Moving on...

It's hard to believe, but our 2 months in Tokyo are nearly over. We leave Sat. Oct. 31 for a week in Sydney and then will be in Auckland, New Zealand from Nov. 8. (If you want to follow our itinerary, go to our very first blog entry in Aug.)

We don't know if we'll have internet until Auckland, so I may not be able to add to the blog til then. No tears, now! Patience is a virtue.

What can I say about Japan? I think it's pretty clear from the blog that WE ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. The people so kind and helpful, the scenery amazing, the refined culture full of beauty, the food delicious...I could go on and on, but I won't. Here are some parting shots:

Miles at the Pacific Ocean in Kamakura

Me in a palanquin at the Edo Tokyo Museum

Sayonara!

For Fish Lovers Only...

Boy, are we dedicated tourists. We set our alarm for 4:40am to catch the first subway train for the day (5:14am) in order to get to the Tsukiji Wholesale Fish Market, the largest in the world. They are open from 5am-12noon, but you have to get there by around 6am to see the tuna auction. It was well worth it. In a large room (with a visitor's gallery), auctioneers ring a hand-held bell to get the buyers' attention and then auction the fish in lots with an auctioneer's chant (in Japanese, of course, but it sounded to me like, "I hear 40, do I hear 60, going, going, going...GONE!")

Chilled tuna on the auction block

The ends are cut so perspective buyers can closely inspect the merchandise, often using a flashlight (I guess it's harder than "thumping" a watermelon to see if it's ripe).

SOLD!!!

We then wandered around the gigantic, bustling wholesale market. You have to watch where you're going or you can get run over by the workers driving motorized carts.

Worker making a delivery

Here's a sample of some of the sea creatures we saw. The Japanese sure do love their fish.

Various mollusks

Eel

Octopus

Shrimp

Squid and fish eggs

Me checking out Japanese mushrooms at the adjoining wholesale vegetable market

Mt Fuji and Itchiku Kobota Art Museum

Another adventure awaited us with Mie our host and Prof. Tsutomu Kambe, our driver and tour guide to Mt. Fuji. Tsutomo, who we saw for lunch at the beginning of our time here, offered to take us by car to Mt. Fuji which he visits frequently.

We met at 7:30 for our 2-hour journey, stopping after an hour on the highway at a rest stop. Now I've been to U.S. rest stops that had a bathroom, picnic benches and a snack bar. Nice. But this was Japanese-style: a huge building with a restaurant, cafeteria, dozens of food stalls, snack bars, gift counters, free hot green tea, etc. It was PACKED with people, too. What was everybody doing there at 8:30am in the middle of the week? The mind boggles.

After our break, we arrived at Mt. Fuji (3,776 meters/12,390 ft) the highest peak in Japan and no doubt the most well-known site. The mountain is open only in July and August for climbing and there are 10 stages. Climbers usually start at stage 5 and it takes about 5 hours to reach the top and most attempt to start at night and try to reach the top by sunrise. Mie said there are about 6,000 hikers a day in the summer and it's very crowded. It's hard to get to the peak by sunrise because of the crowds and the path is blocked. Frustrating.

View of Mt. Fuji from Stage 5 parking lot

We walked along a path at stage 5 for about 1/2 hour. The path is sandy with volcanic rock and can be quite a challenge higher up.

Mie, me, Tsutomo and Miles along the trail at stage 5

View above the clouds from the trail

Mt. Fuji from the road going back down to the valley

The whole region here is quite pretty with forests and 5 lakes and we drove to the nearby Narusawa Ice Cave. We climbed down a tunnel to a cave that is O degrees C. and used to be used to store ice that would be transported to the emperor in Tokyo to cool the palace. It's good to have servants!

Narusawa Ice Cave

We had lunch of delicious local wide-noodle udon soup overlooking Lake Shojin, the smallest of the 5 lakes in the area.


Tsutomo asked if we would like to go on a little walk to a lookout with a good view of Mt. Fuji. Of course! So we walked through a forest, up a hill and then he said, "Turn around". Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather, because there we saw Mt. Fuji bigger than life, RIGHT THERE!!! It took my breath away. And we were so lucky with the weather: clear, a few clouds, the peak was visible.

Wow! Like a postcard
And heeeerrrre's ...... Mt. Fuji!

You'd think things couldn't get any better, right? Well, they did. I had heard about an unusual art museum right by one of the lakes and we decided to check it out.

Itchiku Kubota, who died at 85 in 2003, was a textile artist who spent most of his life devoted to modernizing the ancient silk-dyeing technique called "tsujigahana"--dyeing fabric with multi-colored pictorial patterns. He built his own museum in 1994 near his beloved Mt. Fuji which is in itself a masterpiece of architecture: the entrance to the beautiful Japanese garden and museum is a huge ancient wooden gate from India (heavy and imposing, loaded with iron spikes, probably to scare away intruders).

Entrance gate to mueum

Garden with waterfalls and rocks

There was even a section of an outdoor courtyard that reminded us of Gaudi's Park Guell in Barcelona:

Gaudi-like "grotto" area

Unfortunately, there were no pictures allowed inside. DARN. The interior of the main exhibit hall is in a pyramid shape of 1000-year old cedar beams. Now for the art: here is his life-work consisting of 40 silk kimonos, all lined up along the perimeter of the hall, called "Symphony of Light" representing the four seasons and the universe. His vision was to have 80 pieces in these series. He died before he could finish and his family and apprentices are continuing his work.

Each kimono is a part of a whole picture like many parts of a mural. The striking thing is not only the exquisite colors produced with multiple dyeing stages, but the textures: he would stitch the fabric in such a way to "hide" the dye and then pull some of the strings to create lumps and bumps in the fabric, much like a topographical map. The texturing was quite varied and depicted nature scenes, especially Mt. Fuji. Another scene equally important to him was of the Siberian sunset. (He spent 3 years in Siberia as a POW during WWII and never forgot the impact of the sunsets there). Totally amazing and Itchiku wanted the kimonos fully exposed and not under glass like at regular museums, so visitors could look at each piece closely. Thank you, Itchiku! What a priviledge! It takes a year to complete each kimono-canvas and it seems like the most difficult and tedious process. He even said in the video, "I'm so short-tempered. Why am I doing this?" But what art! I know you want a picture, fortunately we found one on the web which illustrates this extraordinary beauty.

We then left beautiful Mt. Fuji and Itchiku's art and drove back to Tokyo. What a thrilling day.

The island of Kyushu

Our dear host Mie really outdid herself this time as our tour guide and event planner for our field trip to the island of Kyushu, the 3rd largest island to the south-west of Tokyo. We flew a little over an hour to the capital of Kumamoto, rented a car and drove to Shimabara to visit the Mt. Unzen Disaster Memorial Hall. (This excursion was mainly a work-related one for Miles and Mie to study volcanic activity.)

Viewing debris-under-glass from a pyroclastic blast

This is an excellent, modern, interactive educational center dedicated to Mt.Fugen, the dominant peak of Unzen National Park which began its volcanic activity for the first time in 198 years, from 1990-1996. Repeat pyroclastic flows (a large mass of heated volcanic gases, ashes, pumice stones and lava that falls down the side of a mountain at a high speed, destroying extensive areas) resulted from the growth of the lava dome, destroyed many houses and fields and killed 44 people. We needed to learn a lot because we were going to climb this volcano the following day!

Mt. Fugen--our destination for the next day

And off we went, early the next morning, first hiking an hour up, up, up to a shrine (what else?) and then walked an hour through brush, finally reaching the base of the volcano.

At the marker/shrine before the "big climb"

We donned hard hats and thick gloves because we were going to climb over huge boulders...and I mean HUGE...that were thrown here and there by the blasts. Did I mention Mie needed to get special permission from the research institute for us to climb? This is a off-limits area to the casual climber and we were lucky to be allowed in. Lucky or stupid? Hmmm...I'll let you decide.

Do we look like we know what we're doing?

We passed many fumaroles (clouds of hot, sulfur vapor escaping from the rocks) and climbed, using skills I didn't know I possessed, to jump from rock to rock, lifting myself, being careful not to twist an ankle or cause a rock slide due to unforeseen instability of the rock pile, climbing higher and higher, all alone, totally desolate, no trees up here. Get the picture?

On the way up...

And up, up, up...following the trail marker...

View on the way up...

The sky would fill with clouds and we couldn't see where we were going, so we sat, ate a snack, waited a while and miraculously, the clouds would pass and we could see the amazing view (and more importantly, where we were going).

All fogged in---Mie checking the GPS


Walking around...

We made it! Miles at the peak

Returning took just as long and I had to be vigilant about where I placed my feet. My mantra was "concentrate, concentrate" because one wrong step and either I'd twist an ankle, slip on unstable rocks or smash into a boulder. This was not a trip for the faint of heart. Or those with fear of heights.

Pure concentration

But we returned safe and sound and relished our victory ice cream.

To relax even more, we went to yet another onsen (hot thermal pool) at our hotel. Our room had a separate Japanese-style living room with tatami mats looking out over a garden.

View from our room

Our hotel room, wearing our yukata robes

Soaking in hot water never felt so good! And then we wore our yukata (Japanese robe) to dinner in the hotel--delicious fish tempura, duck and eggplant, miso soup, delectable small dishes of pickled vegetables, topped off with a bottle of some distilled alcohol that Mie ordered. I don't know what it was, but it sure made me forget my tired muscles!

Shrimp, squid, fish, pickled vegetables...and rocks!

Lots of thermal activity near the hotel

Day 2: Luckily, this was a non-hiking day. My bod needed to rest. We visited sites that were affected by the blasts: a school completely gutted and houses buried by the debris. We also saw many dams and slews (civil engineering projects) built to help direct the mud and debris away from populated areas in the event this kind of blast would occur again. And it will, but nobody knows when. The research for eruption prediction continues.

Destroyed school
=

Buried house

We then visited Nagasaki, the site of the 2nd atomic bomb. The peace park in Nagasaki has many thought-provoking memorials/statues and a real sense of the hope for peace.

Main statue in Nagasaki Peace Park

Explanation of the statue's symbolism

Fountain in the shape of dove wings

The museum is smaller than the one in Hiroshima and perhaps had more graphic pictures of the human devastation. It was really strange to witness 2 kinds of devastation in one day: one natural (Mt. Fugen's volcanic erruption) and man-made (Nagasaki).

Our stay that night in the Aso volcanic caldera was a real treat. We drove up, up, up into the mountains and ended up at a ryokan (Japanese-style inn/hotel) that was 120 years old. This was a half-timbered lodge with tatami-mat rooms, bathrooms down the hall and an onsen (of course!) Dinner was a special experience: in a huge wooden dining room we sat at a low table with a grill in the middle of the table. To my delight, there was a "canal" of water running by the tables that would have floating pine-bough trays passing by holding skewers of various meats, fish and vegetables that we cooked on our grill. Dinner was completed with dessert and tea brought to our rooms. I was so charmed and delighted! I liked this.

Here comes the tray down the canal

Grilling our food...Kampai!

Next morning a buffet breakfast was in the same room and we toasted bread and cooked our eggs right on the grill at our table. Like camping, only a lot easier.

We then visited the Aso Volcanic Research Center located at a corner of one of the largest calderas in the world created about 90,000 years ago. We're talking 18 kilometers by 25 kilometers. The "valley" is full of homes, cities, farms and is surrounded by peaks of various sizes formed by eruptions, some as recent as 20 years ago. Of course we HAD to visit Mt. Naka which is only one part of this entire area. This one is really different than Mt. Fugen because the main feature here is a crater filled will boiling water (which comes from underground) and lots and lots of rising sulfuric vapor. The water is bright green due to the iron in the soil. There were also some fumaroles on the side of the crater that emitted plumes of smoke and were LOUD like jet engines.

Yudamari Lake in Nakadake Crater

Mie once again left no stone unturned. She got special permission to allow us to enter the "restricted" area. Not only did we have hard hats, but we also used gas masks because the vapors are toxic and if the wind is blowing the wrong way...In fact, just as we were getting started, an alarm went off, the security rounded up all the visitors (a few hundred) and sent them packing. We stayed, of course. We had permission. And gas masks, so what was the problem? I wasn't the least bit worried. We walked all along the edge of the crater (keeping a safe distance, don't worry--I'm not THAT stupid). What an experience.

All alone in the restricted area

Along the edge--click on this picture and you can really see the scale of this thing

We then visited the Aso Volcano Museum, visited with the curators (friends of Mie's) and drove to the airport and returned to Tokyo late Thur. night. Wow. What a trip!

A contact at the Aso Research Center told us to watch the BBC docu-drama called "Super Volcanoes". We watched it last night on the Internet and not only was it excellent, but we really understood it having just visited these sites and talked to so many experts. Just go to You Tube and type in "Super volcanoes bbc" and you can watch all the episodes in 10-minute increments. Now we understand that Yellowstone National Park is just like what we saw: a HUGE caldera with an amazing amount of thermal activity. Walking along the thermal basin there is literally walking in a volcano. Amazing!