Yamaguchi #8: At the Edge of the World

April 2009

(Technically in Shimane Prefecture)



The weather didn’t improve much the next day. It was still cloudy and cold. There was only one redeeming attribute. The fog. Not that fog was exactly pleasant to ride a rented bicycle through first thing in the morning—but it was beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful. “The fog creeps in on little cat feet…” But in Japan it glided around the dark round mountains like a dragon. And in the valley below, the red tiles of the houses glistened.



Originally, I intended to go to the castle ruins, but I changed my mind. Fog is perfect weather to visit an Inari shrine. And Tsuwano had one of the larger Inari shrines in all of Japan.



Any proper Inari shrine has several red torii, or shrine gates, forming a kind of tunnel into the main shrine. In the case of Takodani, the Tsuwano Inari Shrine, it had torii going up the whole side of the hill, painting it red. I ascended and came to the main building, which was bright orange and white, with a huge straw rope handing in the front of it.



I heard flutes and drums. At first, I thought it was a recording, but it seemed too pure, too alive. I followed it to the main shrine. The building’s walls were open, so I could see inside. Musicians were playing, a priest was swinging a branch, and a few dedicated people were sitting inside watching. Then, the music stopped and the priest began talking in a normal voice. I thought I heard something about a meeting. I swear he must have been doing announcements. I felt a little embarrassed at gawking at them, as though I had busted into Sunday service at church.

Tsuwano is a small town, and although it has many attractions, you could probably see all of them in a day. I visited a few notable places, like Japanese Meiji-era author Mori Ogai’s house (which interested me only because I had read his book, “The Wild Geese,” previously) and a chapel dedicated to the Nagasaki martyrs, who stopped at Tsuwano, before being crucified. There were also a few non-notable places. The biggest disappointment was the Tonomachi District. The guidebook had promised me beautiful ditches and ten thousand carp. But the ditches only went on for a few blocks, and I saw more fish at a noodle restaurant in Ibusuki.


I circled around the town and came back to the mountains. My last attraction for the day was the ruins of Hagi castle. There was a lift mentioned in my guidebook and I had imagined a “ropeway,” one of those glass boxes suspended from steel cable which pulls you up the mountain. Well, the lift was sort of like that. But without the glass box.



Instead there were green chairs with a single armrest on the right side and not even a seatbelt to keep you from tumbling out of it. When I saw it, I thought it was scary, and told the man so. In fact, it was fun. The ground was only a couple of feet down and on it was soft-looking green grass. I was fairly certain that if I did fall I wouldn’t die. The rope pulled me slowly, and I was suspended in the air, my feet dangling just above the ground, feeling happy as a clam.



A short walk later, I was tramping through dried grass and staring up at enormous walls. I can’t quite convey what it was like. I was at the very top of a deserted mountain, with a wood in the back and a flat expanse of grass where I imagine the actual castle used to be. And the walls, the very stone foundations of the mountain. They were massive. And it made no sense to me, that such a small town like Tsuwano would ever need such a huge castle? One wall was embedded into the grass and when I walked to it, I found myself looking down the mountain at the valley of small houses below me. It was like I was standing at the edge of the world….

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!

Yamaguchi #6: My Treat

April 2009

“There’s no English signs in the Hagi Museum,” the lady at the information desk told me apologetically (in Japanese).

“It’s all right,” I told her.

To be honest, I hadn’t really expected any. I had learned not to expect any. That’s why I had brought with my two-ring binder with Wikipedia articles on anything I could find about the era and the people in it, and also the diaries of Kido Takayoshi. I was prepared. I could make my way around the museum by myself.

But the lady at the desk didn’t know that and apparently she wasn’t satisfied with my assurance that I would be fine. I came back from the natural history room, to find an older woman (not the lady at the reception desk) waiting for me. She would be my exclusive guide for the remaining trip to the museum, and I was very happy to have her.

We were in the hall, we hadn’t even got into the main exhibits, when my guide drew my attention to a bench and table made of smooth pine wood. She asked me to sit down on it, and so I did. Then she told me (in Japanese of course) that Kido Takayoshi, Takasugi Shinsaku, and the rest had all sat here. Apparently it was part of Yoshida Shoin’s “Under the Pine Trees” school, the one that everyone who was anyone had been in. My immediate reaction was a silly-giddy feeling, as though I were somehow sitting next to the ghosts of the revolutionaries themselves.

My guide, who’s name I found out later was Osaki Yoko, showed me the culture room which featured, among other things, tiny dolls, no bigger than my finger, crafted with the most intricate and beautiful detail. Most dolls could be made assembly style, with one person making heads, one person making hands, and so forth, but these ones had to be made by the same person. It was a time-consuming process and so each small doll was extremely valuable.



I saw other cultural things as well, but I was antsy about getting to the history room. The main exhibition was, of course, Yoshida Shoin. I have to say, even though I saw his grave, Yoshida Shoin was not my favorite revolutionary. He really didn’t do anything—he was executed long before Choshu really became involved in national politics—and yet for some reason, the people of Hagi seem to be obsessed with him. He has a shrine and a wax museum.

I asked Yoko who her favorite person in the Bakumatsu era was, and she answered it was Shoin-sensei (which is how they address Yoshida Shoin in Hagi). Why? I wanted to know. And why, out of all the great men born in Hagi (including the first prime minister and one of the “three nobles of the restoration”) did the people adore this man so much? Yoko answered that it was true that there were many great men in Hagi, but they were all taught by Shoin-sensei. And without Shoin-sensei, they might not have become great.

I’m not sure how much I agreed with that statement. It wasn’t as if he had taught any of them for very long—he started the school at 25 and died by 29, so therefore the longest he could have taught was 4 years. But as she told me more about him, I did respect him a little more. She told me he had traveled all around Japan, from Kyushu to Northern Japan, seeking out all the great masters of the age. Naturally, I didn’t know any of them, but I was still impressed. The trip had taken 3 years and I’m pretty sure he made it as a teenager.

Naturally, my Japanese wasn’t perfect and I didn’t catch everything she was telling me, but since I had suitable background information, I caught quite a bit. I was able to practically finish her sentences. At one point I showed her my two-ring binder, and tried to explain that I had Kido Takayoshi’s diaries in English. That really impressed her.



I asked her if she liked Bakumatsu era history and she said that it wasn’t Bakumatsu history or the history of any one era that interested her, it was Hagi’s history. I could sense the fierce pride she had in her town. I couldn’t blame her either. This small city did more for Japan than many larger cities had.

We ended at the gift shop, and my guide followed me there. She wanted to buy me a book, she told me. At first I protested, no, no, no, but she insisted. She said that even though she was the guide, I had ended up teaching her about the history of the era. So did I want a book on Kido Takayoshi or Yoshida Shoin? I paused. Well, I’d prefer Kido Takayoshi. She bought me the little paperback book in Japanese and, although I couldn’t read it, I told her I’d study hard and try to translate it.

I also ended up buying a translucent file of the Choshu Five and some postcards. I had planned to have some of the museum’s “summer mikan” soft serve ice cream from the beginning, and when she found out, she bought me that too. I couldn’t do anything but thank her profusely. She told me she was 77, and I told her that was about the same age as my grandma. You know, come to think of it, my great-grandma came from Yamaguchi Prefecture, so there’s a chance, however remote, we may have been related.

Other Japanese people also gave me special tours of old houses, out of guilt perhaps that I couldn’t read the signs very easily, and I was grateful to them as well. But Yoko holds a special place in my heart. After all, it’s not everyday I get treated to a book and ice cream, two of my favorite things in the world.

Yamaguchi #5: Sakura and Graveyards

April 2009

There is no denying that sakura, or cherry blossoms, are beautiful. No matter how hard I try, no photograph can ever capture the impression they make. Each blossom is individually gorgeous, but when you see them together, thousands of tiny translucent petals bunched together on dozens of trees, it’s magical. I can’t quite describe what it’s like, riding near the river on a sunny day with rows and rows of sakura trees in full bloom, a soft white veil hanging over your head.



But there is also a deep sadness ingrained in sakura. As soon as the flowers reach the height of their beauty, the petals are already falling. But it’s not just that sakura dies quickly, for many other flowers do as well. No, what makes it sad for me is the human associations that come with it. I lost my grandpa around the time I first saw sakura bloom. The second time I saw sakura blooming in Japan, I came back to my school to find, to my surprise, that some of my teachers had left while I was on vacation. This year, more teachers left, and some of my favorite ones as well, making it all the more painful. No, happy as I am to see the lovely cherry blossoms, sakura will always be seared into my mind as a symbol of loss.

So it was fitting perhaps that on this day, I was hunting down the graves of the heroes and martyrs of the Bakumatsu.* I pushed my bicycle up a hill and found a small, obscure little graveyard. I knew the names on the headstones and I knew their stories. I also knew the age they passed away, and that’s what made the graves particularly tragic.



The headstone read Takasugi Shinsaku. He negotiated the treaty of Shimonoseki (I visited the place of the battle in the last email) and was nearly murdered by his own countrymen for it. A year later, he would lead those same people in a battle against the Shogun, which they would decisively win. He mixed peasants with samurai to create a fierce army and he trained them in the ways of modern warfare. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 28.



Another one read Yoshida Shoin. He was Takasugi’s teacher, and also the teacher of Ito Hirobumi, Kido Takayoshi, and anyone who would become anyone in Choshu at that era. He plotted to assassinate the Shogun, got caught, and stupidly confessed his scheme. He was executed and made a martyr by the Shogun just before Choshu really became involved in the effort to overthrow the Shogunate. He was 29.



I went to a temple called Toko-ji and, in the back, just before the more impressive display of stone lanterns, I found a small area with monuments to samurai who had died for the revolution. I didn’t know their names and couldn’t read the signs very well, but I did figure out their ages. It’s kind of sobering reading about people who were your age or just a little older than you when they died.



Kido Takayoshi (also called Katsura Kogoro) was one of the “three great nobles of the restoration,” and I had some of his diaries with me. In the first year of Meiji** 1868, at the culmination of all his years efforts to restore the Emperor to the throne, Kido wrote: “…the Restoration was fully realized only after many loyal and benevolent men had sacrificed their lives in the service of the Imperial family. Several dozens of my friends fell as martyrs to the cause of the Empire, but by chance I have survived to this day.” He did not survive much longer, though. Nine years later, he died too, at the ripe old age of 43.



They say that a samurai’s life should be like a cherry blossom: beautiful, but brief. I find this ideal morbid, but in this case the metaphor is apt. These men lived short, intense lives, and even now I mourn their death, people who died a hundred years before I was born in a country I didn’t know. Why did they have to die so young and so violently? It doesn’t seem fair.

It’s rarely mentioned, but even as the petals are falling, green leaves are shooting from the branches of the sakura tree. By the time the last cherry blossom is gone, the tree has a healthy crown of leaves that will last it all summer. I wonder if it’s the same thing with these samurai. Even as they died, new people were being born into an age that would be the beginning of a new Japan. Cherry blossoms can’t live forever, there must be leaves, there must be fruits. The beautiful sacrifice of the flower sustains the life and the health of the tree.



*Bakumatsu: The last years of the Shogunate. It dates from 1853, when Admiral Perry’s “black ships” entered Tokyo Bay, until 1867, when the Shogun abdicated and the Emperor was restored. The time is characterized by foreign pressure from outside Japan and revolutionary forces from within.

**Meiji: The era following the Bakumatsu, from 1868-1912. It’s characterized by the modernization of Japan, politically, economically, and militarily. During this time, Japan fought and won two foreign wars: the Sino (China)-Japanese War and the Russo (Russia) –Japanese War. The era began with the restoration of the Emperor Meiji and ended with his death. He was posthumously named after the era.

Yamaguchi #4: The Choshu Five

April 2009



When I visited Nagasaki a year and a half ago, I stumbled upon an old photograph dating from the mid-1800s showing five young Japanese men wearing suits, their hair cut short in Western style. The term “exchange students” must have come up in the explanation of the photograph, because that term got stuck in my mind. These “exchange students” made an impression on me. There was something about the way they were posed, almost carelessly around a balcony, one sitting on the rail, one leaning against it with his hand in his pocket and a certain swagger about him. The photograph was taken in the time when Japan was just starting to open up to the world, my favorite era, and I could imagine these young men bringing back knowledge that would help make Japan into a modern nation. I took a picture of the photograph and posted it on facebook, and I didn’t think about it much after that. But in the back of my mind the image lingered romantically, a symbol of an era.

Go forward a year an a half. Now, I’m in Hagi. I’ve rented a bicycle and I’m just beginning my barrage of history sightseeing. After visiting the Yoshida Shoin shrine, I decide to visit the former home of Ito Hirobumi, the first prime minister of Japan, who was born in the area. I find the house, and I’m about to go inside, when a sign catches my eye. I see a photograph of five young men lounging around a balcony. The photograph looks familiar.

Imagine my surprise to discover that one of my “Nagasaki exchange students” was the prime minister of Japan. And he wasn’t even the only important person pictured there. The sign in front of the house explained, with some English, that these young men (age 21-29) were the “Choshu* Five,” five men from Yamaguchi Prefecture who studied abroad in England and would play a large role in modernizing the nation. Ito Hirobumi, as I said, became the first prime minister of Japan. Inoue Kaoru was the first foreign minister, Yamao Yozo was the “Father of Engineering,” Inoue Masaru was the “Father of Railroads,” and Endo Kinsuke became the director of the mint. It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? It’s one thing to imagine these people doing great deeds, it’s another to hear that they actually did. Ah, Japan. Where else can I trip over history one year, and find out what I tripped over the next.



*Choshu: The name of Yamaguchi Prefecture before the Meiji era. Choshu means “long state.”

Yamaguchi #3: The Case of the Backwards Obi

April 2009

I think in the future I will make it a habit to ask a Japanese person working at a museum one random question, the answer to which, if they know it at all, they will barely be able to convey to me, what with my limited Japanese. Case in point:

I wandered into the Akita Commerce Building shortly after consuming the fugu burger. It was a pretty old building, it was on my way to the park, and it was free of charge. Naturally there was no English signage and the man inside spoke no English, but I managed to get the gist of what made this building so special: it was the first building in Japan to have a rooftop garden, and perhaps the first such building in the world.



Visitors weren’t allowed onto the roof, unfortunately, but I did get to wander through all three stories. On the second floor, in one of the rooms, there was a case with two Japanese dolls wearing kimonos. What was odd about the dolls was that their obi—the large flat belt—was on backwards. The bow was tied in the front. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen such a style in Shimonoseki. A woman wearing a backwards-obi kimono was featured on the front of one of the tourist maps, and pictures of these same kind of women were featured in the Akama Shrine.

Way back when I was living in Nagoya, I learned that, if you wear a kimono, you must never wear the bow in the front. Why? In the Edo era, this was how prostitutes wore their kimonos. As Rachelle said, “easy access.” Not that I thought the women in the pictures were prostitutes—the Edo era was long gone—but still, it surprised me. Why wear clothing that symbolized it?

I tried to ask this question to the man. Needless to say, he didn’t quite understand what I wanted to say. I managed to covey the fact that I wanted to know why the dolls upstairs and the women on my map wore their obis backwards, but since I didn’t know the word for prostitute, that was as far as I got. The man himself didn’t seem to know, and so he went into his room to call for help.

While I was waiting by myself downstairs, two women came in, a foreigner and a Japanese woman. They both spoke English. I explained my question to them, and they brought out their theories. The Japanese woman explained that though these women were prostitutes, they were the highest level of prostitutes, called Oiran, almost like geisha. Well that was all very well, but why were they a symbol of the town? The foreign woman suggested that because Shimonoseki was a port city, there was more trade, more sailors, and prostitution thrived in an environment like that.



Just then, the man came and explained what he learned. At Akama Shrine, a little boy Emperor drowned during a battle a thousand years ago. I had learned about this in my guidebook. Well, fast forward a few hundred years to the Edo era, and the local Oiran were so touched by this incident that they decided to perform dances at the shrine every year on the anniversary of the Emperor’s death. This soon evolved into a full-fledged festival, which continues to this day.

Isn’t that bizarre? The town celebrates prostitutes from three hundred years ago showing their reverence for an emperor who died a thousand years ago by dancing at a shrine. This is just the sort of thing that can only happen in Japan.

Yamaguchi #2: What’s a Fugu Cream Croquette Hamburger?

April 2009

Almost every area of Japan has a special food product. Moji, for example, invented Yaki Curry, which was basically a normal Japanese curry with an over easy egg and a ton of melted cheese added to it. I ate this the first night of my vacation. It was incredibly rich, but oh, so good. I try to make a point of finding out what the special food of an area is and sampling it. It adds something to the trip.



The specialty of Shimonoseki was fugu, the infamous poisonous puffer fish.

I wasn’t afraid to eat fugu because of the poison. Nowadays, the risk of dying is negligible. What scared me was the price. I’d heard that fugu could go upwards of 10,000 yen ($100) and that, adding insult to injury, it wasn’t very tasty, either.

But I guess that’s only if you go for the very nice, traditional fugu meals. If you get creative, you can still eat it for cheap.



I found a small restaurant at the fish market called, “It’s Christmas.” The name alone would have enticed me to eat there. But in addition to this, they were also advertising a “Fugu Cream Croquette Hamburger” for less than 1,000 yen ($10). I had to try it.

So, what is a Fugu Cream Croquette Hamburger? Well, first of all, do you know what a Croquette is? (No, it’s not the game they play with flamingos and hedgehogs in Alice in Wonderland.) A Croquette is a patty of usually a soft or creamy substance, such as mashed potatoes or creamed pumpkin, that is then breaded and deep-fried. It’s quite common in Japan. In this case it was fugu that had been creamed and made into a patty. This special Croquette was then stuck between two buns, like any normal hamburger. All in all, it sort of resembled a fish filet, but not so fishy. The cream was strong.

Although it seems like its almost cheating, I’m going to add fugu to my list of weird Japanese foods I’ve eaten, along with beef intestines, raw chicken, and natto, which is fermented soybeans. (The natto is definitely the most disgusting.)