IV. Countryside

Week 5 in Tokyo went by so fast that I didn’t have time to reflect, let alone write on, all the things I did. Luckily I have the photos to go by. This week was the first time I ventured outside of Tokyo (not counting my foray into the Kichijoji suburbs). On Saturday, I went to meet an Australian friend who has been living in Tokyo for over a year now, and a German friend who stopped by on her round-the-world travels. We went to Yokohama for the day, which was great fun. As it was just days after the beginning of the Chinese New Year, we decided to go to Yokohama’s Chinatown. Unfortunately we didn’t come across any celebrations, but we did visit several beautifully decorated temples and sampled all kinds of Chinese dishes in an all-you-can-eat restaurant. I have had Beijing Duck before, but never just its skin. What can I say… at least it was served in a nice sauce. Other highlights included the giant prawns and the mochi filled with azuki paste. The rice cakes were covered in sesame, and hot! Which is the best way to eat them, as it keeps the azuki filling from being too overpowering. After enjoying Chinatown’s many attractions (including a shop stuffed with panda bears and Hello Kitty), we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building near Shinjuku to enjoy the alledgedly amazing view. Allegedly, because when we got up there, it had started snowing. As the world down below turned into a fairytale-like scene with lights in the trees adding to the effect, the tower itself was surrounded by a thick white fog. Luckily, there were several amazing toy/gadget shops on the top floor of the building, stocking everything from tap dancing Disney dolls to electronic pets and musical piggy banks.

The next day, I went to study in Kanda, around Jimbocho, where the area is filled with second-hand book shops. One of them also had an entire floor devoted to English-language publications, from obscure books on gentleman’s fashion or Britain’s gardens to well-thumbed editions of Catcher in the Rye and the Graduate. I spent some time browsing through books in the shop, which was clearly modelled after British second-hand booksellers’shops –including heavy dark-wood book cases reaching up to the ceiling. This is an area many students frequent as well, and so I ended up memorizing my kanji surrounded by Japanese students at a nearby Starbucks, where I sat at a library-style reading table, complete with desk lamp. That night, I had my interview with Yanagisawa-san about the practicalites of my internship. There was a lot to discuss, but so far everything looks good. I’m really looking forward to working at Hitachi, and quite curious about what life in a Japanese company dorm will be like.

As this was a long weekend, I boarded an outbound train once more early Monday morning. With a couple of other JPP students, I went on a daytrip to snow-covered Nikko. Arriving at Nikko after the two hour train ride was simply amazing. The sky was a bright blue, the snow lay thick around the area, and behind the Chalet-style JR station we could see a nearby mountain range. As we had only one day, we decided to forgo the waterfalls and focus on the Tosho-gu complex instead. Walking up from the station we first passed the Shin-kyo bridge, which, with its red-laquered wooden structure and the mountains in the background, very much looked like the mental image I had of Japan before coming to Tokyo. The temple complex itself was equally wonderful: the elaborately decorated roofs were covered in thick snow blankets, and the setting in the middle of the woods added to the atmosphere. There were quite a lot of tourists, but not as many as we had feared beforehand. Of course, after visiting the temples, we climbed up the two hundred steps to Tokugawa Ieyasu’s tomb. It was surprisingly sober compared to the temples below, but the light coming through the trees in the grove was simply amazing. Having spent the best part of the day temple-viewing, we were chilled to the bone by the time we went back down into the village. We had dinner at a quaint little restaurant- which later turned out to be listed in all major travel guides. It was run by an elderly woman who turned out to be a great cook, and the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with visitors’ thank-you notes, drawings and meishi. The food was quite simple (yakitori, tsukune, soba) but the taste was amazing.

All in all, Tokyo still is an amazing city of which, despite my best efforts, I’ve only seen a tiny portion. Yet it was a terrific idea to leave the city for a change. Living in a cosmopolitan city like Tokyo, sometimes it seems like I’m not living in Japan at all, what with all the Western-style clothes, food and shops. The fresh air, the change of scenery and the historically interesting sights of Nikko have really done a world of good and made me very curious about what the rest of Japan might look like. I can’t wait to venture outside of Tokyo again.