| Submitted by: Mark Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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At home there is a brand of pretzels that has cheese filling and this looks much the same. The other thing I get is some dried, prepared squid. This is a common food even in Asian groceries in the U.S. In China it is eaten in movie theaters the way we eat popcorn. Evelyn got a more prosaic crackers and almonds mix.
We got back to Ikebukuro the department store was closed and we had to settle for what we could get at the grocery. I got orange juice or orange drink, I still am not sure which, and a doughnut. The doughnut was not very good. It serves me right for getting American food.
We tried to get a weather forecast, but could not find it on TV. We asked at the desk and the clerk said that there is no newspaper on Monday.
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10/15/96 Matsumoto: Feudal Castle I
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When we woke up we had to do a fast rethinking of what to do today. We were not sure of nice weather so did not want to risk Hokone again. I suggested we use the rail-pass to go somewhere outside of Tokyo. We tried a number of places and settled on Matsumoto. We grabbed some pork buns at the grocery and headed out for the train.
Some general comments. One of the books commented that the Japanese think they are better with English than they really are. Occasionally it is a problem, though not often. I was impressed in a visit to Chicago once that people on the street seemed very well-dressed. They have nothing on the Japanese who have to be the most uniformly well-dressed people on earth. When you see them on the street women seem to be always dressed with a great deal of taste. Men are dressed well too, but unimaginatively in business suits. But the Japanese, at least in Tokyo, are far more fashion-conscious than we are at home. The one difference in taste is their predilection for the miniskirt. And many of the Japanese young women wear the miniskirt very well. One of the books claims the Japanese think of themselves as an unattractive people. Actually a lot of Japanese are quite attractive.
Our second shove commute was not as bad as yesterday, but it is still surprising to find it acceptable to really push getting off train. Many people do not get straps to hold and are held in place by solid block of people. I was surprised at how many people crowded on to the Matsumoto train. We missed getting window seats, which is disappointing because some of the views are very nice. We guessed wrong on the day again which turn out to have a fair amount of sunshine. The train climbs its way into cloud-shrouded hills. You would thing this would be fairly rural, but we still see a lot of densely packed towns. Small square-ish houses with peaked, shiny tile roofs are common. There are some rural areas in which some crop hangs cascaded over racks. It may rice since it usually seems to be over wet, muddy areas that might be paddies
The train arrived at the station on time to the minute, 11:55. The first order of business was making reservations for the return trip, at 18:49. That should give us time to have a nice dinner. Matsumoto seems like a nice town, though it is fairly densely populated. Our first order of business was lunch. They have a sort of restaurant row on the way to the local castle. We walked looking at food displays and finally settled on a restaurant I had thought looked good early on. We copied the names of two good-looking dishes. Basically they are again noodle soup with big pieces of meat. I am getting one with a pork cutlet, Evelyn got some sort of dunburi. The dishes are 800 yen. That works out to $7.26. I am not sure the rules for sitting at tables here. We sat a table with some other people. You do that in at least some restaurants. They quickly cleared another table for us. My meal was quite good. Ramen with a port cutlet. Evelyn's dish was the worst thing we have had in Japan, meaning it was decent but not exciting. It was sort of like vegetables in a white sauce (like one gets in a Cantonese restaurant). Every meal comes with a little plastic vial of some very tasty fruit drink. I though at first it was a yogurt drink because of the color, but it tasted richer and not yogurt-y.
Matsumoto is not a small town, but it is rather charming. It may well be the nicest place we have visited. It is kind of a cross between Tokyo and Springfield, Massachusetts, two places that I happen to have been. It is a small city but certainly too big to be called a town. It seems like it is trying to build tourism. It has a lot of restaurants, but I does not seem to be crowded with visitors. It has nice hills in the distance and that is always nice. The city seems modern. One building has an outside elevator designed to look like a space shuttle taking off. It indicates a sort of playfulness missing in Americans and that I think is indicative of intelligence. Way back when Rubik's Cube was popular there was an incident that frankly scared me a little. I could solve the cube in about three minutes. I think we were meeting a friend in a Manhattan hotel. I was sitting in the lobby waiting and while I was waiting I was solving the cube to pass the time. I looked up and there was a ring of Japanese businessmen watching how I was doing it. Of course I was pleased. But at the same time I knew that American business could hardly compete with these people. I am sure when American businessmen have a few extra minutes they go into the bar and get a drink. The Japanese will spend the time learning how someone solves Rubik's Cube. For the sake of our economy I wish it was the other way around. Also three different people came up to me to say hello today. It may be that the Japanese even beat the Dutch for being friendly, at least some are. Perhaps it is the ones who do not work in the NS Building in West Shinjuku.
The central attraction of Matsumoto is Matsumoto Castle, formerly Fukashi Castle, of the Ogasawara family. This is a spectacular feudal castle built just five or six years before Sekigahara by allies of Ieyasu. The nickname for the castle is the Black Crow for its black sides. It is five stories high. In fact, our guide may have said it was Toyotomi, which was the family of Hideyoshi. But I am getting ahead of myself. We got to the castle and there were the usual carp in the mote. Carp appear to beg food from humans. They will stick their mouths out of the water and open them as if asking for food. Most of these places you can buy fish-food. And the fish think of humans as big walking feeders.
Inside we paid for our tickets, a very reasonable 500 yen, and the cashier held up at sheet of paper (upside-down) saying that English speakers would be given a guided tour free of charge, ask at the information desk. We went in and had to ask some American tourists where the information desk was. It as a desk right there but un-staffed. After about a ten-minute wait an elderly man did come up and sit at the desk, reading a piece of paper in Hebrew. Hebrew is one language I did not expect to see in Japan. I asked if we could get a guided tour of the castle and he said he would take us. As we walked I asked about the Hebrew. He is studying it for scholarly reasons, he said, and explained he was not Christian. He told us a little about himself. He was a self-made scholar (my term, not his) learning other languages. In the war he was sent to China. He may have been willing to talk about this, but I felt a little funny. Still it might have been interesting to hear what he had to say about the China campaign. His English was OK, though it was a little hard to talk to him, another reason I did not pursue the China campaign. But I have a great deal of respect for these people who continue to study all their lives. My father-in-law is in many ways similar. Taking up Hebrew at 72 is not easy. If I understand correctly he ran a sort of language association and their way to practice foreign language was to give tours of the local castle. We later met a student who also was in his association and acted as a guide.
While European castles were places of residence, Japanese castles were purely strategic devices, almost like fortified bunkers. In time of battle only they were manned. The lord lived in a nearby palace which burned in 1727. Interesting features of this castle were a hidden floor for arranging ambushes, and a Seppuku room. The latter was for the lord if the battle did not go in his favor. I wonder if this was the lord's idea or if it was forced on him.) This particular castle, impressive as it is, was never tested in battle so no seppuku was necessary. Our guide insisted on calling it Hari-Kari, though that really is a vulgar name meaning belly-cutting. Evelyn tells me that into the 20s all students in grade school were taught the proper way to perform Seppuku. (Or is the proper term to 'commit' Seppuku. I suppose it is more than a performance and really is a commitment.) Actually, as to the castle never having been tested in battle, I think that few feudal castles were. There was considerably less fighting after 1600 and Sekigahara.
Currently the castle is a museum including guns of the samurai and even a few grenades. One display shows a print of Nagashino, a battle between Nobunaga, using guns, against the troops of Shingen Tekeda, not using guns. Shingen was already dead at this time, I believe. I knew of the battle because it was dramatized at the end of the film KAGEMUSHA by Akira Kurosawa.
One of the feature of the castle is a moon-viewing room. The Lord could come there and see three types of moon: the moon in the sky, the moon reflected in the mote, and the moon reflected in a cup of sake. Stairways had been put in the castle where there were originally just ladders that could be pulled up. Some of the stairways were as steep as ladders.
The same admission that gets you into the castle includes a folklore museum. The name is something of a misnomer. Folklore is really only the subject on one floor and even there it is more a history museum than anything else. This seems to be more a catch-all museum. The first major thing you see is a dragon boat, sort of the Japanese equivalent of our view of a Viking ship, only not so large. They then have displays of pottery, going back to 2200 BC. They quickly get into swords, samurai armor, and guns. The upper floor starts out as natural history, stuffed birds, eggs, other stuffed animals, including two stuffed serows. (What is a serow? It is a new animal to me that looks like a sheep or a goat. It is stocky like a sheep.)
Someone who I later saw was a custodian came up to me to ask where I was from and to say 'You are welcome, American.' Americans should do the same for foreign visitors.
The largest collection in the folklore museum is one of clocks. They must have 100 clocks. One will be fashioned to look like a Rolls Royce and the caption will say 'Rolls Royce Type Clock.' They had an incense burning timekeeper in shape of dragon, pocket sundials with compasses, and a cannon with a magnifying glass.
In another collection they had Omera--large wooden phallic symbols maybe four foot long and equally proportioned. The same custodian talked to various visitors about objects. There was some English but not much so it was nice to have him. The big sections of the museum were temporarily closed for special exhibits that required separate admission.
After that we walked around the castle grounds taking pictures of the castle and were again met by a man from Kobe wanting to know about us. He was hoping we would visit Kobe, but it was not in our plans currently. Perhaps if there is time on the JR pass.
Then we had to look for dinner before boarding the train back. We were not hungry enough for a big meal. We decided to buy from a convenience store. I got sushi and Evelyn got a box of cold cereal, sort of the local equivalent of Frosted Flakes. To drink we shared a liter of Coke. I read the box of cereal. |
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