Japan / Thailand Part III: Sumo, Kyoto, and Bob Weir

Sun 1/11

This entry is a continuation of my Japan/Thailand trip summary, which starts here.

This was the day I was leaving Tokyo, bound for Kyoto on the high speed shinkansen train. But first, I had one more tour - sumo! There was a sumo tournament going on while I was there, but I wasn't able to get a ticket - sumo tournaments are a hot ticket. Instead, I booked a tour to visit a sumo training gym. This was an early tour, starting at 7:45 AM. I checked out of my hotel and grabbed a taxi to Ryogoku Station, where my idea was to put my bags in a locker while I went on my sumo tour. I got there in plenty of time, so I took time to grab coffee and a nearly inedible donut-looking pastry at 7-11. Since I figured I was already at the meeting point, I took my time sipping my coffee (standing by the door of the 7-11, of course, since one doesn't walk and eat/drink in Japan). When I finally went to find the exact meeting point "by the elevators at Exit A-3" I was perplexed to find that there was no Exit A3. I asked at the information desk and was told that I was at the wrong place, as there are in fact two Ryogoku Stations. I was at the Japan Rail Ryogoku Station, but needed to be at the Ryogoku subway station, about a 5-10 minute walk away (JR and subway lines are highly intertwined, and the distinction between them remains a mystery to me). I took off running to try to get to the right station. The Japanese are also very punctual, and sure enough, at exactly 7:45 AM I got a text from the tour guide asking where I was. I wound up being four minutes late, and we easily caught up with the rest of the group, which consisted mainly of a group of Cornell students, all of whom were coincidentally from Valerie's home town of Great Neck, and were visiting Japan on their way to a semester in Australia.

Japan's newest bantamweight sumo wrestler

Everybody was sumo fighting

The train station has sumo posters

Watching the workout at the “Training Stable” was interesting. Obviously, the wrestler were following a pre-determined routine - as not a word was spoken the whole time. The various wrestlers mostly went through solo exercies, standing on one leg, shuffling across the floor in a squat, hitting a big wooden tree trunk-like thing, etc. In parallel there was a continuous series of wrestling bouts, plus this thing where one wrestler would push another across the ring. Also, they did some recognizable exercises such as push-ups. 

When we came in they gave us each a binder with info about sumo and a list of the stable’s wrestlers. There were a couple of teenage trainees, including a 16 year old who weighed “only” 200 lbs. Most of the wrestlers were in their late 20’s to early 30’s, and weighed 250-350 lbs. The oldest wrestler, about 40 years old, was losing his hair - the top-knot in his hair had migrated to the back of his head - I feel your pain, brother.

At one point a guy identified by the gym staff as a “big master and former wrestler” came in and sat and watched the wrestlers, occasionally barking comments.

Finally, when done we posed for pix, then I walked back to the railroad station to retrieve my bags. Ryogoku is the sumo part of town, and on my way back to the station I passed the stadium where the tournament was going on. As I was entering the station I saw a couple of sumo wrestlers getting off the subway, hair up in the top-knot, and dressed in robes. I guess sumos on the subway is a normal thing in Japan!

Statue outside the sumo stadium

Banners at the sumo stadium

It was at the Ryogoku station that I got the news of the death of Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. For a guy who plays in a Grateful Dead tribute band and travels in the world of Deadheads, this was a big deal. A really big deal, as it marked the end of an era - remnants of the Dead had continued touring as Dead & Company for 30 years since Jerry Garcia's untimely passing, but Weir's death brought an end to any echt Dead line-up. So, this was big news at a macro scale, but it was also going to affect my trip more than I realized over the next several days.

Still digesting the news, I took the train to Tokyo station, where I caught the Shinkansen. I've taken high speed rail in Europe and it feels kind of special - dedicated station, security checkpoint, nice meal on the train. It feels like a nicer version of air travel. In Japan, on the other hand, high speed trains are no big deal. There's a shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto every fifteen minutes or so. It's just another commuter train. Kind of strange how this exceptional thing is so normal. I'd read in advance that you should pick up lunch before getting on the train, so I bought a bento box consisting of  wagyu beef, omelet, and rice - the only choice which didn't feature pork or weird sea creatures. I had also read that the train offers a chance to see Mt. Fuji. It was a clear day and the view was spectacular.

Strava says we were going 177 MPH

On the shinkansen

Mt. Fuji, seen from the train

Bento box lunch

The morning had been warm, but by the time I got to Kyoto the weather had changed; it was freezing and windy. Fortunately, my hotel was right across from the station. I decided to go out and see one temple, To-Ji, a UNESCO heritage sight. I froze my butt off, but it's a beautiful Buddhist complex including Japan’s tallest pagoda. To-Ji has been a shrine since the 7th Century, but the current building dates to 1600’s (previous ones burned down). I stayed at To-Ji almost until closing at 5, and decided after looking at a bunch of statues that I needed to educate myself a little bit on Buddhism & the statues (who’s the one with all the arms? Which one is the Buddha? Why are thee multiple Buddhas? Who’s that on an elephant, on an ox, standing on what looks like watermelons, etc.?).

Procession of monks at To-Ji

To-Ji temple

While my hotel in Tokyo had been fun and funky, the Kyoto hotel is much fancier, with more amenities including a lounge with coffee (it has decaf! as well as hot matcha), as well as a traditional Japanese onsen, or bath house. I’ve been a little coffee starved compared with my usual consumption level and so upon my return from To-Ji I went down and immediately had a decaf latte followed by a decaf black coffee (hey, the cups are small) while I researched dinner on Happy Cow, which reported that there’s a new branch of a delicious sounding vegetarian ramen restaurant right in the train station on the 12th floor. I went to look for it, but the train station is very complex, with connections to multiple buildings, none of which has a 12th floor. I went up to the restaurant floor in the adjacent mall (which wasn’t the 12th floor), but the restaurants all looked too fancy, and they all seemed to have waits. Likewise, the restaurants in the station itself were also crowded and they were all too fast-foody. Finally, after almost an hour of wandering around, I discovered something of a food hall in the basement of the mall building. Lots of sushi, sea creatures, meats/seafood where I couldn’t identify the animal or the body part. But there was a grocery store down there, where I bought a pre-made salad with chicken, a package of cashews, granola, and soy milk, and that was my dinner. Then I passed out for half an hour (it had been a long day). When I woke up I went down and got yet another cup of coffee (hey, the cups are small), then came back up to refill my pills and write up my notes from the day.

Around bedtime I received an email from The Hamilton in DC asking whether Great Northern would be interested in taking part in a Bob Weir tribute show they were trying to pull together very quickly. His goal was to have the show within a few days, though he was also considering the first weekend in February. I explained my situation - that I was half a world away but that I was sure the band would be interested. What followed was a long series of emails and texts back and forth with the band and the venue, until finally about 1 AM my time I connected the venue with one of the other members of the band who was in the right time zone to continue the conversation, and I went to bed.

Mon 1/12

I woke up to lots of accumulated messages about the gig. It was looking like it was going to happen, which was great, but I was bummed that it was going to take place while I was away.

Kyoto is a city of many classic shrines and temples, of which perhaps the best known is Fushimi Inari. This shrine to Inari, Shinto god of rice, is known for its thousands of vermilion red torii gates, which straddle a set of trails leading all the way up to the peak of the mountain. A guidebook suggested that you can just do the lower trails and get the feel of the place, but since my time was my own I decided to hike all the way to the top. Passing through gate after gate after gate is sort of meditative on its own, particularly as you pass through pretty woods, occasionally encountering small shrines and striking vistas. It was quite crowded near the bottom, but as expected, the further up the mountain you got the more it thinned out. Strava says I climbed about 700 ft. 

I have a million pictures of the gates

 

Foxes, associated with Inari, guard the place

View of Kyoto

The larger temples and shrines typically have an assemblage of vendors around the entrance. On my way out of Fushimi Inari I grabbed a snack of some stir-fried noodles for 500 Yen (about three bucks) then hopped the subway to Kiyomizu-dear temple. The noodles weren't quite a full lunch, so I grabbed a sandwich at a Vietnamese banh mi place I passed on the walk from the subway to the temple. 

What can I tell you - another beautiful temple, another set of great views.

Kiyomizu-dera temple

Pagoda at Kiyomizu-dera

People in traditional garb

Another temple up on high - great views

Geishas at the temple

By this point I was feeling tired - hadn’t slept well, so after strolling Sannanzaka Street (another traditional shopping street), I headed back to the hotel and napped.

In the evening I went over to the Gion, which is Kyoto's traditional entertainment district. It's where to this day you can see geisha entertaining guests. It's also, I realized, the model for what each and every Japanese restaurant in the United States looks like. But to tell you the truth, it was underwhelming. I was expecting a lively entertainment district, but it's really just a couple of blocks of quiet restaurants. One of the things you miss out on traveling solo is fine dining. The Gion's restaurants are all somewhat upscale - not the kind of places I ever feel like going to on my own. Instead, I stopped and got soy milk ramen (which was really good!) at a vegetarian ramen joint. 

The Gion at night. Maybe it's livelier in the warmer weather

While wandering I happened on an Irish pub - very much an anachronism in Kyoto! The bartender was from Rockville, Maryland, of all places. He's been tending bar as he worked on his Ph.D. in marine biology at Kyoto University (he had recently successfully defended his dissertation!). While the bartender was a Yank, the customers were more authentically Irish: two parents with young adult children. I hung out and had a Guiness, but when a group of boisterous young Australian rugby players came in, I left and took the bus home. I've got to say, the subways in Japan are great, but I really don't like the buses. While they run on time, my experience is that they're crowded, slow, and just generally unpleasant.

This was just some random temple I passed on the way to the bus stop - that's Kyoto

Irish bar in the Gion

Soy milk ramen

Tuesday 1/13

Wow. Not only is the Bob Weir tribute show back home happening, it's become a big deal. The Hamilton released 650 tickets (Free show), all of which were quickly taken. I woke up to an Inbox full of messages from people looking for a way in to the show. I spoke with Valerie, who was visiting our friend Gail and who had to suffer through a dinner of spicy vegetarian black bean chili, which was four things Valerie doesn't like: spicy, vegetarian, black bean, and chili. After my call to Valerie out of nowhere I got a massive nosebleed. I got it stopped once, but then it started up again just as I was getting into the shower. By the time I finally got it to stop the hotel looked like a crime scene, with blood everywhere: on the duvet, on the towels, on the bathmat, in the tub - everywhere!

I had discovered a French bakery in one of the buildings attached to the station, and had a nice breakfast in the room of yogurt and a pastry I had picked up the previous day at the bakery. The bakery is kind of funny: while it featured typical French pastries, such as croissants, some adaptations to the Japanese palate had also sneaked onto the menu, such as green tea croissants, matcha bread, and bread with bacon and edamame.

I took the subway to Arashiyama, which turned out to be my favorite neighborhood - lots of cool little shops and a very casual, funky feel. The town has been there since the Heian period (794-1185), and today remains popular with tourists and locals alike. It's at the western edge of Kyoto, but feels like it's far from the city. My first destination was the Arashiyama Monkey Park - across the river, then about a mile hike up Mount Arashiyama. When you get to the top there's a small building and a whole lot of Japanese macaque monkeys.  The monkeys are wild, but they hang around because they get fed, and apparently they've all been given names by the staff, so I guess they're kind of semi-wild at this point.

Wild monkeys

Kyoto from Arashiyama (my hotel was near the Kyoto Tower, center)

Wild monkey

The signs had comically bad English

 translations

It started to sprinkle rain a little bit, and needless to say my raincoat was back in the hotel room, so I headed back down the path and headed for the other sights of Arashiyama. I visited the iconic bamboo grove, where wild bamboo grows to incredible heights. Of course I visited another temple, Tenryu-Ji, the head temple of the Tenry-ji branch of Zen Buddhism. There's always another temple to visit. You want a Zen garden? The one at Tenryu-Ji is kind of the original, dating back as it does to the 14th century.

Also, I made it to another of my must-see destinations, the Rilakkuma Cafe. Rilakkuma is a Japanese fictional character, kind of like Hello Kitty, except whereas Hello Kitty is from Sanrio, Rilakkuma is from San-X. I love a country which has multiple companies in the business of creating cutesy characters. My brother and I are both Rilakkuma fans (thanks to having watched the Netflix Rilakkuma and Kaoru series) and this was a place I had to visit. I got a snack of ice cream, which came with a Rilakkuma-shaped cookie on top (upstairs at the cafe there's much more Rilakkuma-themed food, but I didn't go there), and I browsed the store and picked up a few little souvenirs. I strolled the downtown and for lunch had a “set” of fried chicken, rice, miso soup. It was freshly made, and really good!

As I mentioned, my hotel had an onsen. Onsens are traditional Japanese bathouses. Traditionally, they're found at hot springs and are places for bathing and relaxation in natural hot mineral water. I'm guessing that an urban hotel onsen isn't fed by mineral springs, but I really don't know. Here's the thing about onsens: you bathe in them completely naked. There's a ritual (of course there's a ritual, this is Japan we're talking about). You leave all your clothes in the changing room, bringing only a small hand towel with you into the bath area. It's OK is you use the hand towel for privacy, but you don't have to. Also, traditionally, you don't put the towel down when you get into the water; rather, you put it on your head - but I didn't see anyone doing that. When you enter the bathing you first go sit down in a shower booth and give yourself a good shower. Only then can you go into the onsen pool.

I decided that heck, I wasn't going to be the hung up American sheepishly hiding my privates behnd a hand towel. I strode proudly into that onsen like I was John Travolta walking down 86th Street in the opening of Saturday Night Fever, except I wasn't eating pizza. And I wasn't wearing any clothes. There were only two other guys in there (yes, the onsens are gender-segregated), one in the pool and one showering off afterwards. I had a good soak. By the time I was finished, the other guys had left. I dipped my feet into the cold pool (I'm not one for cold plunges), then joined one other guy in the sauna, which was the hottest freaking sauna I've ever experienced. So hot it actually melted my eyeglasses. I stayed in there only three minutes (limitations related to my heart issues), but boy, I had a good schvitz. Then I showered off and headed back to the locker room. All in all, nude bathing wasn't nearly as weird as I had expected. 

[Sorry, no onsen pictures]

After resting back in my room for a bit I headed to Teamlab Biovortex, an immersive experience sort of place. Teamlab operates a number of such places in varies Japanese cities. BioVortex is a new one and supposedly one of the best, so I bypassed their Tokyo locations in favor of this one. Sad to say, I was a little disappointed. Maybe it's because I've ben to plenty such immersive experience things before. There were some very cool interactive elements to it, such as a wall you drew on with an electronic pens, which affected the behavior of little animated characters projected onto the wall. There were even some real -world non-computer driven interactive bits, like a room filled with big clouds of floating soap bubble like stuff. And of course, there was a theme - kinesthetic learning. The idea of the place was to get people moving and interacting. But somehow it fell a little flat with me.

 

This was the end of the Japan leg of my visit, save for a night at an airport hotel, but by the time I was done, didn’t feel like hunting down a “farewell dinner”. I just ate cereal in my room, and packed my bags.

Arashiyama scene

Arashiyama scene

Rilakkuma character-themed food

At the bamboo grove

Bamboo grove

Tenryu-Ji

Tenryu-Ji

Gardens at Tenryu-Ji

Here I am with Rilakkuma and his friends Korilakkuma and Kiiroitori

Rilakkuma ice cream

Rolls Royce flare grafted onto a Daihatsu Midget van

Teamlab BioVortex

Hotels in Japan provide robes and/or pajamas. These are my Kyoto PJs.

Weds 1/14

This was my last day in Japan, and my original plan had been to spend the day in the nearby city of Osaka, then take the shinkansen back to Tokyo, but I decided to just stay in Kyoto for that last day instead, as there was still plenty to see there and it was just less of a logistical hassle.

Truth be told, I started the day in a funk. Back home it was Tuesday evening and Great Northern was just getting started on the gig of a lifetime at The Hamilton. I had made the gig happen, and I wasn’t there. I kept telling myself that if the biggest problem in my life was that I had a conflict between the trip of a lifetime and the gig of a lifetime, then my life was actually pretty good. I watched a little of the live stream while I took the subway to Kinkaku-Ji, the "Golden Pavilion". Yes, another temple! It's a beautiful building and grounds, particularly striking as the temple building is covered in gold - but unfortunately you can’t go inside the temple itself. 

Checking out the stream of Great Northern performing at The Hamilton

Kinkaku-Ji - truly gorgeous

Wider shot

From there I took the train to Ni-Jo castle. Yes, I visited something other than a temple/shrine! Ni-Jo is a16th century castle which houses a shōgun's palace. Built by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first of the Tokugawa shōguns, who served as the model for the fictional Lord Toranaga main character of the TV series Shōgun (if you are old, you may remember the 1980 NBC version; younger people might remember the 2024 Hulu/FX series).

Ni-Jo Castle

A notable feature of the shōgun's palace is that by design every floorboard squeaks when you walk on it. This is by design; a so-called "nightingale floor" is an early warning system designed to detect intruders such as assassins or ninjas. How cool is it to be walking around on an actual ninja detection system? In any case, the continuous stream of tourists through the castle makes the place sound like a jungle of birds. Another notable feature is that the palace is drafty, cold, and sparse. If these shōguns were so powerful and rich, why couldn't they have afforded heat?? Of course you have to take off your shoes when you go inside, which only makes you feel colder. I think shōgun must be a contraction of "I'm shō gunna be shivering in this place". 

The first rooms, used as receiving rooms for those coming to meet with the shōgun, are decorated with large paintings of tigers, meant to intimidate visitors. They're actually a little funny. Since there weren't any actual tigers in Japan at the time, the paintings are somewhat off-base. None of them really look quite like tigers, and in fact some of the tigers pictured are actually leopards, since leopards were at the time thought to be the same thing as tigers. Alas, photography wasn't allowed inside the palace, so I have no pictures of the goofy tigers.

The place seems to consist primarily of meeting rooms where the shōgun would meet with various classes of people: samurai, administration officials, royalty, and so on. We didn't see much in the way of functional spaces like kitchens or living quarters - they must have existed, just not open to the public. Also, unlike European castles and palaces, the shōgun's palace was very sparse, in the Eastern style. The rooms all had extensive decoration in the form of paintings (such as the tigers), but other than that they were bare.

Palace grounds

Moat

After visiting the castle I took a break to warm up with green tea, then went by bus to the nearby Nishiki Market, a cool food hall that runs for blocks and blocks. Needless to say, all the food is Japanese, and if you want sushi, Wagyu and Kobe beef (all Kobe beef is Wagyu, but not all Wagyu is Kobe), tempura, weird sea creature delicacies (octopus stuffed with quail egg on a stick!), yakitori, soy milk donuts, and mochi, as well as kitchenware, etc., this is your place! I  sampled some high end sushi: four pieces of tuna (two otoro, two Akamai) at 800 ¥  ($5) per piece (for comparison, there's also there’s also $2/piece sushi there ). But gosh, it was amazing. I have never had a piece of meat melt in my mouth the way that sushi did, and such flavor! At another stall I also got vegetable tempura, which comes as one big fried ball (think The Blooming Onion) rather than individual pieces such as you'd usually get in the U.S. At one end Nishiki Market intersects with a regular shopping street. I browsed a little (and almost gave into a pair of Japan-only patterned Converse hi-tops), then I took the subway train back to Kyoto station. I stopped back at the French bakery, where I picked up some flatbreads as my meal for the train back to Tokyo (no bento box this time), had a last Tully's decaf, then picked up my bags from the hotel and headed for the Shinkansen high speed train back to Tokyo, then took the monorail out to Haneda airport, where I stayed in an airport hotel to make it easy to catch my flight the next day - in the morning I would be leaving for Thailand!

Nishiki Market

Octopus stuffed with quail egg

Food for sale

Amazing sushi

Vegetable tempura

Haneda airport hotel nightshirt

I've got to say that it was a little strange to be watching my Deadhead friends grieve via social media postings from far away. Meanwhile, whatever impact the end of the Grateful Dead era was having on me, I was all by myself so I just had to process it on my own. I had one friend reach out to me to see how I was handling it, which was nice. 

Japanese Toilet Addendum

Everything you've heard about the marvelous complexity of Japanese toilets is true. Here are a few examples of the airplane cockpit-like control panels of the darn things. Most every toilet I encountered, including in public washrooms, included an integrated bidet. Even for a guy with several engineering degrees, it was sometimes hard to figure out how to flush the darn things. 

Bangkok toilets were almost as feature-packed, but up in Chiang Mai the bidet feature was something that looked like a garden hose alongside the toilet. I never tried using the "bum guns", as my friend Peter called them. But toilets with adjustable heated seats, toilets which started a trickle of water when you sat down on them (what, to break the surface tension like in high diving?), toilets with ambient sound generators (I guess to mask any sounds associated with the use of the toilet) - it's amazing. I didn't encounter any toilets with ambient mood lighting, but I understand that they do exist. Also, in both countries, unlike in the U.S., stall doors offer full privacy, extending down to the floor and lacking the big gaps typical of American bathroom stall doors. Very civilized.

My personal favorite, featuring a built-in sound machine from noted synthesizer maker Roland Corp. 

Look at the complexity of the instructions!

This was in a Tully's Coffee, where the toilet also greeted you by automatically raising the seat lid like something out of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. I like the toilet seat cleaner idea.

Instructions for those accustomed to more traditional squatty toilets

A Note of Disappointment about Japanese 7-Elevens

I had heard about how amazing Japanese 7-Elevens (and their competitors Lawson and FamilyMart) are. The Japanese do love 7-Eleven, which I guess includes some element of national pride, since the chain is now Japanese-owned. 7-eleven stores are everywhere, and they're always busy. Yes, they're superior to their American counterparts, with better snacks (as well as many more octopus and squid-based snack foods), slightly better fresh food, and a wider range of merchandise. But are they as great as people say? No, in my opinion it's mostly hype. 7-Eleven in Japan is still just a convenience store, and I'll take an American WaWa over a Japanese 7-Eleven any day of the week. 

A snack not found in American 7-Elevens

Continue to the next part.