stuck your keys in a slot by the door when you went in, to turn on the electricity to the room. Including the air conditioning. Very important, air conditioning.

Aussie Rebecca in a rented kimono was playing the piano in the ryokan once when we came in, so I played a bit too.

We managed to figure out the Kyoto bus system and got day passes. Out to visit Maruyama Park, ringing the bell at the big Yasaka shrine. There were shrines everywhere you went, it seemed. You would throw some coins into the hopper, then pull the rope, which jangled a bell. Bow and make your prayer, then clap your hands twice or three times. Bow again, maybe, and you’re done.

I prayed for good health for my family. Immediately after that a woman appeared and gave Sam a reiki energy treatment along the hands, explaining that this was something she got from her grandfather. So I guess the spirits of the shrine heard me.

Bus to the Gion section of town where all the Geishas work. Lots of old authentic architecture here, lots of wandering tourists also. They aren’t really called Geishas. The correct term is Geiko. And the ones who are still learning the craft are Meiko.

They were all women, yes. Japanese culture seems to be more sex-divided than what I am used to in America. For example, I understand there are no baby changing stations in the men’s bathrooms. Only in the women’s. Nihon-kara.

My stomach was disagreeing with me, I wonder how that might have come about, so we had pancakes and ice cream for dinner in the Gion area. Then back to the ryokan to spread out the futons for bed.

August 19 Tuesday

I must have needed it: slept eleven hours, didn’t wake up until 10am. Although my body still wasn’t real sure just what time it was supposed to be, I felt much better about the days and nights after the rest.

Okay, I had the Tokyo metro system kind of figured out and now I got to forget all that and work on the Kyoto bus system. Wasn’t that hard. Lots of busses, and right on time too. Japan is good at mass transportation.

Kyoto has about a million people, and it feels like you’re in one of the great cities of the nation. As compared to Tokyo: not to take anything away from Kyoto, but Tokyo has about ten million, and it feels like you’re in one of the great cities of the world.

Visiting the bamboo forest, beautiful rain forest feeling. Hot hot hot again, about 85 degrees Fahrenheit with a dew point around 80. Yes, very hot and humid, breathtakingly hot, so we stopped for purple sweet potato ice cream and wild vegetable soba soup.

Food in Japan can be a crap shoot. Once you recognize the different kinds of noodles you’re in a little better shape, but when you’re a functional illiterate and can’t read the signs or the labels, you just have to look at the pictures and take a guess. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it’s a surprise and you hope you’re hungry so you will want to eat whatever it turned out to be.

Well, not quite illiterate. I did some studying ahead of time and worked up a small vocabulary, and a primitive recognition of most of the characters. Maybe up to a two- or three-year-old child’s command of the language. Maybe that good.

Kyoto is full of historical shrines. We visited the gold and silver temples, the Kinkakuji and the Ginkakuji, and the Kiyomizudera temple complex, then took a totally crowded bus ride back to Kyoto central station.

Back in the ryokan, Sam got a call from the USA and got offered a job with Walden University, remote teaching Nurse Practitioner classes over the internet.

Good ramen soup in the food court near Kyoto Tower, then shopping for a new suitcase in the six story giant downtown store. It cost a lot, but at least they took off the 8% tax when I showed my US passport with temporary visitor visa.

August 20 Wednesday

We took an early morning walk to the huge city block filled fresh food market. It was already very hot and humid. And darn, we should have tried to get out to the market earlier in the week before we had to leave. It reminded me of Pike Place Market in Seattle, with tons of little stands and zillions of different foods for sale, although mostly wrapping up by the time we got there around 10am. Fresh caught fish, flowers, stuff you have no idea what it is all over the place.

But it was time to check out and head back to Tokyo.

Japan doesn’t do well with garbage. They don’t have much room for it, so if you have anything big – like a broken down old suitcase – you have to pay extra to have it disposed of. Ended up costing me 400¥, about $4. I was happy to pay it.

Back on the Shinkansen bullet train, 175mph to Tokyo. Ho hum, just a regular day on the train by now. At freaking 175 miles per hour! When I was taking flying lessons back in the 1960’s my little Piper Cherokee never went that fast.

Back to Shinjuku station, where a hyperactive guy insisted on guiding us from the station to the Keio Plaza, then hit us up for a donation afterward. I gave him all my pocket change, which wasn’t much. Probably about 25 cents worth in yen.

Japanese money.

Most everyone has heard of the Japanese currency: the yen, or ¥. One yen is worth about the same as a US penny. The coins come in 1¥, 5¥, 10¥, 50¥, 100¥, and 500¥. The 100¥ and 500¥ are worth about $1 and $5, so yes, that means there is no Japanese equivalent to the US $1 or $5 paper money. Above that level, they do have paper money for 1000¥, 2000¥, 5000¥, and 10000¥, or about $10, $20, $50, and $100.

Nice lunch in Shinjuku at the Royal Host, once again guessing from the pictures about what there was to eat. But there were plenty of noodles so I was good. Sam translated for me later. I was eating mentaiko (squid), ebi (shrimp), nori (seaweed), shimiju (mushrooms), and aojiso (green perilla vegetable). With noodles, lots of noodles.

Back at the Keio Plaza I drew the new view out the window, and commiserated with Sam over the awful wifi in our new room. It was in and out, constantly dropping.

Going down the elevator with some Chinese women athletes who were a good head taller than me. Basketball? We didn’t talk, so I didn’t know. I only knew they were Chinese because they all had matching red workout jackets with the red Chinese flag on them. They were hanging out in the lobby later with some Chinese men athletes who were even taller than the girls.

August 21 Thursday

Okay, the day began with an early rise, about 4:30am and checkout of the hotel again. We left our bags with the bellman desk and met up with the Fuji Mountain Guides group, right there in the lobby. Gary “lightning rod” and Mary from Denver, Nicole and Daniel from Perth, guides Luke and Brent. Our group was full, twenty-four of us plus the two guides. Annie and Miranda from Melbourne, Doctor Dave (Gajeski?) from Philadelphia with wife Jill and sons Ethan and Clay, Rachel from Wales on her second trip up the mountain. Doctor Dave had some medication to prevent altitude sickness. It was the same thing they give to people with cerebral edema.

Altitude sickness is not common, but it’s real, and can be serious. You get horrible headaches and throw up when you go up to high altitudes. It’s caused by a swelling of the brain from the change in altitude. Once you get it the only known cure is to go down to a lower altitude as soon as you can.

We all piled into the bus and headed out. The bus went underground at one point so we were starting from the very bottom, heading for the very top.

We got off the bus at the Fifth station on the Subashiri Trail up Mount Fuji. Restaurants, souvenirs, water and drinks, all available. Some of the group bought Fuji climbing sticks, about five foot long by one inch diameter octagonal walking sticks you could get branded at each of the stations on the way up. I had hiking poles and the guide guys were going to give me a certificate that would fit in my luggage much better, so I skipped the pole. I did end up getting a short 30cm souvenir pole at the summit.

The stations were loosely numbered, but Fifth station where we started is at 2000m elevation, about 6600 feet. After a bit of a rest to hit the pay toilets ($2 at the bottom, $3 at the top), we commenced hiking. Climbing. Something. There was a lot of it.

I’m not sure exactly what to call it but it was up, up, up. Every step was higher than the one before it. The trail measures about five miles from the Fifth station to the top, so if you can imagine a five mile long staircase? Slow and steady makes it there.

There wasn’t really a staircase, of course. Toward the bottom we were walking through a nice green shady forest, although it was still beastly hot and humid. The higher we got the cooler it got. And the higher we got the more the plants cleared out.

I noticed that Japan does indeed have what we call Japanese beetles eating the leaves. The “real” Japanese beetles in Japan are smaller than ours are here, and with a blue sheen to them instead of the copper sheen we get here. But they make the same lacework out of leaves that they do here, which is how I noticed they were there.

The walking varied a bit at first. In the forest we often walked up what looked like a dry stream bed, climbing up and over rocks a lot. By the time we got to 8000 or 9000 feet the vegetation had cleared out and it was a desolate rocky path up the mountain, often with a low chain to mark the edges of the path and the switchbacks. Fuji is a dormant volcano, so there was a lot of black volcanic rock, and a little bit of loose scree. There was no real “technical” climbing, but the sheer length of the hike and the ever increasing steepness made it one of the hardest things I have ever done, both mentally and physically. And exhilarating, in a strange kind of way.

Hiking all day, up up up. We made it to the Fujisan Hotel and Restaurant, also known as the Eighth station, by around 4:30 or 5:00pm. That’s where we planned to spend the night, there at 3400m or 11000 feet elevation, before getting up early for the final push to get to the summit for dawn.

Calling it a “hotel and restaurant” makes it sound pretty spiffy, but we are not talking the Keio Plaza here. The restaurant area has a few benches and tables and could probably seat fifty if you packed in close, which we did. They served whatever they could haul up the mountain and resell at a huge profit. They had a slightly better selection than the typical state park refreshment stand. A half liter water bottle that cost 100¥ at the truck stop on the highway on the road to the mountain was 500¥ by the time you got to the Eighth station.

And the hotel section? Everyone got 1.6 square meters of space and a sleeping bag of their own. All twenty six in our group were sleeping together, shoulder to shoulder. The sexes were not segregated, no sir, we were past all that foolishness. We were in this adventure together, all right. The Fuji Mountain Guides gave us all a packet of useful stuff, including ear plugs and eye masks. I used mine and slept well. Tired? You bet.

Hanging out at the Fujisan Hotel, watching lightning flash around in the clouds a mile below our feet. Fantastic view, a sea of clouds with mountains occasionally sticking up through them.

All the Fuji stations burn the waste from the pay toilets, and all have a similar odor. Not really bad, just noticeable.

Heart washing.

So what was I doing in Japan anyway? Our eldest child Sam was taking a year off from being a nurse practitioner in Tucson Arizona because of job burnout. Sam loves to travel, and languages, and ended up in Okinawa for a few months. Is it a “gap year?” Yeah, kind of, only a traditional gap year happens between high school and college, and Sam is way past that. “Recovering from burnout” is an accurate way to describe it but still misses the point a little. So Sam came up with “heart washing.” In Japanese the words sound more exotic but are still about as non-poetic as you can imagine. The Fuji Mountain guides and the staff at one of the Fuji stations talked about it and decided that it was a good description of what Sam was up to this year.

August 22 Friday

I was one of the lucky few who slept well, although none of us got to sleep for very long. We all got up at 2:00am to leave by 2:30am.

I didn’t know it before hand but apparently there’s a thing where you climb Mt Fuji so that you can see the dawn from the summit. Dawn was at 5:00am so that means we had to leave the Eighth station by 2:30am for the final push. It wouldn’t really have taken us that long but there were a few thousand other people on the same trail heading for the same destination at the same time, so the last part of the climb was slow and crowded. And at that elevation, slow and steady was the only way to go.

Because if you would get out of breath at that altitude, you were not going to catch up with it again.

We all carried flashlights or wore them on our heads and you could see the line of lights snaking up the mountain ahead of you. Kind of neat in the dark. The lights from the people behind you lit up the ground you were walking on, and your own light helped out the people ahead of you. A group effort, and we were all part of the common group at that point. A little Japanese culture feeling, even for us baka gaijin (crazy foreigners).

Yes, there was a huge mob on the summit trail. Slow going but still hard work. But sunrise from the top of Mt Fuji as amazing and exhilarating, and somehow joyous. There was applause when the sun peeked over the horizon.

We had breakfast in one of the summit restaurants – yes, restaurant like at the Eighth station, although no tables. They had benches and your choice of two or three noodle dishes they had available. There were more souvenir shops up there, and that’s where I got my Fuji stick.

A few of us walked around the caldera before we headed down. It’s not always snow capped, but the volcano has some ice in it year round. When we were there the only ice was a patch in the bottom of the caldera where it was in the shade.

Then we headed down. And that turned out to be much harder than going up had been. Going up was hard enough, but down was worse. The trail down was a different path, straighter and steeper than the way up. Lots of it was loose gravelly scree you could almost ski down. But not quite, so with every step you slid a little, and had to catch yourself. By the first hour of that my legs were shaking and I could barely stand up, much less walk. Lots of stopping to rest and drink some water. It took a good three hours to get down, and every step was painful by the bottom. And of course, if you didn’t remember, it got hotter and hotter the further down you went. Think rivers of sweat pouring out of everywhere on your body. Hot blazing sun beating down. Shade sparse and hard to find, slippery footing, shaky legs.

Yeah, delightful. The going down was definitely worse than the going up. On the map they called it a “sand run,” evoking thoughts of warm beaches by the sea. But the two or three mile sand run was more like a military basic training torture drill than a pleasant evening with a cool drink by the ocean.

I was thinking of asking Luke if I could keep the hiking poles for a few more days so I could use them to walk.

Luke and Brent were our main two guides, and looked every bit the part of healthy thirty-something Americans who did a lot of mountain climbing. Both were fluent in Japanese, since they both grew up in Japan and went to grade school there. They met in high school in Denver. Brent worked for IBM for a while, and when his old friend Luke called looking for help with his new business he felt it was time for a change.

Luke started Fuji Mountain Guides because his Japanese was too good. How can that be? It’s part of the us-vs.-them mentality. Japan is a very insular society, where you are part of the group and the group watches out for each other, and it’s all us versus the rest of the world. You can tell where you are in the group by your language. In fact, there are things you can say and words you can use with your immediate superior that are different from what you can say to your immediate inferiors, and a completely different set entirely for use with upper management. Knowing that dialect is a signal that you are one of the group. But what about when you look like an American but can speak the inner-circle dialect? That’s jarring, unexpected, surprising, somehow just wrong, and you make people uncomfortable. So Luke’s brother, who went all the way through college in Japan and has impeccable Japanese, is having a hard time finding work. He just makes people uncomfortable with his too-good language skills. Luke, who spent time in Colorado, speaks fluent Japanese but not the level of perfection that makes people uncomfortable. Even still, he was having a hard time finding work there because of his ethnicity. So he started his own company, and that’s how we got Fuji Mountain Guides.

Anyhow, we all made it back down to the Fifth Station and hung out until every one of our group was safely back. Which took a while because one of our folks reinjured an ankle and couldn’t make it. They had to bring up a bulldozer – which is how they get the supplies up there – to haul her out. We all made it eventually, and piled back in the bus for the trip back to Tokyo.

There was a nice sense of camaraderie throughout the bus. We had all been through some hard times and amazing times together, and it brought us together in a good way.

Sam and I did walk around a little afterward, although not far. Hobbled around, is more like it. We found the Toko-Ri Japanese Grill which seemed okay. But again we were surprised. Turned out they specialized in Korean food. Go figure. There was horse meat on the menu, which we both passed on. I had the shrimp. They had neat metal chopsticks with thin pointy ends.

August 23 Saturday

Woke up to sore muscles aching all up and down my legs and hips. We walked around outside, anyway. It hurt to get up. It hurt to sit down. But I was going to be okay, eventually, I could tell. Fuji was one of the most strenuous things I ever did, both mentally and physically.

Going down the mountain stressed out my quads, the top of thigh muscles. Also my triceps, from using the walking poles.

We met up with Yoshiko, a friend of Sam’s from years ago at UWSP. She was there for a year of university and to learn English, and was one of Sam’s good friends from back then. Yoshiko had a six week old son named Kenshin who was with a sitter while she came to the hotel to hang out with us.

We found a Tempura Tendon Tenya restaurant, a chain restaurant which kind of reminded me of an upscale Cozy Kitchen featuring tempura fried food which was pretty good and surprisingly reasonable. We sat and talked for a good hour and a half.

That evening we went to Robot Restaurant for the dinner and show. The dinner was a bento box with twelve servings of different cheap foods, not very impressive, but the show was well done and impressive. It featured loud music and singing and dancing girls and big robots fighting each other, and lots of glitz and glam and singing. Shiny surfaces everywhere, strobe and laser lights, loud music, weird story line. Knight Josen was a beautiful bikini clad girl in chainmail with a winged metal hat and a sword who somehow defeated all the bad guys with a shrug of her shoulders and a toss of her head. With fiery explosions in the background. Fighting robots, too, and a huge animatronic shark that lurched out to swallow the bad guys. That was after the giant spider, and the giant panda riding the cow. There was a dragon somewhere in there too, of course. Nihon-kara.

We had to consult with the hotel guest services to find the place, and while we were talking to them we arranged for bus tickets to the airport for tomorrow.

Japan is: expensive, xenophobic, hot and humid, crowded in places, strangely and surprisingly spiritual, beautiful, perfectly fine without me but they were okay with me being there, full of fascinating people trying very hard, polite, a bit surreal, busy, fastidious, intense, punctual. And a whole lot more.

August 24 Sunday

Time traveling. Busy traveling day. Up at 6:00am to pack and take the bus to Narita airport with Sam. Hung around Narita a few hours before my flight, then onto a United airplane from Narita direct to Chicago O’Hare. We left Narita about 5:00pm and arrived in Chicago earlier the same day at 3:00pm. Thank you international date line.

Enjoyed some real American food in Chicago, the first time using a fork since leaving. No, chopsticks are not hard to use, once you get used to them. But it was nice to feel like I was getting home again. Flew from there to Central Wisconsin where my mother picked me up. Home to stay up a while and catch up with Mary and unload the shiny new suitcase.

In terms of Central time, I got up at about 8:00pm Saturday night, got about two hours sleep, and arrived home the next day, about 11:00pm Sunday night. My body clock was not so much “out of whack” as “knocked off the night stand and smashed on the floor.”

So would I like to go back to Japan again? Absolutely yes, for sure I would. I had a great time, and it’s a fascinating place. It’d be nice to have a native guide like Sam. It was kind of frustrating at times, although also strangely liberating, to be a functional illiterate in another country. Can’t talk to people, can’t read the signs. Depending heavily on the kindness of strangers to get around. Luckily, there was plenty of kindness to be found, everywhere I went. I gained a great appreciation for foreigners who come to the US with only a limited command of English.