Day 4: Part 1: Standing Naked on the Top of the World

Day 4: Part 1: Standing Naked on the Top of the World !!

(Did I say that out loud?)

I find that I am a worry wort. I especially worry about what is going to happen between now and the time that I have to execute some currently incomprehensible travel instructions. So, I don't sleep to well. Have lots of very strange and unremembered dreams, and then wake up way before the alarm (because you really aren't on Tokyo time yet anyway) and get on with it all ready.

Today's young thin gorgeous japanese girl (no uniform. But clothing distinctively suggestive of the Anime style) greated us at 7:40 and took our lives. She assured me that my luggage would be ok. “Don't worry. It will get to Kyoto. Enjoy your tour!!”

Great. I won't worry. Except, I am not going to Kyoto. I am going on a 3 day mountain tour (“The Alps of Japan”) but on the end of day 3 I will end up in Kyoto (and my baggage had better be their !!)(I almost said, “my baggage had better be there, Bitch”, but she was just too sweet to me).

We were handed off to 4 different tour guides today. Only the one that picks you up is cute. The others have to have their “tour Guide” license, or at least their “tour guide in training” license. Evidently it takes at least 30 years to get said license. It went like this: 7:40, Tour Coordinator meets us in the lobby, assures us that our luggage will not be lost. 8:00, board bus #1, drive around for 30 minutes picking up other people worrying about the same things that I am. 8:50 : arrive at tour bus station. Meet tour guide lady #2. Be assured that my luggage will not be lost and that everything will be fine. Don't worry. Have a nice tour. Wish I was going with you. Oh..... assure us not to worry that we are going to have to get off the Bullet train (Shinkansen) at Nagaya and transfer to the the local express and that we havre 9 MINUTES TO MAKE THE CONNECTION. Why should we worry? Because a friendly person from SunRise tours will surely meet us there. Perhaps the translation of that was bad. Anyway, Tour lady #2 (with cute tour girl #1 following around for some reason) puts us on to tour bus #2 and delivers us to the Bullet train (Shinkansen) station. At this point our tour has an interesting selection of english speaking peoples. We have a couple from Australia, A couple from Chicago (who are really from Spain, but we will leave that for now) A older couple from Santa Barbara (who are actually going to be on our 3 day tour, so we will be nice to them) and some people from India and England and somplace called “CANADA”. So. Moving along.

One thing that #2 insisted on is that we but our lunch before we get on the Bullet train (shinkansen). So we got ourselves a Bento Box at the tokyo station. This should be fun. Bento boxes are around 1000 Yen but have a better selection of interesting food than anything you would ever find in an american boxed food store. I had some sort of cutlet, plus rice and some pickled veggie something. Daniel had some red rice and some white rice and many pickled vegtables and some things like salty plums. Should be yummy when we eat our lunch after our “Transfer”.

We get on the bullet train. We have assigned seating. We don't have our full baggage train because there isn't that much room on the trains. You baggage rides by slow train or truck. This actually makes sense. Why should you pay to ship your luggage at high speed. You don't care if it shows up later at your hotel as long as it shows up. And this is Japan, the Luggage WILL SHOW UP. So, the bullet train (Shinkansen) pulls out of the train with tour person #2 waiving at us from the window. We don't worry because she assures us that someone she doesn't know will meet us in Nagoya. (He future me, please check and make sure that that is the right name of the transfer city)(Don't worry, Past me, I got your back. And you did have it spelled wrong)  

It turns out that bullet trains go pretty fast. 300 KPH. (do the math, 100 KPH is 60 MPH). I will see if I can paste in a movie I took of japan speeding by.

Bullet trains (shinkansen) are very comfortable. You have American Butt sized seats (approximately) and plenty of room for small sized carry on luggage. The train is quite and smooth and you can watch the sites, or sleep, or plug in your computer and use the local WiFi. I elected to watch the sites stream by. What a Noob.

After a hour or so of very blurry highspeed scenery, we arrive in Nagaya. Literally 10 feet in front of the door we walk out was tour lady #3 with a SunRise Tours sign and a list of names and directions. She took us in tow and walked us down the stairs, across the terminal. Through a ticket change. Up an elevator, onto our local express train landing, and into the arms the waiting Tour lady #4. This was our final hand off of the day. Tour Lady #4 put us on the Train to Takayama (check this one too) sat down with us, and off we went.

Some very delicious bento and nice scenery ensued.

The local express we are now one still goes pretty fast (perhaps 60 MPH) and has very few stops. It has a little more room than the bullet train (shinkansen) but just doesn't seem as modern (except for the star trek doors going into the WC). We had 2 hours on this train. Time to sit back and watch.

 

what a nice train

We road up this gorge for about an hour

This is a part of Japan that is right out of “The Last Samurai”. Steep and close mountain passes that are closed in the winter (well, unless you have 20^th Century snow plows) winding roads. Really neat river gorges and rapid flowing rivers. All intertwined in a landscape that has clearly been occupied for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. All of the trees are planted and ordered, all of the available flat land is planted or built up with houses. Everything is planed. Everything is neat and pretty. Well, everything up to the flood level of the river running down the vally. And even that has been challenged in the last 100 years buy a series of flood control and hydro electric dams. Nothing major. Just a continuous string of small dams and ingenious generation plants. As far as I could tell, each dam only served to displace the water into some canal or tunel that ran along the ridge of the moutain until it had gone far enough to build up a decent pressure head and then it was funneled down the slope in a large metal tube to a turbine. And after that.... back into the same river to do it again at the next dam. I counted 5 of turbine locations and I MUST have missed some.

We pulled into our destination station of Takayama at 2:09. Nearly an entire minute late. Made me feel ashamed for the poor engineer. Then just a short walk carrying our abreviated luggage to our motel for the night. Holy shit, this one is nicer than the one in Tokyo. They provided us with these neat japanese lounging apparal which they encourage us to where anywhere around the hotel (and especially to the baths (more on that later)).

And this counts as the Hapi Coat picture also.

A short wait, and then we have our Walking Tour Of Takayama.

Not sure how to give you the feel of Takayama. This is clearly a very famous place in Japan. A thing that all of the school children learn about and yearn to visit. As an example, the tourist trap gift stores in the lobby downstairs (which are VERY nice, by the way, and have a river running through them full of golden carp) were packed with Japanese School kids buying up stuff. Perhaps it is an old town something like Charleston or Jamestown. Something that the towns people keep historically accurate and the rest of the nation thanks them for it with their cash dollars.

God I love these little trucks.

 

Tori Gate. 

Oh Carp !

 

Several of the historic buildings are open for tours. The one we went into was a money merchants house. Very large and plush (for the time). It was built in around the 1800s. It had huge cedar beams and tatami mat floors (please to take off your shoes). Now that I think about it, a 19^th century european example of a rich merchants house would be much more modern that this one. I would compare this to something I would find in the American West at that time. Oh, perhaps it was that there was no use of stone. It was all wood and plaster.

Cedar Beam me Up Scotty

Hearth. In Japanese: Health.

 

That Giant Ball means Sake is made here. (2 balls is American Bourbon)

Then we walked up the street and were introduced to the real Raison d'être for this little town. The festival floats  Click Here!!!. Here they have 28 extremely beautiful and complex wheel contraptions, each older than the USA, that are part of an elaborate festival parade and ceremony. These things are literally a national treasure. They are brought out twice a year (spring and fall) and are wheeled through the city with much fanfare. This must be a really hopping place at that time. The roads are just wide enough to accommodate this ancient floats and the team of people it takes to move, turn, and operate them (they have mechanisms).

Some of the interesting things about these floats: They have like three stories and can be jacked up and down to fit under the power lines (now, 200 years ago they didn't have power lines, they needed to be jacked down to fit through the entrance to the castle). During the rest of the year, each float has a storage facility it is kept in. Some of the floats are chosen (I think on a rotating basis) to sit in a public display area.

 

There are a lot of little and neat shops here, things I expect you might see in Jamestown. Black smith, Sake brewery, Misu factory, hand carved bowls etc. But they close early and we didn't get to see them today.

Later we walked back to the hotel along the little river. To my surprise there are Carp in the river. The big orange Koi. And I saw fishing nets for sale at a little store. Hmmmm

<there was supposed to be a picture of a carp here, but a bunch of my pictures just fraking disappeared from my camera>

As we walked along I commented to the guy walking beside me (who happened to be an Australian) that I wasn't seeing any old cars. All of the cars we saw, parked in the tiny parking spaces, were tiny, shiny, clean and new. And many were boxy. The little boxy Sasuki (which I don't think I have seen in the US) was very popular. so boxy . The Australian said that this was because there are laws in Japan that encourage people to buy new cars every few years. And they evidently don't sell used cars here. He knew this because the used cars are shipped to Austrailia and they buy the there (“Because we drive on the same side of the road, don't you see”).

Our guide had encouraged us to make use of the public baths that are in the hotel. I have used hotel public baths in Korea and I knew them to be very pleasant, so I went to try the out. Oh they were divine. We have this group of high school kids staying here today (Swim Team?) and they had the basement baths reservered for them, so we other guests were directed to the public baths on the roof.

This is the rules for using the baths:

1. There are separate Men's and Women's areas.
2. Take off your shoes before you enter the dressing room.
3. Take off you clothes before you enter the bathing area.
4. No Swim Suites. It is Nude or Nothing, baby.
5. Don't take your towel into the tub.
6. Wash thoroughly with soap and shampoo and rinse before you enter the hot baths.
7. Don't make a nuisance of yourself (it really said that).

So, get naked and leave your stuff in a little cubby in the dressing room. They actually provide “hotel lounge wear” that you can wear anywhere in the hotel but I think is mainly designed for going to the baths. Once you enter the baths proper, there are a bunch of little washing stations along the wall. You plop yourself down on a very little stool (say 8 inches high) in front of a little bowl (for dumping water on you) an assortment of soaps, and a shower on a hose thing. Take your time. Have fun. Get really clean.

<I apologize. No cameras are allowed in the bath area as they are considered clothing>

Now you can lower your self into the the water. The bath is a 30 by 20 by 2 foot of pretty hot (but not overly challenging mineral water. You can feel your skin get silky even as you lower yourself into the water. Once you get all the way in, just soak for awhile. Ahhh.

Ok, now ready for the real treat? You go out the door onto the patio and there is the really hot tub. And there is no one out here except for YOU !!!. Wow, this water is great. Can't take too much of this. So get out and stand naked on the top of the tallest building in the town and soak in the cool night breeze. Raise your hands over your head, you are lord of your Domain !! You are a New Age God !! You are probably overcome by the heat. Perhaps you should sit down for a minute before you fall down.

One more funny thing about the baths. I go and take a cold shower to cool down some and then I soak in the hot tub a little more. As I go to walk back to the entrance and get dressed, the attendant comes in to check on things and make sure everything is clean. Probably to make sure the Americans are drowning in the 2 feet of water. As I mention, the bathing areas are Male and Female. However, the attendants are only Female. So when the young woman walks by you it is important to just act your age, throw your towel over your shoulder, and smile.