Photo courtesy of Flickr
Our first Japanese train experience- with the high speed “Shinkansen” bullet train. We got to the station, checked into our “green car” (first class”) seats. What a way to travel. Huge seats, lots of legroom and nobody in the car. Evidently reserved seating is extra so most of the Japanese travel by ordinary class, non –reserved. Even ordinary class looked pretty decent.
Photo courtesy of Flickr
They go about 170 mph and nationwide/year-round; their arrival time is +/- 36 seconds. You can set your watch by the trains! The train went from Tokyo to Nagoya where we had to change to another line- not a bullet train, but every bit as nice.
We headed to the Japanese Alps to a town called Takayama. It’s a Japanese tourist town and we decided to splurge on our hotel by staying in a traditional Japanese style hotel called a “Ryokan”. For a mere $200 a night, we would get our room (shared bath) and breakfast and dinner.
We checked in- checked our shoes at the door and were given tiny plastic slippers. We were shown to our room, which had a tatami (reed) mat. Slippers have to come off before walking on the mats and then we were served tea and biscuits in our room.
We headed out to walk around the town. It was a beautiful little town- one of the few in Japan that’s managed to retain some of the old housing and charm. It was filled with tiny shops and museums and sake breweries. We quickly realized that we were not in Tokyo anymore- none of the signage was in English and we didn’t have a clue how to decipher the Japanese script. They have one of the most complex writing systems in the world- using three different scripts; they use the Chinese script, another known as hiragana and a simplified script known as katakana. Needless to say, we couldn’t figure out any of the signs and couldn’t find anything. To add to our frustration, no one spoke English so we were reduced to pointing to the Japanese word and hoping to get the right directions.
We met an interesting older man while we were munching down a corn dog on the street corner who talked to us about the youth of Japan – “it’s just as bad as the U.S”. Evidently youth violence is on the rise and they’re not following the traditional path of Japanese society.
We headed back to the hotel and our hostess once again showed us the bath. We were getting a sense that this “ryokan” experience was something we didn’t truly understand, so we went back to our room and started reading our guidebooks.
We learned a little bit about the room and a lot about the tradition of the ryokan. The interior of the room has an alcove (tokonoma) decorated with a scroll or other display. One side of the room has a cupboard with sliding doors for the bedding; the other side has sliding screens covered with rice paper that opened onto our veranda overlooking the river. In the middle of the room is a low table surrounded by cushions. When you check into your room, you are asked to sign the register.
They provide a tray with a towel, cotton robe (yukata) and belt (obi) which you are supposed to put on before you take your bath. It’s important to remember to wear the left side over the right- since the reverse order is used for dressing the dead. At this point, we started to get a bit nervous about our ability to handle this experience without major screw-ups. We really started to get nervous when we pulled out the yukatas and realized that a lot of John would be exposed given the Japanese robe sizing.
Before dinner and dressed in your yakata, you are shown to the bath. Even bathing has a specific ritual to it. You are shown into a dressing room, place your clothes in baskets and go into your private bath. On one wall is a shower, soap, loofahs, etc. On the other side is a large tub filled with hot water. The rules are: douse, wash, rinse then get in the tub to soak and meditate, come out to soap and scrub, rinse and get in again. It’s important not to get any soap or dirt in the tub. Thank god for guidebooks!
We both did the bathing thing and headed to dinner in our yakatas (John wore shorts underneath- a wise move).
Dinner was laid out on a low table- spectacularly presented – 12 bowls and dishes of sushi, sashimi, miso soup, tempura, pickles, vegetables in vinegar, dried fish and the specialty of the region- hida beef. While it wasn’t our favorite cuisine, we managed to try everything, helped down with local beer. We also managed to get through without major embarrassment (except for the rice which we put in the hida beef bowl instead of in the rice bowl which mortified our hostess).
We returned to our room to find the table removed and mattresses spread on the tatami mats with rock hard pillows and a quilt on top.
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