Zoe and Ashley's Visit: Part I

I had been looking forward to Zoe and Ashley's visit since before I ever set foot in Japan. They bought their tickets last spring a few months before I left, and unknowable to them, ended some of the panic I was feeling about moving to Asia sight-unseen. Knowing that they would be here for my Birthday, Christmas and New Years made the whole idea bearable and assured me that the holidays wouldn't be so tough away from my family. Now, understanding all this, you can imagine the freak out that I had when Zoe said this to me a mere 12 hours before I they were scheduled to land at Narita: "Japan Air is not honoring our flight from Chicago to Tokyo and they won't release it to Delta to help us, so I'm not sure we are coming at all." Luckily, I had a house filled with people so I couldn't burst into tears as I would have otherwise. It was a long 24 hours before I got the call I wanted, "We're on the plane!"

They got in at 3:00 on Monday afternoon, which happened to be my last day of work. My sweet friend Matt offered to go pick them up at the airport while I was at work and bring them back to my apartment. I finished work at 5 and raced home, only to run smack into them at the train station as they were coming up the escalator. They arrived on the nastiest day I have witnessed in Japan so far. It was cold, windy as hell and raining sideways. By the time we finished the ten minute walk from the station to my house, two of my three umbrellas suffered the inside-out death and we were all soaked and chattering when we came through the front door. Welcome to Japan.

I had been planning their eleven days in Japan for months, and since they were a day late, they were not allowed the all important jet-lag time. As soon as they walked in the door, it was a quick cup of sake and then into the showers. We had dinner reservations in Tokyo with 8 of my friends and an all-night party train planned for the last leg of my 30th Birthday celebration.

Their first glimpse of Tokyo: Shibuya Station, Hachiko Crossing.

I think they liked it.

We went to dinner at a great izakaya in Shibuya. It looked like a Japanese garden inside. To get to your table, or to the bathrooms for that matter, you walked on stepping stones through a fish pond. You could never build awesome things like hallway Koi ponds in the US because of the super litigious society and the resulting excessive code that chokes every designer before they begin to sketch. The food was equally adventurous. They had an English menu, but some things are lost in translation and I wasn't surprised when no one ordered the 'grilled fish guts tube style'. Zoe picked a winner with the spicy beef and rice, but Ashley was not so lucky with her assorted chicken organs on sticks happy meal. Luckily, there was enough food on the table to go around, and we were mostly on a liquid diet that night anyway.

Then it was off in Taxis to Shinjuku where we had a glass karaoke room reserved for us overlooking the chaos below. I think Zoe's reaction to the view summed up a feeling shared by most of us.

In the absence of a pole, improvise with a window mullion.

I know Karaoke has major stigmas attached in the US, and before I lived here, I shared in the 'would rather go home and watch c-span' mentality, but it's just different here. For starters, you get your own private room with just your friends, so the humiliation is limited to people who have already come to love you for other reasons. Second, it's really not about whether or not you can sing (thank God) but how much heart you put into your performance, and most importantly, your ability to pick a crowd pleasing song so that you don't sing alone. Lastly, if you can't sing, you should at least be funny. This is why my most popular selection is always Macy Gray's, I try. A few cigarettes and a white Russian and I am a dead ringer, or so my friends who already love me have said. Matt won the MVP this night, even over Zoe who actually sang Whitney Houston beautifully, with his ear splitting rendition of the most infamous of Bee Gee's songs. The combination of his high pitched AH-HA-HA-HA staying alive's combined with his deadly serious expression has us all on the floor. Well done Matt, it will be tough to beat.
My recollection gets a bit blurry right around 4:00, but I do remember being impressed with Zoe and Ash. They were troopers. Not only did they not yawn once, but they were the last two standing not long after our last drinks when watched the sun rise on Glen and Steff's Balcony thirty-three stories up over the city we had just finished painting red.

Ohaiyo Tokyo at dawn

And around 3:00 that afternoon when we woke up. Not so genki.

Catch the subway home and... crash.

We didn't have long to recover as we were due on the Shinkansen (bullet train) the following morning (Christmas Eve) to go to Hakone, a hot springs resort area at the base of Mt. Fuji. As I've mentioned before, the Shinkansen is the way to travel and the awesomeness was not lost on my friends. We caught a quick glimpse of Fuji from the window of the train, but by the time we had our cameras ready it was hiding behind a closer mountain chain again. We figured we had all weekend to gaze lovingly at the iconic giant of Japan. How wrong we were.

On the Shinkansen

There was some confusion as to which hotel we had reserved, as two different places were listed on our itinerary. We went with the first one and guessed wrong. The travel agency paid our way via cab to the second hotel, Nampu-so, in the Hakone-Yumoto region. The only real problem is that I had researched the route to see Fuji from the first hotel, so when we arrived a half hour later at our new digs, I had to rely solely on asking questions in Japanese to make a new plan. The first order of business was lunch, just across the river from our hotel. It was a standard Japanese noodle house, with no English on the menu, so I read what I could and ordered for all three of us. I got lucky.

Lunch was good.

We decided to wander a bit aimlessly for the afternoon and see what we could see off the beaten path. In this regard we were wildly successful. We got to see some serious backwoods Japan that at times so closely resembled North Georgia, I kept warping back about 6 years in my mind. Six years ago Zoe and I were living together in Atlanta, and on weekends we would frequently go back to her home town in Rabun County, Georgia. Rabun County is where they filmed Deliverance, no joke, look it up. So, it's mountainous and has lots of beautiful gorges and waterfalls, but some strange things to behold as well, like people partying with a keg in an overturned rusted out school bus, etc...

This section Japan in latitudinally aligned with North Georgia so the landscape is familiar, and with all the waterfalls and hiking trails it felt almost identical. Throw in the fact that it was Zoe walking in front of me (wearing the same damn light blue coat) and you could see where I'd have trouble keeping my chronology straight.

I like this photo of me because it reminds me of my favorite DuChamp painting, only I am clothed and ascending the staircase, but still, it's cool.

Waterfall, Shinto Shrine, Koi pond, Hakone


Underwater camera awesomeness

Pathway to the temple in Hakone

Not long after we veered off the touristy path, we came across a seriously creepy little town, as first evidenced by this terrifying statue of a tanuki. As we wandered further in, some of the locals told us about a temple that was worth seeing. On our way we witness two roadside fires burning unattended and a very large man walking briskly with an axe or a hoe or something over his shoulder. There were sounds of construction coming from all directions, but no one in sight. This town was seriously eerie. When Ashley went to the bathroom and failed to return, Zoe and I were convinced we were staring in a horror flick so naturally we headed for the cemetery and started videotaping.

After exploring for the afternoon, we headed back to the hotel for a hot springs (onsen) soak before dinner. I had been to an onsen once before in Shikoku with Liz and Joe, so I wasn't as nervous this time around. Onsens are separated by sex, and swim suits are forbidden, so if you don't like being naked in front of friends and strangers, it's probably not for you. First, we scrubbed up at the shower stations making sure to get all the soap off, and then took a look at the lay of the land.

The hotel had a series of baths, four inside and three outside. They were all beautiful, but we all liked the look of the baths outside overlooking the mountain best. It had three pools all pouring into each other, a bamboo round basin at the top with benches under the water, then a square tiled pool, and at the bottom a free form rock pool at the edge of the plateau. We all agreed on our destination and tippy toed our happy naked asses right past the first five pools, out into the December air and splashed down into the last one. What we did not know is that the pools are designed to be done in sequence, with each pool being hotter than the last to gradually acclimate your body to the insane temperature of the last pool. We managed to stay in for about a minute and then climbed out and stood on the edge watching the steam pour off of our skin. Ashley made a quick crack about us having smoking hot bodies, but we were at 3,000 feet in December so it didn't last long. We figured out the right way of doing things soon after and headed back to our room when we were all soaked out.

Goofing around after the onsen

The Japanese style hotel, or Ryokan, was old and huge and filled with things we didn't understand, so naturally we loved it. When you stay in a Ryokan, generally you get one big room covered in tatami mat flooring (soft bamboo mats) on which you sit, sleep and eat depending on what time of day it is. For dinner, the staff set up a low table and served about 10 mini dishes each of varying unidentifiable fish products. Zoe hates fish, so her dinner consisted of rice, miso soup, and beer. She didn't seem all that displeased.

Staying in a Ryokan is a great experience for those of us used to American customer service. First your dinner is served in your room and it's presentation is not to be believed. This was our 'waitress' for lack of a better word and she chatted with us in half English half Japanese for a while before leaving us to eat. She told us to dial 7 on the phone when we were ready for our dished to be cleared and asked us what time we wanted to go to bed. We understood this a bit better later, when she came to set up our beds and tucked us in before bowing her way out of the room promising to wake us up early so we could go to Fuji.

In our yukatta (robes) checking out the spread

Miss Muffett on her tuffett

We awoke early Christmas morning and set out to finally get a good look at Fuji. After much language butchering at the train station, I bought us each a ticket up the switchback railroad, a ticket for the cable car transfer and a ticket for the gondola that would take us to the highest point next to Fuji for some good photo opportunities. About an hour later we were on the gondola cruising up a mountain ridge wondering aloud when we were going to see Fuji. We saw the top of a very steep ridge approaching but couldn't see anything beyond it so we waited as the rope car made it's way over the top. What we encountered on the other side was a little less like the serene snow capped Fuji framed between pink blossoming cherry trees I envisioned, and a lot closer to Mordor. The wind increased ten fold the moment we rose above the ridge that was blocking our view. The gondola was swaying back and forth violently revealing pitching views of the sulfur fields that lay at the base of Fuji and some nasty looking clouds that would occasionally engulf us and reduce visibility to zero.

Sulfur mines

For a few fleeting seconds the clouds cleared and we could see Fuji, but with all the holding on and screaming, no one had the presence of mind to take any good pictures. At the end of the rope line was a restaurant perched on a cliff. We sat down, ordered a beer to calm our nerves and were contemplating lunch when the manager came over and asked if we spoke Japanese. When I said yes, he explained that we may not want to stay long as the winds has been increasing all afternoon and they were close to the point at which they shut down the rope car, leaving us stuck in the restaurant for the night with the windows rattling. No thanks. We chugged our beers, bought a bottle of sake for the ride down, took a deep breath and got back in the gondola. Ten minutes later we were back over the ridge and the world was normal again: birds chirping, sun shining, bamboo swaying in the breeze. It was all a bit unreal. When my students asked me what I thought of Fuji, I found it was the perfect opportunity to teach them the word 'intense'.

The only pic we took, from the restaurant in a moment of decent visibility.

To be continued....