Japan Day 45

I believe I have a bazillion pictures of one temple today. We went driving around with Dr. and Mrs. Kobayashi. Dr. Kobayashi usually is busy and we don’t see him that often, but he took us to a temple and a museum of Tomohiro Hoshino’s watercolors.

I can’t remember the name of the temple, but it’s in Saitama Prefecture and just received the status of “National Treasure.” They repainted and regilded (I think) the carvings to replicate their original colors and they’re quite spectacular.

But before that, the traditional chrysanthemum displays of the season.

This is a picture of the outer gate. The roof is unique in the Kanto region. I think this is the gate from Yamaguchi Prefecture and there are more examples of the roofline there.

This is actually this inner gate is the first one we went to. This is the only picture I have of Mrs. Kobayashi, my mom, and Dr. Kobayashi.

This is a larger inner gate.

One of the temple guards in the inner gate. This guy was on the right side. The guy on the left side was being restored.

This is the temple itself.

If you pay extra, you can see the back side of the temple and get an explanatory tour.

The back is definitely something to see.

 The panels are all of gods playing.

This is the back.

And the inner side.

In the explanation of the paintings they talked about looking for the original paints for two years.

For lunch we went to a small shop next to the temple that was pretty busy and is probably going to get even busier. They had unagi and 

After that Dr. Kobayashi kept insisting that we go to the Tomihiro Hoshino museum. We followed the route the GPS suggested and I was asleep until we hit a dirt road. It didn’t seem like an actual dirt road, but a road under construction. After that we went down a windy mountain road that was barely wide enough for one car. We met two cars on the way and there were only inches to spare to get by. The road we were on was a prefectural route so now I know that prefectural routes can be goat paths.

Tomihiro Hoshino is a man who became quadriplegic and learned to write and draw using his mouth. He paints watercolors and writes poetry and that’s pretty darn impressive.

We went to a sushi & unagi restaurant in Takasaki for dinner. Usually you don’t see those together, especially not this good.

So that’s Day 45.

Japan Day 44

As I suspected, there wasn’t any intarwebs at our friends place in Maebashi, so I’m trying to catch up. Day 44 was a travel day. I was going to visit friends in Toyama, but they had several deaths in their family so they were understandably too busy. I ended up going to Maebashi to visit other friends and to meet up with my mom. At first I was just going to hang out in Tokyo, but this was an interesting option as well.

I tried to take some pictures from the Shinkansen but you can imagine that a train going 170mph isn’t going to let you take very good pictures out the window.

Here’s a picture of the tea fields of Shizuoka Prefecture. It’s usually rice paddies out the window but Shizuoka is different.

Here’s a picture of Mount Fuji from Shizuoka.

As we got closer to Mount Fuji, it got cloudier.

Ah well.

So it’s ¥4,900 to take the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Maebashi. It only cost me ¥1,680 on regular trains. The travel time is only about ½ hour more, but there are more connections to the Shinkansen. The further I got from Tokyo, the quicker my iPhone battery died, so I took a screen shot of the directions on Google maps and made it my background wallpaper.

My mom wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 9:20PM, so we had some time to kill. The first place we went was Costco!

There are a few differences. The light bulbs in my local Costco are all fluorescents. Here I only saw LED light bulbs.

They had the same huge meat packs and chickens and even had pre-made paella. The bread here is actually bigger.

I didn’t see the pre-made sushi, but this woman had it in her cart.

For dinner we went to a shabu-shabu restaurant that my sister told me about in the past.

Here’s the appetizers.

A sashimi course.

Some more fish.

The meat is frozen and sliced thin right to order.

After slicing it goes right back into the freezer.

Here’s the shabu-shabu!

I tried some local saké as well.

After the main course, you can get udon or zosui.

I took a picture of the owner in her beautiful kimono. Her husband recently passed away and was a classmate of Mrs. Kobayashi’s so they chatted about classmates and Uniqlo.

My mom arrived at 9:40, 30 minutes later than the schedule we had, but she’s fine. And that’s day 44.

 

 

 

 

 

Japan Day 43

Today I was just planning on doing laundry. Most places in Japan that would mean I’d be at it at least half of the day but the washing machines at the Nishi-Umeda Hearton Hotel are almost as large as the ones in the US. And the driers are industrial (the same size as a normal US drier). So I was able to finish just as I was finishing breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

I thought I’d go see the area around the Osaka Sky Garden because last night I saw four tourists from Texas who were looking for it. I took them to the Tourist Information Center because it was on the way to where I thought the closer route would be. Turns out the suggested route from the hotel is to just keep walking and then turn north through a semi-industrial area. When I got there the building didn’t look like anything exciting, so I didn’t go up and just headed back towards the station through the underground route. There’s a big freight yard you have to get past to get to the Osaka Sky Garden. I think it’s closer to go underground.

I was pretty tired, so I decided to get a coffee at the Starbucks by the hotel. They already had the Xmas decorations up and had their praline latte. I also spent a lot of time unsuccessfully trying to register for the free wifi. After that I went back to the hotel and took a nap.

I knew I had to do a couple more things today. One was to pack up to leave. Another was to do my sister’s bidding and make sure they had down vests at Uniqlo. First, though, I thought I’d get ANOTHER coffee and a doughnut at Mr. Donut. I’m addicted to the things. There’s one in Umeda, but there’s also one at the next railway station. It’s not very far, though I had to go back through the industrial area again. Turns out there’s an easier route and it really isn’t that far.

Somehow I was drawn in by Mickey D’s. I wanted a normal hamburger but it wasn’t on their menu on the wall behind the registers. In fact, I couldn’t find it on the printed menu they had at by the register. I didn’t find it until after I ordered a Big Mac and saw a big sign on the side wall away from the registers that had their complete menu.

This is also sort of an experiment because I like Big Macs but they make my stomach hurt. I wanted to see if the Japanese Big Macs would treat me differently. It even tasted a little different as they grilled the patty longer and salted it more.

Of course I really set out for a doughnut so you know where I went next. Check out the evil-looking doughnut they gave me. They were brewing a fresh pot of not-very-good coffee. I even got a free refill.

I checked for down vests (they’re all over Uniqlo but not on the web page, I guess), got a haircut, and then went back to the hotel and puttered around not packing until I finally got around to packing. I have a ¥990 gym bag I bought at Ameyoko to hold the stuff I’m leaving here at this hotel (I’ll be back in 9 days from today) and so my suitcase feels a lot lighter.

I had that ¥500 ticket from last night so I went back to the Daimaru to spend it on dinner. I thought I’d go to the KYK tonkatsu shop since it’s a chain and it was good when I went before. I ordered the “healthy fall” dish and forgot to take a picture of the first few things they brought out. But here’s all the drinks you get with the meal. I think the tomato juice was just a sample, but it’s cold tea and umeshu (plum liquor).

It took a while and I was going to say it wasn’t the best (the tonkatsu was almost soggy) but it tasted great. I guess the herbed cutlet (there’s green around the pork inside of the breading) is juicier than a regular pork cutlet. They also gave me kurigohan, too! I went back for another drawing and didn’t win anything this time. That’s actually lucky because now I don’t feel obligated to come back to use any coupons.

So that’s it for my last day (for now) in Osaka. Tomorrow I meet my mom in Maebashi after four hours on the train. I’m hoping I can get a seat for the last two hours. Here’s a picture of my haircut. Looking at myself in the mirror, I still look pudgy but I think I must be losing weight walking every day and not eating much lunch. I better wear the pants I just bought because once I get back I won’t fit in them for very long.

I’m not sure if I’ll have access to the intarwebs for a couple of days so things may be a little quiet. If so, see you in a couple of days.