Osaka

 Ted. Mention Osaka to most Westerners and they would think of the castle. And that's not wrong. It's awesome.

Mention the city to someone who has been there and they think of food - especially in the neighborhood called Dotombori. We visited the city on a quick day trip from Kyoto and spent most of our time in this crazy place.

This is around 1:00 on a Wednesday!!

The restaurants all have wild signs designed to draw in diners.

It's not cool to walk around eating

Golf ball size dumplings filled with octopus

Seafood pancakes

1,000 yen is about $6! Not bad

Ask a Japanese person what Osaka is know for, and they'll say their sense of humor. Here's an example; "In Kyoto, the locals go bankrupt buying kimonos. In Osaka, the locals go broke buying food." Gotta love it!

 

Gion, a Piece of Japanese Heaven

Judy. Kyoto is so big and has so much going on that I really can’t speak to much about the city, especially since out of our six days there, we took a few side trips to other towns. What we did see was pretty busy (not just with tourists), but once you crossed the river to our little area of Gion, the world suddenly became quiet and welcoming. Oh, I liked Kyoto just fine—it’s just that Gion was—maybe older, more authentic. And light years from modern, crazy, busy Tokyo.

A canal marks the boundary of the Gion neighborhood

Peaceful entrance to our hotel

Our hotel was small, charming, and just "Japanese" enough to make us feel like we were really experiencing the country.  While breakfast in our hotel was western-style, it only took a 2-minute walk to get to the sister hotel for a Japanese meal: smoked fish, miso soup, tofu, vegetables, rice, and pickles. Yum! 

Our room

Shoes and slippers for the room are stored in this cabinet outside the room

Gion is one of the places Geisho and Maiko (Geishas in training) live and work. Although we often saw young women we thought were Maiko, we only saw a Geisho once, but we didn’t take a photo. That’s just not cool. 

Maiko and her chaperone in the train station

What we did see is many locals dressed in traditional clothing, much like we saw in Vietnam. Only here, the men often dressed up as well. Among these old, wooden houses, it just looked right, though we often saw young people on the subways, dressed to the nines. 

A lovely canal separates Gion Hotel from the most historic part of town, with an ancient shrine just over the bridge. The most traditional part of the area is, as you could expect, filled with tourists. There are signs reminding us not to take pictures on streets where residents live, and a policeman who makes  sure that what little traffic there is keeps moving. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as busy as I expected. 

Shrine to the deity for performing arts, including Maiko & Geiko

Area where most of the Geiko perform, very old part of the city

Like the rest of the city, Gion is squeaky clean. What trash there is is placed in small plastic bags for the garbage man to pick up One morning I saw that a hotel placed netting over its small pile of refuse so the wind wouldn’t blow it away. 

Trash awaiting pickup

There’s a deep respect for this city. Tradition certainly rules Gion, although four blocks away cars and crowds rule the day. It was such a pleasure to return to our little refuge at the end of every busy day!

Quiet entrance to a restaurant

Large shrine

Plum tree in bloom

Kyoto

Ted. From Tokyo we traveled to the much more laid back city of Kyoto for a six night stay. This beautiful city had been the imperial capital of Japan for over a thousand years!

Our grandchildren love something called manga. To learn more about it, one of the first places we visited was the Kyoto International Manga Museum. 

Apparently, in Western countries, manga is considered to mean Japanese comics. However, the Japanese, seem to take a broader view and consider manga to be comic books and cartoons produced anywhere in the world. So, I guess they might think Batman comics and Snoopy cartoon strips are just American manga. 

We learned that the roots of Japanese manga lie in simple cartoon strips which were found in newspapers in the early 20th century. They were usually funny and were often political satire. 

Paper was expensive and books were rare so manga enthusiasts collected their favorite comic strips in simple scrapbooks. These now comprise an important part of the archives at this museum. 

We saw artists at work, children learning how to to the drawings and even an area where artists would create manga style caricatures of museum visitors. 

The most important aspect of the museum appeared to be the huge library of classic manga books which lined the walls of several reading rooms. Folks just pulled books off the shelves from their favorite series, plopped down into one of the dozens of the chairs and started reading. It was all very cool. 

On another day, we visited a famous Shinto shrine called Fushimi Inari Taisha. Built to honor a god called Inari, the shrine is know for the Senbon Torii, a path up a mountain created by a thousand traditional gates. We walked much of the way but the crowds were daunting. 

One torii

Many torii

On our last day in Kyoto we attended a tea ceremony for which the attendees dressed in kimonos - definitely a first for me! 

I found the process fascinating and worth the effort to dress the part.

Our teacher

Properly frothed macha

Someone had WAY too much fun!

Tokyo

Ted. After just three nights, we are about to leave our very nice hotel in Tokyo so it is time to jot down some thoughts on the brief glimpse we have had of one of the world’s great cities. 

Judy and I covered a lot of ground in the two full days we had here but barely scratched the surface. We explored a Buddhist temple, a Shinto shrine and a national garden. We saw the vastness of the city from the top of one of it’s tallest buildings (by day and by night) and watched pedestrians navigate a huge intersection. We even figured out how to use the metro and regional trains and order at little restaurants. 

Senso-ji

Judy got a good fortune from the shaker

I got good snacks from this shop

The "married" camphor trees at Meiji Jingu

Taiwan Pavilion at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden

Shibuya Crossing - organized and quiet!

First impressions? Paper walls! The traditional houses here were very small and had paper walls so folks lived in close proximity and could hear everything their neighbors said. The culture today reflects that fact. The Japanese people are obsessed with politeness and respect for each other, especially older people. They stand patiently at stoplights until the “walk” light comes on. Cars always yield to pedestrians. Nobody speaks above a quiet conversational tone. Everyone bows to each other and says thank you - all the time. That extends to the environment as well. There is no need for public trash cans because everyone packs their own trash home. Tokyo's metro population is over 37 million but, because of these cultural differences, it feels more like a cluster of thousands of small villages.

For me, the highpoint here was the time we spent with a very nice Servas day host named Wakaba. Referred to us by Joy Seng (with whom we visited in Singapore) she was able to meet up with us twice. We also met her son, and 91 year old mother. 

Wakaba has lived in the US and speaks excellent English. Enjoying tea in her home and eating out on two occasions, she taught us a lot about the lives of typical Japanese. We will never forget her generosity. 

As usual, the best way to experience a place is by meeting people. Thank you, Wakaba!

Farewell, Vietnam

Ted. I am writing this post in a very nice high rise hotel room in the ritzy Shinjuku neighborhood of Tokyo, Japan. From our window I look out over crystal blue skies. There are no sounds of the traffic below us, you can drink the tap water, the toilet has multiple functions and you can even flush the paper. 

And yet…I don’t hear children playing in the street at night. I’m not greeted by name by smiling staff members and there is nothing within a 20 minute walk but office buildings and big hotels. I know we will have a wonderful time during our three weeks in Japan, but in many ways, I really miss Vietnam. 

What a remarkable history that country has! In just the last 100 years they have fought wars with France, Japan, Cambodia, China and the US. They have survived droughts, famine, typhoons and disastrous land reform policies. Yet, there is a sincere warmth in the smiles of most folks we have encountered. Maybe they realize the importance of the foreign currency that tourists bring to their families. Or maybe they are just proud to have replaced their bicycle with a scooter!

Is Vietnam perfect? No way! It’s a developing country with all of the negatives that entails such as dirty air and water, trash in the streets and streams and horrible traffic. The infrastructure is crying for improvements and country folk are racing to the big cities causing incredible congestion and straining limited resources. 

But Vietnam has an exuberance about it. Everyone is dreaming of a bright future and some parents probably imagine their children traveling the world soon, just like the Korean and Malaysian tourists they see on their streets everyday. 

I am amazed, given the vast political, economic, cultural and language differences that exist, that we were able to make so many personal connections in just six short weeks. Suong, a lady who prepared our breakfast every day in Hoi An keeps up with Judy on Facebook now. Tuey, a lady who owns a small restaurant messaged Judy the other day. Several folks in Hanoi are now reading our blog. And everyone - everyone insisted that we MUST return one day! 

If it were easier to get there, I wouldn’t even think twice about planning a return visit, but I am torn. When brainstorming future travel, Judy and I inevitably struggle between visiting new countries and returning to countries that we know and love. Our visit to Vietnam has further complicated these discussions. 

One trait I admire in the Vietnamese (as well as most Asians) is a deep reverence for one's ancestors. On several occasions, I have found myself in a temple or shrine breathing in the incense, with eyes closed, and smiling at mental images of my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

At Judy’s suggestion, I just read The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai. Most of the novel takes place in the Old Quarter of Hanoi and every day I walked the same streets as the characters, further deepening my connection to the country.

At one point in the book, a grandmother says to her granddaughter, “If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.”