Tip #1 to begin preparations for a journey where the signposts are unfamiliar, where the new worlds you see reveal elements in yourself that you never knew existed.
Patricia was swarmed by excited students when she was asked: “what is your favorite thing in Japan?” Her answer: “Gegege Kitaro, a manga character by Mizuki Shigeru.
“Yōkai, ghosts and goblins are peaceful, playful creatures.”
On my Japan List is a Temple Stay, a quiet way to see a side of Japan not often encountered. Pico Ayer went to Japan to live in a Temple, to become a monk. He wrote of his first year in Kyoto in his book: The Lady and the Monk Click HERE to learn more about Shukubo.
“Temple stays can be arranged in a number of popular pilgrimage destinations across Japan, including the ancient capital of Kyoto, but also in some of the nation's more off-the-beaten-path prefectures, such as Aomori, Tottori and Nagano.”
* A Toto in Your Water Closet * Tokyo Car Culture * The Giant Wave of Kanazawa and Ukeo-e Wood Block Prints * Wonder Filled Japanese World Heritage Sites * An Unforgettable Journey by train. * “This Is The Land Of Your Ancestors.” —Yuji Ishihara * Why Get Married in Japan #6 * Why Get Married in Japan #5 * Iconic Japan: The Ghibli Museum (Totoro and Spirited Away) * Table of Contents * Can a Foreigner Buy a Home in Japan? * May 1, 2019 First Day of the new Japanese Era * Finding Japanese Ancestors * Space Saver Tip 34 * 10,000 People: Japan Art Book Project * Forging a Katana (Samurai Sword) Tip 33 The Narita Express (Fast Train to & from Narita Airport) Tip 32 Book: Meeting With Japan by Fosco Mariani Tai Chi and Mount Fuji
Tip 31 Mobile Passport: breezing through customs at LAX .
Tip 30 Jet Lag Part 2 * How To Get Married In Japan * Moon Restaurant: 58th Floor of the Mori Museum Building * Senju Shrine: Perfect for an Intimate Shinto Wedding * 10,000 People Art Book Project: Misata * Discovering Immeasurable Treasures * 10,000 People Japan Art Book Project: Milo @ Beer To Go * Eyes Open Wide ;;;;Day In Tokyo
* The Diaries of Patricia and Tobias * Jim Reed: "What is Shabui and Wabi Sabi?" * Chucky Thomas in Asuka Village * Shinto Wedding Purification Ritual * Tai Chi Wedding Sendoff * The Diaries of Patricia and Tobias * Patricia's Fan Fold Temple Book * Sakura Zensen in Tokyo: Following the Cherry Blossom Wave * Godzilla & Staying at the APA Shinjuku Kabuki-cho Tower * 36 of Japan's Most Stunning Places * Japanese Phrases for Your First Day * First Kimono * Calligraphy and Sumi (Japanese Ink Making) * 10,000 People: Japan Art Book Project # 10
* 10,000 People: Japan Art Book Project begins.
Tip 28 Cherry Blossom Report: Sakura Zensen Tracking
Tip 27 Nara: Miwa Mountain of 1,000 Shrines
Tip 26 The Great Buddha of Todai-ji
Tip 25 Folding steel for Samurai Swords and bringing home a fine folded steel kitchen knife from Nara
Headed to Kyoto? .... this capsule hotel stands out as quite an Adventure! Perfect accommodations for college age kids on a travel budget. Capsules are on our list of Japan Travel adventures. Click HERE for the Millenium Capsule Hotel in Kyoto
We haven't been north of Tokyo yet but we've added Yukigassen to our list of things to do in Japan: one of the world's most unique sporting events: the highly regulated snowball fight that began in Japan. Click HERE to view a Japanese snowball fight.
A long line of bibliophiles waited for Pico Ayer to sign A Beginner’s Guide to Japan after his comments, but I was more interested in a book he’d written 28 years earlier when he first arrived in Japan from the busy streets of Manhattan; The Lady and the Monk: Four seasons in Kyoto. 1991.
This morning Patricia, as we often do, read to me an interesting passage where Pico captures a form of Japanese intimacy: ai ai gasa, Japanese love symbolism.
There is lyric in Pico Ayer’s writing about Japan which compels me to nominate it to our list of Readings on Japan for those planning a visit. Just a few pages into The Lady and the Monk I can see how it will frame your upcoming visit to Kyoto.
I still want to know what moved Pico from his manic life in Manhattan to becoming a monk in a Kyoto Buddhist Monastery. One day I’ll sit down for a chat with him.
One of my earliest memories with Tommie comes from when I came to live with my mother Tamaki Ishihara Manzanares, I was 10 years old. She took me to Grandview Gardens in China Town where we were served tea while dining. She showed me the tea leaves remaining at the bottom of my cup while telling me she could see my future in those leaves. It would be 48 more years before I could walk the land of my Japanese ancestors. I still look very carefully at the bottom of my tea cup and have discovered that I can also see my past. Those remarkable days with her while growing up.
Part 1: Tea first arrived when Japanese Envoys returned from China in the 8th century. Though tea originated in China, it has become “one of the most quintessentially Japanese experiences" where guests
From Wikipedia: The Buddhist monks Kūkai and Saichō may have been the first to bring tea seeds to Japan. The first form of tea brought from China was probably brick tea. Tea became a drink of the royal classes when Emperor Saga encouraged the growth of tea plants. Seeds were imported from China, and cultivation in Japan began.
Tea consumption became popular among the gentry during the 12th century, after the publication of Eisai's Kissa Yōjōki. Uji, with its strategic location near the capital at Kyoto, became Japan's first major tea-producing region during this period. Beginning in the 13th and 14th centuries, Japanese tea culture developed the distinctive features for which it is known today, and the Japanese tea ceremony emerged as a key component of that culture.
In the following centuries, production increased and tea became a staple of the general public. The development of sencha in the 18th century led to the creation of distinctive new styles of green tea which now dominate tea consumption in Japan. In the 19th and 20th centuries, industrialization and automation transformed the Japanese tea industry into a highly efficient operation, capable of producing large quantities of tea despite Japan's limited arable land area.
Part 2: The Tea. A peaceful side trip just a few minutes away from busy streets of Kyoto.
The next time you’re in Kyoto... just 15 minutes away Reading Tea Leaves
Part 3: A Culture of Peace: The Japanese Ceremony, Chanoyu, "Way of Tea, wabicha elevates hospitality to a form of art, a way of being. Guests take their shoes off before entering the tea room. Click Here for more about The Japanese Tea Ceremonywhich teaches us that "every meeting should be treasured because it can never be fully recaptured”. --Sen no Rikyu 1522-1591. In a Wabicha tea ceremony simplicity is held preeminent.
Photo credit: japan.travel
A Culture of Peace
Part 4: The History of the Tiny Tea Room Entrance click HERE.
Photo credit muza-chan.net
The nijiriguchi躙口 is a "wriggle-in” 60 by 65 centimeter entrance for guests in a rustic style tea ceremony room. Upon entering, first your hands, then your head, then one knee... symbolizing that all guests are equal in this tea room. The host uses the regular door.
Waiting for a table outside the Common Cafe in the APA Shinjuku Kabukicho Tower, Patricia whispers: “You’ve gotta see this!!!” Taking my arm like a co-conspirator in a mystery novel she pulls me through the door into a space the very definition of Shibui: spacious, simple, yet elegant. She’s drawn me into a beautiful room where I hear the soft sound of a running stream (designed to mask the sound made when even a delicate lady takes care of her “business”. She’s discovered the wonderful world of Toto Washlets, the most hygienic way for humans to ... well ... “take care of business”. That was our first together trip to Japan.
Is it possible that a scale was tipped at that moment?
I took her to Nara and Asuka Village on our second trip.
On our third trip, I proposed to her on a tiny island in Heian Shrine in Kyoto in three languages.
We were married under falling Cherry Blossoms at Senju Shrine in Tokyo on our fourth trip.
All those days, were experiencing the saving graces of Toto Washlets.
A short time after returning home from our Japanese Sakura Wedding, I visited a nearby Bath show room and brought home an easy to install S500e washlet for just over $1,000.
Chucke, install one of these for your wife... she’ll know that you’re a keeper for all the rest of her living days! Imagine her loving you more each time she takes care of “business.”
Imagine her sighing: “Oh... I love that man.”
The Lunar Japan is not hidden, but easily missed. Looking at the Japanese flag we see the rising sun, the logo of the industrial, political, global business side of Japan, but Japan’s hidden beauty is its lunar nature, the experiences that make us yearn to return as soon as when we depart.
The Geishas are hostesses having completed advanced classes in dance, instrumental music, poetry, calligraphy, traditional Japanese tea ceremony, and other fine and performing arts. Their education takes several years.
Shinto, no founder, no dogma, no commandments.
Naoshima, Art Island, east of Hiroshima
Art House Project integrates art into nature. Stay at a hotel that’s also an art museum.
My California Cousin Albert has a far reaching interest in and a deep fascination for mechanical engineering, for example, at 15 he bought a 1968 Camero, pulled the engine and two days later it was back together. So I know one day... he’ll find himself exploring Japan’s Car Culture.
Patricia found beautiful Hokusai thank you notes at her favorite stationary store in Shinjuku... Every detail from the wedding invitations to the thank you notes has behind it ... a story like the one above...
And the one below...
...
Or the fascinating story below of how Ukiyo-e Woodblock prints were made during the Edo Period, click on the video below...
The Wave Off Kanagawa influenced the French composer Claude Debussy
in his composition of La mer (The Sea) Three Symphonic Sketches for Orchestra.
Matthew’s is the most resonant story: that The Wave Off Kanagawa is a representation of a snapshot of Japanese History when the Mongol invading army was destroyed on August 15, 1281 by a giant typhoon. In the wake of the Mongol disaster, there came in Japan a feeling that they were protected by the god (kami) of the wind (kazi).
Most people believe that a guided tour is the best way to travel to a new country. Epiphany, I just realized that using the following article, one can explore Japan without a guided tour or any prior experience.
“This is the land of your ancestors. Your family lived here.” Yuji Ishihara Growing up in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, I walked the land of my Manzanares ancestors, cast my eyes up to see the same migrating Canadian Geese flying in long breath taking V-formations. Yet long had I the dream of walking in the footsteps of my Ishihara/Kobayakawa ancestors, until in the year 2015, I boarded a flight to Niimi, Okayama, Japan, where I met Sohji and his father Yuji Ishihara. To make short the story of a long adventure with Yuji, the genius of Niimi, we skip forward to the place where Yuji tells me of a very old Buddhist monk who carried in his memory the long history of the families of what was once the tiny village of Niimi.
After meeting the old Buddhist priest who knew of my family, Yuji took me to the Nichinan Shiaksho (city hall) near Niimi to research the Kobayakawa family records and examine the books of maps. In those historical records we found “the land of my ancestors.” Yuji then drove to the map location, parked and walked to the edge of a rice field. With a different set of ears I heard Yuji say: “Your family lived here.” I could see them, Jotaro and Taka Kobayakawa, and their ancestors quietly walking along the mountain margin of the cedar forest above rippling fields of rice.
Why get married in Japan? #6 This is what Matthew was wanting to read: our Japanese wedding vows, which are wedding promises to the Japanese.
Another unexpected and wonderful consequence of a Japanese wedding is saying your wedding vows in Japanese! Hearing our wedding promises in Japanese was wonderful. The term "vows" feels ... legalistic while in Japan the concept is one of promises, which reflects how we feel, not because the law says we have to but because our love inspires promises of the heart.
Why get married in Japan #5. Unexpected and joyful the rain of happy energy as we boarded Singapore Airlines for our wedding flight to Narita Airport. Effervescence spilling into each step. Once we landed, I continued saying to anyone who would listen: "We're getting married in Japan!" Common was a questioning look: "Why?" Looking into their eyes I'd wonder: do they want the short answer or the long answer? Almost always I chose the short option, and wait a millisecond or two for an example to come to mind.
Why indeed. Our destination wedding in Japan incurred a level of complexity not for the faint of heart. Why complicate things when you can go to Las Vegas? Slam bam, it's over and done with!
Example #5, so subtle it didn't surface for a month and a week after our wedding. Our friend Matthew Ma explained it this way when he said the phoenixes (symbols lost in the mists of antiquity) on the top of your wedding certificate "symbolize that birds gather when something good is about to unfold." This often echoed on our wedding journey, the many good things that unexpectedly unfolded along our way, like the pleasure of signing our names in Japanese for the first time on our Shinjuku City Hall wedding documents. Think about it... When has it ever happened, joy, from singing your name.
At our reception, Jim Reed said: "I've been to all of Toby's weddings!" When we stopped laughing I realized, he wasn't kidding. True it was. He was speaking of my third (and last) wedding. But this one was designed on a remarkably divergent and most dependable foundation. I've come to learn that the more I put into the wedding, the greater and more profound would be it's impact on my mindscape. Thinking of all the weddings I've ever attended, including all of my own, I see now that the groom was basically along for the ride, with the bride, her mother and her friends planning and executing 99.9% of the details. Recently, I've been hearing the word: bridezilla, which I assume is a reflection of the accumulated over-the-top stress stuffed into the journey. Now, I was in a foreign and unfamiliar territory. I'd never planned a wedding, and this made for me, all the difference. More to come.
When in Tokyo, Studio Ghibli Museum is a must visit for Spirited Away movie fans of Japan’s most celebrated Hayao Miyazaki, who has transformed feature animation movie making into museum art. Ghibli Museum Tickets click HERE on Viator site.
There are Ghibli tickets available once a month at Lawson’s (ubiquitous Japanese convenience stores) for a much better price, but we haven’t figured out how to reserve them in advance. Patricia’s research turned up this site when we needed to lock in reservations on a specific date. Lawson's $10 Ghibli Ticket Instructions click HERE using Loppi Ticket Machine
I'll try this the next time I'm in Japan (on the tenth of the month).
1. Use the Interactive Table of Contents. --------->
Click on a title that takes you in a flash to that specific site. As of November 2021, this Interactive Table of Contents is 15% complete.
2. Normally one browses through a blog by using the Blog Archive in the right column. --------->
Click on a date range and click again on a specific date to pop up the title. The earliest posts are at the bottom.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
* A Toto in Your Water Closet * Tokyo Car Culture * The Giant Wave of Kanazawa * Wonder Filled Japanese World Heritage Sites * An Unforgettable Journey by train. * “This Is The Land Of Your Ancestors.” —Yuji Ishihara * Why Get Married in Japan #6 * Why Get Married in Japan #5 * For Rochelle’s Family is headed to Tokyo * Table of Contents * Can a Foreigner Buy a Home in Japan? * May 1, 2019 First Day of the new Japanese Era * Finding Japanese Ancestors * Space Saver Tip 34 * 10,000 People: Japan Art Book Project * Forging a Katana (Samurai Sword) Tip 33 The Narita Express (Train) Tip 32 Book: Meeting With Japan by Fosco Mariani Tai Chi and Mount Fuji
Tip 31 Mobile Passport: breezing through customs.
Tip 30 Jet Lag Part 2 * How To Get Married In Japan * Moon Restaurant: 58th Floor of the Mori Museum Building * Senju Shrine: Perfect for an Intimate Shinto Wedding * 10,000 People Art Book Project: Misata * Discovering Immeasurable Treasures * 10,000 People Japan Art Book Project: Milo @ Beer To Go * Eyes Open Wide Day In Tokyo
Tip 29 The Thirty Types of Japanese Restaurants
* The Diaries of Patricia and Tobias * Jim Reed: "What is Shabui and Wabi Sabi?" * Chucky Thomas in Asuka Village * Shinto Wedding Purification Ritual * Tai Chi Wedding Sendoff * The Diaries of Patricia and Tobias * Patricia's Fan Fold Temple Book * Sakura Zensen in Tokyo: Following the Cherry Blossom Wave * Godzilla & Staying at the APA Shinjuku Kabuki-cho Tower * 36 of Japan's Most Stunning Places * Japanese Phrases for Your First Day * First Kimono * Calligraphy and Sumi (Japanese Ink Making) * 10,000 People: Japan Art Book Project # 10
* 10,000 People: Japan Art Book Project begins.
Tip 28 Cherry Blossom Report: Sakura Zensen Tracking
Tip 27 Nara: Miwa Mountain of 1,000 Shrines
Tip 26 The Great Buddha of Todai-ji
Tip 25 Folding steel for Samurai Swords and bringing home a fine folded steel kitchen knife from Nara
Tip 24 Akiko and her new Tour Company (highly recommended) Tip 23A No need for Electrical adaptors and drinking water
Tip 22 Hiroshima: Peace Park and ringing the Peace Bell
Tip 21 Using Google Translate
Tip 20 Temples, Shinto Shrines and Japanese Culture
Tip 19 Way Finding in Japan and Restaurant Culture
Tip 18 “Do not hesitate to ask when you need help.
Tip 17 Google Maps: A great way to navigate Japan
Tip 16 Kanji: Japanese Writing
Tip 15B My Friend Yuji Short Documentary
Tip 15A Home Stays: the best way to learn about Japan
Tip 14 Japan Rail Pass
Tip 13 Pasmo card for easier Subway use
Tip 12 Travel Light: Using Roll Aboards
Tip 11 Conversion of $ to Yen
Tip 10 Ghibli Museum: Home of Japan’s greatest director/animator.
Tip 9 Tokyo Subway: A wayfinding introduction.
Tip 8B Copious ideas to build your own Japan Itinerary including World Heritage sites.
Tip 8A Miyabidado Takemine Ryokan in Tokyo, wedding night. Tip 7 Introduction to Ryokans: Japan’s historic, traditional inns.
Tip 6 Hotel APA Shinjuku Kabukicho Tower
Tip 5 Portable charger for you phone and Pocket Wifi
Tip 4 Pocket WiFi across Japan, Google Translate, & Maps
Tip 3 Hitching Rides with Buddha: a first book to read.
Tip 2 b Shinjuku Station, busiest in the world. 3.5 million passengers each day.
Tip 2 a Japan Rail Pass (perfect for beyond the big cities)
Tip 1 Minimizing Jet Lag April 16, 2018
000 In the beginning: Jotaro and Taka Kobayakawa Nov. 17, 2015
