Daimyo, Samurai, and Gardens

We met our guide a few minutes after nine this morning. She was a soft-spoken women probably a few years younger than us. Her name was Amori, I believe, but she preferred to be called Mori. We never did discover much about her background, but she was one of the most well-educated guides I have ever had. Before we started on our tour, we stopped by Starbucks because John really needed a cup of coffee. While we were there, Mori gave us a little background about Kanazawa. While there have been people living here for many centuries, the city first began to take shape in the Muromachi period of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The power of the government in Kyoto was quite weak at this time, and a peasant rebellion in this area resulted in the formation of a Buddhist state historians call the “Peasants’ Kingdom.” The peasants had difficulty establishing a strong central government, and the Oda Nobunaga, a powerful daimyo, defeated the peasant forced. He gave the Kanazawa area to one of his generals, Sakuma Morimasa, But after the assassination of Oda, Sakuma was defeated by forces loyal to Maeda Toshiie. in 1600, Maeda sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu. In gratitude, Tokugawa significantly expanded the lands of Maeda and during the many years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Kaga Domain was the largest in the country and the Maeda became one of the richest and most important families in Japan.  

Because the Maeda were so rich and powerful, Kanazawa became a kind of little Kyoto. The enormous Kanazawa Castle, the symbol of Maeda power, dominated the center of the town. Around it were built not only elaborate defense but also extensive gardens and dozens of temples. This central area was surrounded by areas set aside for samurai, for merchants, and finally for geisha. The closer to the castle your home was indicated how important you were, how close you were socially to the center of regional power. One of the samurai districts is still largely intact, and our tour started there. Mori pointed out the original walls of a samurai home. These are made of a kind of adobe, and in the winter straw is placed over them to help keep them from weather damage. If you look closely, you can see irregular lines created by the straw. 

That last picture, of course, is a picture of a picture as the winter mats were taken down some weeks ago. The streets, however, all always clear of snow thanks to an ingenious system that sprinkles them with warm spring water when it snows. The samurai neighborhood is now possibly the most exclusive place to live in Kanazawa. Homes are beautiful

and beautifully landscaped.

Mori snapped a picture of the two of us. We have noticed that the guides here like to take pictures of us. We try to explain that we know what we look like and could be happier about it, but they never take no for an answer. 

One of these homes, called the Nomura-ke or "Nomura’s house," is open to the public. It is unfortunately a little too popular, and the place was so crowded with tour groups, mostly European, that we could barely move. The Normura family were not of the highest samurai rank, but they still had quite a comfortable life. The house fairly large, but it is only a part of the original compound. Kitchen, bedrooms, servant quarters, and other private areas of the house are now gone. 

As I watched and listened to the other groups I really appreciated Mori. She had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the home and the period. She carefully explained the layout of rooms and Japanese homes and the function of the alcoves. Suddenly our room in Matsumoto made sense to me! The alcove is the central focus of the room. It is the only part of the room that is decorated in a western sense. There is always a scroll with a poem or saying written on it appropriate to the season and the occasion. There is also a floral arrangement of some kind. Coming into the room, guests are expected to sit quietly in front of the alcove, ponder the epigram or poem, and admire the flowers. After that, if this were a social occasion, the owner would sit on the floor with his back to the alcove and the guests would continue to face it. 

Japanese homes are generally arranged around gardens. There is a larger garden between the house and the walls surrounding the home and smaller gardens among the different sections of the home. The smaller gardens allowed light and air to enter the home. The larger garden at Nomura-ke are some of the most famous in Japan. They are not large, but exquisitely designed.

The place was so crowded that it was hard to get a good picture. We just tried to flow through the crowds like these koi through the pond and see as much as we could, cursing Dutch and Hungarian tour groups under our breath. 

Mori took time to explain the different parts of the family shrine. 

She also took us up into a small second-floor room that looked utterly nondescript. I would walked briefly through the low doorway and left after a few seconds without her guidance. This plain little room, she explained, was the setting for the tea ceremony. While I tend to think of the tea ceremony as being a divertissement for women, it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth century a very serious affair for powerful men. The rituals of the tea ceremony were developed by Buddhists, particularly of the Zen school, to provide a framework for negotiations among powerful feudal lords and their samurai. Everything about the tea ceremony was designed to calm and focus these often volatile men and to allow them to calmly begin processes of  compromise. Drinking tea made total sense now:  these were not men who should be downing large quantities of sake! 

One feature of the tea room was striking, the ceiling. 

Mori told us that this is made of semi-fossilized cypress wood. One way to spot the function and importance of a room in a traditional Japanese home is to look at its ceiling. The extremely valuable wood here would have made the significance of this room obvious to anyone in the Edo period. 

While most of the visitors in this house were foreigners, there were a few Japanese here. We have noticed that some young Japanese people, both female and male, seem to like to dress in traditional costume and have their pictures taken, often selfies, in historic sites. These two girls were doing that

but they were also quite happy to let foreigners snap pictures of them, too. 

We took a taxi from here to our next stop, the Kanazawa Gardens. These are considered one of the most perfect Japanese gardens in the world, and both John and I would have to agree with that assessment! They are also enormous and stunningly located on a hilltop, adjacent to the castle, overlooking the city and the entire valley. The gardens were laid out by the Maeda family for their enjoyment and that of their guests. Mori explained to us that Japanese gardens aim to achieve certain opposites at the same time. They are utterly artificial, but are designed to look natural. They should provide a sense of spaciousness while still providing places for privacy and seclusion. Water needs to be constantly flowing through the garden, but it should often appear to be still as well.

The center of the garden is dominated by a large lake. The lantern here illustrates one of the aspects of the Japanese aesthetic:  it is not perfectly symmetrical. One leg is intentionally shorter than the other because the irregularity was seen a making it more beautiful. 

The lantern is also in the shape the struts of a koto, the court instruments that women might play during social events in the garden. As we strolled through the garden, we saw one lovely scene after another.

A young Japanese couple were taking pictures of themselves in traditional dress. I find this an very interesting revival. 

Mori took us through the Seisonkaku, the large Japanese villa built in 1863 by Maeda Nariyasu, the thirteenth daimyō, as a retirement home for his mother. Photographs, unfortunately, are now allowed here, and though we would probably have taken some anyhow, at least without flash, if we were by ourselves, we felt that we did not want to get Mori in trouble here. It is a remarkable house, largely traditional in style, yet showing some of the signs of the openness to the west that characterized the Meiji era. It still has the original Persian carpets and electric lights that were installed when the crown prince, later to be the Emperor Taisho, came to Kanazawa for a visit. 

After a little over four hours, it was time for Mori to leave us. She finished the tour by bringing us to the Noh Museum. John loves theater, so we had asked to come here. There was a fantastic display of kimonos.

That last one is my favorite, and although it looks stunningly modern, it was made and used before Admiral Perry landed his fleet here. There were also a large collection of masks.

Volunteers at the museum allow visitors to try on becoming a Noh actor. A young woman put on everything. 

John asked if he could do the same, but the woman told him that he could only do the mask. 

It was still pretty effective.

After that, we went to the Myoryuji Temple, commonly called the “Ninja” temple.

The temple has some connection with the priest Nichiren, founder of one of the principal sects of Japanese Buddhism. It does NOT have any connection with ninjas. In the Edo period, ninjas were essential, but as spies and assassins the work they did was dishonorable and so they were not given the same kind of respect as samurai. The temple was given the ninja moniker because it has all kinds of hidden passageways and traps. I was never completely clear why this was. I understood that sometimes the daimyo might be in the temple and that this could be a place for an assassination attempt. But some other things I read made it sound like this was also a place where samurai might be stationed. 

Part of the reason I was never clear is that the tour was conducted in Japanese. We were given an English guide as we went through it, but this was obviously not really a completely satisfactory substitute for the information provided in Japanese. Photos were forbidden and nobody seemed to be trying to take any even surreptitiously. The guide was a rather severe young woman. I kept thinking that if she were Catholic instead of Buddhist she would probably have a name like Sister Peter Canisius. While she gave the tour in Japanese she occasionally barked order to us in English referring to us as “foreigners.” “Foreigners in the back!” “Foreigners first down the stairs!”

By this time it was late afternoon and we were ready to go back to our hotel. Catching a cab is not easy in Kanazawa away from the central business district and it was not that far from hotel anyhow. And we did enjoy a bit of the view on the way. The natural setting of this city is pretty impressive.

Back in our hotel room, we enjoyed the same view. 

In the evening we went out one more time. The contemporary art museum was open until eight o’clock, and it was a pretty intriguing building. The building is round, and the outside wall is completely made of glass. The collection inside, however, was not as interesting as the building. The only interesting thing, in fact, was a two story swimming pool. Here is John “under water” and 

doing his Sunset Boulevard homage.

On our way home we took time to observe the full moon

 a few of the early blooming cherry blossoms. 

We strolled around looking for bite to eat. The place I wanted to go turned out to be closed for a private party, but we walked through some very cool, extremely Japanese neighborhoods. 

Tomorrow we taken the bullet train to Tokyo, and from there we return to Los Angeles. It’s been a great trip overall. 

 

 

 

 

 

Bikes and Buses

This morning we said our farewell, without any particular sadness, to the Takayama Ouan Hotel. I suppose I should not be so harsh on this place as the staff has been unfailingly pleasant and helpful. It is just not the place I would have picked to stay, and I was irritated that we ended up here. We are trying Japan’s famous luggage forwarding services. We packed a small overnight bag to take with us to Kanazawa today, and we should be reunited with our two larger suitcases in Tokyo on Saturday. 

We put the bags that were coming with us today in a locket at the train station and took a local train to Hida Furakawa, a village about 10 kilometers from Takayama. As expected, the train left the station at 9:40 precisely. We reached our destination 15 minutes later. Our travel agent had arranged for us to take a bike ride through the countryside here with a guide. We wandered through the town and, with the help of Google, found the bike tour office. We liked our guide right away. He had lived and studied in Toronto, and not only did he have a solid mastery of English, he also understood North American sensibilities. We had some company today, two older Spaniards, a married couple. We also liked them, even though we somehow never quite learned their names. He was a retired electrical engineer, and he spoke excellent English. His wife spoke little English, though she was absolutely delighted that I could converse with her in Spanish. 

One we all had our bikes and had adjusted them, we were off through the quiet streets of the village. The old neighborhoods of Hida Furukawa are beautifully preserved. 

As we rode along, everyone greeted us with a cheerful “ohiogozaimas” or “good morning.” The secondary students had to practice their English by calling out “Hello! How are you?” to use as we passed. I found it hard to imagine Americans in most places being so friendly. 

As we rode along, we learned a great deal about the different types of rice that are planted here. The Japanese prefer short-grain rices instead of the long-grain varieties that are more common in California. They grow ordinary rice for daily use, sticky rice for making sushi, and a special almost round rice that will be distilled into sake. Our guide confirmed that few farmers make much money from growing rice and that evading otherwise harsh taxes was the principal reason for planting year after year. He pointed out that they also grow soybeans here and also different types of vegetables. We came across a family planting some vegetables today.

 

We also had a chance to see where they raise the famous Hida beef. Japanese beef is the opposite of free-range beef. The cattle are raised in barns and fed a rich diet before they are slaughtered. 

It gave me pause.

We stopped at a farmhouse. Our guide explained that the house was extremely large by Japanese standards, but that was because several generations of the same family lived there. 

The farmer’s wife was quite happy to show us around and even let us go inside to see the room for receiving guests. It is not easy to describe Japanese rooms sometimes as their functions are different from those of American or European rooms. 

We stopped at a spring on a small hillside. John refilled his water bottle.

and our guide used the same spring water to make us some tea.

We passed over the train tracks 

and soon we were back in the village.

We said goodbye to our guide and our Spanish friends, and headed back to catch the train. Our return train was an “express” which probably saved us a minute or two, hardly worth the extra ¥300. 

Back in Takayama, we had a quick cup of coffee. We grabbed our belongings and went from the train station to the bus station next door. We were headed to Kanagawa, but along the way we were scheduled to stop at Shirakawa-go for a couple hours. You can see why I did not want to be carrying all our belongings with us! Unfortunately, this bus did not have reserved seats and it was insanely crowded. I had a regular seat, but poor John had to endure 65 minutes on a folding seat in the aisle. It was torture. 

Shirakawa-go is high in the mountains. The climate is harsh: the area experiences some of the heaviest snowfall in the country. It was so remote from other settlements that it developed a fairly unique culture and style of architecture. Now connected by highway to both Takayama, Kanazawa, and other cities, it has become a magnet for tourists who want to see the unique gassho-style homes. It is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

There are about 300 of these houses in all. Some are still used as private homes. Other have been converted into shops and restaurants. Others form a folk village museum here. John was not feeling that great after his miserable bus ride, so we just had some coffee and a soft serve and walked around a bit. We did not really have time for the folk museum, and I figured that I had learned most of this stuff in Hida, anyhow. 

Around four thirty we boarded the second bus. We had reserved seats, actually, very good ones, on this bus and it was not all that crowded, either. We took a final look at Shirakawa-go

and continued on to Kanazawa. 

We arrived in Kanazawa around six o’clock. We took a cab to our hotel in the center of the small city. We are staying at the Hotel Tokyu. It is a Hilton kind of place designed for business travelers and western tourists. The room is the standard size for this kind of hotel, but after our accommodations in Takayama it seems like Versailles. 

In the evening, we asked the helpful man at the front desk for a dinner recommendation. He asked what we wanted and I said that I really wanted tonkotsu ramen. He said that was an easy one, and suggested a place about a minute’s walk away. We found it without much problem. It was a small place with only a couple tables and a larger counter. We took a place at the counter, and a few minutes later were slurping the most delicious ramen I have ever had. It was far from the fanciest meal I have had in Japan, but it might be the most satisfying. 

Discoveries and Disappointments

I tried to like our hotel a little better today. John took me up the to spa on the roof this morning. It hardly compared to the onsen in Matsumoto, but it was clean, relatively uncrowded, and there was a nice view from the outside tub. We had breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant. It was a buffet of some western and mostly Japanese food. Nothing was awful, but nothing was great, either.

We had a guided tour of the city this morning. Our guide was a charming young woman named Akiko. She spoke quite good English. It turned out that she had lived and studied in Halifax for a year. Her walking tour focused on the special foods of this region. It was a pleasant way to spend a morning. For much of the tour, we walked along the river. 

There were dozens of stalls set up on the embankment. We stopped at many of them. We tasted different types of miso, looked at unusual vegetables, and sampled local specialties. One of the places I liked best was a coffee cart that sold espresso in cups made from cookie dough. They also did very cute designs on the top of the cappuccino foam.

We walked through the narrow streets of the old merchants’ quarter. While not quite as extensive as similar neighborhoods in Kyoto, there is a truly impressive amount of old houses and shops in Takayama. For some reason, though, I did not seem to take pictures here. I guess I was too busy eating….

We  stopped at a very large shrine on a hillside.

There was some kind of event going on, and there were a large number of older people there wearing kimono. The men all had the emblem of the shrine on their gray and black kimono. I man was talking to them over a loud speaker and they seemed to be intently listening. Akiko did not give us much of a sense of what was going on, but I wondered if it was in some way political. Shinto practice in recent years has often been linked to quite conservative elements in Japanese society. 

Instead, she took our picture.

Our last stop were at a place that sold grilled rice on a stick

and a little shop that sold pretty little tea sweets. 

After four lovely hours together, we said goodbye to Akiko. John and I had some time here and decided to look at some of the local shops. After shopping for fifteen or twenty minutes, I realized that I did not have my camera. I was upset as I this would be the third camera I have somehow lost on a trip. But this being Japan, probably the most honest country in the world, it was exactly where I had left it on a post on the busiest street in Takayama. 

We have been amazed in Japan to find everything left out without fear of theft. Good bicycles are left overnight in front of houses or stores. Antique shops leave stuff outside on tables. You never hear the sound, so ubiquitous in Los Angeles, of cars locking and unlocking. 

There are many sophisticated museums in Takayama, but John wanted to go to one that was not, the Takayama Showa Kan. Showa refers to the regnal years of the Emperor Hirohito, 1926 - 1989. Kan simply means hall or big room. This private museum is devoted to the popular culture of Japan during that era. 

John insisted on having me pose in the school room. I actually was a little upset about the angles in the triangle. You did not need a protractor to understand why this measurement was wrong.

Meanwhile, John was the epitome of post-war angst in a small luncheonette. 

We headed back to the train station. On the way, we stopped at the largest Buddhist temple in Takayama. Most of it was closed up, but the architecture was lovely.

One of the most famous things at this temple is a massive tree that is supposed to be about 1200 years old. It is still early spring here, so it was not at its best.

We had bus tickets at 1:10 to go to Hirayu Onsen, the hot spring located high in the mountains. We had stopped here briefly on our way to Takayama. The bus ride, which lasted about an hour, was not unpleasant at all. I brought along my pocket wifi and did some work on this blog as we rode up. The hot springs area is mostly a ski resort, and it has looks a lot like many second or third tier North American ski resorts. It’s not Whistler. John wanted to get something to eat, and we fumbled around with an automated system for ordering your food. The staff tried to helpful, though nobody seemed to speak a word of English. The cafeteria was almost deserted. After we finished eating, we went up to the onsen on the third floor.

As Bette Davis famously said, “What a dump!” There were only two pools, one indoors and one out-of-doors. Both were starting to fall apart. There was genuine hot springs water here with a high calcium content and a trace of sulphur, but the nice water could not make up for the sorry state of the facilities. We were supposed to spend about two hours here, but after a few minutes we figured out the schedule for taking a bus back to Takayama sooner. I am pretty annoyed by this. One of the reasons for working with a travel agent is to avoid mistakes that waste an entire afternoon on a short trip, and this was definitely a wasted afternoon. 

This evening we went to a restaurant Akiko had recommended called Kyoyo. It was a charcoal-barbecue-on-your-table joint located in what appeared to be an old nineteenth century house. The food was not bad at all, but the place was filled with Europeans, mostly Dutch. There were only a handful of Japanese customers. 

We have a busy, busy day tomorrow.