Japan 2013 (Day 13 - 24th of July)

I am really sorry for the absence of posts lately but such is life. I have felt sick, been busy, went away to places with no internet connection etc.

On the 24th of July (i am way behind on these)...

...we got up and got our bags ready and pretty much got in the car. 

The destination was about 2 and a half hours away. We pretty much rode on highways for the longest part so it was only natural that, when picking where to have lunch, we ended up in a highway stop.

I told my husband he should just pick anything he thought I’d enjoy and so he did.

Mari always gets a baby chair to sit with us and she’s been through quite some food adventures as well. 

She’s had Japanese baby food which contains really strange things for us back in Portugal like seaweed, daikon, gobo... but she eats anything really, she loved everything.

When we finished out meal Mari's grandfather has stolen her away for a stroll and returned with some odd shaped object in his hand... what could it be?

He had bought Mari a new toy, an Anpanman "stick" with a switch that, when pressed, makes him blow his horn in a swift movement and say the famous sentence "genki hyakubai: Anpanman!". (100 times "stronger": anpanman! - or something) 

She still loved that thing... she gets tired of old toys very fast but still adores this anpanman as well as the other toy my father in law got her. Mother in law says he's got a sense for what kids like. 

In the parking lot we saw this "Ninja" mini van. It's apparently used to promote some business obviously. Ninjas usually are wearing black but they probably made it pink so it looks cute and not scary.

It was time to get back on the road!

Somewhere along the way we had to stop at a Aeon supermarket to try to see if we could finally find a bathing suit for Mari. We had been trying for a while and must have checked 5 stores but the smaller sizes were all gone. There's so many cute things to check at any store and supermarket in Japan that if you are a shoppaholic you'll surely manage to over spend every single time you go to one. I have been very good and spent moderately i suppose but i still wish for some stuff... like every time i see majollica makeup or dolly wink lashes... 

But the thing i actually considered getting was this:

old version (look at all the pretty colors!)

new version (mint!!)

I have never been a gamer, i like playing some things but mainly i prefer to stay online chatting, browsing websites or just watching movies and tv. My friend Vania keeps posting about these games she likes and i always leave her house wanting to play something, she seems so passionate about them. So it's not the first time I have considered to get one of these. But, since 14000yen is a lot of money i decided to leave all these expensive "maybe" buys for the last days when i'll see how much i have left and where i can spend it.

I also bought another karepan, i've been eating a tone of karepan lately, i gained 1kg in this trip already even though i sweat like a pig every single day because its so hot and humid here. :X

We had a plan to visit the famous Ise Jingu. Well I have to say that to mee most of these seem a bit alike and i cannot fully recognize their importance because i've been to a few. I am always overwhelmed with how much space these take, its fantastic to have green areas like these but at the same time It feels odd that japanese modern apartements in general are so tiny because of "space" and at the same time there seems to be so much of it in other areas. It's just a bit odd for me, nothing much. 

We parket in a parking that had 4 or 5 floors and was, as if "everything" very organized. In the exit, right accross the main entrance to the jingu area was a map. I always take shots of signs and maps... not really sure why but i like those... and store fronts and buildings...

This has to be the only photo of me i do not hate from that day so here it is. Beautiful place, isn't it? 

Before entering the shrine one has to purify their body. For that purpose there's a few chozuya, a sort of fountain with small cups or baskets to pour water on your hands and then in your mouth. You are not supposed to drink it though!

I found this store sign interesting, its super scary and typically japanese at the same time.

In order to help you fight the heat a lot of icecream and that ice flavored thing you can find at festivals is available. Look at all those different flavors. I love the colors.

We had to walk a loong way, always surronded by trees to get to the main section of the shrine. It was a lot cooler so it was a blessing actually. Mari was already sweating.

These places are always stunning. Anyone who has not visited one would have their jaws drop. Don't you agree?

You know there's a god in everything here so when you find a specially old tree you pay respects to it. Mari didn't want to touch it with her hand as you're supposed to so i had her rub her tiny little foot in it. I hope it still counts.

Mari and my inlaws. <3

I found this really interesting, its a smoking box. Yes you can actually smoke in the middle of all those trees, apparently god does not mind and so they built something in the style of the shrine for you to do so. I like these little details more than the grand picture at the moment. 

Another thing I like it that every area seems to have their own sewer lid. Isn't it stunning? I much prefer these to the mascots even though i agree that they make cuter souveniers... i can't imagine how one would make a souvenier out of a lid. My mother in laugh thought it was funny that i would want to take a photo of it.

After this we just ran off to the car, turned on ther air conditioner, felt a lot better and headed off to where we would spend the night, a Ryokan. I have never been to a ryokan before actually so this was exciting!

Here it was, Hamachi Ryokan. It was actually not where I was expecting it to be but that's because I had not thought straight and have never done this before. It was just a building in the middle of so many others in some small traditional looking town with narrow streets but right next to the sea.

This is what the entrance looked like, just a regular japanese traditional looking building I suppose.

We got in and of course there was a lot of bowing and coutesy going on and I'm one to feel very unconfortable with all that especially not being able to speak japanese well. At least I know how to behave more or less? Could be worse.

We had to of course take our shoes off and then someone carried my smelly old sneakers to the shoe locker room hehe. After that we waited a bit in the lobby area (it was pretty but there'll be photos of it soon) and got our room keys. We were introduced to the owner who was looking stunning in a light colored kimono and an employee took us to our rooms.

We got into my inlaws's room first and fed Mari, after that we decided we should go over to our room, take a shower and get back to have dinner (they eat early around here).

So yeah this is what I look like with no makeup on... But anyway carrying on... what I am wearing is the typical pajama around these parts. I think its adorable and I really like putting it on. What I do not like so much is sleeping in it, i always wake up... well with almost nothing on haha but it is cute. Normal modern hotels also have these most of the time, i think the only time i found something different was later on in this trip. The pattern also does not seem to change much either, i've only ever seen exactly this green one and another white/blue one.

We seem to have a major problem... Mari simply adooores Tatami flooring and is now crawling everywhere and touching everything so when we get back we seriously must think about how to make the house safer for her. It's actually a pretty safe environment for kids other than the stairs which will be protected but we need to re-arrange the wires etc. I love her pajama, it looks like Pupe's piyo piyo bird, doesn't it?

After only a bit an employee started coming in and setting things up. I thought it was strange to have such a meal in the room over a tatami floor but also that it was strange that, having such a big table in the room, we'd be eating in trays. After a bit it all looked like this:

This is a traditional Ryokan meal apparently and due to the proximity of the sea, most of it is fish of course.

I find that some of the people I know would not touch 99% of what was in the tables. I admit there are some things i do not feel like eating and contrary to what i did before this time I did just eat what i felt like eating which is still the majority of the stuff here. I like being respectful but also I am not very picky.

The only thing here I did not eat was the green stuff in the left bottom corner. I'll tell you why. It's got nothing to do with the green stuff at all but they put it in this sort of slimmy white sauce and i have a big issue with slimmy things. I can eat it if i make an effort but i decided that amongst familly one should not have to do so and my inlaws are fantastic about that. I myself decide to do x and y to be respectful, they demand nothing. They are some of the most incredible human beings I have met in this lifetime.

This is the sashimi trey. It is for everyone, not just one person of course. Since I love sashimi i must have eaten more from it than everyone else. I really love sashimi. I know its "just raw fish" but i have decided that its my current favorite japanese food.

The food was always coming in so i could not take photos of everything, of course there was rice, dessert, soup... and something that i could not eat... living sea food one had to cook... yes cook alive.. see it die. I am an hypocrite, i love meat and fish but i don't want to kill them myself. 

It was not easy taking care of a baby in this condition because they are attracted by everything new... but she wanted to see everything and we let her. She was especially fascinated with the fish trey.

So my father in law carefully let her touch the fish with her own tiny hands.

 After dinner Mari and my father in law took a nap so my mother in law told us we should go have a walk or enjoy the jazz performance scheduled for that night so we did just that, changed clothes first even though we could have gone down in a yukata.. i just still do not feel confortable in it. I feel naked haha.

I like this photo, its the ceiling lamp in our room.

And this is where they keep the futon beds that someone later would place for us. 

We got ready and went downstairs. When we got there only two other tables had guests. I felt a bid sorry for the owner but glad we had decided to attend. She asked me a couple of things because in this trip for some reason people have been assuming my japanese is amazing, a lot! which made me unconfortable but mostly it was just a quiet enjoyable performance. 

The Ryokan owner wearing her white yukata singling american classic jazz tunes. She actually was good even though she does this as a hobby apparently.  

So this is the thing, there performances happen only once a month and we were lucky enough to be there when that month's performance took place but it was not an ordinary performance, seems like it was recorded for some Shizuoka tv station... yet another travel show or something and the host was in a yukata so he probably stayed in the ryokan as a guest with his crew. It was sort of strange but the owner seemed quite pleased of course. So that means i'll be on a shizuoka channel somewhere around september and i'll probably never get to see that show. :P

I look amused, i had fun and drank champagne too. I wore the only dress i took with me, something to look proper in this sort of occasion and paired it with my jane marple freeby mook scarf. 

This is the view from where we were sitting, its a small ryokan garden. It is replicating the Meoto Iwa which is a local tourist spot in the area. During the day, right behind that garden one can see the sea.

After the jazz perfomance we got back to the room and so did all the other guest apparently. This is what the lobby looks like at night. 

My mother in law told us we could go get Mari who was now awake so we took her to our room and said goodnight.

And like this the day was over and it was time to renew our energies.

I hope you liked reading! I'm going to start writting the next post soon <3

Jo

Japan 2013 (Day 5 - 16th July)

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry for the lack of posts but I'll try to keep up with them in one way or another!

If you were a reader back when i went to Japan the last time you probably remember me talking about sausages... it sounds silly but these japanese sausages make me drool... its like eating toro (now japanese people will laugh at me even more for the ridiculous comparison haha)... you put a bit of some food and you start chewing and this sense of happiness appear from the deliciousness? That's how i feel when i eat these sausages that just click when you take a bite. haha And this post starts with something silly, go me.

In the morning we rushed a bit because my husband was so busy that day.

I cannot believe how much effort that man puts into his work, always going around with books from place to place (did you know we carried books from Portugal because of his work? crazy huh?), trying to spend time with me, his parents, our daughter and trying to find spots in his schedule to take me to some places... anyway even with all that we went by car to some far away spot in the prefecture (i mean really, they only have one place for that in all of Nara?!) just to renew his japanese drivers licence. Apparently since the renovation period expired people are forced to have a 1 hour and something class on safe driving. As if that is going to make the difference haha. But we went anyway. Instead of waiting for him we got some fast lunch from a convenience store and went home where I changed to some special clothes because we were going to do something i'll call (even though it isn't really that) tourism-ish for a change.

Take out food from a convenience store. They are everywhere and you can eat a lot of different sort of dishes.

We finally got to the place and my husband got in the car so we could get to a train station. The streets we got in were so narrow, i am always surprised at how cars can circulate so smoothly in what seem to be tiny roads. Well the cars aren't very big either.
The train station was located in the middle or an area that had a festival (matsuri) of some sort because the decorations were still up and it made it look rather pretty.

My husband getting us our tickets. For some reason he always got our tickets when we visit so i'm not the best with doing this sort of thing here and have yet to reach a stage where i'm 100% independant which is bad. 

 My husband poiting at the nice paper lanters on display in the train platform.

We saw a grown up girl in yukata for the first time during our stay in Japan. Since we are in a residencial area unless there's a festival going on they are nowhere to be seen which is a shame if you ask me. 

We were going to Kyoto, to check out an actual famous matsuri (traditional festival) in Japan, the Gion Matsuri which in that particular day (night time) is called Yoiyama 宵山. Obviously because of that we were bond to see a lot more people wearing yukata.

This is the Kyoto station. It's huge and like most big stations, there's tunels everywhere and shopping malls and stores. It's huge and a big mess so you can get lost if you are distracted. I always kind of do. 

HA! Fooled you (some of you?), that was me all along. I bought another yukata set just to attend this. I figured I wanted to try new things and its no fun to be there in the summer and not wear a yukata. Of course I wanted to feel confortable and respectful so I wore it traditionally even though i did want to wear my all stars with it if i could. My mother in law said I shouldn't even wear sandals even though I can do anything because I'm foreign. When i got to the actual matsuri japanese girls were breaking all the rules, i even saw one wearing a yukata with crocs! I am not kidding you. You can clearly see the generation gap happening here hehe. (i am open minded but crocs???) 

I borrowed this bag from my mother in law, i had my tote bag but this is much nicer! ^_^;

When we got there it was still day time and it was rather empty as you can see. We were glad to feel a bit of the wind blow and not be under intense heat as well because it had been super hot the previous day. We spotted people in yukata everywhere from kyoto station to the subway to our last destination, kyoto's main shopping street. 

To cool themselves off, japanese eat this thing... its not really ice cream, its not just ice... its ice with a topping that gives it flavor. It is called kakigori and you can read about it if you would like. I picked lemon because its more refreshing but there were 6 o7 different flavours to choose from.

Men in Yukata. I love how men look in their yukatas, more than girls I guess but that's maybe because men in my country would very hardly be caught wearing anything that resembles a skirt out in a serious manner. I must say it is kind of charming.

After an hour or so it started getting a lot more crowded. The streets had food stalls and other interesting festival sort of stalls in both sides for kms!

Women in Yukata. Being slimm is a plus because that belt is not flattering on anyone although they have accessories and tricks to make it more so (like some sort of thick ruller looking things that they wear on the inside for the obi not to have a folded look like mine did after a while ha.) 

Balloon stall for kids. Always a must in every festival anywhere I suppose.

A game stall. You have a sort of tiny raquet with a white paper to catch a fish. If you catch it you can take it home with you. 

One of my favorites, a Takoyaki stall. I haven't had any this time though but i plan to. Anyway they are a snack with a ball shape that are made from octopus, some sort of batter and other things for taste. They are then coated with sauce. It's really good, i like it a lot.

The main attractione were not the people (although for me it always is), the food, the open houses showing their treasures for the only time of the year (people open their homes for visitors to check old relics or familly treasures!) but of course the yamaboko floats which are a sort of cart that is stopped during this event but with their "staff" in playing music, showing off a special float detail or doing something else. The floats are decorated with lanters and are divided in two types, bigger ones and smaller ones. Of corse the bigger ones need more people to make it advance and are heavier. 

I must admit that after all the walking, loads and loads of people, photo taking and geta walking I was beat. So we decided it was time to start thinking about getting back and so we left the alleys and went back to the main street where we saw...

...something slightly disturbing. A marketing strategy that made me feel sad to be a woman in this world. They got this girl, told her to wear a skimpy outfit in public and dance on a plastic box with a monkey in between her breasts. And there were kids around which eliminates that whole idea they nothing negative can be done/shown at x time. I admit i was not expecting that there... and by the look on everyone else's face, nor were they. I just hope they are paying her enough... if there's such a thing.

We were also a bit tired so we stopped by a coffee shop, ate half a sandwich each and drank very strong "dutch coffee". It was pretty damn good. 

See? I am now in charge of buying all the tickets so i get used to it. I also got that tea for the ride home, there's nothing like drinking something cold when facing japan's heat. We also walked a lot but ended up still taking the subway because i was on the verge of just sleeping on the street, those damn geta!

And this is what a regular train looks like. An interesting thing is you can turn the seats around to face the other side and not be forced to ride backwards. 

When we arrived at the local station we went in Lawson and bought a couple of onigiri because we had only eaten half a sandwich and started heading home which is about 10min by foot from the station.

This is where my inlaws live, its a big appartment building a bit in the middle of nowhere, its really peacefull and rather pretty with all the trees and the river.

I'm going to post this one for my older brother. It's not new that in Japan people are not very often stealing other people's things but the faith they put into that is for me something that I can only dream of having in Portugal. Here's an example: In the entrance of the appartment building there's a "garage" for bikes and it is open, with no gate... and the bikes are only locked to prevent people from riding out of there with one. Nothing is done to prevent them from being carried out of that place and they just stay there and in reality they do not disappear. Amazing, I know. 

The main difference besides the location obviously of this house from the other one is that now there's an elevator, no more carrying heavy things up the stairs for my inlaws. I think everyone's very happy about that!

We finally arrived and of course kisses our daughter to death because she is the cutest thing ever and we miss her! The second thing was, eating. I ended up being able to eat both because my husband found something else that he would rather eat, score! hehe

And that was it for the day. A very different busy day. I hope you liked reading!

Kisses,

Jo