Exploring Japan Vol. 21 - SUMO!!

So you're probably asking yourself why it took so long for me to write about Sumo.  To be honest, there are two reasons. First, it was something we did as part of a tour group the on our initial visit to Tokyo.  We're not big on tours and this was one of only two that we took.  While I'm glad we did it, it still felt like we were kind of sheltered and not really a part of the action and vibe.

Second (and maybe because of that sheltered feeling), the whole thing kind of came off as a one dimensional experience.  Allow me to explain the whole concept though because I really feel like if I lived there, attended on my own and followed it for even one season, I'd be hooked.

Sumo is Japan's national sport.  They take this very, very seriously.  There are six tournaments per year, three of which take place in Tokyo.  Each tournament lasts only 15 days but over that time, the newspapers and television are covered with stories about each day's results.  

The sport started as part of a religious ritual and the matches were thought to be entertaining to the Shinto deities.  As you watch a match, you'll still see components of this.  The matches take place on a raised platform made of clay and covered with sand.  A Shinto priest will start each match by chanting to purify the ring.  Then each wrestler will do his own ritual, tossing salt to further purify it and get into the proper mindset.  Eventually, they will get into position mere inches from each other.  There is no whistle or anything to start.  One will just suddenly make a move and in a few seconds the match is over.

The rules are simple.  If you exit the ring or if any part of your body other than the soles of your feet touch the floor, you lose.

Wrestlers are split into hierarchies based on their performance.  They can move up or down within those depending how well they do in each tournament with one exception.  The winner of the tournament is crowned Yokozuna (Grand Champion).  Once that happens, you're a Yokozuna for life.  However, if your performance begins to slip, you are expected to retire.

Winning brings with it some fantastic rewards.  Aside from fame, you also get prizes from different sponsors that include giant casks of sake, chesnuts, etc.  You also win money and there's always the occasional sponsorship.

The matches themselves are fun to watch, but they end so quickly you need to make sure you don't blink.  The real fun for us though was watching the people with the ringside seats.  You may have realized from the picture below that there are no ropes to keep a wrestler from falling into the crowd.  This happens quite a bit.  In fact, if you sit close to the ring itself you're not allowed to bring food or drinks.  Seeing 350 pound giants fall on a family of four can be relatively entertaining if you're in the right mindset.

When the day's matches are over, there's a closing ceremony where all the high ranked wrestlers perform a final ritual.  Then everyone heads home.

All that said, if you've never attended then going for a day is worth doing.  Matches begin early (8:30 a.m. most days) and go until after 6:00 p.m.  The better wrestlers get the later matches so the stadium tends to fill up as the day goes on.  Bring some yen so you can buy snacks and beer and allow a few hours to get the full effect.  Also, we found that there was an English radio broadcast of the event, so bring a portable radio with headphones if you have one and you can hear the call in real time.

Next week, we'll explore some of Tokyo's public parks and hang out with some cats.  Be sure to join me!

Exploring Japan Vol. 20 - Miyajima

This week we'll wrap up the part of our trip that took us south of Tokyo.  When I lived in Iwakuni, there were two places easily accessible by train.  The best was Hiroshima, with its modern ginza and professional baseball team.  The other was no slouch though.  It was the island of Itsukushima and the small town of Miyajima.

Funny enough, Miyajima technically doesn't exist anymore.  It was annexed by the city of Hatsukaichi in 2005, however people still refer to it by the old name.  It sits 20 minutes outside of Hiroshima by train, however that only gets you to the ferry station.  A ten minute ferry ride puts you at the dock and immediately you're beset by roving deer.

At first, you'll think they're fantastic but if you sit back and watch them awhile, you'll see their mercenary tactics at work.  They travel in packs of two or three and while one distracts people by acting cute, the others start eating anything they can get hold of. In this case, even Karen's shirt.

One of my favorite things about this trip was watching a woman get ambushed from behind by a deer who walked away with most of an ice cream cone.  She had her attention on the one in front of her and before she knew it, the one in back of her had bitten the top off her cone.

The town of Miyajima is known for a few things beside aggressive deer.  First, and most impressive, is their giant torii.  

It sits in the water at high tide, but when the water moves out, you can walk right down to the base.  In fact, you'll find locals digging for clams, crabs and other fresh seafood.  

It's a truly amazing structure and once you get close to it, the sheer size of the trees the builders used will floor you.  

  

The second awesome sight is the floating Buddhist temple.  It doesn't really float, however when the tide is in, it sits directly over the water.  

The third thing they're known for is not a sight at all.  It's a taste.  Miyajima is the place to get the best bean cakes in all of Japan (in my humble opinion).  These are fresh sponge cakes that are filled with sweet red bean paste. 

If you don't like red bean paste, don't worry.  There are at least ten different flavors that range from chocolate and vanilla to banana and berry flavors.  There are multiple stores along the route that all make these fresh and many have their own proprietary flavors so be sure to shop around.  They are well worth your yen.  You can even pick up special Kit Kat flavors that are specific to Miyajima.

If you follow the main path through town, you'll find yourself walking in a beautiful wooded area.  It will take you over bridges and by Shinto shrines that are nestled back among the trees.  

It makes for a gorgeous hike but if you're not in the mood, you can catch a bus up to the cable car at the end of the path. 

For a small fee, you can take that up to a point on Mt. Misen where you'll get fabulous views of the inland sea and the small islands that dot it.  

It's from this point you can also find the trail up to the temple that houses the eternal flame I wrote about in the second post of this series.  If you're really ambitious, you can continue on from there and hike all the way to the top of the mountain.  

The only thing you need to be aware of is that the ferry does stop running relatively early, so if you're not off the mountain on time, you'll be finding a place to stay on the island.

Karen and Lil had a mixed response to visiting Miyajima.  While they liked the town and the deer, they didn't like hiking in the heat and humidity.  The selfie above was taken to show me just how much they hated trying to get to the eternal fire temple.  They turned back about a quarter mile from the temple itself and snapped this about ten minutes after they left me.  They snapped another that included a hand gesture but I'm trying to keep this blog semi-PC.  

Still, I can't help but recommend visiting the island AND making the hike.  It's one of my favorite places in all of Japan and ranks a solid number two in my top three most beautiful and peaceful places to visit. Number one would be the mountain trail I wrote about in the Iwakuni post and number three would be Meiji Shrine in Tokyo.

Next week, we'll finally talk about sumo, because I feel obligated and a few people have asked about it.  

See you then!

Exploring Japan Vol. 19 - Hiroshima

As I mentioned last week, our first trip to Japan as a family involved a four day excursion down to my old stomping grounds in Iwakuni.  Iwakuni itself is a small city and there’s not a lot there for tourists besides the Kikkou Park area. That’s one of the reasons we opted to stay in Hiroshima and branch out from there.

The other reason is that Hiroshima has, as you probably know, a remarkable and tragic history of its own.  If you are going to travel to this part of Japan, you owe it to yourself to visit even though it will be a sobering experience in some respects.  When I lived in Iwakuni, I would make the trip down to Hiroshima about twice a year. Once was always to attend a Hiroshima Carps game (especially when ex-Atlanta Brave Bob Horner would come to town with the Yakult Swallows) and again around Christmas time in order to shop at some of the stores in the local ginza.

The main draw for most visitors though is Peace Park.  This is ground zero for the first atomic bomb detonated in a wartime engagement. The park itself houses The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It’s an amazing journey that takes you through pre-war Hiroshima, the dropping of the bomb, the aftermath and the eventual recovery.  This is the kind of place that puts everything into a perspective that you may not have heard before, while at the same time goes to great pains to be fair in the telling. You’ll see artifacts that will haunt you for the rest of your life, but I still say it’s important that you go.  It’s the kind of thing that puts an abstract idea like “atomic explosion” into a very real and tangible thing that you can easily wrap your mind around.

I did not take any photos inside the museum as it just didn’t feel right.  

After the visit, we walked around the park on a fittingly gray and rainy day.  There are markers showing exactly where ground zero was. There is the eternal flame which (if you recall from an earlier post) was lit from the fire that’s been burning for 1,200 years on Mt. Misen. There are memorials to the children who lost their lives here. These have large chains of paper cranes on display.

One of the most fascinating, and again sobering, things in Peace Park is the A-Bomb Dome.

It's the remains of what used to be a government building and is the only structure still left standing from the time of the atomic blast. At the time, it was one of the few buildings in the area with a metal framework and it sat very close to the center of the blast.

It was kept intact as a memorial to the 70,000 people who lost their lives in the detonation as well as the tens of thousands who died from radiation related illnesses after.

After touring the museum and spending a couple of hours wandering the area, we were ready to lighten things up a bit. Here’s where I decided to try to find my way back to the ginza I used to frequent thirty years ago. To my wife and daughter’s surprise, I led us right to it.  

To be honest, I was kind of surprised myself. There wasn’t much to point out here, other than it’s a fine place to grab a quick meal.  There is also a department store on one end that has a Tower Records at the top if you’re into that sort of thing.  I am but I'm more inclined to hit up the second hand stores than a Tower.

The locals absolutely love their baseball team, and I used to love watching them also, so I was happy to see that Vans has struck a deal with the Hiroshima Carps to provide Carps branded shoes. Of course, even their largest size wouldn't fit my giant feet.  

I also passed on buying the Carps branded katsu mix.

I just grabbed a hat instead.

For the next two days, we found ourselves coming back to the ginza each night to eat after our day excursions.  We searched every nook and cranny of it for things to do, but to be honest, there wasn’t a lot except for people watching.  

If you’re into that sort of thing, then head to the McDonald’s, get something small (to justify your seat) and go upstairs to the window. There you’ll get a view of everyone wandering the ginza and your daughter can start obsessing over strange Japanese boys who seem to be cosplaying.

Next week, I’ll wrap up the southern jaunt by showing you a little more of Miyajima.  

See you then!

Exploring Japan Vol. 18 - Return to Iwakuni

For those of you reading this who are a little older, I have a question. Was there ever a place you lived that you feel helped form the person you became?  If so, was it someplace far from home and family?

If you said yes to both of those questions, then you’ll probably appreciate this post.  There is nowhere I’ve lived that changed me more as a human being than my three years spent in Iwakuni, Japan.  I made friends there I still keep in touch with to this day. I also learned a lot of valuable lessons and made a lot of mistakes.  It was a time that I will never forget but which the years have blurred to the point of romanticizing things a bit.

I’d always told my wife that if given the chance, I’d love to take her to Iwakuni just so she could see where I lived and what life is like there. That said, I never truly thought I’d ever get that chance, so imagine my surprise when we realized that we could make it happen. On our first trip to Japan as a family, we carved out five days for a jaunt via Shinkansen to the Hiroshima area.  

Iwakuni sits about 45 minutes away right up against the inland sea and while we were only in Iwakuni itself for a single day, it was enough. As a family, when we think back on that first trip, every single one of us ranks that day as one of the best we had.

In an earlier post, I mentioned visiting the tea region of Japan.  The day after that trip, we boarded the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. If you’ve never ridden on a bullet train, the best I can describe it is to say it’s like the world’s smoothest flight.  

First, they are ALWAYS on time. In fact, it’s to the minute most days, so don’t dare be late or you will be left. The seats are comfortable and roomy. There is a service that comes through offering beverages and meals.  You can get up and walk around whenever you feel like it and if you have Snapchat, you can take cool photos that use your location tracking on your phone to figure out how fast you’re going.

Yeah, that’s really freakin’ fast.  

The only bad thing is that the further south you go, the more tunnels there are on this route so instead of seeing more of the countryside, many times you only see cement walls or just blackness.  Still, it’s a pleasant ride overall and it’s easy to find yourself lulled to sleep.

Once in Hiroshima, we checked into our hotel and explored a bit.  I’ll go into that and our day trip to Miyajima in a separate post.  The third day there, we took the train down to Iwakuni. Now, when I lived there, it was courtesy of the U.S. Navy.  I was allowed to live off base with my friend Dave Adsit (a Marine) and we got a taste of what life was really like living in Japan.  I would have loved to have visited the base and then wandered outside the gates to find where I’d used to live, however we only had one day.  With time being such a factor, I wanted the girls to see my favorite place to visit in Iwakuni: Kintai Bridge and Iwakuni Castle.

Kintai bridge is a footbridge that crosses the Nishiki River.  It was originally built in 1673 and while parts of it have been washed away from time to time (the last one being 1950), it’s been rebuilt in its original fashion and is a true sight to behold.  

Five arches rise and fall across a line of stone bases. They lead you from a city street into a beautiful park (Kikkou Park) where you can spend an entire day exploring.

We crossed over and wandered through the area where the diving birds are kept.  These birds are used to catch fish and this area was known for this activity back in the days when the bridge was built.  

From there, we took the cable car up to Iwakuni Castle. What sits atop the mountain now is a recreation. The original castle fell centuries ago by an official order in 1615.  

The bridge used to lead to the main gate. The castle recreation houses a museum that shows off artifacts that have been uncovered in the area. You’ll find samurai swords, armor and even bits of the roof from the original castle.  If you go up to the top level, you’ll find telescopes and it was through one of these I was able to see the barracks I used to live in when I first moved to Iwakuni.

I was also able to see the television/radio station I used to work at while I lived there.

I need to give a special shout out to my wife for helping me manipulate the smartphone camera in the telescope lens in order to capture those pictures.

However, the real fun is in wandering the paths around the castle.  On the day we were there, it was windy and you could hear music in the thousands of leaves rustling around you.  

I took the girls to see the old well (which was one of my favorite places to see) and we wandered a little way down the paved mountain path.  It was here that I saw something I didn’t expect to find.

Years ago, I used to ride my bike to Kintai Bridge and then hike a steep path through the woods all the way up the mountain to the castle.  Every map I’d seen recently only showed a wide paved path that one could walk(or drive) up, but there was no sign of the trail I used to take.  

Yet here, right off that paved path, was an obvious trail. There was no sign marking it as the one down to the bottom, but I knew it was the same one.

I bid the girls goodbye and told them I’d meet them at the bottom.  They headed back to the cable car and I started down one of the steepest paths I’ve climbed in years.  However, I was completely alone. There wasn’t any sound around me but the wind in the trees and my own footsteps.  

Only once did I see any wildlife as a snake crossed the path in front of me. I was happy for that rather than catching one hanging from a branch like in this helpful sign tacked to a tree halfway down.

By the time I got to the bottom, I felt more peaceful than I’ve felt in ages.  

The last part of the path leveled out and led through this beautiful tunnel of green before opening up at the entrance to a Shinto Temple.  

I quickly paid my respects and then met the girls in the park. They’d discovered the wading pool and we all sat with our feet in the water and watched the local kids play around us.  

It was a magical day and one I’d love to repeat at some point.  For now, I’ll just feel lucky that I got the chance to do it again this time.

If you find yourself in the Hiroshima area, take a day to visit Iwakuni. Kikkou Park is a treasure and especially so during cherry blossom season.

Next week, we’ll talk a bit more about Hiroshima and how sometimes, my fifty-year-old memory is still sharp as a tack.

See you then!