Northern Japan #5: Aizu-Wakamatsu, Tohoku

Late August 2009

(Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday, Thursday morning)

It was 6:00 when I arrived at my hotel. Dinner time. But as I walked around the quiet neighborhood, I realized a problem: there were no restaurants. There were several small hotels like mine that would feed you breakfast and dinner if you ordered it when you made your reservation—I hadn’t. There was a tourist attraction nearby—the large housing complex of an important samurai—but the two or three cafes and souvenir stands were already dark. Besides that there were only residential houses, a long empty street, and a 7/11 around the corner.

I didn’t want to have dinner at a convenience store, but I didn’t have a choice. There was no other place. I made the best of it. I tried the “red” spicy fried chicken (very tender) and a piroshky, a Russian snack that resembled a fried dumpling. It was cheap—even with drinks and dessert and breakfast for tomorrow, I still spent less than ten bucks. It was casual—I plopped myself down on my futon bed, spread out my food on the tatami mat floor, and ate while holding a book to my nose. It was fun.



Aizu-Wakamatsu reminded me of Kanoya, except with more history and less restaurants. It had a very small-town feel, and like Kanoya, it’s in the middle of nowhere. There are hills inside the city and hills surrounding the city on the outside, but no ocean. Aizu is as deep inland as a city in Japan can be.

When I woke up the next morning, a miracle happened: my earache, which persisted since Hakodate, suddenly vanished. I was healed! Of course, this ailment would be replaced with another, namely giant blisters on my toes, but I don’t want to complain. Point is, I was mostly healthy by now and feeling pretty good.



My first stop was the aforementioned tourist attraction, Aizu Bukeyashiki, the home of one of the most important retainer samurai of the old Aizu domain. The houses were typically pretty with wooden beams and gleaming roof tiles. There was even a pond with golden carp that swam so close to the edge of the water, you could practically scoop them up in your hand. But what I liked even better were the life-sized dolls interacting with the artifacts in the room. A samurai greeting a guest, a woman playing a musical instrument, a girl with short hair playing with a paper ball.



And the signs! Glorious English signs! They explained things like why there was a wagon of sand underneath the toilet. (Apparently the doctor checked the excrement for warning signs of sickness—ew!) Or that the giant chugging water wheel in the dark room that smelled of damp wood was a rice polishing machine. (Although it didn’t explain how it polished rice or even why rice needed to be polished in the first place.)



But there were no English signs in the museum. Coming up the stairs from the rice polishing machine, I stumbled across a room filled with the portraits of great men. Hanging off the second floor balcony was a banner showing the last lord of Aizu, Matsudaira Katamori, and two members of the Shinsengumi, including my old friend Hijikata. (Remember him from Hakodate?) I was curious. What was the relationship between the two parties? And why was it displayed here, in a house neither owned by the lord nor the Shinsengumi?

I asked these questions to the women at the front desk in my garbled Japanese.

“No, there’s no relationship between these people and this house,” she said. “The banner is old.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “I have an interest in the Shinsengumi.”

The women picked up the phone. “Just a minute,” she said.

A short while later she showed me the location of the Shinsengumi Memorial Museum on a Japanese map. Incidentally, this did not appear on my English map at all. I thanked the woman and bought an akabeko keychain from a basket on her counter. An akabeko is a red cow with a bobbing head that’s a symbol of Aizu.



Another museum on the grounds showcased women and children of the household committing suicide. Two women slumped over, one with a child over her lap, its eyes shut. The dolls wore traditional white gowns of seppuku. Considering seppuku involves ritually disemboweling oneself, their clothes were oddly pristine and bloodless.

When Satsuma and Choshu (Kagoshima and Yamaguchi) declared the end of the Shogunate, the restoration of the Emperor, and the coming of the Meiji era in 1868, Aizu resisted. The Imperial army marched on Aizu, and their armies clashed. Aizu’s castle burned. Sensing defeat, the wife of the manor declared the household must commit suicide. Seppuku followed.

A third woman in white leaned up in agony. She gazed up at scary-looking soldier with a long orange vest and a sword in his hand. “If you are a friend, help me to die,” she pleaded. In fact, he was an enemy. But he obliged. A quick swipe of his sword, and she too lay dead.



The soldier had long red hair.

“Kenshin!” I gasped in horror.

(Kenshin is a red-haired samurai who worked as an assassin for Choshu at this time in history. He appears in the comic series Rurouni Kenshin, which I read in college.)

Somehow, though, I doubted the fictional hero of my comic would appear in a history museum. My memory flickered; I recalled another red-haired soldier among the miniatures of Goryo-kaku Tower in Hakodate. There was a pattern here. If only I knew what it was.

Before leaving the samurai villa, I asked a woman working at the souvenir shop why the soldier had red hair. Apparently the men in the Imperial army wore wigs in order to intimidate their enemy. They were supposed to resemble some kind of animal. What animal? I didn’t actually catch that, but later I read something about “red bear” wigs. Odd. Whoever heard of a red bear?



The bus ran a loop from tragedy to tragedy. My next stop was Iimori Mountain. In a tale similar to that of the women in white, a group of teenage boys had climbed the mountain, seen the smoke of the castle burning, and decided to plunge their swords into their stomachs. Today souvenir stands crowd the base of Iimori Mountain, selling deep-fried vegetables, soft serve, and a thousand brick-a-bracks with the name of the group plastered on it.



Byakkotai. White Tigers. Most of the boys in the group were only 16 or 17, but they were samurai and soldiers. Two swords hung at their hip, and they held a long black riffle in their hand. I studied their statues and the paintings of their journey, from a skirmish at a bridge to a retreat up the mountain. What struck me was their clothes. They all wore black, high-collared military jackets with a line of buttons down the front. I’d seen those jackets before: it resembled the school uniforms worn by my own high school students.



The White Tigers are enshrined in a temple at the mountains, and tourists surround their graves, burning incense and taking pictures. What is it about stupid acts of teenage suicide that tickles the sensibilities? Why do people think it’s romantic? It’s not. It’s a waste of life. Yet here are the White Tigers, the biggest tourist attraction in Aizu, and me, a hypocrite, snapping pictures just like everyone else.

The bus ran a loop from tragedy to tragedy, and now I came to Aizu Castle, also called Crane Castle. The crux of both acts of suicides. The fact that the castle had been at least partially burned down a hundred and fifty years ago didn’t in any way hinder its existence today. Its grey tiles gleamed in the sunlight, and its walls shone bright with a fresh coat of paint.



My English pamphlet patiently explained all the information I already knew. Yes, yes, yes a battle was fought here and Aizu lost. I got that. But how did they lose? How did their castle get burned? What was the breakdown of the battle? Who were the people involved and how did they decide to surrender? All the answers may have been inside. But if they were, they were all in Japanese—and I couldn’t read them!

I was a dog behind a chain link fence with a juicy bone on the other side. No matter how I jumped at the bone, the metal links would snap me back. That’s how I felt when I explored the museum inside the castle. I saw pictures of the battle, but I couldn’t read the explanations. If only there was a guide, like that lady in Yamaguchi Prefecture, someone who would take me by the hand and lead me like a child through the displays—but there was no guide, no one in this afternoon crowd who would stop and talk to me.



That was the real source of my frustration, I think. I went to these places of history in order to find someone who shared my love of history.

To find someone to talk to.

The alarm rang the next morning. Slowly, sleepily, I got out of bed, sorted my trash, and packed my bags. It was time to leave Aizu, but not before making one last stop. The Shinsengumi Memorial Museum was located in the old town district of Aizu. The train station had no automatic wicket or even a person to take my ticket. I walked right out without anyone checking to see if I’d paid the correct fare. Across the street was a temple and down the road, rows of quaint, wooden shops selling painted candles and local crafts.

I recognized the Shinsengumi museum by the triangle-striped banners bearing the kanji “makoto” or sincerity. The first floor was packed with Shinsengumi figurines and memorabilia, candy to my eyes, but I didn’t buy anything until after I saw the museum, on the second story. This floor was even more crammed with artifacts—no English of course—but as I had some information of the Shinsengumi already, I didn’t mind. I browsed through the small, empty museum and took pictures of anything that caught my attention.



Quite a bit caught my attention: banners, paintings, old photographs—and costumes. I came across a black button down jacket very similar to the ones the White Tiger boys wore, except pinned to the sleeve as a badge of identification was the word sincerity. It was a Shinsengumi uniform. After taking a picture, I skimmed the explanation for any kanji I knew. A single horizontal mark caught my eye. It was the mark for the number one, but read as a name it could be Hajime.

Saito Hajime. Unlike most of the Shinsengumi, he survived, long into the Meiji era. He became a policeman. That’s what impresses me, that he continued to live and serve in society. Compared to all the other tragic suicidal wastes in Aizu, here was a man who chose to live.

When I came down stairs, I said to the man at the counter, “You probably like the Shinsengumi?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you like them?”

“I like Saito,” he said.

Saito? He wasn’t one popular ones. “Really? Why?”

“He fought for Aizu,” he said.

That was true. Saito was the one who led what little Shinsengumi remained in the battle of Aizu, amid the burning castle.



“Have you seen his grave?” the man said.

“Grave?”

“It’s at the temple over there.”

He drew me a map and I thanked him. The temple was quiet. It was not a major tourist attraction; indeed my guidebook hardly noticed that part of town. But there was a sign, surprisingly in English, that identified the grave as Saito’s and gave a brief account of his life. According to the sign, he wished to be buried at the temple.

Maybe it’s better this way. Tourists flock to the graves of the White Tigers, buying souvenirs and making a racket. But Saito, who in surviving showed more heroism than any of the foolish boys, is able to rest in quiet, dignified peace.

Northern Japan #2: Hakodate, Hokkaido

Late August 2009

(Saturday evening, Sunday)

Character. The word sprang unbidden to my head. Hakodate has character.



Bright cutesy cartoons of sea life splashed the faded shops of the Asa-ichi, the morning fish market. Although it was evening, a few men and women still hawked their wares: whole crabs in crates of ice, stacks of corn, and green overpriced melons. In front of one shop, a small white rowboat was being used as a tank—for crabs, I assumed. But when I looked inside—zip, zip, zip—sleek purple squids skimmed the surface of the water.



Other places sold food—rice bowls topped with pieces of shredded white crab meat, glowing red fish eggs, or amorphous orange sea urchin blobs. One clever dish used somen noodles to form the body of a squid, strips of sashimi for tentacles, and real fish eyeballs for …well… the eyes. It was barely five, but people were already standing outside and holding out dinner menus.



“Irasshaimase. Iikaga desho.”
“Won’t you come in? It’s good.”



But when I say that Hakodate had character, I don’t just mean the fish market. At the Hakodate JR Station, artistic statues intersected with huge souvenir shops, an open bay with the skyscrapers of downtown. A mural on the side of a department store depicted gray towers and white church steeples, painted in an old-fashioned style that for some reason reminded me of the 1950s. “Welcome to Hakodate,” it said. Just below the mural—or was it part of it?—sat a small picture of a beer bottle and the words “Sapporo Soft.”

Character. I can’t describe it any other way.



Sunday morning greeted me with a sharp, piercing earache. I stuffed my left ear with cotton, but it throbbed every time I swallowed a piece of my chocolate-swirled melon bread. As the day went on—and I kept sucking on Halls throat drops—the pain eased. But it never entirely went away.




I walked the fort of Goryo-kaku first thing in the morning. Across a bridge, up a mound of earth, to a museum showing cannons from a battle. But try as I may, I could not make out the famous star shape of the fort. It wasn’t until I took the elevator to the top floor of Goryo-kaku Tower and saw the fort from a bird’s eye view that I understood. The sudden bend in the road I walked—that was the arrow-head point of the star jutting out.



But I am a girl of strange taste. I did not marvel for long at the breath-taking view of the city below for the top floor of Goryo-kaku Tower also featured several lovingly crafted miniatures acting out the history of the fort. That and an English pamphlet held me completely entranced.



Many ships of the rebel army had already capsized in the rough waves of October, but those that survived pulled onto the shore. Among them was Hijikata Toshizo, “demon of the Shinsengumi” and now the military leader of the struggling group of soldiers. They attacked Goryo-kaku fort and took it as their own. Those few that resisted the Meiji government built the Republic of Ezo in December of 1868. But by spring of 1869, the Imperial army had come.



Hijikata knew death was approaching. “I am not going to battle to win. …I will fight the best battle of my life to die for the country.” The detailed miniature shows him astride his horse, sword drawn, mouth open in mid-yell. He was shot down dead.



Nowadays, the gift shops at the bottom of the tower sell key chains, towels, and file folders with his image plastered on. There are also a couple of Hijikata statues floating around. I induced a lady wearing eccentric clothing to take my picture with one such statue. Then I selfishly talked her ear off for a good twenty minutes about Hijikata, the Shinsengumi, the Bakumatsu, and Japanese history in general. She was a good sport; she even gave me her address.



In the shadow of Hijikata is a lesser known statue: Enomoto Takeaki—the president of the Republic of Ezo, perhaps the only president in all Japan. After he surrendered in May 1869, he went on to serve in the Meiji government as ambassador, among other positions. I didn’t know much about him at the time, so I didn’t pose for a picture near his statue. But later, when I checked my Wikipedia sources and learned about his life, I grew to respect him. By not dying, by serving the government that defeated him, he actually helped create the Japan we know today. And in my heart of hearts, I admire that more than all the myth and hoopla over Hijikata.



It was now about 11:00, and I decided to eat lunch. Fortunately, just down the road sat Lucky Pierrot, a quirky little hamburger restaurant decorated with a giant clown head and religious paintings from the Italian Renaissance. I ate the #1 popular Chinese Chicken burger. It was delicious. Not in a fine dining sort of way, but cheap, good, and fun. The tourists besides me took pictures of their meals. Apparently, this Hakodate chain was an attraction in and of itself.



After a brief visit to the sight of Hijikata’s last stand, I rode the tram to the old Motomachi district. Black lampposts climbed the hill. A statue of a boy stood near a ship’s steering wheel and looked down, down to the bay below. A bronze lady in a puff-sleeved dress and flowered hat sat in neat squares of red and white flowers. At the top of the hill a yellow-trimmed Victorian house stood and bushes of violet Hydrangeas gathered near four copper men. To the right lay a green field and a solitary statue of Commodore Matthew Perry. To the left, a white colonial building with a blue doorframe and blue windowsills. The old British Consulate.



I had tea at the British Consulate. The lady working there brought me a steaming tea pot and cake with fresh cream and rose syrup. While waiting for the tea to brew, I read over the museum information. The Consulate was established to look after the needs of British citizens abroad, but under the guidance of Consul Eusden, it evolved into a place of international cooperation and exchange. I strained the leaves from my tea pot and took a bite of my cake. The syrup was delicious. I could taste the texture of the petals, yet it was sweet.



I spent the afternoon walking idly from museum to museum in the Motomachi district. The Canemori general store had been turned into the Museum of Local History, and it had old bottles of beer and cans of venison. I tried to talk history with the men inside, but I couldn’t for the life of me fathom they were saying. I visited the Museum of Northern Peoples and then walked along the bay, snapping photos of statues near the waterfront.



For dinner I ate curry soup—a specialty of Hokkaido. My order was a coconut, seafood curry. A little spicy, it reminded me of Thai or Indian curry. I liked the oysters and eggplant especially. The sun began to set. I crossed a bridge near the old Mori warehouses, brick, turned into stores now. Boats rested in the bay and jellyfish bobbed in the water. I caught part of the Sai World Music and Dance Festival. An Indian man sang beautifully, and a French group of dancers made me laugh.



At the end of the day, my ear still hurt. I had acquired a headache around midday and it lingered long into the evening. But something had changed. It was 8:00 and I didn’t feel the least bit tired; walking back to my hotel, I smiled and hummed music from the festival. For the first time on my vacation, I really had fun. My lethargy faded; little by little, I was beginning to feel healthy again.

Northern Japan: The Beginning

Late August 2009

Lifting my eyelids was like trying to pull water from a deep well. The alarm rang, and I hit the snooze. Then I hit it again. When my mind finally decided I had to get up, I moved slowly. There was an ominous pricking in my left ear. I had a headache and felt slightly flushed.

Stress sickness. I had felt it before.

“Stress sickness” is my own word. It’s that feeling of dancing dangerously on the edge of a cold. Technically, you’re not sick, you know you’re not sick, but if you push yourself too hard, you might well become so. It usually follows some period of intense work or stress. Hence the name.

When I was in Yamaguchi Prefecture last spring, I had felt these same symptoms, but the difference was they came in the middle of the trip—after I worn myself out trying to look at every single place of historical significance that I could find. This time all I’d done was wake up and I was already exhausted.

It was not an auspicious sign.

I got on my plane, read a book, and arrived at Hokkaido, and still my spell of exhaustion had not passed. So, then and there, I made a decision. This vacation I was not going to focus on seeing and doing as much as I could. This vacation I would have a new priority: relax.

It became a theme that wove through my vacation. It was my command, my order to myself. At the crossroads of a decision, I would ask myself: will this lead me to health and peace of mind? Or will it make me more stressed? It was my mantra that I chanted over and over again in my mind.

Relax. Relax. Relax.

Yamaguchi #7: Under the Weather

April 2009

Wednesday began with a spectacular flash of lightning and a growl of thunder. It woke me up at some God-awful hour. The rain was pouring while I got dressed and flipped through my guidebook, but it receded to a drizzle by the time I actually stepped outside.



I saw the remains of Hagi castle that morning. The castle had been dismantled in the Meiji era and made into a park; now only the walls remained. I liked it better that way. There’s something more imaginative about just seeing the old stone walls of a castle. Something more mysterious. I climbed a hill of moss covered steps, through branches of falling sakura blossoms, to stare over into the rich blue moat.



In addition to the walls and the cherry blossoms, there was also a nice shrine in the park. It had a quaint, arch-shaped stone bridge and an old house next to it that still retained its screen paintings. But the best part was when I followed an obscure trail to the back of the park and found the last of the castle walls, opening, like a gate, to the rocky beach and the ocean. I think I’ve said it before, but there’s nothing like walking around in a park first thing in the morning.



Amendment: there’s nothing like it when the weather is nice. The weather was not nice. The rain had let up, but it was still overcast. Moreover, it was cold. People in Kanoya warned me it would be and told me to pack accordingly. But did I? Not really. It was the problem of baggage I mentioned before. So, here I was, wandering in the dank park for an hour or so and later spending another hour walking back to the station. After a while, the cold started to bother me.

And it wasn’t just the cold, either. Since Shimonoseki, my shoulders had been knotted up and painful. I was a little tired and stressed. I had been to three cities in three days, was immersed in Japanese, and was dealing with a change of climate that was colder than I was used to. I began to feel a little “stress sick.” Not really sick, but a kind of feeling like you’re on the edge of a cold and if you don’t take it easy, you might actually end up sick. To put it succinctly, I was feeling under the weather.

And it was going to get worse.

I took a bus to Tsuwano at around noon, and, I swear, on the way there I saw a brief flurry of snowflakes. I hadn’t even brought gloves. When I actually got to Tsuwano, it was merely raining. And windy. And cold. It was so cold, I really wanted my gloves and my scarf and maybe a nice hat, too.

When it came time to check into my ryokan, I didn’t want to leave. I had two good hours of sightseeing left and little within my room to keep me amused, but you could not have dragged me out of there. The room had a heater and, more importantly, a kotatsu.

A kotatsu is basically a table with quilts trailing from the edges like a tablecloth and a heater underneath. You stick your legs underneath and it warms your lower body right up. Well, this kotatsu was hot. It was like submerging yourself into a piping hot bath. I didn’t so much sit underneath as stretch out on my stomach like a cat, so only my head, shoulder, and feet were sticking out. The weather got worse and worse, but I just lay in my room, reading out of my two-ring binder, until dinner. Which was in the ryokan, just downstairs.

Wednesday began with a storm and it ended with one. I remember this because this was the night I had to do my laundry. I looked out the window and shuddered at the thought of going out into that rain and wind in a strange city, finding a Laundromat, and somehow having to haul my clean clothes back. But fortunately, it all worked out. When I asked the lady who ran the ryokan where a coin laundry was, she simply took my clothes and did my laundry for me. This is why I love Japan!

Becky Catches a Cold

February 10, 2008

I have a cold.

Not just any cold. A nasty, persistent cold. A chameleon of a cold.

The symptoms began two weeks ago on Friday—that is February 1st. I had started to feel tired at work. My throat began to hurt. By the time night fell, I was shivering and moaning with a fever. Fire streaked down my throat. I decided to spend all Saturday at rest, hoping it would go away. It didn’t.

On Sunday, I decided to put my health insurance to the test. I had Rachelle drive me. It turned out to be quite an adventure. The first two hospitals we found were closed for the weekend. We went in search of the third one, Ikeda Hospital, following signs in kanji, or Chinese lettering.

After finding a hospital that was open, I filled out my forms and waited. Now, you’ve all been to an HMO before, right; you know the procedure: you fill out a form, you wait for thirty minutes, the doctor calls you in, you wait for another thirty minutes, the doctor diagnoses you, you wait for another thirty minutes, you get your prescription and pay, then you wait for an hour to get the medicine.

So, I filled out the form and gave it to the receptionist. Five minutes later, the doctor called me in. He looked at my throat and said they’d put something on it in the next room. I walked into the next room and they put something on my throat, a red substance that made my throat feel a little numb and tingly. Then he wrote a prescription. We went to the pharmacist and, in about 20 minutes, got the medicine. The whole process took less than an hour. Co-pay was about the same as in America: 1000 yen ($10) for visit, 1000 yen ($10) for medicine.

I thought to myself, wow, this is great. If only the American system could be this fast.

But then the days went by, and I noticed that the medicine wasn’t astoundingly effective. I’ve had my share of sore throats and ear infections and usually after I take medicine from the doctor for a day, it goes away. In fact, I usually stop taking the medicine before it runs out, because I no longer feel pain. Not so this time.

I faithfully took my medicine, three times a day, for three days. By the beginning of the 4th day, my throat no longer hurt. Unfortunately, my cold had morphed into other symptoms. In the course of the week my ears have hurt, my throat has been dry, I’ve been congested, I’ve had a piercing headache, I’ve lost my voice, and I’ve had a cough. And guess what? It’s been over a week and my cold still hasn’t completely gone away.

I began to think, rather belatedly, you know, the doctor could have checked my ears or taken my temperature, too. All he did was check my throat. But I did complain that I had a cold, as well as a throat ache. So why didn’t he check for other symptoms and prescribe something stronger?

Dealing with a cold while in a foreign country is not fun. There’s no medicine that I recognize: no Tylenol, Advil, Sudafed (it’s illegal), Nyquil, or anything else. The medicine is Japanese. There’s not even chicken noodle soup. So I’ve been getting recommendations from Japanese people. They recommend daikon (radish) soaked in honey, sleeping with the medical masks on, and certain types of medicine. I’ve chosen some of their suggestions. I’ve also stocked up on throat drops and orange juice.