So I was on sabbatical, at least that's my excuse. I'm now 3.5 months behind on what's going on. Let's do a little reeeeewiiinndd. Beware, this is a gigantic post, proceed at your own risk.
Mid-April, specifically April 18th, saw the arrival of my family in Japan. They were flying into Narita, but I ended up just meeting them in Nagoya. Courtney insisted they’d be fine navigating the trains, and to be honest, if you transfer to the bullet train at Shinagawa instead of Tokyo station proper, it’s pretty difficult to mess it up, and not terribly stressful. They were scheduled to get in around 5:30-6:30-ish in Nagoya station. I headed into Nagoya earlier in the day to pick up my shoulder bag, which I had left at a friend’s house when I went into Nagoya for cherry blossom viewing two weeks prior. I ended grabbing lunch and hanging out with that friend and his fiancé for the afternoon. Then I headed back to Nagoya station, waited for maybe a half hour or so, and then I saw my mom and sisters on the other side of the ticketing machines and waved them down. It was definitely kind of nuts seeing them here, in Japan, but it was also very cool. They were all understandably quite tired from all the traveling, so we took the train back to Ogaki right away so they could check-in to the hotel and hit the hay. Part of what was interesting for me was to see how my family reacted to Japan, and what they picked out as odd or weird. I’ve been here long enough where my frame of reference is completely skewed. Also, it was my mom’s first trip outside of the U.S. (aside from going to St. Thomas decades ago), so she was funny sometimes. In particular, on the train back to Ogaki, she mentioned it was “just like on TV.” It took me a second to realize she was just referring to the idea of riding on a packed train, having to hold onto the rings hanging from the ceiling. Riding a train has become so mundane for me (especially the stretch from Ogaki to Gifu/Nagoya), that I had forgotten it could be an experience worth making note. That being said, I still shut my brain off when riding that stretch. We arrived in Ogaki and got mom and Adriane to their hotel room, although not without a bit of confusion at the front desk. I ended up having to cancel a night because we switched the day we were going to stay in Kyoto. I did via Internet, got a e-mail confirmation, but the front desk apparently had no clue. So I explained myself multiple times until they seemed to understand. I would later find out, they hadn’t actually gotten it correct.
Anywho, we got our keys, dropped off Mom and Ad, and then Courtney and I started the trek back to my apartment. Courtney had been a bit sick leading up to the trip, and she ended up not eating much on the plane. She was still hungry, and I’m up for eating pretty much anytime, so we walked over to Loc City and grabbed some ramen from the sit-down joint in the food court. Thankfully that seemed to help out her stomach and she was able to eat a majority of the bowl. Not sure how everyone would be feeling after the flight, I left the plan for Monday wide open. Seeing as Ogaki castle is currently under construction and covered with scaffolding, I decided there wasn’t much point in spending a whole day seeing the non-existent sights of Ogaki, so I decided we’d head to Inuyama, which is close enough for a day trip even with a late start, and it features the oldest standing non reconstructed castle in Japan. We grabbed breakfast at a traditional Japanese institution-Mister Donut.
Sure, it might not be the first thing you think of when it comes to Japan, but it should be; they are all over the place. After they swooned over how cute the little 6 donut hole sampler tray was, we sat down to a nice breakfast. We then grabbed the train, transferred at Gifu, and headed to Inuyama. During the transfer in Gifu, we took the opportunity to stop at what may have very well been my mom’s favorite part of Japan, the French-style bakeries. Between multiple locations of Vie de France along with another bakery on the ground floor of Ogaki station, there were more types of bread and pastries than my mom knew what to do with. We grabbed a few treats to split on the train and were on our way. Once in Inuyama, we found our destination quickly, MONKEY PHARMACY!!!
In actuality, we took a bit of a scenic route to the castle, passing through smaller residential streets, while my mom was sure to take in all the different plants and mini-gardens of each house. It had been awhile (a good 3 years) since I’d been to Inuyama, and ended up overshooting the entrance to the castle grounds, which of course didn’t go unnoticed, or un-teased, by my mom and sisters.
The dude looks way to happy about picking up his dog's feces.
Now, Inuyama castle is old, and not rebuilt inside, so it still has these rather steep staircases you need to climb to get to the top. We checked out the artifacts on the various floors, where I attempted to answer the myriad questions from the family. I’m no history buff, so beyond the basics I’m not too helpful, and the signs often didn’t give more than the name and the place the artifact was found, and sometimes a general use for the tool, armor, etc. When you get to the top floor of the castle, there is a wooden observation walkway (with railings) going around the castle. It turns out that mom and Ad’s fear of heights is so great that they wouldn’t go out onto the deck to take a proper look around. The best we got out of them (after some convincing) was stepping just past the doorway to the deck so we could get a picture of them.
Don't look down!
The way down was also a cause of fear due to how steep the steps are. I did manage to get a picture of Adriane “freaking out” on the way down the staircase. This is definitely one of my favorite pictures from the trip (that and mom eating, of course).
THEY'RE ATTACKIN' THE CASTLE!! Oh wait, it's just stairs.
A "normal" picture, framed by traditional gates. Aww...it's so Japan.
Having safely made it back to solid ground, we went in search of some comestibles. Given that the castle attracts a relatively large amount of tourists on any given day, I was surprised at the limited number of restaurants nearby. We came upon this little hole in the wall noodle place run by one old dude. Mom and Courtney got the vegetable udon and Ad got the tempura udon, whereas I went with zarusoba (buckwheat noodle served cold w/ a dipping sauce). I figured the bowl of noodles wouldn’t fill me up, plus I wanted to give them a chance to try more food, so I ordered a plate of mitarashi dango (rice paste balls covered in a sweet, savory sauce) and a bowl of oden (Japanese winter “stew” although it is basically random things including an egg, konyaku, fish paste in various shapes, and fried tofu simmered and served in a fish stock broth). The mitarashi dango went over decently, with the texture of the rice paste being the main problem, but nobody really cared for the oden due to its rather fishy taste. And that is certainly understandable. Oden isn’t exactly on the top of my list of Japanese foods I enjoy. It’s not horrible, either, just very meh, and very fishy. We made our way back to the station, once again passing the infamous Monkey Pharmacy we had all laughed about on the way to the castle.
Once back, we stopped at my favorite yakiniku (grilled meat) place in Ogaki. It serves Hida beef, which although not on the same level as Kobe, is still a major step up from your standard stuff. None of us were too terribly hungry due to the late lunch, so this ended up being perfect, as the beef is expensive enough where you certainly aren’t walking in ravenously hungry and eating your fill (unless you’re a baller, I suppose). The food went over well, especially the dipping sauce, which is amazing. I took the job of cooking the meat (the table had a grill in it), and managed to do a pretty decent job of not burning anything. Where I failed miserably, though, was in keeping the “cooking” chopsticks separate from my “eating” chopsticks. To be fair, the chopsticks were identical, but I pretty much had both my sisters trying to keep me straight, and they were almost constantly having to point out that I was eating with the “cooking” chopsticks or vice versa. After having warmed up thanks to the grill, we headed back to the hotel and made a plan for meeting the next morning to head to…Kyoto!
So we grabbed a train a little after 8am heading out of Ogaki, which ended up being the same train Jon always takes to the school he works at on Tues and Thurs. We saw him as he was heading off the train and briefly said hi. Also, Jon wasn’t the only person going to work. We were pretty much smack dab in the middle of commuting rush hour, so there were no seats on the first leg of the trip. Thankfully, that meant we were closer to the door to make the cross-platform transfer on Maibara, which gave us a better chance at nabbing seats on the second leg. Mom and Courtney managed to secure proper seats, whereas Adriane and I had to settle for the auxiliary pull-down seats near the door. This ending up being a fateful decision, as when more and more people got on at each stop on the way to Kyoto, we had less and less personal space. It hit critical when this lady decided to park herself directly in front of me. And she was positioned such that although her feet were in “front” of me, the rest of her was pretty much “over” me. Particularly, her ass was generally an average of 1-2cm away from my face (that’s less than an inch, folks). To make matters worse, she had very long hair, so that whenever she shifted position a little, her hair would brush against my nose. This obviously made my nose itchy, and given the lack of personal space, it was darn near impossible to scratch my nose. I also had some photocopied info on Kyoto I was attempting to “read”. That sure as heck didn’t work very well. The whole time this is happening Adriane is obviously getting a kick out of the entire situation, and Mom and Courtney are oblivious, as we can no longer see each other due to the wall o’ humanity in between. We get in to Kyoto and the first thing on the agenda is to head to the post office to cash my mom’s international money order (don’t laugh, guys) so she could get some yen. My sisters had used their check cards to get money in Ogaki (which took all of 2 minutes per person), but my mom’s money order had to be handled at a big branch, so we figured Kyoto should work. We did eventually get the thing cashed, but not without a good 45 minutes of waiting for the folks behind the counter to figure out what the heck it was (this would be after me telling them in Japanese what it was). The person at the counter would ask someone, who would be confused and then ask someone else, only for them to tell us we needed to fill out a couple lines of info on the back. Of course, we can’t do that quick at the counter, but instead have to pull another number. Like I said, though, we eventually got mom her money and we were on our way to find our inn. We grabbed the subway, and thanks to my impeccable sense of direction, I had us turn the wrong way out of the subway station. After about 15min of walk (with luggage, ugh!) I realize the mistake and we doubled back. We finally arrived in the correct area/neighborhood of Kyoto, but couldn’t find it. And this was even with the help of the GPS on my iPhone. The streets are so tiny (one car can barely fit) and the buildings so close together that the GPS is sensitive enough to be helpful. After much trial and error, we managed to head down the correct alley, and spot the sign. We dropped off our luggage and headed out to explore a bit. We stopped by Yasaka Shrine, whose gate, etc. is painted in a brilliant, bright orange along with white. The grounds aren’t that huge but are free to get into (always a plus). We spotted a group of high schools girls ringing the bell making a prayer/wish. I’ll bet ten bucks they were all just hoping for a boyfriend. Here’s a tip: Maybe if you spoke in a normal register, and stopped squealing like Alvin the Chipmunk, you’d have a chance.
We grabbed lunch at a place that was suggested in the Kyoto guidebook Courtney had brought along from her local public library (hey, what they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?). It was by far the swankiest little yakitori place I’ve been to. It had some solid food to be sure, but was maybe a tad overpriced. That, and I went for the “seasonal” rice bowl with my set meal, assuming it, too, like all the other regular rice bowls, would feature chicken, seeing as it’s a grilled chicken restaurant. But nope, mine had a bunch of tiny little fish larvae and some veggies. Hooray. Needless to say, I was disappointed in that. However, that place did also serve a little cup of what was quite possibly the best chicken broth I’ve ever had. Make some chicken noodle soup with that, and you’d really be onto something. We also wandered through Maruyama Park and managed to see some of the double bloom cherry blossom trees, which all had a pretty neat drooping nature to all of their branches. Mom was geeking out, as expected. The park itself was really nice and everyone seemed to be snapping lots of nature pictures and enjoying themselves, so that was a plus.
Awww...
There's a lot going on. Courtney giving the sidelong glance. I look like I'm about to backhand Courtney with the umbrella, and mom is desperately trying to get at her drugs.
Then we headed to Kodaiji, which, again, everyone seemed to enjoy. There was even a surprise for me, as they had completely redone the main Zen stone garden. We made our way back to the Inn so as to be back in time for dinner to be served in our room at 7:30. I in theory had some time to hop up in the public bath before dinner, but when I got up there the sign said they were cleaning, so I went without. I kept the bathrobe on, though, since they are comfy. And pretty much everyone else had thrown them on as well.
Nice look, mom.
It was kind of fun to see them all looking so Japan-y. We pretty much lazed around until the food came. They brought out the initial round of dishes including some raw fish (sashimi) and cucumber salad with some sort of sesame paste, which was super tasty.
Also included in the initial round of dishes was one of the few things in Japanese cuisine I’m not a fan of, and that would be the tofu skin/skimmings. Not only is the texture a bit odd, but it really doesn’t taste like anything but watery milk with a less than pleasant aftertaste.
The calm before the storm.
The initial round by itself probably would have been enough for my mom and sisters, but they kept bringing out more and more food. A dish of large, simmered bamboo chunks came out along with yellowfish in some sort of sweet sauce with what we thought were green peppercorns. Then they brought out a huge pot of tofu nabe (a “stew”, although this was mainly tofu and a few veggies boiling in water). I’m not normally a huge tofu fan, but this was quite easily the best tofu I’ve ever had. The dipping sauce was really scrumptious, and the tofu itself was really soft and had a much more subtle taste than your standard stuff. I even surprised myself with how many times I went back to get more of that. I’m sure they brought out a few more dishes that I’m forgetting about at the moment. And just when we thought it was all over, they brought us each out a sizeable plate of tempura with a couple shrimp and various vegetables. And then on top of that came dessert in the form of melon (watermelon if I recall correctly…).
They don't mess around. It's game time.
I’d everyone at least took a bit of most things (save for some of the sashimi and that tofu skin), and thoroughly enjoyed a decent chunk of it, but it was far too much food for my sisters and quite possibly even more so for my mom, who chews a HALF stick of gum (no, you aren’t going to live that one down, mom). This boded well for me, because after all of this food, I still had plenty of room. I certainly wasn’t going to let all of that food go to waste, plus I had uphold our family’s honor and make it look like we ate most of it. Anywho, I was in hog heaven, finishing up everyone’s sashimi platter, working on leftover tempura, bamboo, and yellowfish, and also putting a further dent of the tofu stew. Since I was eating at such a leisurely pace, I was certainly able to put away more than normal, but I daresay my family was appalled at the amount of food I consumed. After that massive meal, we just sort of lazed around, planning the next day, and then headed to bed…or should I say futon. Now, if need be, I can fall asleep on the floor, so it’s also not a problem to fall asleep on a futon (which in my opinion, doesn’t really offer much support or cushion, and feels just about the same as sleeping on the floor). At the same time, I am quite thankful that I have a bed in my apartment. The futon isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, and I’m pretty sure if I had to sleep on one everyday, my back would be throwing a hissy fit (a fate which my friend Jon is currently suffering through).
Planning the next day on fluffy-looking, but not back-supporting futon.
Breakfast at the inn the next day was equally interesting, and although not quite on the same scale quanitity-wise as dinner, it was way too much for breakfast. I honestly don’t remember exactly what was served, but there was this odd dish that was meat of some sort, but due to the texture, I had a vague feeling it was little chunks of some organ I’d rather not be eating at 8am. The big centerpiece was a pot of rice porridge with chunks of sweet potato in it. This was by far my favorite thing, and in my mind, felt like a breakfast food, although rice and potatoes together makes for a ton o’ carbs.
After breakfast was finished, I think my mom and sisters were glad to be done with meals at the inn and get back to some “regular” Japanese food.
Sayonara to the Ryokan!
The next day we ventured out to Kiyomizudera, which, if the kanji is directly translated, would be the “Pure Water Temple” in English. It has rather impressive wooden architecture, and features one of the most well-known views the city of Kyoto (and Japan itself) has to offer.
Famous view, now with extra FAMILY!
After checking out the grounds we stopped at a little outdoor “café” of sorts, since they were selling sweet sake and I thought I had vaguely remembered one of my family members expressing interest in that after I had written about having it up in Gero with Maria. So we stopped and had some sweet sake and matcha (green powder tea). After that we wandered around the Higashiyama area doing some shopping, where Ad and I both picked up a rather sharp looking red/black umbrella, and where I managed to find a second-hand yukata (cotton summer kimono) for just over $10. We also saw a oddly familiar restaurant name...
This is for the folks from Oshvegas. Oblio's!
At a random souvenir store. PEE!
We then ventured to another joint in Courtney’s guidebook to experience the culinary delight known as okonomiyaki. Normally consisting mainly of batter and cabbage, the savory pancake-esque dish can then be customizing with various meats and toppings. The particular joint we went to was a bit different in that it only served one variation of okonomiyaki, and this version had 2 eggs cooked in with it making it a bit omlette-esque.
The one menu item. Don't like it? Too bad.
It also was folded over in half with various goodies tucked in, taco-style, rather than mixed in with the batter. The spicy diced konnyaku inside was welcome addition, and the portion is large enough to satisfy. It was definitely one my favorite, if not indeed my favorite, variation on this tried and true dish. Good call, Courtney! And for bonus points, the restaurant had a large breasted “Hello Titty” sticker on one of the beams, along with a statue out front where a dog is biting some dude’s trousers off.
This speaks for itself.
I know what you're thinking, but give the guy a break, he's a grower, not a shower.
After lunch, we hopped on the subway and ventured to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens so mom (and let’s be honest, my sisters as well) could geek out over some flowers. Our timing worked out pretty well in that the Tulip garden on the grounds was pretty much in full bloom, and even in my opinion, it was quite impressive.
Black tulips are badass, end of story.
Most of the other sections weren’t really in bloom, but it was nice and relaxing to walk the grounds. Plus, they had a really interesting collection of sculpted bonsai trees.
BONSAI!
You hear a lot of bonsai, at least, I feel like that is on the list of aspects of Japanese culture that your average American may have actually heard of. Despite that, you don’t see very much at all, at least not outside temple and shrine grounds in Kyoto. And this was the first time I had seen the miniature bonsai trees, which were very neat.
The last thing we did (which I normally do) was check out Kyoto station and its amazing architecture, and then grab dinner on the dedicated ramen restaurant floor. I still can’t quite get over the fact that there is a whole floor of pretty much just ramen joints, but I love it. We stopped at a place that claimed their pork bone broth was something to write home about. It was indeed one of the better bowls of ramen I’ve had, although I dare say I have since found a place in Gifu that does pork bone even better. Mom wasn’t really hungry, so she skipped out, whereas I’m always hungry, one may even say ravenous, and ordered potstickers in addition to my ramen.
Upon returning to Ogaki, there was a bit of an issue regarding checking into the APA Hotel, mainly that the room would be considered super cramped for one person, let alone the two they were claiming could use it. Essentially they stuck a double bed in a single room and said it was good to go. Those who are logical thinkers must be saying, “but wait, doesn’t the double bed take up more room, leaving even less space to move around?” Yes, you would be correct. In fact, there basically was no place to put the luggage, unless you wanted to take up the entire entranceway (thus making access to the bathroom next to impossible). This obviously wasn’t going to cut it, so I went down to the front desk and got my mom and sis changed to a bigger room. Note to self: don’t go for anything not called a “twin” room when booking for two people in Japan. Thankfully that problem resolved itself pretty quickly.
The next saw us heading into Nagoya for the day. Unfortunately, it also rained pretty steadily throughout the day. But our first stop was an important one, the infamous hole in the wall ramen joint I have raved about before on here. I have taken everyone who visits me to this place, and no one has been disappointed. This trend continued as my mom and sisters ended up being big fans, although only Courtney was man enough to get the ‘spicy’ version (which isn’t really too bad at all).
This tiny kitchen produces some AMAZING ramen.
My sisters are about to have their minds (and tastebuds) blown.
We went early to beat the lunch rush and were actually able to get four adjacent seats, which is no easy feat considering full seating capacity is 12. Beating the rush also meant we didn’t have to rush eating quite as much. Although everyone made valiant use of their chopsticks during the trip, eating at the speed generally required at a ramen shop requires serious chopstick skills, not to mention a cast iron digestive tract. Hell, I still feel a bit slow when I pop in there during rush. Having gotten our butts out of there just as it was filling up, we headed back to the subway and made our way to the Noritake Gardens. I’m not entirely sure how much of a garden there actually was, since the pouring rain quelled any desire to take a leisurely stroll around the grounds. Thankfully, there was a super nice older man working the parking lot, who saw us kind of wandering aimlessly, and proceeded to speak to us in surprisingly decent English. He told us a little bit about the smokestacks of the old factory that still remain. And then he ran and grabbed some English information pamphlets he had in a plastic bag under a “caution-wet floor style” folding signboard. I was again floored by the level of service, and how earnest his desire to help us was. We then made our way to the outlet store, where mom was drooling over all the chinaware (really, it was kind of ridiculous; they almost had to ask her to leave. I guess the drool eats away at the shiny finish). We ended up spending quite a long time in there, as both of my sisters were also making tough decisions on exactly what to purchase. This was totally fine by me, seeing as it was pouring rain outside. When everyone was done shopping we headed back to the subway and over to Osu, a kooky covered shopping arcade in Nagoya. Aimed largely at Japanese youth, most of the shops are clothing stores that adhere to nonsensical J-fashion standards, and thus weren’t exactly full of potential purchases, but just seeing everything is still worthwhile. We did stop in a few stores to search for T-shirts with Engrish (the nonsensical brand of Japanese “english”) on them.
Quick current update: I am now the owner of a t-shirt that says “I would like to know. I’ll investigate it carefully. Know and burn!” I feel that burning is always a valid answer to life’s problems. Investigate the problem, find the solution, and then burn, just because you can.
And back from the tangent to Osu. We stopped at a ceramics shop and then took a break at a café for cake and/or coffee. We wandered around Osu a little bit more before heading back to Nagoya station for dinner. We stopped at this restaurant specializing in miso katsu, a regional dish of the Nagoya area. It is essentially a fried pork cultet with this thick miso-based sauce slathered on top. I hadn’t really noticed before, but one of my sisters pointed that tasted kind of a like a BBQ. The more I thought about it, I agreed. It certainly has a different taste, but that’s not a bad way to describe it. Everyone seemed to enjoy what they ordered, although I must add as a caveat that my mom ordered French fries. Yeah, I tried to hide in the corner, but it was no use. The next day my family had to leave halfway through the afternoon for their hotel in Tokyo before flying out of Narita the next morning. Before that, though, we stopped at Loc City, the mall complex near my apartment, for a little bit of souvenir shopping. We hit up the nicer, sit-down ramen joint in the mall for lunch, and then went to the snack emporium to buy odd Japanese snacks and candy to bring back. We looked around at some other shops as well for gifts, but all of sudden it was time to go. We packed up and headed to Ogaki station where I saw them off. Their 5 days in Japan came and went quickly. It seems like a blur to me, so I can only imagine what it felt like for my family who isn’t used to the sensory overload that Japan can be. It was great to see them again and to finally be able to show them Japan. And to think, in a mere 4.5 months, I’ll be seeing them again when I come back to visit for the holidays!
