Language Lessons

The title of this blog was chosen for a very specific reason...because you cannot be prepared for a trip to Japan. Of course, you cover your bases, do your homework and take an open mind with you, which are the basic tools for getting by in any new place, but it is such an inherently different culture that you will very quickly find yourself awash in new, unique ways of going about your day. If you have the right mindset, you go with the flow, learn the basics and how to float on the tide of "different-ness" around you, as well as trying to pick out areas that are problematic and how to work around those issues. When I am actually at a place, this tends to work pretty well, but the lead up to going somewhere usually leaves me stressed and frazzled. I worry that I haven't done enough reading; that I won't remember where that vital piece of information I'll surely need is located; that I won't be able to communicate my desire for the basic things I need to survive in a foreign land...like food and beer. This last issue had me particularly in a twist before this trip (the communication part, not the food and beer bit). Most of the places I've been recently have been Spanish speaking, which I'm by no means fluent in, but have a workmanlike, useable grasp of. Japan, as you may be aware, is NOT a Spanish speaking nation. I therefore dove into the language with a lustful appetite to learn something new, though fueled by a terror that I would end up eating at a McDonald's for lack of ability to ask where a conveyor belt sushi joint was located. I purchased many books, and in the end at departure day had a mighty command of about 300 words and a basic knowledge of grammar to put them all together.

Holly was given the task of learning a bit of the written language. She shares none of my interest of stressing about this sort of thing. She memorized nary a character. In the end our language abilities were about as useful. I'm not sure who wrote the books I used. Perhaps I should have splurged and seen if Rosetta Stone was worth the $476,788 for a masterful grasp of the language. Who knows. I DO know that on top of having learned I was right in not thinking it would be important to know how to say "this computer is new" I have also learned that the authors of the books in my possession have never bothered to check if anyone will understand you if you use the Japanese they are teaching you. They won't. Instead, you'll fish about in your newly acquired vocabulary forgetting the actual word you need, select the nicest, simplest words you can muster, combine them with your most arrow straight pointing finger, mix this in with any English the person you are talking to may know, use sumimasen and hai a lot, and get by just fine. At one point we were talking to the owner of the place we were staying in Kyoto and I noted that it seemed you could get by in Japan with just the words hai and sumimasen, he replied if I add in gomen nasai I was probably right. I learned pretty quickly my attempt at acquiring the bare minimum of Japanese was rubbish, on the first day, in fact. I also quickly realized that we would be just fine (although I did continue to have my moments of wild eyed "Hunh?"). This was mostly proven by the fact that, almost by accident, but mainly because the Japanese are helpful to a fault and their trains are un-friggen believably good, we had flown in, taken a monorail to the Yamanote, gotten to Tokyo Station, gotten our JR passes, gotten on a Shinkansen, arrived at Odawara, gotten our Hakone Freepasses, taken a train from Odawara to Hakone-yumoto, changed trains to a switchback narrow guage train and arrived at the town we'd be staying at that night by 10am. We had been in the country for 4 hours. We couldn't check in til 3. We stared at each other for a bit. Luckily, we had those previusly mentioned Freepasses. A rail employee had spotted this big, goofy American and his smaller spouse the minute we walked up to the ticket machines in Odawara and asked if we wanted one. We had read about them, but honestly I wasn't sure we'd really have the time to get the value out of them. I had looked at Holly and she said to just go ahead and get them. Now, sitting in Miyanoshita station, with the better part of the day to kill, I'm glad I did. They are, to put it simply, excellent value.

Even if you're just in Tokyo and looking to get out for a day or overnight trip, they're almost like admission to the huge park that is the area to the south of Mt. Fuji.

There's rides, scenery, lakeside towns that look like Alpine Italian villages(?), boats done up to look like pirate ships(??), excellent open air modern sculpture museums (including a piece by my personal favorite, Arnoldo Pomodoro), and with the Freepass you can roam about the area at your whim on any of the myriad forms of transportation (short of camels...but we may just have not seen the camels) bearing the fantastic Hakone Freepass logo (I now have the image of a camel with the Freepass logo on its butt, hee).

So with all the time in the world, we dumped our bags in a coin locker, jumped back on the train and headed up the line to get a view of Mt. Fuji.
The narrow guage switchback train ended at an incline railway, where we confused a poor cook by trying to order lunch when he wasn't quite open, it being only 10:30 and us not realizing it. So we jumped on the incline which took you to a cable-car

Which supposedly took you to a spot with good views of the volcano. As it happens, we got good views of diddly-jack. August is apparently not prime Fuji viewing season, so we got a fantastic view of clouds and a nice humid, tropical haze...no prize for guessing wether I've got a pic of that to post. I do, I'm not posting it. Instead, at the terminus we observed the odd collection of sights on and around Lake Ashi,

And then decided to head back down

Back in Miyanoshita, it actually was lunch time, so we popped into a place by the station for our first real meal in country, which set the pace for the rest of the trip by being friggen delicious, not that you'd get that idea from this pic where I'm showing Holly how to be a classy guest in a foreign land...but it really was

All this to and fro and eating had managed to get us to nearly 2, so we grabbed the bags and headed to the hotel, where our room wasn't ready, but we got to sit in the nice conditioned air waiting to take the private incline train down to where we were to stay that night, ryokan Taiseikan.
Which moves nicely to my next rave, ryokan. They are fantastic. Taken care of by your own maid, served ridiculous quantities of food, and topped off with a bath in a pool filled with natural hot spring water while fireworks go off from the mountain above. It was so relaxing I told them so, I actually remembered the words for "it was relaxing", I was so proud of myself.

The above pic is just one course of our dinner. It was, in fact, so many different little dishes we began to wonder if it ever actually had an end, or if they just kept bringing courses until you specifically told them to stop...or they ran out of food. Breakfast was equally as overblown an affair. Delicious.
I also had to take the obligatory pic of the high tech toilet of which the Japanese are so fond. Mild noises of panic and laughter later informed that Holly had gotten adventurous with the buttons.