Tuesday
I spent that night cozily on Alyssa’s bed while she took a futon on the floor (very Japanese of her). From the Nagoya airport it had been easy to find the train into the main part of the city, but not as easy to find Alyssa in the huge station! Even though we turned out to be in the same section, we had to play a few rounds of “what do you see around you” before we saw each other’s faces. I’m so grateful that Alyssa had suggested that I rent a cell phone at the airport or else it would have been tough to find her without wifi. From Nagoya we took the train into Yokkaichi, the city where Alyssa lives and teaches English, and then to her apartment. Oh, first we stopped at Family Mart, a convenience store that seems to be on every corner, and bought some Japanese snack foods!
When Alyssa was moving to Yokkaichi, her employers told her that the apartment she was getting was one of the bigger ones. I’d hate to see one of the “small” ones! Most people know that on the small island nation of Japan, space is at a premium! Alyssa’s apartment is two rooms, a long skinny front room with a tiny sink/hot plate/pantry area and a place for her to stick a table suitable for one person. Off of this room there is a bathroom (toilet only) and a room with a bathroom sink, washing machine, and a door to the shower room which holds a deep bath and a floor with a drain in the corner. She told me that they don’t like to have a toilet and a shower in the same room. Why would you want your toilet in the room where you go to get clean?
The whole back wall of the front room is a two paneled sliding door to the back room. This is her bedroom with her single bed, low to the floor, a couple of book shelves, tv, desk and built in closet. It also has a sliding glass door out to a small patio mostly used for hanging her clothes to dry. I’ve found in most Asian countries they don’t have electrical clothes dryers. I can understand that in countries like Singapore and Thailand where the weather rarely drops below 60, but it was literally freezing in Japan and could take more than two days for a pair of Jeans to dry.
Though I’d had a full day of sightseeing in Seoul and traveling, and hadn’t slept more than 3 hours the night before, I was excited to see Alyssa and we stayed up pretty late talking. I was excited to see the Meiji-Mura museum the next day, but I was more excited to sleep in!
Sunday morning Alyssa and I caught the train to Nagoya and then a bus to see the museum. Using busses in foreign countries makes me nervous because it’s hard to tell how much to pay and they often only accept exact change. When we boarded this bus, we saw that people were taking tickets from a ticket dispenser in the back. When it was time to get off, we saw that there was a slot to leave the ticket and then pay. Alyssa asked the driver how much we needed to pay and then started putting money in the slot. Soon however, it was spitting money back out, so she took the money and tried to get an explanation from the driver. I followed suit, putting in coins until the machine spat back change. Alyssa said she thought we got a discount because we had the ticket. This made no sense to me since we’d just gotten the ticket on bus as we boarded. Why would they give such a significant discount for having a ticket that only served to prove that yes, we’d boarded the bus? But never mind that.
The museum was huge. The websites had said to leave 4 hours to explore, but I think a full day would have been better. It was a fascinating look into how these people lived, in the generation that was just beginning to open itself up to western culture. I always love something that provokes the imagination as it teaches. There were old churches, houses of government officials and famous authors, and even one building that told all about the study of infectious diseases. And all around were breathtaking views of forest and lake.
Throughout my trip I had to wonder if Japan is just a country exceptionally blessed by elegant natural scenery, or if their appreciation for nature has caused them to preserve and encourage it in a way you don’t see in America. You see old trees that are held up by ropes or even filled in with cement to keep them from falling. In shrines, where aesthetics are arranged to promote serenity, gardens and buildings are set up to take advantage of the surrounding landscape instead of subduing nature to fit their purposes.
The restrooms at the front of this museum were my first experience with the miracle of the Japanese toilet. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of toilets that play music and talk to you, but the true joy of the Japanese toilet is the heated seat. Since it hovered slightly above freezing throughout my trip, I was enormously grateful for this invention. However my worship of the Japanese ingenuity was soon dampened when I had to wash my hands in water that felt like it came from the frozen lake outside. They can have toilets with heated seats but can’t do anything about water temperature?
As beautiful and interesting as the museum is, the thing that I remember the most is the food. We arrived a little after lunch, so pretty soon we were checking out food options. We found a food stand that sold fried curry puffs. Crispy, golden dough encasing warm smooth curry? Yes please! Soon after, we found a place that made an interesting egg sandwich type snack. The man was working at a skillet where he scrambled eggs with loads of cheese, sprinkled with red ginger and then places between two large crackers with some sauce. Alyssa had to ask her Japanese friend later if you could get that snack anywhere with an unfortunate negative reply. Oh, it was perfect. The ginger was just strong enough to cut the buttery cheesy egg, but not overpowering at all. The crackers lent a satisfying crunch. I don’t remember what it was called and I don’t know if I’ll ever encounter the snack again, but I’ll remember it to my dying day. Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration.
We spent a few hours exploring the museum, only covering a small part before our feet felt like lead. Around that time museum staff began scurrying towards the front (one older woman looked like she was in a hurry to get to something much more exciting), and we took it as a sign that the place was closing soon. Having made our way into the center, we had to drag ourselves all the way back out to the front bus stop. At one point we saw one of the shuttles that take people from one area of the park to another, so we stood in front of the area where it was supposed to stop. The shuttle immediately slowed down several yards away from us, and started inching forward, reluctant to pick us up. Alyssa insisted that it was intentionally stalling so it wouldn’t have to pick us up, which I wouldn’t have believed until we started back towards the front on foot and the shuttle picked up speed again. I couldn’t believe it! They couldn’t be bothered to pick us up! And they didn’t even have the nerve to just pass us by, they had to slow down until we gave up waiting, like a person who pretends to retrieve something they’ve dropped to pretend they hadn’t noticed an old acquaintance. So we made our way out, on foot, up a hill, and looked pointedly in the opposite direction when the shuttle passed by.
The bus ride home was restful. We enjoyed the scenery and talked about Japanese authors and what to have for dinner. When it was time to get off the bus, we dropped the ticket in the slot, inserted a few coins and collected the change that it spit back. I started to exit the bus when the driver started yelling at me. You must pay! I thought I had, and it gave me most of my money back! Alyssa instructed me that I still had to pay the 810 yen, even though it was giving me change back already. I couldn’t make sense of it, but oh well. Later I understood what Alyssa had tried to explain to me at the time. The place we’d put our coins for payment was actually the place to insert coins if you don’t have the proper change. You put in a coin or bill and the machine splits it into smaller coins so you can then pay with the exact change in the slot where we’d been putting our tickets. That means that on our trip out to Meiji-Mura, we’d inserted our payment and gotten change for it, collected all the money we’d paid, and gotten a free bus ride without the driver saying anything!
That night we had a not very authentic meal of fabulous gorgonzola pizza and risotto, with dessert from Family Mart, before snuggling up near the heater back at Alyssa’s apartment.
See the pictures from my Meiji-Mura adventure here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.557974693849.2039985.176800932&type=3&l=0a59fa058d
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