Last night I dreamt Sylvester McCoy was my uncle and he was taking me on a tour of New York City. I suppose it's because McCoy's birthday was recently and I was admiring New York in Only Murders in the Building.
Yesterday, the last day of August, I decided to go up Mount Amanokagu, one of the three famous mountains of Kashihara, the Yamato Sanzan.
So now I've been up all three, though it's been a year or two since I went up Miminashi. Maybe I'll go again this weekend. Here's a map at Amanokagu showing the three mountains:
The grid shows Fujiwara City, the capital of Japan from 694 to 710, with Fujiwara Palace being the dark square in the middle.
Amanokagu is 500 feet tall, smaller than Unebi but a little taller than Miminashi, which surprised me. I felt like I got to the top of Amanokagu much faster.
There was a little shrine at the top. I saw a guy there with a big green bug net. A popular summer activity in Japan is bug catching. There's also an insect museum near Amanokagu. I think I had my fill of gnats yesterday but I was heartened to see plenty of spider webs.
I was in Tokyo for five days. In addition to going to Comiket, I wanted to spend time in the biggest city in the world because I hadn't yet, really. When I first came to Japan, I stopped briefly at Narita Airport before getting a short flight to Osaka. Narita is in the general Tokyo area but it didn't really feel like I'd been to Tokyo.
I live in Kashihara, which is a small city in Nara Prefecture, less than an hour away from Kyoto and Osaka. They say the grass is always greener on the other side but actually I like this grass the best. I mean, Kashihara is small but big enough that I have everything I need. If I want to do some serious shopping, Osaka is easy to get to. If I want to see some beautiful historical buildings and swanky restaurants, Kyoto is easy to get to. It took me three hours to get to Tokyo by bullet train. But Tokyo was pretty great.
I had two guides. I knew about all the famous parts of town from all the Japanese movies I've seen. And I also asked my students to recommend places to go and things to do.
My hotel was a cheap APA hotel in Minato, around 4000 yen a night (so less than 40 dollars). There wasn't a whole lot to see around there, though I did have incredible chicken kebob at a corner restaurant one night. But my hotel was in easy walking distance of Tokyo Tower.
It was surprisingly expensive to go to the top deck--3000 yen! I ended up just going to the middle deck for 1200.
It was still a good view.
Many of my students recommended an old part of town called Asakusa. I'm not sure why. It was nice but nothing to write home about. I guess I should have visited the temple. They'd asked me to eat monjayaki but, despite searching high and low, I could not find a monjayaki restaurant that was open. Maybe it was a Covid thing but I don't know why just monjayaki restaurants would be closed.
I did see a lot of wanted posters:
I ended up just having chashu ramen for lunch.
If you like really tender pork, I strongly recommend chashu ramen.
It was after Comiket, on Sunday, that I really started exploring the city in earnest. The first place I wanted to go to was Shinjuku because I really like this Keiko Fuji song;
Shinjuku is yakuza headquarters in Tokyo so, unsurprisingly, it basically turned out to be a red light district filled with gambling dens and strip clubs.
It was in Shinjuku I found a restaurant that served edomaezushi, another thing my students recommended.
Edo is the old name for Tokyo and "mae" means before or in front of. So this is sushi made from fish, roe, and shrimp from the Tokyo area and treated with vinegar in a way that served to preserve the meat in ancient times.
It was good, very tender with a subtle flavour. And expensive--5000 yen, which I gather is relatively cheap for edomaezushi!
After Shinjuku, I visited Harajuku and Shibuya, the fashionable shopping areas of Tokyo.
I didn't buy anything. And it was tough to resist temptation. For, behold:
I took this picture from a little window across the street because I wanted to show that this Tower Records is in fact a tower. Yes, it's the whole building. That's nine storeys of music, CDs and vinyl mostly. On the floor dedicated to rock music, I found a two disk set of Nine Inch Nails performing with David Bowie. On the floor with soundtracks, I found a three disk extended edition of the Bram Stoker's Dracula soundtrack. Every section I looked at had something ranging from rare to ultra-rare. In the vinyl section, I spotted a whole Dalek album, the first Doctor Who merchandise I've seen anywhere in Japan.
After Shibuya, I went to Ginza. I remembered how cool Ginza looked in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and I wondered if anything remained of that chill bar scene from the 1960 movie. Now it appears to be a very expensive shopping district.
I saw a lot of foreigners here, I didn't feel special at all. I'd say 30% of the people I saw were white and I heard a lot of English being spoken. Some of the buildings were really beautiful.
I didn't get anything in Ginza, either. But after Ginza, I stopped in Akasaka and found another meal my students had recommended.
Menchi-katsu is breaded, deep-fried meat. I started eating before I remembered to take a picture. It comes with a bowl of shredded lettuce and there's an assortment of sauces you can choose to add to it. It was pretty good and thankfully cheap, less than 1000 yen.
On the way back to my hotel one day, I randomly decided to stop in a place called Nakano. I'm glad I did because it turned out to be Otaku-central, containing a huge mall for anime, manga, video games, cosplay, and various other hobby and nerd goods.
So that's some of what I did in Tokyo. This entry is getting really long so I think I'll save the rest for another time.
Twitter Sonnet #1613
The volunteer could drive us up the wall.
Abysmal business charred the building black.
A crooked man was yet surpassing tall.
Corrupted boys began to build the track.
A normal hour took the cloudy day.
Revolving eyes were ever right at noon.
We crammed a ransom 'neath the choc'late bay.
The smuggler's fleet departs before the moon.
The growing brick was yet a coffin shape.
Diverse examples tried the yankee plant.
A puppet's teeth could never cut the tape.
Recall what butter does and jelly can't.
The stacks of stuff arrived in varied hues.
The rare and common blend in vibrant blues.
I couldn't go as far as San Diego Comic Con this year but I did go to Comiket, Japan's version of a Comic Con, and it's actually a much bigger event, in fact the biggest of its kind in the world, typically drawing more than 720,000 people. It's held twice a year, for two days in summer and two days in winter. The number of attendees was down this year because, in view of the covid pandemic, tickets were sold instead of entry being open to everyone. I think they were limited to 55,000 per day. I only went for one day, Saturday, August 13. I wish I'd bought a ticket for Sunday, I'm not sure why I didn't. I did have a nice time.
I didn't take many pictures of cosplayers for the same reason I don't usually at Comic Con anymore. There are too many web sites with exhaustive photo catalogues of cosplayers (like this one). I limited myself to a few characters I actually recognised.
Like Lum from Urusei Yatsura.
But actually, the best cosplay picture I took I can't even show you because the young lady, although she posed and gave me permission to take a picture, asked me not to share it on social media. I refrained from asking what I'm supposed to do with it then. Maybe I'll frame it and put it on my desk one day, I don't know. But for the record, she was cosplaying as the title character from Revolutionary Girl Utena. I chatted with her briefly in my terrible Japanese about what a great show it is.
It's a good thing I didn't decide to dedicate my time to photographing cosplayers because the protocol seems to be a bit different to Comic Con due to the manners Japan is famous for. I walked through a large hall where photographers were lined up in single file to take photos, one at a time, of beautiful cosplayers who posed for each in turn. It's nice everyone's asking for permission but surely it would save everyone a lot of time if they all just took their pictures at the same time? Some of the guys at the back of the queue had expensive telephoto lenses but they were waiting patiently to take photos from a few feet away. There seems to be a kind of ritual aspect to it.
I was truly more interested in seeing some comics, though. Comiket was an event founded to facilitate the sales of independent, or doujin, comics. Unlike Comic Con, I saw no big studios present (and, incidentally, though I've seen plenty of Japanese cosplay characters at Comic Con, I saw absolutely no western characters at Comiket).
There weren't just comics, though. It was a vast sea of self-published music, crafts, guide books, porn, and even gadgets. Walking through a section of music booths, I talked to Robot Head Girl:
I really liked her style. Here's one of her videos:
Most of the music booths were for Vocaloids, the new phenomenon of artificial singers that's very popular in Japan.
There were many booths for military aficionados and for train aficionados. Many of the latter had one or two older guys with self-published books of photos of trains. I do fairly often see guys at train stations just taking pictures of the normal trains. That such a hobby even exists shows how much more hobbies are honoured in Japanese society compared to American society.
In the crafts section, I saw a lot of amazing jewellery but this is the thing I bought:
It's a tiny Nursery Alice! I mean, it's the whole book with full illustrations!
This is the creation of book binder Hataori Dori. She was selling The Nursery Alice and The Call of Cthulu. It was a really tough choice for me but I went for the one with colour illustrations. Also, I'd never seen a copy of The Nursery Alice for sale anywhere before.
Lewis Carroll, author of the original Alice books, wrote The Nursery Alice in 1889--around 23 years after the original was published--as a version for kids under five years old. It contained updated and newly coloured versions of the original John Tenniel illustrations, updated by Tenniel himself, which you can see in my teeny tiny copy.
It was the end of the day so she threw in a free tiny pillow.
So, all in all, a similar but also different experience to Comic Con. The food was certainly better.
I didn't have time to eat there but, unlike the sad little pizza cafe at Comic Con, Comiket has several full restaurants and a convenience store. I saw curry and ramen.
Yesterday I visited Koyasan in Wakayama, south of Osaka, with my friend Tiffany and her boss.
Koyasan, or Mount Koya, is covered with temples, museums, and cemeteries.
It's also a functioning town, high up on the mountain, with a college, a high school, a fire department, and many stores.
First we visited the cemetery, easily the strangest and most impressive cemetery I've ever visited. The first thing I saw was a rocket.
This cemetery has company plots for some of the largest companies in Japan. Employees who die on the job are buried here.
The plot for the UCC coffee company has two great urns that are kept filled with coffee.
There are many pet mausoleums onsite, too.
This is a memorial for all the ants killed in Japan, an apology for killing them as pests:
Tombs further in are more traditional.
We went inside the temple at the centre of the cemetery where no photography is allowed. We listened to a monk chanting in the amazing, dark interior decorated with thousands of lanterns. Little candles illuminated gold Buddhist statues.
Afterwards, we visited Kongobuji, the headquarters of Shingon-shu Buddhism.
Its rock gardens are the largest in Japan and are intended to represent dragons "emerging from a sea of clouds".
The interior is filled with beautiful painted doors. Signs prohibited not only photographs but sketches as well. We sat for a time in one very comfortable, large room with cushioned seats and tatami floors as a monk gave instructions on meditation.
Afterwards, we visited a number of pagodas in the area, some of them as old as the 12th century.
Most of them, though, are less than a century old because the original buildings burned down and were rebuilt several times.
Finally, we visited the Koyasan Reihokan Museaum, which houses many incredible artefacts. I saw mandala tapestries, scrolls upon which 11th century poets actually wrote, and astounding wood and gold statues, most of them dating from the Heian era (794-1185).
My favourite was a statue of the Heavenly General Jinja-daisho sculpted by Kaikei in the Heian era. This fellow has a necklace of skulls, a placidly smiling human face in his belly button, and elephant heads on his knees. Not only that, but each elephant head has four tusks. It's a work of genius.
All of these museums and shrines are surrounded by beautiful forests.
This is the most respectable looking Starbucks I've ever seen. I think most of the building is actually a tourist centre--this is in Nara City, where I ended up yesterday towards the end of a very long day out.
I got up early to take the train to Osaka, a journey of a little more than an hour, where I sat on panels to give oral exams to Japanese college students hoping to become English teachers. Then I decided to save some train fare and walked from Sakai to Tennoji station, a walk that turned out to be about two hours. But I'm pleased to say I never got lost and I only used my phone once. I didn't see anything really interesting except a couple weird buildings.
I think this one's an apartment building:
Would you call that a skyscraping barn?
Closer to Tennoji I saw this barber shop:
For a mere 1000 yen (around ten dollars) this dedicated barber will cut your hair right to the roots! I like to imagine nothing can stand in the way of his commitment.
Instead of taking the Kintetsu line as usual, I had the bright idea I could get to northern Kashihara faster by taking the JR line. When I realised this was wrong, I figured it was no big deal because my phone said I could transfer at Oji station to a train that went directly to Kashihara and I wouldn't lose any time. But it turns out Google maps is not infallible because the train it said would be at Oji station never arrived. After that, the only way I could see was going all the way to the end of the line at Nara, about fifteen kilometers north, away from my destination, and transfer to a southbound train. Altogether I think I travelled around 75 kilometers yesterday by train. Who knows how far by walking. Once in Nara, I had to hoof it again to go from the JR station to the Kintetsu station. It was a pleasant walk, though.
I got a lot of reading done on the trains. I finished reading Pirates of Barbary, a 2010 book by historian Adrian Tinniswood. Some of it was really interesting but not what I was hoping for. It's really not a book about the Barbary pirates, it's a book about European dealings with the Barbary pirates. The first several chapters of the book deal with European pirates who became prominent figures among the Barbary pirates, even commanding ships, such as John Ward and Zymen Danseker. Profiles of corsairs actually born and raised on the Barbary coast are pretty scanty as are descriptions of the institutions that supported them. Worse than that, the self-hating European bias is surprisingly prevalent for an author whose Wikipedia entry says he's a nearly 70 year old Officer of the Order of the British Empire. He frequently mentions the Janissaries, a Muslim fighting corps who were the main muscle of the Barbary pirates, but has very little to say about their society and produces no illustrative examples from among their numbers in the way he talks about European pirates. He mentions an incident where 30 Janissaries gang raped the son of a Dutch renegade in a Tripoli tavern but he only mentions it to say that the inclusion of the incident in the journal of the British consul to Tripoli reflected a peculiar preoccupation with sex on the part of the Brit. Perhaps a remark could just possibly be spared for the Janissaries and what the incident says about them?
Tinniswood's instinctive hatred for European culture carries over to the U.S. In describing the peace treaty temporarily signed between the U.S. and Tripoli 1805, Tinniswood quotes from the U.S. consul, Tobias Lear;
On finally meeting his former adversary, Lear commented with some surprise that [pasha of Tripoli] Yusuf [Karamanli] was "a man of very good presence, manly and dignified, and has not, in his appearance, so much of the tyrant as he had been represented to be." Abstract notions of the Other as barbarian are hard to sustain when you come face-to-face with the reality.
Abstract notions? This comes after several pages in which Tinniswood described how Yusuf had extorted tens of thousands of dollars from the young country, essentially protection money, because the U.S. navy wasn't strong enough yet to fend off the corsairs, who had already taken a few American ships and their crews.
He concludes his book by reminding us, "Fear of European conquest had turned the Barbary states into pirate kingdoms in the first place, motivating the Barbarossa brothers and their sixteenth-century corsairs to set out on their sea-jihad. Without that fear of conquest, Barbary's socialised piracy would never have grown into the scourge of Christendom." Yeah, of course, somehow it's all, always, European colonialism at fault. It's clear even from Tinniswood's own book that history simply isn't that simple.
