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 #4: Matsushima, Tohoku

Late August 2009

(Tuesday morning)



Matsushima, or “Pine Island(s),” is one of the Three Great Sights in all of Japan. Why is that, I wonder. It’s not as though the many small islands of dark pines calmly floating the sea aren’t lovely—they are. But what makes this place greater than the ribboned waterfall of Yakushima or the fog-clouded mountains of Tsuwano? How can you objectively rank what’s beautiful?



The coastal town is small, and many of the tourist attractions were within easy walking distance. I visited an old, grey temple with Chinese zodiac animals carved into the wood. I walked along the spongy, moss-covered paths in Fukuura Island. (It was like stepping in mud, except my shoes didn’t get dirty.) I marveled at the caves in front of Zuigan Temple, blackened from cremation, with mossy stone deities guarding them.



Actually, Zuigan Temple was the best attraction on the island. It had a treasure house and murals inside the main building. One room featured a mural of hawks devouring cranes. According to the English description, the hawks represented the samurai of Sendai. Very well. But who were the cranes? It reminded me of a cover idea for my high school year book, one they decided against, a hawk with a rabbit in its talons. Our school’s mascot is a hawk, our rival Victor’s mascot is a jackrabbit. Tee, hee. So which enemy was Sendai symbolically disemboweling? Alas, the description was too polite to say.



I wandered the island in a dreamy state. This mood had little to do with the natural beauty of Matsushima. To be honest, I was only half-paying attention to this “one of Three Great Sights in all of Japan.” I had come to the critical point in the Agatha Christie novel I was reading, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and the ending blew me away. (I won’t say anymore; go out and read it!) Even after I knew who the murderer was, my mind was firmly planted in the world of my book, and I drifted from attraction to attraction like a ghost.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the second Agatha Christie book I read on the trip and the fourth book overall. By the time vacation was over, my tally would come to seven. It was wonderful to gobble down so many stories all at once. So relaxing. Like being a kid again.

Northern Japan #3: Sendai, Tohoku

Late August 2009

(Monday afternoon)

Sendai didn’t like me much, and, as a consequence, I didn’t like it.

Buildings were crammed together, tangled with big streets and side streets and even a crowded little marketplace that sold melons and fish; gigantic department stores, chain convenience stores, drug stores, and construction, all so very Japanese and so very tiresome, battled for space and narrowed my view. A huge bus/ taxi circle was plopped right in front of the station, and I couldn’t get across.

I had to go up to the second floor to the pedestrian overwalk. But even from there I couldn’t see more than two or three buildings deep. My little map to the Library Hotel had made it look so simple. Just go straight down a certain street. If only I could find said certain street. There were several roads branching off from the station, not all of them listed on my map. And I couldn’t see the landmarks, because the damn department stores were blocking my view. I stared at the city several minutes, raindrops blurring the ink of my map—did I mention it was raining?—before deciding there was nothing to do but push off and do my best to find it.

Of course I got lost.

The rain, which had started off barely a drizzle, became malicious. It pounded down. And then the wind came up, blowing strong. My small black collapsible umbrella could not shelter the bulk of my backpack, my duffle bag, and my shoulder bag combined. My shoes filled with water. I went up one road and decided I went too far. I turned left and went down another road. I went back to the first road. I turned right and headed back toward the direction of the station.

I never did find my hotel. I found a Library Hotel—it turned out there were three near the station. The people at the front desk were kind enough to let me transfer my reservation from the Library Hotel I couldn’t find to the one I could. They were also kind enough not to remark on the gallons of water I was dripping onto their nice, expensive-looking floor.

On the train ride down I had packaged souvenirs for my family, and my first order of business in Sendai was to mail them. Once I finished, it was pushing 3:00. I wanted to see Sendai Castle, but that was on the other side of the city and the buses only ran every half hour. And after that I still had errands: buying books, picking up a Starbucks Sendai tumbler for my teacher, and doing my laundry. Time, like a vice, was beginning to squeeze me.

I was obliged to see the castle. I was obliged to see something, how could I just stay in my hotel and see nothing of the city. On the other hand, did I really want to go traipsing about the ruins—that’s right, not even a real castle—the ruins of Sendai Castle, in the rain and wind and mud when I had seen a dozen Japanese castles already and would see at least one more before the trip was over? Did I really care about Sendai City and its proud history?

Would visiting Sendai Castle lead me to health and peace of mind? Or would it make me more stressed?

It would, I decided, stress me out.

The weather cinched it. Would anyone blame me for not going out in a mini-typhoon? No. I proceeded to my bookstore, where I bought three Agatha Christie novels. I read one and a half books while I did my laundry. Perhaps it was a bit of a waste, not seeing the castle—but to be honest, I couldn’t think of a more delightful way to pass the evening.

One last thing. Although I didn’t eat anything exotic inside the city of Sendai, I did eat a rather interesting bento, or boxed lunch, on the train ride to Sendai. It was called “gyuutan” or cow’s tongue, which happens to be Sendai’s specialty food. When I pulled a string, my box puffed up and steam swooped out through the cracks. After about ten minutes I had hot rice with about five strips of beef (and a flower-shaped slice of carrot) laying on top. The cow tongue was a little greasy, but tasty. The only thing that disturbed me was the bumps on the surface of the meat.

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 #1: Sapporo, Hokkaido

Late August 2009

Friday evening and Saturday morning



If you imagine the island of Hokkaido to be an uchiwa fan (not a folding fan, but the kind with a big circle of paper on a stick), then Sapporo would be where the wood and the paper meet. It’s almost in the center of Hokkaido. Within the city, I didn’t notice any hills or rivers, which are typical features in Japan. In fact, when I got out of the train stations, I wondered if I was in Japan at all.



The city seemed too… spacious… to be Japanese. I could see the blue sky peeking out in patches between the skyscrapers. For some reason this reminded me of LA, but not quite LA. The streets were lined with leafy green trees and statues were spattered here and there. In the front of the station sat red-bricked vine-covered department stores, which alluded to Hokkaido’s Meiji past.



Saturday morning the weather was very fine, nice and cool, and I could wear a light sweater without feeling warm. But I was still a little flushed from my stress sickness, so I kept my sweater off. In keeping with my “relax” motto, I didn’t go very far: just a ten minute walk to the Former Hokkaido Government Office Building and another ten minutes after that to the Botanic Garden of Hokkaido University.



Hokkaido’s history, as an important island of Japan, didn’t really begin until the Meiji Restoration, that is, the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Japan was rapidly making itself into a modern nation. That was the reason for so many red-bricked buildings in Sapporo, including the Former Government Office. It was a large, stately building, and looked more European than Japanese.



Inside were a free museum and several paintings by local artists. As I looked at the artifacts—a black and white unsmiling photograph of children near their new school, advertisements of fish sketched in colored pencil—it occurred to me that Hokkaido was a lot like the American west. Around the time, American settlers were crossing the prairie by train and fighting in the Cowboy-Indian Wars, people from poor fishing villages in Japan were urged to “immigrate” to Hokkaido with the promise of cheap land and new opportunities. Even in the paintings, I could see a physical resemblance: the vast blue skies, the wide yellow plains punctuated by dark mountains, people on horses, people who would tame this new land, but looking somehow small and insignificant compared to the rolling landscape.



In fact, Hokkaido even has its own “Native Americans,” a group of hunter-gatherers called the Ainu, who flourished in Hokkaido long ago. In the Botanical Garden, there was a museum of Ainu artifacts, such as a seal skin jacket and intricately carved rice paddles. I watched a video of a sacred ritual involving a bear in a cage (poor bear) and admired the altars of woven grass. But what impressed me the most (and not in a good way) was a kind of smelly plant they hung near their houses to ward off demons. I believed it could ward off demons; in the stuffy museum, the scent nearly overwhelmed me.



The museums (there were several) in the Botanical Garden were nice, but the actual plants didn’t impress me. In the middle of summer, it was nice and green but there were no flowers. With one exception. On my way to a sadly withered rose garden, I stumbled upon a patch of Hydrangeas in full bloom. Vibrant blue and rich purple blossoms, clothed in alternating shadow and sunlight. Beautiful.



In Japan, Hokkaido means food: ramen, beer, milk and dairy products, fresh caramels, melons, corn, potatoes, asparagus, crab, sea urchin, squid, strawberries, sausage, and probably a few other products I’m forgetting. I had planned to eat my way through. The famous Sapporo ramen was all right, but I really enjoyed the “beer hall” tofu.



Slices of white tofu were garnished with sauce, chopped sausage, and chopped cheese. I don’t know if the sauce had beer in it or not—maybe. In the beginning I thought it tasted strange, but the more I ate it, the more I loved it. The sausage and cheese were excellent. Even after I finished my tofu, I scraped up the crumbs with the tip of my chopsticks.