Sept. 11: Kanazawa

Want to avoid those annoying Japanese tour groups with the flags and bullhorns disrupting the serenity of a famous garden? Sight-see in a typhoon! But before you set out, be smart and go to the railroad station and score yourself an umbrella. Not that it’ll do a whole lot of good.

I think that describing today as a complete and utter fiasco would be accurate enough. I got up at 7-ish, went downstairs, and hit the breakfast buffet as opposed to ordering from the menu they put in front of me, which included “breakfast salad.” There was some decent stuff, although I forewent the natto this morning, thanks, as well as the mountain potato. Then I headed out, buying the umbrella which, although it wasn’t raining when I left the hotel, looked like it might be necessary.

Found my way to the market just fine, thanks (I can always seem to find food), and looked over the early-morning crop of crabs and lobsters and octopus legs, as well as vegetables marinated in kasu, but realized that there was a hike ahead, so I left and headed towards Kanazawa’s giant park. It started to rain, and so I stopped at the shrine that I thought was one of the gates. It wasn’t, but the rain abated enough for me to forge forward and I twisted through some streets until I hit a real gate. There were these cute yellow whales (by cute, of course, I mean kawaii) advertising something, and as I got closer, a rock band started to play. They had a very pretty girl singer. I know this because although I never saw the band, she couldn’t sing. My goal was the reconstructed castle, or the part of the castle that’s been reconstructed, it having been huge (1000 tatamis). Nobody among the iridescent green-suited admissions folks spoke any English at all, but one told me the ticket they were selling was because “garden is green,” and I remembered the website saying something about a garden festival. Okay, I wasn’t interested, so I went back down the hill and continued circling the grounds. The castle eventually loomed above me, and I admired its defenses: I couldn’t figure out how to get into it. Finally, I saw a bridge high above the main street I was walking along, so I backtracked, crossed the street, and found the bridge. Sure enough, that led to the back gate, which was the entrance. (Or an entrance: turns out I could have gotten in at that first gate).



Kanazawa Castle

After a little confusion due to the fact that the tickets weren’t sold at the point where they were collected, I got in, and headed first to the watchtower I’d seen from the road. The guy who let me in actually spoke some English, and showed me how parts of the floor lifted up so that you could shoot arrows down on unwanted visitors. I asked him if the castle had ever been taken, and he said “No, this wasn’t a castle of war. This was the lord’s castle.” Sounds like an invitation to invasion to me, but hey, I let it pass. I then wandered towards the main building, shooting a couple of pix along the way. At the entrance, I had to line up with some other people until a guide came. She talked to me, and I admitted I knew no Japanese. No big deal to her, she ignored me. We were then admitted, and removed our shoes and put our umbrellas in plastic bags.

I have no idea what was said after that. At one point she played a tape from a machine which had a button marked “English,” but the main thrill was when we got to see a short video presentation (on DVD) about how the castle had been constructed. Apparently the thing had burned, although I’m not sure when (Kanazawa wasn’t bombed, for some reason), and archaeologists had found foundation stones. Using 19th century photographs and other documentation, they had craftsmen rebuild the thing with traditional techniques (except, I assume, for the nails in the flooring, there, no doubt, for safety reasons). The intricate shaping, nesting, and pegging of the various components puts Western cabinetry to shame. It was awesome watching the computer-generated pieces fly together. But I have no idea what the rest of the tour was about. Since the guide was reading from a script, I found myself wondering if it would be a terrible imposition to get someone at the nearby university to translate this script into several other languages, put them on a laminated card for the foreign tourist to read as the tour proceeds, and hand in at the end. But I don’t think Kanazawa really wants a non-Japanese tourist industry to develop. As we left, the guide shook my hand and said “Sank you veddy mosh,” as if I’d done anything. Fortunately there were bare-bones translations of the major points of interest on the rest of the grounds, and I wandered through the hill where the main castle had stood. At one point there was a godawful noise by my feet and I saw a huge cicada on the ground. I stepped threateningly towards him and he repeated the performance. The rain and wind was picking up, and my umbrella was getting tossed around. I had to use both hands to steady it a number of times.

The next place I wanted to go was the samurai quarter, where, after the Meiji Restoration abolished their trade, they lived in poverty. I could find it on the map, but it looked like it made more sense to go across the street to the gardens, where there was also a Meiji mansion and the museum of local arts and crafts. But what to do after that? How to get to this neighborhood? I sat in a dry area and stared at the book. Where on earth was the castle? Then it struck me: the book had been published in 1998, and one of the things I’d enjoyed was the smell of the place, which I remembered from childhood. That was the smell of new wood, Japanese cedar, is what it was. Chances are this had all gone up since anyone had revised the book. While I was figuring this out, a song was playing over the loudspeakers. It was a children’s chorus singing a simple short melody that was driving me crazy. It went like “Dada zaza nana ricky --Icky!/Dada zaza nana naaa...” and so on. After the ninth pass, I decided I’d leave anyway, even if I had no idea where I was going. Perhaps I’d throw myself into traffic from the bridge. Anything to get away from it. Well, I did know that if I left via the bridge I’d come in on there was an entrance to the pleasure garden, and in there was the arts and crafts museum, so I did that. I paid my admission and the woman asked where I was from. “I’m American, and I live in Germany.” “America?” she asked. “Yes, but I live in Germany.” Blank stare. Memo: don’t make it complicated.

The gardens are formal, and, thus, obey the six principles of formal gardens, explained in the brochure you’re given with the admissions fee. They were once attached to the castle, but because the dates are given as “the rule of the13th lord of...” and so on, instead of Christian dates, I can’t tell you much about it. There was a basin by a teahouse made out of the fossil of a cedar and its roots, Japan’s first fountain and first artificial waterfall, a famous stone lantern which sticks one foot in the water, many, many artfully deformed pines, and a lot more, but the typhoon was really kicking in at this point. Time to go inside. Unfortunately, the museum closes from 12-1 for lunch, so I hit the mansion. It wasn’t as spare and interesting as the houes I saw yesterday, although there was a lot to admire in the decoration of the rooms, which included stained-glass paintings of birds imported from Holland. I put my shoes back on and went next door to the museum. There was a desk at the entrance with a girl at a desk, some money, and the admissions fee posted so I tried to attract her attention, and when I got it, I handed over my money. She pushed it back, giggling, and waved me in. Hey, maybe it was free day. But inside, there was another desk with two girls, also giggling, and they took my dough. Behind them was what looked like a gift-shop, although the book says that none of this is for sale, for some reason, and there’s also a space where a craftsman works. Today’s was putting gold leaf on lacquer chopsticks. Upstairs the local crafts are explained in clear, simple English in such exemplary fashion that I wondered who’d done it and why they weren’t working on any other tourist attraction in Kanazawa. I stayed some time and developed a lust for Tsurugi steel knives and Wajima lacquerware. (I never did find the former, but I later saw what may have been a set of the latter, miso soup bowls including covers and matching trays, three to the set, for a mere ¥540,000. Just $4500! I always did have good taste). The other thing I saw was an education: fireworks from Nota. They had several cut in half so you could see how the various bombs were interconnected so that when the outer shell was blown off the timed explosions of the rest were effected. Always wondered about that.



Kanazawa: the park

So I went outside and inquired from the lady at the exit which way the samurais were. She pointed me back into the park, which I am not sure was correct. Whatever, I walked through and got a good picture of gardening ladies in traditional gear working by the teahouse pond. When I got out, I decided I needed lunch, so I stopped at one of the souvenir shops with upstairs restaurants which line the area.

It was at this point that I must have lost it, or my brain fried or something. It was very hard communicating with the waitress. I wanted cha-soba, green-tea soba, but she pointed me to a “soba set” of normal soba. Okay, so they didn’t have cha-soba, so I got normal. There was cold jibujibu soup (was it supposed to be cold?), miso soup, rice, pickles, and soba and dipping sauce. It was certainly okay. I mean, how can you ruin it? I called her over and mimed scribbling and she ran and got a pad. No. I pulled out my money, and she pointed downstairs. I really can’t explain what happened next. I almost left without paying, but the various salesgirls blocked the door and I turned around to find the proprietor smiling at me. Oops. It was ¥1400. Okay. I reached in my pocket and pulled out ¥140. Completely stupid. He said no, and then I realized my mistake and handed him ¥1040. What an idiot! One more time, and I got it right. I mean, I’ve been doing fine since I got here. The lady at the beer shop last night was boggled at my ability to pay with exact change!

Oh, but it got worse. I had determined that I could reach the samurais by walking down the road, turning right, and, after a while, turning left. The rain was awful, and I was noticing that I was getting soaked despite the umbrella, which was doing a good job of keeping my back dry. It was raining too hard to whip out the book and consult it, but I thought I had myself pretty well fixed: the castle park was to my right, and I should be headed back to the market, except I had to turn off before then. I walked along the castle park, watching an inch-long hummingbird sucking from the flowers planted by the side of the road. The road ended, though, before I came to the main road I was expecting, so I just kept walking. Before long I realized I was lost. The map had shown nice even parallel lines, so I wasn’t worried. There was a neon-filled commercial section with Cartier and Gucci boutiques, so I figured I wasn’t too far from the station and the expensive hotels. Then the commercial landscape degenerated into more of those small bars I’d seen in Takayama. Some were clearly brothels of some kind; one had a picture of a fat salaryman tied up with rope while a pixie-like girl tugged it tighter. Things blanded out again. The rain was awful. One thing I knew: the Sky Hotel, the Apa, the Miyako, all had their distinct skyline imprints, and would guide me to the station. The skyline may have been a bit blocked out by the rain, but those behemoths surely would be visible. I kept walking. I knew I was parallelling a river, which was good because that’s where the station was, but no dice. Finally, I came to an intersection and turned left. This took me up a big hill. My thought was to turn left again, since I had clearly made an error, and this would bring me back to the castle. It was useless asking anybody.

After two hours, I stumbled on a temple. In front of the temple, as with all temples in Kanazawa, there was a map. Why the mapmakers couldn’t manage to orient the maps north-south I cannot tell you (a very common problem throughout Japan, as it developed), but I assumed that’s what it was, and all I had to do was walk a few meters to a main street, turn left, and I’d be there. Which I did. Walking down the sidewalk through huge crowds of schoolgirls waiting for the bus, seeing convenience stores, funeral parlors, beauty salons, the usual city stuff. Finally I spotted a parallel street with a vista. I went over and stared. Nothing I recognized was there: no Sky Hotel, no APA, nothing. I went back onto the main road and reversed direction. It was now pouring, the wind whipping the umbrella, and I was miserable. All I wanted was to get back. Fuck the samurai. The Meiji Restoration had. Aha! Up ahead was another temple, down a small side-road. I went there and in drenching rain stared at the map. It was here that I finally noticed that the map’s orientation wasn’t north-south, so I turned my head upside down and eventually worked out that if I went back to the main street, and turned first right, I’d be headed towards the station. Hooray!

Premature. The road ended at the Kanazawa College of Art, the source of the horrid faux Rodins in part of the castle park. There was an area of dirt ahead, and a sheer drop off the mountain I seemed to be on. But as I drew closer, I saw that there was a brand-new modern stairway down the hill. I headed down it, glad to be out of the typhoon, and saw a main street running at a 90-degree angle just ahead. A road sign indicated that, as I’d thought, a left turn would take me to the station. I’d seen some tall buildings as I’d come out of the stairway, so I knew I was all right now. Right: turn a couple of corners and...

And I came out at the entrance to the gardens, right where I’d started three hours and some ago. But I knew how to get back from here, so I forged on, and, thinking I spied a short-cut, went down a street and...right into the back end of the market. Desperately thirsty and with the reverse of my Takayama dilemma -- I had only ¥40 in coins and some ¥10,000 bills -- I headed to a woman selling rice-crackers (had to replace the chili ones I’d bought in Tokyo and eaten the other night with my Takayama ale) and paid for a ¥280 pakcage with one sodden ten-grander. She made a face, and I pointed to the outside. She sort of grinned. I boogied, stopping only at a vending machine to whip out some of my change and buy a half-liter -- a half-liter! This town isn’t all bad! -- of Water Salad.

Back in the room, I tossed it down after taking off my clothes and spreading them around to dry (the air-conditioning does a good job with that, if yesterday’s jeans, doffed at about the same time, are any indication). I put on the yakuta that comes with most Japanese hotel rooms, and lazed until I had the energy to stand up and take a shower. A hot shower. A long shower. I had been walking for eight hours, for the better part of four of which I was lost.

Dinner downstairs in the seafood restaurant again, because I was damned if I was going to leave the hotel again, although I did go out for that Sapporo autumn beer, which wasn’t as good as Kirin’s.

Sept. 12: Kanazawa, Nagoya

It takes a day like this for me to realize how dependent I am on full information access, and how deeply frustrating it is when it is thwarted. I remember a couple of years ago when Kathleen Maher and I went out for dinner in San Francisco the night her partner Jon had his sort of salon, where he and his friends pick a non-work-related topic and discuss it, and afterwards we joined them. The night’s topic was whether access to information was a basic human right. Good question; I’ve certainly formulated my personal answer.

There were Japanese newspapers all over the place this morning, which hadn’t happened before, and a picture of buildings and what looked like clouds. I assumed that the typhoon had hit Tokyo, (which, in fact, it had) and this is what I was seeing (which, of course, I was not). So I went in to breakfast and then went back to the room and decided to go find that samurai quarter. Very scared after yesterday’s getting lost -- and I didn’t want to miss my train at noon -- I gingerly picked my way to the market and then kept walking down that main street. The map in the book seemed to indicate that there was a more direct way, but I wasn’t taking any chances: this was something I knew. I was looking for the Grand Hotel, and although it sure wasn’t all that grand, it was there. So I picked my way through small streets in the general direction I thought I was supposed to go and was rewarded by a sign pointing right where I wanted to go. There were, it seemed, a lot of old houses in this part of town, but nothing like the photos I’d seen on the website. I even found a signpost with arrows. The one for where I was going pointed 45 degrees to the southwest. This was the location of my feet.

I was still nervous about the time and very insecure about where I was, so I didn’t deviate too much from where I was sure I was oriented back to the hotel. Forget it, I told myself, and walked down a street with pleasant tile-roofed houses to a main street, where I turned right and sure enough, not only did I find myself back at the hotel after a while, but I discovered that this was the road that ran right in front of the damn thing. The weather was threatening rain again, it was muggy, and I was going to be in a bad mood if I let myself go that way, so I just went into the station, got my reservation for a noon train to Nagoya, and went back to finish packing.

I glanced harder at one of the papers when I got to the hotel, and noticed that the picture looked like New York. In the foreground, a well-dressed black man with a briefcase was hustling away from what was clearly an explosion. This meant it wasn’t Japan: no corporation would send over a black executive if they expected to do business with the Japanese, who wouldn’t talk to him. The site seemed to be the World Trade Center. Another bombing? But there was nothing in the copy of the Japan Times I’d bought at the station. Curious.

I checked out, spent an hour mooching around Kanazawa Station, and eventually boarded the train. It was a pleasant trip through a Midwestern landscape, with mountains in the distance and quite a number of tunnels, which indicated that there were other mountains around. We got to one station, where people got off to get on the Shinkansen, and then everybody in the car stood up and wheeled the seats around! I was completely mystified by this, and a couple of young women behind me helped show me what to do. Pretty soon, I began to recognize where we were: Ogaki, Gifu, and...we stopped. A couple of Railroad Police had gotten on in Ogaki, and they walked through the car with radios going. A suicide on the tracks? Maybe.

We sat for an hour, and it got pretty warm, despite our air-conditioning. Eventually the train hauled itself towards Nagoya, and I was pleased to find a tourist info center, complete with an English-speaking woman who took the piece of paper with the hotel name on it and wrote, for the benefit of the taxi-driver, “Take this man to the Garden Palace Hotel.”

I got in the taxi, and as we pulled away, the driver said “American?” I said yes, and he pointed to the radio, where the word “America” kept repeating. I said I didn’t understand, and he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a tiny color television, tuned in a station, and I saw tiny pictures of a disaster. Hard to tell quite what it was, though. It wasn’t until I got to the palatial hotel and turned on the television that I began to figure out what was going on in the outside world. It was perfect nightmare material, combining my fear of flying with my fear of heights and tall buildings. But it was also impossible to stop watching.

Fortunately, Carl called from his house, informing me that they were headed to Nagoya and that once they got there, we’d all be going out for dinner. After he arrived, he caught me up on what information there was, and then we agreed to gather in the lobby for the trip to the place Noda-san had chosen, specializing in a local pork dish. I changed my shirt, got onto the elevator, my head filled with the horror images I’d been seeing on television, and the elevator stopped and on got a couple in full wedding regalia and an older woman who was holding the bride’s train. (The poor groom, however, didn’t look so hot in his brown polyester suit). Just the touch of surrealism I needed. In the lobby was our party. There was Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Hako, the vocalist for tomorrow night’s performance, Noda-san and his girlfriend, Carl and Yoshiko, and a Japanese woman with bleach-blonde hair whose function I wasn’t sure of.

I’d been so distracted with the little television and trying to simultaneously tune it in and make sense of the picture on it that I wasn’t at all sure where I was in the city, but we marched into a Shinjuku-like area and around and down and into an alleyway, at the end of which was a tiny little place. Much shouting and voting on orders and so on ensued, then we took off our shoes and went upstairs. As I am told will happen in joints like this, the food appeared sporadically, but we wound up with rice bowls topped with many pieces of deep-fried breaded pork, mixed with miso, and a raw egg broken into the middle of it, finished off by miso soup with many, many clams. It was delicious.

Afterwards, Carl and Yoshiko and the vocalist went back to the hotel, and the rest of us went into an apartment building which seemed to be full of clubs instead of apartments. After much discussion, we headed towards one on the 4th floor called Chique Fou, but it turned out to be closed. Noda-san and his girlfriend and I went back to the hotel, and Otomo and his bunch headed somewhere else. Noda revealed his passion for Tejano accordion, Cajun and zydeco music (and he knew the difference, unlike most Americans), and Brave Combo, although he’d never heard their Japanese albums. At 9:15, I found myself back in the room, and, unwilling to watch the airliners puncture the towers over and over again (let alone watch it and then be switched immediately to a commercial with a purple kawaii bunny sitting in a field, as had happened earlier), I got a beer from the machine and sat down to read The Russia House until sleep overtook me at about 11.

Sept. 13: Nagoya

But not for long. Another buckwheat pillow (much too late, I discovered that if you turn it over you get another filling), and I woke up at 5 with a brilliant idea in my head about how to finally get my e-mail and web access fixed. It was so obvious that I got excited, but I tried to keep myself in bed until 6:30, and pretty much succeeded. These early bedtimes will kill me.

There was a very elegant Japanese breakfast downstairs, with taped birds tweeting over the sound system in the breakfast room. I hereby anoint anyone who can pick up a cube of egg tofu with chopsticks as a virtuoso. I was saving room, though, because Noda-san was taking us out for eel at 11:45. My brilliant idea still rattling around in my head, I went back upstairs to implement it. Suffice it to say that it didn’t work. And that this is Compuserve’s fault, I’m almost certain, because of their damn proprietary software. I desperately wanted to get an e-mail out to the Journal to make sure my editor Taylor and all were okay, and I also wanted to check the Times on-line. Maybe even the Well. Wasn’t gonna happen.

Neither was Noda-san taking us to lunch: Carl called to give me the plan for the day -- doors open at 6:30, gig at 7, just like Tokyo -- and told me he was kidnapping Noda to set up in the hall. Lunch was still on, though, but it would be other people.

Just who, I never got to find out. I decided to take a walk and let the maids get to the room, and figured out where the castle was. I got there, and there was a good 30 minutes until I had to be back, but better safe, etc. etc., so I turned around and figured I’d use the time between lunch and 6:15, when Yoshiko would be in the lobby to take me to the gig. It was also getting quite hot, which had all happened in less than an hour. Somehow, I did it again, circling and circling and never finding the hotel, which, in my defense, is very understated and subtle. But still, I’d just left and I’d made notes on landmarks, so you’d think I could have found it. By the time I got back, it was 12:15, and everyone had gone.

This has brought up another question I find myself asking myself with increasing frequency: do I want to be here? I’m finding the country, excepting the food, rather monotonous. This makes me feel like a boor, and it’s not completely true, because there are things I enjoy seeing over and over: the little gardens behind people’s houses, where they make a lot with not too much, the crazy pop culture (I saw a girl with a tour t-shirt for the Bape Heads, whoever they are, today), the wild variety of the streets. But the official culture is pretty incomprehensible, Shinto is a total void (and I haven’t seen much Buddhism, although I guess that’ll change in Kyoto), the history is as opaque as anything I’ve ever encountered that wasn’t written by A.E. van Vogt, and some of the social stuff, the position of women being foremost, is getting me down. Plus, with Eric not being around to at least share the confusion in my language and two more weeks of mostly solo touring, how much more do I want to see? If I were back in Berlin, I might be able to get some work drummed up, I’d be around friends and a language I can at least start to comprehend and a culture that makes sense. I guess I’ll just put it off until I get to Kyoto, see if Nick shows up, and decide then. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to the trip back, nor was I particularly anxious to be flitting around temples and formal gardens while George W was declaring World War III.



Nagoya Castle

So I launched myself out again, to Nagoya Castle, which, its reconstruction in concrete notwithstanding, had well-displayed exhibits and good English documentation, and lost a couple of hours there. Then I found my way back easily enough, and spent some time watching the bilingual channel with ABC News (Carl had pointed out the bilingual button, which, of course, was labelled in Japanese), which, to my surprise, had Barak and that Palestinian woman at the end of a discussion which sounded good. The Palestinian woman was gently chiding America for its isolationism, its refusal to engage much with the outside world, and implying that this was something other countries resented, a very good point. The anchor, though, cut her off, saying he had to go to a local story. Then he said something which made me realize why Americans are as poorly informed as they are: “It’s sometimes hard, during mind-numbing discussions of foreign affairs, to remember that the real story here is the people, and the losses they’ve suffered in this terrible tragedy.” Excuse me? These losses were part of something which is included in the term “foreign affairs,” and if the media don’t make an attempt to explain and give the viewers the larger context, if they’re really going to be that solipsistic, we’re completely fucked. I watched some of the “color,” and then, the Tokyo Stock Exchange having just shut down for the day, they switched to business news. I never thought I’d miss CNN, for heaven’s sakes.

But soon enough, it was time for the concert. Yoshiko met me in the lobby and we walked towards an Eiffel-Tower sort of building, which turned out to be in a small park, the other side of which was the art museum/concert hall. It seemed very sterile, and yet when we got in, it was humming. The small hall turned out to be completely sold out. I was introduced to numerous of Carl’s colleagues from the university where he’s teaching, and exchanged “name cards” with them. One had even participated in the sound-installation event in Berlin I’d missed because of moving five years ago. Eventually everyone sat down and the show began.

“Modulations for Voices and Sine Wave,” by Otomo Yoshihide, was really avant-garde, but I’m not convinced there was any content. Two vocalists, Yoshida Ami and Sagara Nami (the blonde from last night), were up front, and Otomo and Sachiko were in the back. It started so quietly I wasn’t sure it actually had started, and Ami began to make little slurping and kissing and sucking noises. Eventually the sine wave came in, and Nami duplicated its tone, eventually going a bit out of tune with it so she was making beats. I think Otomo was sampling something, but it was hard to tell what he was doing. Eventually it died down -- after about 30 minutes -- and that was that. Then the hyper-efficient stage crew whipped out the desk with Carl’s equipment and a music stand for Hako, his vocalist, to use, and within minutes he was on stage and starting up some samples in loops. I found this piece quite fascinating, since they were feeding back each other’s information without the audience hearing it: Hako was singing against what was going into her earphones, which the audience couldn’t hear, Carl was dealing with it while sending her other samples and providing sounds for the audience to hear. Hako is possessed of excellent technique, doing jazz scatting, weird noises, low tones, and “trained” voice. The audience loved it. There was an intermission, and then Otomo, Carl, and Nami came back for what was essentially a jam.

There was the usual post-concert stand-around-and-wait, exacerbated by the fact that the CD money seemed to have come up short. I talked to a guy from Bordeaux who’d just published a sort of reference book on Japanese independent music of the past 20 years, which was apparently selling like hotcakes despite a pan in The Wire this month. Dang, those guys just don’t seem to get it. Or they’re as provincial as the other British music magazines. (Later, I read the review, which wasn’t nearly the pan he’d told me it was, and, in fact, said that the book was quite useful and the accompanying CD excellent. I still think they don’t get it a lot of the time, though).

We finally all jelled, everybody got their money, and a fleet of taxis went back to the hotel, where we changed clothes and got ready to go out to another izakaya, this one famous for its chicken wings, which they make two ways. There were lots and lots of other dishes: various sashimis, including chicken two ways (one boiled for just an instant), thin-sliced pork with kimchi, those famous pepper-dusted wings, and a beef-and-potato stew (rather sweet) that’s apparently pronounced something like “Mick Jagger.” Nami was astonished that I was eating what I was eating, and she and I finished off with broiled fugu fins in sake, which isn’t as bad an idea as it sounds. Nor as good. Carl, having to get up and teach the next day before heading on to Kyoto, left early, and the rest of us were there til 1. I must say, I slept better than I had the night before, but we had a 10 o’clock call the next morning to check out.

Sept. 14: Kyoto

Yes, I slept, but not, it seemed, for very long. I was pooped after only 6 1/2 hours of sleep, but we had the Shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto to catch. It was raining again. Is this why I’ve found it so easy to get hotel rooms here? Because any “old Japan hand” would know better than to travel here in September?

After breakfast, we checked out and stowed our baggage at the hotel, and then everybody went shopping. I went with Noda-san, who first went to a bank to get some dough and then hit a gourmet store which I found utterly fascinating. He was after some Nagoya specialties -- noodles, in particular -- and I roamed the aisles seeing old friends like De Cecco spaghetti and Best Foods mayonnaise and even some flour tortillas, which the salesman was trying to explain to a distinguished-looking older gentleman. I really do wish I’d been able to understand that conversation. Noda got his stuff together and I picked out some rice-crackers which he approved of, and we headed out, only to return to the hotel. I spent a half-hour reading in the lobby and one by one the rest of the crew trickled in. Some cabs were obtained, and we hit the station.

I spent most of the trip trying to make sense out of the Japan Times’ coverage of the WTC disaster, but it had clearly been superseded by the TV I’d watched while packing. I continue to be impressed by the Shinkansen, although the view from it was mostly grimy industrial towns and block housing.

We certainly did make it to Kyoto fast, which was good news. Carl had gone back to Ogaki to check in at the university, and would be coming later with Yoshiko. We were met at the track by two guys from the Club Metro, where tonight’s performance would take place. I still can’t get over how formal and polite everyone here is with each other. Although these guys are the equivalent of nearly every young club owner I’ve known in the States, there’s still lots of bowing and polite language exchanged. We threaded our way down a crowded main street and wound up right across from the Imperial Palace at the Palace Side Hotel. Looked pretty low-key, but the woman who took my reservation was clearly Japanese-American -- or had spent time in the States or had one hell of a teacher. I observed pretty quickly that they did a good trade in the international young folks’ crowd, and there were -- hooray! -- two internet terminals in the lobby. At last I could contact people, check the Web, check in at the Well, and so on!

There was also a laundromat in the hotel, which was good because with all the places I’d been, my socks took a beating, not to mention the way my clothes got soaked in this weather. But I went downstairs and started hitting the net right away. I sent mail to Taylor, Susan, Chris, Ray and Natalie to see what was up from elvispresley.com -- thank heaven for free e-mail websites! -- and then went to the Well to see how the attack had shaken people up there.

Noda-san of course came downsairs pretty quickly and asked if I were hungry. A pretty stupid question when he’s around: he seems to know great places everywhere in Japan, a walking compendium of regional delicacies. There was a cafe down the street, where, because it was so hot, I just had some cold soba while Ami, Sachiko, Noda, and his girlfriend all had soup. Then they headed to the 7-11 to load up on snacks and so on for later and as we left we saw Carl and Yoshiko on the other side of the street blithely strolling in the wrong direction. Noda and Carl and the others went off to the club to rehearse and do sound-check and I relaxed. There wouldn’t be dinner tonight.

An 8:50 call got us to the club in time to witness the end of a rather pointless vinyl-terror group’s messing around with records, mostly sliding the needle around to make screeching sounds, sampling them, and using the samples to make other horrid noise. Club Metro is in the entrance to a subway station, weirdly enough, although appropriate for the name, and it’s a long, dark, smoky joint that was getting filled with young folks (all, again, bowing to each other) who seemed to know each other and the artists and hovered around the CD stall without seeming to buy anything. Eventually Sachiko and Ami went on with pretty much a recap of the previous night’s stuff, after which the DJ filled in for a while and a guy with a Powerbook came on and did some fairly interesting, if disjointed, sample work which ended with an endless string-quartet sample which he didn’t seem interested in modifying or playing with until he distorted it slightly, then a lot more, and then turned himself off.

After more DJ, Otomo went on, starting with a really loud bass tone and working up to 20 minutes of extreme noise terror of just the sort I’d been expecting in Japan, from what I’d read. Frank, the French guy I’d met in Nagoya, was there, too, and I marvelled at his capacity for this sort of thing. I was really pissed off that I’d left my earplugs back at the hotel (as had Carl), and spent most of the time in the lobby of the club, from which vantage-point I could hear everything perfectly well. Carl was worried because Yoshiko had disappeared (“This is just the kind of place she hates,” he said, and it was easy, with all the smoke and noise, to see why), and now he was getting worried at having to follow Otomo. He certainly rose to the challenge, providing plenty of volume, but, I thought, a lot more structure and coherence. Otomo’s set had mostly been a roar and a thrash; this seemed more thought out, although it was, in the end, just an improvisation. He got good applause, and then he and Otomo went on to duet. At one point, Carl was feeding a bunch of dripping sounds into the mix, and I began to feel I was in a dank cave, what with the oppressive smoke and humidity. It really got into a battle for a while, and then they found a way to end it (pull the plug: Carl commented later to Frank that “I have trouble with endings, but I always remember what Aaron Copland said: ‘Be sure to use the big bass drum at the end.’”). There was the usual post-gig hang-around although this show was going on til 5 am -- and Frank, who’d been unable to find a place to stay in Kyoto, was going to stay til the end and then take the first train to Osaka, where someone was putting him up. I spent a lot of time outside talking to Frank, and then Carl came out to chat, and finally he went inside, got his stuff, and we took a cab back to the hotel.

Sept. 15: Kyoto

Today is the start of the second solo part of the trip, but not before I had breakfast with Carl and Yoshiko, after which he sat down to settle accounts with Noda. They’re working on the hotel, drilling into the walls, which is certainly Berlin territory, and I can attest they started this morning at 8:20. (So can Otmo, who appeared all dishevelled in the elevator at one point looking like a pissed-off samurai). It’s a fairly seedy hotel, but three nights here cost little more than one night at some of the other places I’ve been staying, which, for a week, if they can do it, is almost bearable. There’s certainly a lot to see here, and I’m thinking to take it slow, see what I can, and take a day of down-time. One weird thing about yesterday: I swear that twice I saw a woman here who looks like Margaret, the woman who used to live down the street from me in Austin. It wouldn’t surprise me, knowing her, but I didn’t call out to her, and I hoped I’d catch her again. (I later saw her again, and, although the resemblance is uncanny, by the time I’d asked her if she were from Texas, I knew it wasn’t her).

We decided that after the reckoning and check-out, Noda, his girlfriend, Carl, Yoshiko, and I would go to lunch, and then we’d go check out the castle, Nijo-jo, which is a UNESCO site. Noda announced that our goal was a Taiwanese place he knew, so off we went, down some back streets. For all its size, Kyoto seems to have some mellow corners in it. At one point, we found a temple, and peered inside. There was a large stature of a woman dressed almost like a Catholic nun, holding a trident, and I have no idea who that might be. We eventually found the place, and the sign on the rolling steel curtain announced that it was closed for lunch on Saturdays, predictably enough. But across the street, Noda’s eye caught a sign offering regional soba dishes, so we went in there. I got one that featured shiitakes and grilled cakes of mochi, the name of which apparently could pun on the word for “jealousy,” a pun the proprietoress gleefully made. Carl was unhappy that they wouldn’t start serving oysters until next month, but Yoshiko really got the prize, which came in a large round container, which, when the top was taken off, revealed a tray of condiments including a quail’s egg, and when that was removed, a tray of some other stuff I couldn’t identify to mix with the soba, which resided in a bowl beneath. I don’t think this was on the English side of the menu, to be honest.



Soba!

I was full, but Noda insisted that we take tea, and a few doors down was a Kyoto institution, Ippodo, tea merchants since 1717. It’s not a tea-ceremony kind of place, but there is, on the side of the commercial part, a tea-room with three tables, and we took two of them. You order a given sort of tea, and eventually the waitress brings out little teapots with your selection of leaves in them, a big container of boiling water, a sweet for each person, and then instructs you in how each one is done. Carl’s involved pouring a cup of water then turning it into a second cup, from there to a third, and thence to a fourth before pouring the contents into the teacup. I’m not sure what the reasoning behind this was. Yoshiko got the full gourmet macha treatment, which involved a thick paste of green tea in a large bowl, which she drank, after which she got a cold cup of a rougher tea, houjicha. I got genmaicha, which I’d seen outside, with rice and barley in it, funky and country-tasting. Carl then bought a bunch of tea to take with him on tour and some to give to Yoshiko’s family. And now it was pouring.

Fortunately, the next stop, the castle, was far enough away that a taxi was in order. It was also time to say good-bye to Noda, whose wisdom and guidance I’ll miss, but whose insistence that we eat every hour or so I can probably do without, tempting though it is, and gratifying though the results tend to be. How do these skinny guys do it? And how do the Japanese consume such massive amounts of caffeine and sodium? I’m going to have to go on a desalinization project when I get home.

Nijo Castle is, frankly, worth the hype. The Ninomaru Palace’s massive rooms have gold-painted walls, all done by the highest masters of the 17th century, with giant tigers prowling around to drive home the power of the shogun. The famous “nightingale floors,” which actually chirp as you walk on them (supposedly to warn the Shogun if any enemies are coming, although Nick’s book says that the clan was so poweful in Kyoto that nobody would dare attack anyway) surprised me because I was expecting some sort of creaking noise, and now I wonder how in the hell they did it -- it’s not explained in the place, but, I found later, it is on the sheet they give you to guide yourself. Unfortunately, Carl marched rather quicker than I would have liked through the thing, probably worried about getting back to the hotel and grabbing his stuff in time to catch the train back home. And it was still pouring after we got out.



Nijo-jo


A quick trip to the hotel, and I joined them at the station, hoping I could get a Herald Tribune there instead of one of the useless local products. After they left, I noticed it was still raining, and after a search failed to turn up a paper, I decided to walk a bit. I found a way out of the terminal and crossed the tracks by a bridge, and found myself approaching this tremendous office building/shopping mall/hotel that’s the main part, as it turned out, of the station. This was promising, and I went in, finding myself in the company of several thousand people, and eventually found a kiosk with the paper. After that, I wended my way to the subway, and, after a few minutes studying the instructions, figured out how to buy the right ticket, get on the right line, and get back to the hotel. I felt like a master. But I wish my mastery extended to getting it to stop raining!

In fact, after I got back, the weather stayed lousy. I spent some time on the computers downstairs, found I’d received some e-mails, and then went back upstairs to settle on a plan, which was pretty easy: I’d been wanting tonkatsu, deep-fried breaded pork filet, and Nick’s book said a place not far away, Yamamoto, was one of the best; gave it two stars, in fact. So I carefully plotted a map from the map in the book and then noticed that it was raining Texas-style, with a fury I hadn’t seen even during the typhoon. But it finally relented at about 8:30, at which time I knew I had to get out before the restaurant closed at 10. Anyway, it seemed to have vented all its fury at long last.

Finding the place was easier than I’d thought, which meant that, because there was no transliteration of the restaurant’s sign, and I’d gotten to the front door and turned around because there was a fish-tank of some sort by the entrance, I spent an additional 30 minutes criss-crossing the neighborhood in search of it. Finally, I got to another restaurant where some young people were leaving and I asked them if they knew where it was. Turned out they were looking for a cab, so they weren’t even from around there, but the restaurant’s proprietor was hailing the cab, and when it came, they asked him, and the words “Yamamoto” and “tonkatsu” got tossed around. After they’d departed and he’d bowed at them until the cab disappeared into traffic, he told me to walk to the light and it was “near.” This took me back to the place I’d first found, so, emboldened, I asked a teenage girl who was consulting her cell-phone, and she confirmed that I was there. I walked in to find a beautiful interior, a young couple eating at the counter that stretched around the place, and a very surprised couple running the place. The woman was doubtful that I wanted to eat there, and pointed out that they’d be closing in a half-hour. I made her understand that I understood, but I wanted a tonkatsu, so she resigned herself to serving me and sat me at the bar. The menu wasn’t translated, of course, so I whipped out Satterwhite’s book, and she was astonished at what was in it. The idea that there was their specialty in there made her realize I was serious, and so she decided to give me the “set.”

She (Mrs. Yamamoto, as it turned out) did, in fact, have rudimentary English, and as I watched the other two customers, I began to wonder what I’d gotten myself into. They were eating something quite elaborate, and after the chef pounded and breaded my cutlet, he set about grabbing an abalone from a tank full of them, dispatching it cleanly and turning it into sashimi in a matter of a minute or two. This was not cheap fare, and the place was so well-appointed I was scared that I’d fallen into something deep. I had a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket, enough to cover that sashimi place we’d gone into in Tokyo, so it wasn’t that I was scared I wouldn’t be able to pay the bill. In any event, the cutlet was sizzling in the big brass vessel filled with oil, so it was too late. Mrs. Y was rubbing some kasu off of some pickled vegetables, which she brought, and the chef was taking some abalone parts and getting ready to deep-fry them in another bowl. Other parts he was grilling on some aluminum foil. Finally, it all arrived, and I have to say, it was exquisite. The outside was crunchy, the inside delicate, there was a bowl of superb soup (not miso: this is made from a different kind of broth, and has chunks of pork in it), and the pickles were very subtly flavored.

After I finished, the male customer asked in perfect English who I was and where I was from, and how I’d heard of the place. He relayed some of this info to Mrs. Y, and the chef brightened considerably when I told him (exaggerating just a bit) that Nick had said this was possibly the best tonkatsu in Japan. He introduced himself as Narita, and, as the chef was sauteeing some beef filets for them and finishing them with cognac (!), I decided to let things get back to normal, and paid the bill: ¥3700. High for tonkatsu, maybe, but easily worth it.

Naturally, I decided to go back a slightly different way than I’d come, and got lost, although I seemed to be on the periphery of the park which contains the Imperial Palace, so I knew I wasn’t too lost. I eventually got to a subway station with a map, and saw the way back. It was starting to rain again by the time I finally found the hotel, but at least it wasn’t a Kanazawa-style nightmare, so I read a little bit and fell asleep quickly in the narrow bed.

Sept. 16, Kyoto

Today was going to be the down-time day, but while eating my bizarre “Western” breakfast (inch-thick toast, “morning salad” with pasta and ham, fruit cup, two fried eggs, microtome-sliced pink stuff that’s allegedly ham, and five -- count ’em! five! -- french fries), I realized I’d still have to get out of the place while they did the room. So I walked across the street into the park, where zillions of boy scouts, girl scouts, cub scouts and little girl scouts in light blue uniforms were, I dunno, experiencing nature. There was no way to get into the palace, which I decided to walk around, and suddenly last night’s relief from the heat began to give way to a relentless sun. So I figured, hell, as long as I was walking, I might as well walk to some end, so I left the park.



Goo, where pig is king

Somehow, I’d managed to go out a gate that was considerably above the one I’d gone in, but at least I knew how to deal with that, so I headed down the street the hotel was on. There were a lot of wedding hotels on one part of the strip, and a shrine which was apparently doing wedding business, although it was also a historic site, the Goo Shrine. Apparently, in the 800s, a crazed monk tried to take over the country, and a general loyal to the king did battle with him and was repulsed. Wounded in the leg, he made a retreat, but he wasn’t doing too well. Suddenly, out in the country, 400 wild pigs appeared to him and guided him to a place of safety. He recovered, defeated the monk, and built this shrine, which, instead of the traditional lion-dogs guarding it, has pigs! There were also hundreds of toy and ceramic and wooden pigs, no doubt donated by satisfied customers who’d used the shrine. Back in the street, I passed the hotel, hopped on the subway, headed to the station, and went from there to my second UNESCO site in two days, To-ji, the temple which is Kyoto’s symbol.



To-ji

It feels redundant and silly to set down impressions of a place like this, which overwhelms and confounds them, especially in a superficial traveller like myself who lacks a lot (although not all) of the background to go in deeper. I must say that the so-called “lecture hall,” with all the statues supposedly carved by the founder, would be hard to lecture in, since nearly the entire interior, a considerable volume, is filled by them. I don’t know what he was like as a theorist or theologian, nor do I know much about the Esoteric Buddhism he introduced, but he was a hell of a sculptor. There was a caption in English which said that the statues were working together for peace for all nations, and I hoped they were doing their job. The feeling inside was certainly peaceful, but I also detected a tension, which might have been my own. The next hall had three more statues flanked by renderings of lotuses, also spectacular. I wandered the garden some, checked out the working buildings (four monks were standing chanting sutras), saw that the museum was closed until the 20th, and walked around the 200-foot pagoda.

The book said that the “Rashomon site” was nearby, but I couldn’t find it. Perhaps it’s just there and not marked; been a long time since I saw the film. I wandered the streets behind the temple and found the sub-temple to its north, but it, too, was closed, as it is most of the time. It was getting hotter and hotter, and I reflected that I had, after all, resolved to take the day off and take care of some menial business, like washing my socks. So I walked back to the station, found the subway, and came back to the hotel, stopping off at the neighborhood 7-11 for a couple of those triangular rice-and-nori things Carl had said were so good. They were, although the fillings were meager enough that I had no idea what they were.

Did the laundry, checked the internet for news -- not much -- and then cruised around for a possible replacement for this hotel, which I planned to move from tomorrow. Either the ANA or the Kyoto would be both affordable and better in terms of service and room. Also browsed the book for a dinner recommendation, and found a place that’s both good and has an English menu. What the hell, after last night I was a bit cowed by dining, so I decided to go there. After I move, I can also start exploring again, and maybe I will, after all, be able to see a lot of this city.

Which I certainly got to do tonight. Not a lot in terms of geography, but I think I know where everybody in Kyoto was. I’d chickened out, as I said, and gone for this place with the English menu, but to get there, I had to take the subway two stops and then walk down what looked like a long street. I saw from the map of the area in the book that it had a number of the listed restaurants and shops, but I wasn’t prepared for what was there: it was Shiji, a long, brightly lit, covered-sidewalk street lined with the noisiest, busiest places I’d yet seen here. Restaurants, fast-food joints, stores of every description, and lots and lots of people.

As it turned out, I was walking towards the river and Pontocho, one of the two geisha districts, and when I checked the little map I’d made from the map in the book, I noticed that the restaurant I was heading to, Yamatomi, was up the next-to-last of the narrow streets which transect the main street. These are lined with restaurants, bars, and clubs, and people patronizing them. I walked and walked up the thing, and didn’t see the place, which I (again) assumed would have a bilingual sign, but there was a restaurant worker smoking a cigarette on a break, and I asked him, and he said, in perfect English, “Right over there.” Walking in, I was exuberantly greeted by a chubby older woman, and urged to sit at the counter, which I did. She snapped “English menu!” to someone and one appeared. I started out with a soup with fried tofu in it, followed up with two pieces of eggplant with two different kinds of miso (one blonde, one dark and sweet), then had the tempura vegetable combo and the tempura squid. Too much, I guess, and definitely too greasy, but the woman and I communicated in broken English, she pointed out her daughter who was helping her run the shop, and, when she went to take a telephone call (I think she may have been some kind of ex-geisha, although I might be wrong here), the cook behind the counter came up and turned out to speak pretty good English.

As I was finishing up, a whole bunch of Japanese tourists came from upstairs, pretty drunk, and one man came over and introduced himself. I’ve forgotten his name, but he was from Hokkaido, specifically Sapporo, and told me he was on vacation, too. He advised me to come to Sapporo, saying it was Japan’s most beautiful city, and told me he had a friend from Texas in Sapporo who taught English. Mama-san and her daughter, meanwhile, were giggling German at me, and the whole experience was pretty much fun. Finally, I disengaged myself and threaded my way back through the crowd, which by this point was gaining lots of busking young Japanese guys with rock and roll attitudes, attended by adoring young girls. They were playing very competent rock and roll with Japanese lyrics, and there seemed to be a lot of competition among them for attention from the crowd, which was nonetheless going its own way, for the most part. I finally got to the subway and went back to the hotel.

Sept. 17, Kyoto

I’d made a reservation at the Kyoto Hotel, figuring if it was good enough for Palevsky (who hadn’t yet shown or communicated), it was good enough for me. A bit of a budget-stretcher, but not too bad. And the chaos and dirt, not to mention the tiny room, at the Palace View was getting to me, along with the suspicion that it was run by a religious organization or a cult or something; there was an odd “meeting place” and a “communal kitchen” on the same floor as the vending machines and the laundry. Maybe I was freaked by the Midwestern-style St. Agnes Episcopal Church I could see from my window. But I still think there was more than met the eye there.

I checked the news and the Well after breakfast, and people on the Well seemed to be having a mass therapy session. Someone had asked me why I’d said I might bail early on this trip, and I replied that, among other things, I was feeling pretty isolated (after all, besides Nick, Eric hadn’t shown up, and I was counting on at least one of them to provide some company and, in Nick’s case, expertise), I was finding it impossible to read Japanese characters, and I was generally uncomfortable. A symptom of this, I said, was that I hadn’t bought anything or been tempted to, which, I later realized, was a symptom of perhaps not wanting to remember this place, although I noted as I packed that I’d saved all the booklets I’d been given at the various attractions.

At any rate, I had to get out, so I packed and checked out and realized that one night at the Kyoto would cost what three nights at the Palace View had including breakfast! Wow. But, like I said, I’d been a good boy so far, things had been much cheaper than I’d expected (I hadn’t realized that Noda had negotiated the room-rate at the Garden Palace in Nagoya from ¥8000 to ¥6000!), and maybe a bit of pampering was in order to salve the damaged psyche and produce a more positive attitude towards the rest of the trip.

The cab dropped me at the Kyoto, and imagine my surprise when they had no record of the reservation I’d made over the internet the night before. They weren’t very friendly, but they did have a room, so they reluctantly stored my luggage and told me to come back in an hour when checkout started. My shoulder-bag was heavy, and it was, again, very hot outside, but I started walking and soon found myself at the Terimachi Market. At first, it was like the place in Kanazawa, covered, with an odd mix of total garbage and treasure. There were, for instance, several shops carrying religious goods, prayer beads, Buddha statues, and the like. An entire shop devoted to fans, very refined. I was doing better at keeping my orientation together, though, and so I realized that the market had several branches. One of them I turned down -- a very long one -- turned out to be the food market, Nishiki. It was hopping. The usual fish, including one place that was shaving bonito with a machine, loads of places with fine bentos on display, lots of pickle shops, which always had kasu pickles, one place I couldn’t figure out, which had a paste made from miso, sesame, and chili peppers that I sampled and flipped over, a store with knives to die for, places with exquisite tea sweets, and people shopping everywhere.

It was here that the comparison I’d heard between Kyoto and Paris made sense. Not that elsewhere in Japan I’ve noticed an indifference to food as is the case in Berlin, but these people really had that Parisian “prove this is worth the price” attitude as they carefully inspected the goods. If I’m in the neighborhood, I know where I’ll be eating lunch. And I’m in the neighborhood. On the way out, I even bought something: a cigarette lighter meticulously shaped like a video camera, whose “lens” is a flashlight.

And, as I write this, I’m in the Kyoto Hotel. When I came back at about 12:30, they were all smiles, and I even found out I had a 10% discount, for no apparent reason, which at least negates the consumption tax. Nick, however, isn’t here, and I suspect he’s bypassed Japan entirely and headed back to Bangkok -- if he could even get out of the States. The answer is very likely sitting -- along with 2000 other messages -- in my in-box back home. Eric, I now realized, even if he hadn’t bailed a month or so before I left, would also never have been able to get out; he was due here on the 13th.

Going back to Nishiki for lunch was such a seductive idea that, naturally, I was no match for it. I marched back into Nishiki (which, wouldn’t you know it, has its own website) and suddenly realized that the oshi-zushi place I wanted to go didn’t have a place to sit, and I didn’t want to march back to the hotel again to eat a bento, so I went a little further on and discovered a place which only seemed to have two or three specialties, all of which looked gorgeous. I pointed at a bento in the window, and then pointed to the counter inside, and the guy took the menu, showed me that it was going to run ¥2000, and I said okay, so I was in. What I got, thanks to the guy’s daughter’s fine English, was Anago Thirashi, a bowl of cold rice mixed with something vaguely sweet, topped with shredded omelet, nori, chopped shiso, and finished off with cubes of grilled sea-eel, anago. (“Unagi is river eel,” she informed me.) It was just enough, and it was truly exquisite, because each of its ingredients was in balance. I didn’t even want the miso soup which came with it, but I drank it anyway, to be polite. Profuse thanks, and back into the maelstrom.

Two more stops I wanted to make: a liquor store, where I’d noticed some “Autumn Ale” on sale from a local brewer, and the knife shop across the way from where I’d eaten, Aritsugu. They were fairly surly at the liquor store, but Aritsugu produced a smart young saleswoman who explained the knives to me. I’d had my eyes on some lovely ones in a showcase, but she informed me that they were sushi knives, with one flat side, which, of course, makes sense given the task they’re made for. There were only about 80 different types. I got a fairly Western-looking one, a small chef’s knife which will do a good job of filling in between the two I already have, and that’ll be it in the knife department for me. I declined having my name engraved on it, which was appealing in a way, but maybe a bit much. I should at least have inquired if they’d do it in kana, dammit. After I’d made the selection, I was seated at a counter and a cup of cold tea came out immediately. So did the master, who set about doing the final sharpening and cleaning. I was also given very specific instructions for its use. This for about $65.

Going out at the top of Nishiki into the main market, I noticed that the main market street seemed to have a parallel street. Having seen the rest of the market, however superficially, I decided to explore this one, too. It was far weirder than the rest of the market, mostly because, I think, it was aimed at young people. Oh, it had its pachinko parlors and the occasional classy shop, but it seemed to specialize in what I began to think of as “schoolgirl” shops. These are all laid out the same: on the left you find tons of trinkets, in particular the sorts of doo-dads one hangs from one’s cell-phone. Further back, there’s a selection of pop-group memorabilia and fan stuff. Then, moving to the right and back out again, there’s a selection of what appear to be teen tea sweets. In the center, out front, there’ll be all sorts of stuff, probably the latest things everybody’s gotta have. Every store has somewhat different stuff, all are laid out like this, and there were twenty of them on this street (which, admittedly, was long) if there was one. For the boys, there are clothing shops with expensive Japanese hip-hop and skater wear, sneaker shops, and action-figure shops for the hopeless dweebs who’ll become computer wizards. There was also, of course, a Mister Donut (“San Francisco Chinatown,” they all say -- true?) and a variety of other fast-food places. I shot a gigantic bean omelet hovering over a plastic food display in front of one of them.



A bean omelet looms

Another thing this street had was tons of temples and altars. I came upon one which seemed to have as its main deity a water buffalo, whose bronze statue had been made glossy on the nose and horns by people touching it and which also featured a machine where, if you put in a coin, a puppet dressed as a person in a water-buffalo costume with a mask would do a number of different dances. (I assume they were different dances because there were four buttons you could press.) A young family with a 3-year-old was entertaining him with it, and then they moved him over to the altar, where he rang the bell and they showed him how to make a prayer. Another temple down the road was owned by a sect which encouraged women to become involved with Buddhism, and which also had had as a priest the man they credited with inventing the Japanese comic strip, to which he had made pioneering contributions. Too bad he couldn’t have patented it: the temple would never have had to ask for another donation ever again. And what appeared to be a Shinto place seemed to venerate an octopus.

I finally staggered back to the hotel at 3:45 and realized that I’d gotten my down-time day. The only temples I’d gone to had been minor and probably fairly new, and I’d gone to them completely by accident. I’d done some shopping (I also scored a beautiful yakuta, thanks to a very helpful saleswoman who was shocked that I wasn’t as big as she’d assumed, and a large Japanese size did very nicely, thanks), and seemed to be back in the groove. Tomorrow I’d try to find the 1001 Kannon temple and do some other stuff, but it was too late to “do” anything except go back to the castle, so I decided to kick back, and download the photos in the camera before I forgot what they were -- which I almost did: I’m going to have to go back and look at them again to see if some of the “Kanazawa” photos aren’t maybe Nagoya ones. These castles and so on are beginning to merge into each other.

Dinner was a disaster, though. I headed towards a recommended yakitori place, found it easily enough, but it seemed to be out of business. The only other place with a bilingual menu I’d bothered to note was a place called Fable Table, which I’d passed on the way to the other place. It seemed mostly to feature a black guy singing “soul and jazz,” which didn’t bode well. It was supposed to be a beer cellar with a lot of different varieties and an “international and Japanese” menu. It was horrid. The guy was your typical professional black guy overseas, but he (or someone) knew how to program the electronic keyboard he had, and when I came in, to complete the stereotype, he was murdering “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” Of course. I was seated in a place where I had a tile wall for a neighbor and a commanding view of the walk-in refrigerator. The waiters all looked like junior yakuza, and the food was beyond awful. I started with a Korean cold noodle dish, which wasn’t too bad, given that it had a kimchi base, and then I ordered grilled beef and vegetables, since everything on the menu seemed to cost the same: ¥500. (This included mixed nuts, incidentally, as well as ice cream and chocolate). The beef and vegetables were two hunks of gristly meat, two small eggplants, and a slice of red pepper stuck on a metal arrow, sitting in a red sauce of indeterminate tomatoeyness. With two beers, this cost me ¥2300, a total burn. Back to the hotel in a bad mood, drank the Autumn ale too quickly (nice and hoppy, but not much else), went to bed at 11:30, slept fitfully.