More Japanese tidbits

So, I never did get to eat Kobe beef while in Japan. But I did manage a lot of other unique, or perhaps rather traditional things while there, that I forgot to mention in my last post. And besides, there is a great little restaurant in Los Angeles, called Koi, were they serve a fantastic Kobe beef carpaccio, so I’ll just have to wait until I get back. And really, fish heads trump beef, right?

A few observations about my experience in Japan. I had realized about ten days into this trip how entirely dependent I am on my cell phone back at home. I think I talk to my best friend Kat at least 6 times a day, and I call my parents several times a week. There have been several times I’ve sworn I felt the vibration of my cell phone in my purse, or went to reach for it because I was longing to hear the voice of a good friend. But the necessity of a cell phone became evident when I made plans with my friend Brian to meet up at a big ferris wheel in the center of Kobe at 3pm, incidentally to go get some Kobe beef on our last day in port. By this time, I had a fairly decent idea of how to get around Kobe, but I was running just a few minutes late, and had no way to let him know. Asking for directions was fun, too, because I could ask in Japanese how to get to the wheel, but of course, I couldn’t understand the response! I did arrive a few minutes past three, and no Brian. 45 minutes later, still no Brian, and again, no cell phone, and no way to communicate. I did write a nice little haiku about it, and left it for him at the wheel, but that’s something I probably shouldn’t post here. Fortunately I ran into some other friends later and we had a fantastic meal (most of which was purely by luck). Another observation about cell phones. Japanese people are far more polite than typical Americans and you never hear them incessantly talking on their cell phones. Even on the trains and subways, you might see people text messaging, or sending e-mails, but you will never hear them chatting away in public, and you certainly would never see two people together each talking on their phones or worse yet, talking on their phones in a restaurant! Contrast that with LA where people are literally attached to their phones and will hold an entire conversation with their significant other, or even hold a business meeting while grocery shopping at Ralphs! (Ok, I am guilty of this too). But, Japan was so quiet. Even in the cities, there was always a calm peace. It was pretty refreshing.

One little challenge were the toilets. My first experience was in a train station, when I walked into the restroom and found these lovely little toilets were holes on the floor. Yikes! How am I going to do this? The toilets were surprisingly clean (everything in Japan was, by the way), but presented a bit of a challenge since I’m not used to squatting unless of course I’m at the gym. The first few times were quite amusing. I tend to be rather clutzy as it is, so I was a bit nervous I might fall in. It took me much longer to figure it out because I was afraid. Finally we did find some “western toilets”, which were more what I am used to in the states but interestingly enough, some of them had heated seats! A very funny thing happened though, when we had a group of Japanese students visit us on the ship. I walked into the ship restroom and found two young women dressed in Kimono looking rather nervous and confused. They were staring at the “western toilets” as if to question, “How can I do this?” I really wanted to help her but I couldn’t figure out how? Taking the kimono on and off is an intense process and requires a lot of time and assistance. I’m not sure how she did it, but I felt a shared compassion over this toilet experience, and realized I’m going to have to learn to use these eastern toilets because I don’t expect to find many western ones in most of our upcoming ports.

Just as toilets in Japan were a unique experience, I found that the Japanese take the concept of bathing to a whole new level. After a day of walking around town for hours with backpacks, and a few of my friends riding around on bicycles, we decided to have a traditional Japanese experience and go to a public bath. So, we dropped off everything at our hotel and headed to a nearby bath in Kyoto. Having never done this before, we brought with us only a change of clothing and nothing else. Upon paying our 500 yen (less than $5) at desk, we were given these teeny tiny little blue towels. Hmm, how are we going to dry off with these? I guess we’ll make it work, we thought. So, we entered the bath, walked into a room full of Japanese women, and looked around to see what we were supposed to do. , Immediately, three little Japanese women approached us with little bowls for washing, stools to sit on, and showed us to our respective showers. The ritual is essentially to wash everything off first, and use these little blue towels as washcloths. Aha. Since we had brought nothing with us, we were happy to find that soap and shampoo were provided. So, we followed the example of these Japanese women and scrubbed and scrubbed, removing all the dirt, residue, and every remaining dead skin cell from or bodies. Some of these ladies scrubbed for a good half hour or perhaps much more. I don’t think I have ever been so clean in my life. The next step was to soak in one of several hot tubs of water, opening up the pores. After a day of walking around from temple to temple in the heat, carrying a backpack, this was the most relaxing experience and a great way to rest and clear the mind from any stress from the day. I spent a good 10 minutes just relaxing in the first bath.

The ritual continued with moving on to one of many other hot tubs, then back to the shower and scrubbing again, rinsing off again, and then back to the hot tubs to relax. I think you could repeat this as many times as you wanted. We weren’t sure, so we just tried to imitate what we saw. Finally, after scrubbing and soaking and relaxing, we were then to submerse ourselves in a very cold pool of water, which was incredibly refreshing. It really was one of my favorite experiences in Japan.

Of course one amazing experience of mine would not be complete without a bit of humor and humility. You may remember that we neglected to bring towels and had just used our little blue towels for washcloths. All the other women of course brought their own towels. They were locals and knew the process quite well. We, on the other hand were the only foreigners there and marveled at how we’d have to drip dry. At this point, a few women tried talking to us, perhaps telling us we needed to bring our own towels, I’m not really sure. Eventually, they gave up and looked away and I suppose they thought we’d figure something out. Fortunately Japanese people are extremely polite and never stare. So, when we found these little hair dryers and fans on the wall, no one laughed or pointed at us when we realized it was our only way to get dry. I am sure they thought, what are these crazy foreign women doing here, and how silly they are drying themselves like that. But, no one stared, and eventually we did get dry and go on with our day.

Next time, however, we’ll remember to bring towels.



In case you are wondering, we also managed to outrun the typhoon and are now in calm waters, approaching Hong Kong in one day. It was very rocky for awhile and everyone was walking around the ship from side to side, looking a bit like zombies. Now all is well, and I cannot wait to see what mysteries and surprises await in China and Hong Kong.