Noto to Takayama

The swell had died down for our last morning at Lamp no yado. It was wake up, onsen, big breakfast again, pack and go. We had a longish drive to Takayama ahead of us, made longish because we wanted to hug the coastline instead of take the expressway inland.

It was lovely. Ultra quiet, both the road and the sea. A lake. Then we got towards the bottom of the peninsula and after a turn I spotted snowy peaks on the other side. They looked vaguely like a band of clouds, but it was snow on high mountains, jutting into the sea.

We stopped for coffee in a town called Nanao. Get out of big cities and coffee is almost as bad as in the States. Barely tastes of coffee at all. Sadly Nanao only looked like a big town the coffee was pretty rubbish even though the place looked cool and the guy was nice. We asked if he knew of any okonomi-yaki restaurant in town (we couldn’t have any more fish!). They only opened in the evening but he went on the net and gave us the address of one place in the next town, Himi. But next door was a supermarket with lots of salads and we thought a picnic was in order. I went back in the café and asked where the nearest bakery was. The guy got out and almost walked me there. Then he shook my hand and thanked me. ? indeed.

With our shopping done we drove on a bit until we found a lovely spot in a harbour, sitting on the jetty, across from the snowy peaks still and bathed in the friendliest sun. Great lunch. European to some extent, which was very much welcome.

Then we drove on again and a few hours later we were in Takayama. I’d always thought the town was just a convenient stop on the way to the mountain village Alex had lined up for us. But we saw lots of white faces around. At the hotel’s onsen, a fat Italian guy asked me if he could keep his swimming trunks on. Goes to show innit. Point being that the place was full of ‘us’, and it made me think there must be something a bit special about Takayama.

When we got out and walked to the old district, which was all shut and dark, it wasn’t obvious. But the streets had charm. And very nice restaurants, including a Franco-Italian one called Le midi. We tried not to go there, but did in the end. They made a wicked minestrone, and Alex ordered spaghetti with Japanese aubergines. All very nice and NOT fishy.

The onsen was something else. No, you didn’t get a direct view of the sea. But of the whole city, from inside and outside. Long hotspring pool in, with wet ‘nap’ area. Then another pool outside, next to a wooden tub of boiling water, all of them with glass walls and parapets so you can, depending on your inclination, view the world or parade your private parts. From the 9th floor, so you’re safe, mind.

Anyway, good day. Another one.

Read one day, get one free

Busy being in awe the last 3 days, so for once I’m gonna try to summarise a bit. Wouldn’t want to bore my reader now, would I?

 

Our evening in Wajima was so-so. The place was dead as Victor Hugo. Pretty desolate too. First we’ve come across that. Lots of derelict buildings. Some squarely in ruins, some other in the process of making way for something else.

 

The harbour was a fishing boat’s one. In fact, after having driven arounds the whole of the Noto peninsula, I can safely say that not a single sailing pleasure boat is anchored there. As if the Japanese turned away from the sea.

 

We desperately walked around looking for a café, and none presented itself. On some backstreet we came across the Mariners and sat down. A slightly surreal experience, a bit English coastal town pub and a lot junk shop with tacky posters on the walls, five guitars on stands, CDs, tidbits, little dolls, and an eclectic menu.

 

After warming up on coffee and a milky drink for Alex (neither good), we ordered food. Choup got a pumpkin gratin, I a soup.

 

Our hotel was a business hotel on the sea front, with again some serious sea defences out. Hundred of actual blocks were also neatly parked in various spots, awaiting positioning in the sea I guess, or as quick replacement for breaking ones maybe. Our room was a smoking one. We slept with the window ajar.

 

We woke up to terrible rain and fog and wind and raging sea. The sea defences came into their own.

 

At breakfast a guy engaged conversation. A writer on Japanese culture and arts from Nagoya. 62 years old. Cool guy with cowboy-ish boots, redneck’s shirt and body warmer. Nice face too. He’d had a grandchild 15 days earlier, whom he couldn’t have enough of. He was there for a day to see an old friend (he’d driven to Wajima, 6 hours both ways). He knew the mayor of the place who was too busy that weekend to see him. He was going to see a doctor for a stomach pain that’s been lasting for 3 months. He hopes it’s not cancer, but fears it might as in Japanese there’s a saying that when a life is born another dies.

 

We walked the ‘best morning market in Japan’, dixit our writer mate, in the pouring chilly rain. Lots of weird fish and octopus everywhere. Miserable though. So we hopped in the car and drove around a bit for warmth and shelter. Still miserable. Drab. Awful day. Alex got quite depressed.

 

We could have left but hung around Wajima as I wanted to try the Mariners’ egg and teriyaki triple burger. It was good. Then had two crêpes with strawberry jam. Alex had potato gratin.

 

We chatted with the owner, Jun. A musician. Live concerts at times at his place. He played a CD of his stuff, which was like a Japanese Bruce Springsteen’s music.

 

Then we drove off to Lamp no yado, THE ryokan of the hols. The one place that convinced Alex to explore the Noto peninsula as opposed to anything else in Japan. Our friends Tessa and Ian from Vientiane had told us about it, and they’d been bloody right: traditional buildings and rooms (tatamis, futon etc) right over the sea. Well, right over a pool which is right over the sea. A little cove filled with rocks out to sea to naturally protect the owner’s investment from the massive waves crashing down on the coast on that day and until the early morning.

 

Not just that: just over the pool over the sea, our private hotbath, a wooden quasi-circular tub filled to the brim with hooot water. Slide the floor-to-ceiling windows and you’ve got yourself a hot bath in the elements, meters away from the sea below.

 

And boy did we feel the elements: slashing rain, stormy winds, boat-swallowing fog, but you don’t care you’re just quietly boiling away in your hot spring water. Unbelievably awesome.

 

Solid two-metre waves were constantly at the rocks, splashing 10 metres in the air at least.

 

OK, looks like I may have been a bit over-enthusiastic in my introduction: it’s just gonna be a normal blog, long and detailey and diarrhoaic. Ah well. Anyway I don’t write these for people to read. It’s more a journal written for the Denis in 20 years’ time. Souvenirs souvenirs. All these details here will come into their own when it’s be time to reminisce and I’ll be mighty happy I went to the trouble.

 

Dinner was the ‘real Japanese experience’. Remove the apostrophes. Proper real. We counted 10 different fish, 5 cooking styles (boiled, grilled, teriyaki, steamed, raw) all possible shapes of plates (oval, round, starred, long and thin, square, lozengey) and lost count of the number of dishes we got served.

 

The night awesome, spent under impressively warm covers and with the sound of the angry sea battering the rocks just ten paces away.

 

Breakfast was about the same as dinner. Fish fish fish.

 

Just as the storm had followed a summery day, the storm made way for another summery day. It had lasted just one day of full on fury. Just like that. Like a mistake, quickly rectified.

 

We drove to the famous Senmaida paddyfields, which we had quickly glimpsed through the rain and wind the previous day. It’s a hillside running down to the sea covered in terraced paddies. Lovely. We ate on the spot, stuff with not an ounce of fish.

 

Then we crossed that bit of peninsula south to Suzu. That stretch was sheltered from the still imposing swell and, finally, we did spot a surfer. On the north coast and quite a lot around Suzu, the problem is that the bottom of the sea is just rocks, and there’s always seem to be boulders here and there making surfing impossible. I saw some truly fantastic barrels on the north shore but most of the time their sucking in water revealed lava boulders waiting for the surfer who’d be stupid enough to go in.

 

There was a beach, and a guy paddled out. The waves were what, one metre’s high or so, quite fast. But they didn’t peel and mostly closed out in a 20-metre or so white wall. Besides, they seemed a bit slow to break and the guy missed lots of waves thinking they would when they still ran for a good 5 metres further before breaking.

 

Anyway he wasn’t any good, but who bloody cares. I was happy to see him. I’d have loved to go. But I’d jumped in many times in our pool to cool down from the hot bath and knew I wouldn’t last more than a minute in the sea. Should have taken my wetsuit. Mind you I did lose one of my flippers in Malaysia…

 

Got back to the heavenly hotel. The waves had quitened down a fair bit by then. The rocks could breathe again.

 

Dinner was even more fish and kinds of cooking and dishes than the previous day. It was fish galore. By the end of it gills were starting to grow on my skull.

 

At 9pm I’d arranged for masseurs to do their thing. Not that we needed them, but then again why wait?

 

I can safely say this is the best hotel I’ve ever been in. Yes it’s pricey and it’s overly fishy, but for once I could see why. Sure the hotel hadn’t planned for there to be a storm just for our stay, but there was; there was a wet grey day, a sunny stormy one, and on our departure day quiet seas and summer sun.

 

Tessa and Ian, again, thanks millions for the idea.

Kanazawa to Wajima (Noto peninsula)

We picked up our rental car from the train station. After a few hiccups with the English-speaking-but-Japanese-written GPS we managed to leave Kanazawa behind. We followed the coast. For endless kilometres it was just a conurbation road squeezed between a row of houses and shops on either side, with surreal speed limits, mostly 40km/h, and with a white line all the way, so no chance of overtaking anywhere. Must be said though that it didn’t stress me out. Don’t know if it’s because of the fear of radars and the invisible police force or because everyone does the same or because it’s my first day. Anyway it was quite relaxing in a sluggish way.

The sun was beautiful, not a cloudy smear in the sky. It was warm and soon we’d be by the sea and the scenic Noto peninsula. Alex elected to come here when a friend of ours mentioned staying in a ryokan that sounded incredibly brilliant. From the website it didn’t just sound it, so she was sold.

Just before leaving the highway we stopped at the Space and UFO museum of the UFO capital of Japan, Hakui. Huge and impressive building with Yuri Gagarin’s real Vostok capsule (apparently) and quite an extensive space exploration collection of exhibits. The UFO section was comparatively mediocre and overall it felt like the building was 10 times too big for what it showed. Anyway it was fun and wacky.

Hakui is at the top of a very long beach after which Noto starts proper, and the low-lying dune-type scenery makes way for a cliffy, rocky and green one. The vegetation changed completely too: at first like a mix between Brittany and côte d’azur, then like alpine forest. And when I say alpine I mean it, we kept seeing carpark dedicated to putting chains on your tyres and we even came across a huge snowplough parked in a corner. Not even a kilometre from the coast the trees looked like you were at least a 1000m up.

With the sun shining the way it did and all the deep green of the trees and blue-green of the sea it was hard to believe this place could get snowed up. But that wasn’t even all.

I read on the Internet that when the Chinese tried to invade Japan twice in the 16th or 17th century, each time with at least 4 times more manpower than the islanders, a storm and a typhoon decimated them to such an extent that they lost or had to retreat with their ponytails between their legs.

When we stopped in a lovely fishing village – the first of the day – the sheer number and scale of sea defences put out to sea and on the coast indirectly showed just what the Chinese had had to deal with: a first line 60 metres out, another at an angle 40 metres in, big rocks and concrete wall on the coast and concrete walls by the houses. Houses, I shall add, whose sea-facing wooden walls never had any opening. In fact, that’s something we’ve found: here harbours are not valued as tourist attractions, there is no eatery or bar, it’s just working places. In France even the smallest coastal hamlet provides something for tourists.

Anyway it was lovely: all wooden houses with black tiles. Few people around, very few cars (is the whole of Japan just crammed into Tokyo or what? So far it’s been such a quiet-deserted country it’s hard to think where the cliché comes from).

Lunch took place in a canteen-type restaurant cliffhanging some 50 metres above a gorgeous cove with bunches of seaweedy rocks, sand and a true painter-like palette of colours. I chose a dish I’d never seen before, a bowl of rice covered in shredded meat mixed with egg. Yummy. To go with that I had miso and spice dried ray slices, which were so beef-jerky-like I had to ask Alex to confirm they smelled of fish. Me wife wasn’t so lucky, her udon soup was a bit disappointing.

A few kilometres up the coast I spotted a lone surfer in a bay. We parked and went down to the beach. There was a hint of wind but the sun was still strong. I was very tempted to go in but thought I’d wait until the next day when we’re staying in that great ryokan overlooking the sea.

I love surfing, and I love watching surfing. It’s a great surrogate. There was just one peak, which started well enough but petered out after two seconds. The guy was doing the same short and tiny wave over and over again. I also thought he was very well padded, with socks and gloves and even a sun-hat-looking hood. I wondered if he was particularly sensitive to the cold, but we later found out the water temperature is actually 10 right now, which isn’t much so I don’t blame the man. Funny, it felt pretty warm (15 maybe?) just looking at it.

Still, I will go in at some point. Can’t miss the chance. I’ve swam in Ouessant in March. I’ve dipped into mountain streams high up in Corsica. I’ve also surfed in January in the North sea when the water was 7 degrees (I had a wetsuit for sure, although a bad one and holes in my crap gloves). Loved it every single time.

It was great seeing this lone man and the sea. The whole ocean for himself. A peak to himself. Surfing in March, in the sun, by yourself. Yeah, that’s the life.

In a way I tend to prefer this kind of surfing. Most of the time you’ll be on your own, no sharing and no priority. Your face is biting, you’ve got to keep paddling to keep away the onset of hypothermia. I remember some incredible sessions on the west coast of Scotland in winter and early spring with crystal-clear water, no one in sight, decent waves, the deep green hills dotted with white sheep all over, and the yellow line of the sand, plus the blue sky. Fantastic.

In fact, in the water it’s fine. The hardest is putting on the wetsuit, especially if it’s windy, and worst of all is taking it off. You’re already cold, yet you have to remove your second skin, the warmish water trapped in runs off and the wind knifes you like a hundred daggers.

It’s been fantastic being by the sea again. Maybe it’s being in Laos. Maybe it’s aging and knowing more precisely who I am and what I like the most more, but yep, the sea is definitely where I belong and want to live. Kyoto and Kanazawa have been great, but being reunited with salty water beats them hands down. The difference between great and greater.

In the match-up between nurture and nature, the latter doesn’t even have a rival.

The sea moves and is never boring. It’s threatening or sweet or perfect or cuddly or welcoming and womb-like, it’s a hundred colours, endless possibilities, surfing, sailing, paddling, snorkeling, fishing, jetskiing, swimming, kite-surfing. There’s the fish, the seaweed, the birds, the storms and x-foot waves, the sound and the fury, the sun reflecting on it or not, the clouds, the days when the horizon is unable to differentiate between sky and sea, the floating corpses, the spawned eggs, the floatsome, the rubbish, the oil leaks, the occasional poo, the people who walk along it, the kids who play in it, the dogs and their stick, the plunging cormorants and boobies.

Give me the sea over every land scenery. Yes mountains are awesome and dramatic, but they are not liquid and don’t dance in the wind. The panorama stays the same even if small details disappear or get altered. The seasons affect them for sure, but on the coast you can have two seasons in a day, rain and sun, wind and stillness, new face, new character, new painting there just in front of you. Every week you know you’ll have seen ten or more new sceneries.

You can’t fly in the air, but you can fly underwater. And on the sea. It’s called surfing.

I must admit, I’m writing this on a footless chair sat on tatamis leading onto a wooden platform jutting out into a raging sea. It’s 22 degrees inside, 6 out, the wind is rattling the windows, the waves are splashing over the very spiky Japanese black rocks scattered into the bay, whitewashing the dark low sky in impressionistic touches. Lines of cormorants keep gliding past our glass-wall. The storm may even get stronger yet Choupette is sitting on the other side of the table reading a book by an Anglo-Japanese writer. Perfection in motion is happening all around me this evening.

Circumstances do affect perception. But my perception of the sea doesn’t. This ryokan, in this particular spot, at this particular time of day and of my life, just makes perfection more perfect.

Lucky, very lucky me. Thank you Choupette.

Kanazawa day 3 and last

I started our last full day at 7am by taking pictures at the fishmarket. They were only setting up but it was nice as I was the only non-worker there. It was freezing though.

I got back to the hotel via a supermarket to buy some mochi to make-do for the lack of sugar in the all-Japanese breakfast. The female cashier chatted to me in decent French when she found out where I was from. She had started in English. Travelled to France 5 times so far. You’d think a cashier can’t afford all this travelling or speak at least 3 languages. There goes a cliché.

Back at the hotel we engaged in a planned gym session. Abs, push-ups, chair etc. Tough after so much eating and no sport whatever for a week. Then onsen for me. After which came the much needed breakkie: this time we had cold grilled sardines. Yummy.

Outside it was pretty warm: not a cloud and a very extrovert sun. Which was nice as we’d decided to visit the castle and gardens today. The castle was not visitable. From what I saw it was the expected thing, neither amazing nor too shabby, just massively long buildings with typical roofs and monumental doors. Yeah okay.

The gardens are described as the third best in the country. Very cute, lovely trees (80% of which are propped up by ropes and poles and sticks), ponds, waterfalls, pavillions. And there was a cherry tree area full of white, pink or reddish blossoms. Nice. But not ‘waw’. More zen than in your face, and as a result not that impressive (to me).

In the grove as I was taking pix by myself, an old man showed me his little finger. Had no idea what he was on about so I started playing, showing ‘three’ (cars) then ‘seven’ (wives).

When we got out of the grove and headed for the tea house, we bumped into him again and this time I understood what his little finger meant: ‘are you by yourself?’. So I showed him Alex and said ‘two’. To cut a long story short, he ended up invited us to the tea house and bought the entrance tickets (700 yen per person, about 4.5 GBP), which include cake and tea served on tatami by traditional ladies who turn the bowl of macha tea twice before giving it to you and say a little prayer when you sip. Lucky the cake was there and sweet because the tea was very bitter and quite undrinkable.

The old man was nice apart from the fact that he spoke no English whatever. Pfff. But the nice thing with Japanese is that despite knowing you don’t get a word they keep going on in Japanese anyway. So there’s no uncomfortable silence. In the end we didn’t know much more about him that before, but he’d been nice and showed us around the pavillion. We just are sure than he’s retired, from Toyama and didn’t work for either Panasonic, Nissan, Toyota or Toto (the toilet makers).

From the gardens we walked to the samurai district and ate… Indian… Very nice at that.

With a few more mochi down the throat in lieu of dessert, we crawled back to the ryokan and collapsed. Alex had a good hour’s sleep.

When we got out again it was nightfall. We borrowed the ryokan’s bikes and cycled to the small geisha district, really close-by. A wee stroll later we were back to our bikes, which we’d parked in front of a great looking place. Alex was reticent to go (as always) as she didn’t know what it was, and of course I wasn’t. Turned out it was a cocktail bar. There was a woman at one end of the counter, a man at the other, and the barman. We sat in between the two customers. The atmosphere was lovely, intimate, dimmed lights, jazz music (if I haven’t mentioned music in Japan yet, it’s been mostly jazz and classical music; once we had Japanese pop, and twice or thrice Anglophone pop), Japanese sitting, and a huge choice of drinks (like in Chez Quasimodo).

Alex went for a glass of white wine, which she said was very good. I started with a fresh mango and orange juice, followed up by a glass of Calvados. We chatted a bit with the barman and the guy to our left, who after a while got joined by another.

We talked whiskies, cognacs, calvados, sakes and baijiu (Chinese rice spirit). We laughed. And left. Indeed we had booked a table at the Italian we’d visited on our first night. Without noticing, our choice of restaurant has gently gone from 100% Japanese to less so. Maybe it’s the full-on breakfasts, extremely good but unusual (even to me). Anyway on our last full day in Kanazawa we had Jap breakkie, Indian lunch and Italian dinner.

Then we collapsed again, after a late-night onsen visit for me.

Very, very impressed by Kanazawa, even more than by Kyoto. Great mix of ambiances, great overall feel, great location. Lovely people too.

Kanazawa day 1 and 2

It was not the Shinkansen we took to come up here. The line will open in 2015. The Thunderbird train took us 2 hours 20 or so. It was raining.

Bit of context: we came here coz of the interesting history – the only city with Kyoto that has kept the geisha tradition alive and wasn’t bombed by the Yankees. It has a world famous contemporary art museum and the third best gardens in Japan. It’s also go the best shrimps of the country.

Kanazawa was rainy too. We dropped the bags at our first ryokan of the hols, a traditional inn with tatami and futon and onsen (public hot baths). Dinner, if you opt for it, is served in the room. You leave your shoes at the entrance, and jump into slippers which you can’t take inside your room. In your private loo there are loo sandals you can use.

It was past two and we headed for the next-door fishmarket, a famous one as seafood from Kanazawa is very highly regarded (the owner of Yulala in Vientiane, from Kyoto, warned me not to eat seafood in his hometown, but to wait until I got to Kanazawa). We settled for a sushi bar. Ah ah nice joke. There’s only sushi bars in the market.

I gave weird things a go, especially fatty tuna and three-way clam sushis. The tuna was not even pink, more like light brown. It felt like biting into vaguely resisting butter, was quite thick, tasted so so, although not of fish. The clam came on three separate bunches of rice, three separate parts. The first one I bit into, I had the impression of crunchy carrott. It didn’t taste of anything. The second was like cartilage and I spit it out. Only the third was lovely, extremely tender and tasting of something coming from the sea.The rest was more ‘normal’, lean red tuna, edamame, roe, seared bonito. No, we also had nice cucumber and plum rolls, a combo we didn’t know.

After that we bought some mochi, had coffee and took a taxi to the museum, a very nice round building with a lot of glass. Sadly no artwork was visible as they were preparing a new exhibition. Then we took the loop bus back to the fishmarket area.

We spent some time in the close-by shopping mall. Alex couldn’t believe how much stuff Muji sell: food, bicycles and the rest.

It was high time for the onsen. The water was boiling hot in the hottub, and on the first day it was pretty hard to alternate with freezing showers. That wiped me out for some time.

For dinner, after wandering aimlessly in the driving rain, we looped back to the hotel and took refuge in the very Japanese-looking Italian across the street from our ryokan (great decor). Alex ordered pasta a l’arrabiata (very good), and I a beef soup. The meat was fattier than fatty tuna but the soup was yummy, flavoured and light and springtimey.

Kanazawa is by the sea (well, a few kms in), and by the mountains too. You can see snow-capped peaks in the distance. It’s a lovely feeling: seagulls in the sky, yummy fish in the stalls but a crispness and air that come definitely from the mountains. I should know, I lived 1400m up in the Pyrenees for three years, and it’s the same feeling of purity.

The room was hot all night. Alex loved it, as for me I had to sleep fully dressed over the covers. It’s the only way I was going to stop sweating without getting cold.

The Japanese breakfast downstairs was lovely, with barely a touch of sugar. We had grilled and cold salmon, rice, pickles, glutten thinggies and other lovely stuff.

The sun shone today, and that was a relief. We borrowed the ryokan bikes and cycled to the biggest geisha district, over the river. Due to a slight miscalculation we ended up climbing the whole hill (lovely). In fact the district was at the foot but we got there eventually.

It was nice but a bit too posh and manicured. Great architecture though, and some fine produce which we sampled later back in our room (including a truly brilliant miso-caramelised dried shrimp and sardine and walnut mix).

We cycled back to the hotel along the river through the other, smaller but ‘realer’ geisha area.

After our apéritifs we felt like udon soup and found a restaurant next door. Great looking. Actually, that’s one thing that has struck us in Japan: the awesome tradition of interior design and its transition from traditional to modern in such a seamless way. Everything seems to make sense, is well thought-out, unobstrusive yet beautiful. At a café in the first geisha district we sat by a window whose top was at about my nipples’ height. From where my eyes were all I could see a tray full of white pebbles topped by a ceramic dish full with water and a green pine tree twig. Lovely. Then I thought ‘what a strange idea to have a window so low’, so I bent down and looked. The outdoor space was 1,50m by 2m at most, full of AC motors and ugly wires and all the rest of it. In short, it was nasty. Yet, by cutting a low window and drawing as a result your attention to the white pebbles, the architects allowed natural light in (outdoor space and reflective white stones), zen beauty and clever design. Instead of the ‘let’s have a wall here and stick a strong light’ attitude many people would have in the West, they circumvented the whole problem and turned it into a very impressive selling point.

This kind of realisations seems to happen again and again here. These guys are very very clever at designing. Of course we knew of Japanese architecture. We’ve got coffee table books of it. We’ve watched TV programs about it. But you’ve got to make it here to fully understand. It’s not just a few token architect houses that are amazing: the principles are at play in a lot of common places as well. Materials, dark ceilings with white walls and floors, wood, slats, circles, minimalism with the only decoration being the udon soup bowls (sublime)… Pasta a l’arrabiata on black ceramic plates…

Anyway. After lunch we headed for the samurai district. I thought samurai were the private army of their masters. Bodyguards and police for them. But Wikipedia proved me wrong: at times in Japanese history they were a ruling class unto themselves, they even managed to kick out the emperor at one point. No surprise their houses look so stunning, and the district as pretty as a dream. Now it’s also full of lovely restaurants, including an Irish pub serving ‘real Irish food’ and a Breton one with decent-looking ‘galettes’.

Alex fell in love with yet more bicycles in a shop there. I chatted with three young skateboarders. The smell of bread drew us to a lovely boulangerie.

Hell, Kanazawa is nice. I really like it. It’s got a lot going for it: traditional and cool big avenues. The feel is just right. The central area of Kyoto we visited was a letdown of sorts, whereas here it’s all good, and again so quiet yet so alive. No one in the streets yet all eateries are full. Weird.

Walking down to the river in the south to grab the loop bus back up, Alex found a lovely shop mixing new and antiques with handbags and mobiles and cameras and all the quirkiness of our Japan so far stashed into a neat-looking industrial-Finnish-Edo space. She got a French handbag made in Japan, I a book of B&W film photos of the town. By an American. Who has been living here for 23 years. Beautiful book, beautiful pix: he follows the seasons from autumn to summer and draws a great portrait of the city, in quite a ‘Japanese’ style as well – refined, understated, mixing, discreet.

It’s only been two days in Kanazawa, but I can see why you could stay here for so long (beyond what I’ve already said): winters are tough, piles of snow and frezzing cold (roofs are equipped to deal with that, snow spades are tucked away in garages). Summers are hot. The seasons exist here, not like in, say… Laos? And seasons, I realise now, are important to me. Can’t have too much of only one thing, it kills the pleasure. You need to freeze to enjoy the heat, and vice-versa. The lesson of onsen maybe.

Speaking of which, ours shuts at 11pm. Sayonara.

Last day in Kyototo

Our evening with Dom and Cat was very lovely indeed. We took them to the okonomi yaki (pancake) place we discovered on our first night. The waiter recognised us instantly. I bent my diet and partook in a yasube yaki again. Had a quick self-flagellation afterwards. Bad boy. Baaad.

 

Then Dom dragged us through the emptying streets of historical Kyoto to a place he’d read about online. He described it as a ‘barely-converted garage’ for drinking wine. After a few hesitations and happening upon a scooter-pedestrian crash, we found it. It had nothing of a garage anymore (if it had ever been one), although it was on a small dead residential street. It’s called ‘Chez Quasimodo’, looks very neat from the outside. Inside it’s like a Montmartre cellar: a 10-pax bar, a huge stucco glass cabinet full of all the spirits you can think of, dim lights, a top-of-the-range record player and speakers, a wine fridge, a round-shaped ceiling and a liveried barman, Japanese yet more French-looking than any of us Frogs these days, speaking French (he ‘had fun’ in Bordeaux he said).

 

We ordered a bottle of Côtes de nuit Village which was very nice, and after pouring our glasses the waiter left the bottle in front of us on the bar. Once in a while he’d get cheeses out and slice them just in front of us for other customers (all pairs but us). They smelled like the real deal and had us salivating. But we didn’t take the bait. At other times he’d change the LPs, which he chose from monumental shelves full to the rafters with them. Always with a nice smile on his face. Very attentive but not sticky at all, a master at his trade, retired yet always present when needed, slow darting eyes to his various duty stations. A cool dude.

 

After a long while chatting in pairs (Alex and Dom, Cat and I) due to the bar, we decided to move to spirits. Dom ordered a Talisker, Cat a Macallan, Alex another glass of red, and I a very lovely Cognac which had hints of strawberry, was creamy and quite light with a pink/light colour. Again, the cool dude left our respective bottles in front of us. Great evening. Great coincidence to all be here at the same time.

 

Next day (yesterday), I felt a bit shit. Don’t know if it was because of the drinking or a combo of that and a wee bug. My right calf was hurting quite bad too; that was the walking. The plan was to go into the centre, so we did. The tube system is confusing at the best of times but we got to our destination, having paid a pound each more than we should have apparently. The Kyoto station, we were told, is famous. It was built by a controversial architect in the 90s and was adjuged then to be far too modernist. Frankly, it was very underwhelming. One side has got a huge metal girder-and-glass round structure way up above the atrium. It’s got the monumental on its side but it’s disconnected from everything, looks badly aged and useless. In a way it’s like a messed-up trial version of the King’s Cross station roof that was built uncomfortably high so that people didn’t have to see it if they didn’t want to.

 

Another famous part of the design is the 25-metre wide steps going up to the roof, from where you can enjoy city views from behind glasspanes. Yeah. Right. Woohoo, 25-metre wide steps. Personally, I’d stick the whole thing in the ‘missed opportunity’ section of 20th century architecture. But anyway.

 

Under the station is a huge maze of shops and exits that you can never reach and signs leading to nowhere. Still we managed to escape after kafkaing our way out and headed for the best shopping plaza, said the guide. The Avanti plaza. It was plain rubbish. After a minute we got out and it was time to eat. Desperately we looked for a restaurant in the streets that took our fancy… And ended up in another plaza, way up in the food court. We hadn’t planned to but settled for a pizza. It is said that Japan is good at foreign food so we gave it a go, and it was actually pretty good.

 

After that we took the escalator down. The plan was to get back to where Chez Quasimodo was for Alex had spotted nice shops in the area. But we never made it. We stopped at Uniqlo on the floor below the food court. Then the outdoor clothing shop. Then the bicycle section (for electric bikes), and the electronics floor to finish with (and finish us off). We were quite disappointed by the looks of these malls: low-ceilinged, very messy, gaudy (says Alex). Personally, I was expecting something more akin to classy Bangkok shopping malls but so far, nope.

 

(before I forget, since I’m writing this on the train to Kanazawa: Japanese trains are WAY TOO hot. I’m wearing a tee-shirt now and still I’m sweating. It’s unbearable. Reminds me of Czech and Slovak trains and buildings)

 

However, it must be said that they are very well stocked, and we bough a few things, messed up our tube journey back and crawled to the hotel. Had a bath straight away again to ease the painful and heavy legs. We could have gone to a traditional show. Should have. But didn’t. Just lifting my eyelid was exhausting. After a shot of acid (JOKE – ndf), I did manage to drag myself out for diner. We walked through another red light district by a nice canal, found an udon counter restaurant and slurped the goodies.

 

Then it was curtains.

Kyototo day 2

The calves are not responding well to all this walking. Stretching session this late afternoon and I’m still feeling pretty stiff.

Last night we wandered in the banana district of town, which is a euphemism for a male thing that sometimes looks like the fruit. Nothing was on show so Alex got a bit disappointed. But we found a counter restaurant for a maximum of six, and ate there. The guy was real nice, jokey and eager to please, like most people we’ve come across so far (this evening in the train 2 women followed us on the wrong line for them thinking we’d made a mistake – we hadn’t, so that got off and turned round). It was just us and him, he knew five food words in English and us nothing in Japanese but we got by. He talked about beefoo and his wifoo.

I had pickles and cabbage salad, Alex tempura veggies and SHRIMP, which she ate like a big girl. Besides, she didn’t die, so there may be an opening here.

We got home, read for 10 minutes and fell asleep like logs of Lao frangipani tree. Amazing how well we’re sleeping here: the cold air, the walking, the opaque curtains, the silent streets, all these combine to give us a rest like we haven’t had in over a year. Still, we’re knackered.

Today was cultural day as we headed for Ryoanji and the golden temple. I’ve known about the former for years. It started when I got into architecture all the way back, and cropped up again when I worked on my PhD thesis as John Cage was deeply influenced by it. He even wrote pieces with this title.

Well, I was a bit underwhelmed really. It’s a single walled garden 25m x 10m. You sit, think profound things, walk around the house and leave. It was nice, don’t misunderstand me, but not as impressive as I thought it would be. The landscape gardens around the shrine are very pretty. We walked around the lake twice and ended up eating at the shrine’s restaurant, a VERY traditional place in its own big Japanese garden. The tables were 30cm high, you sat on flat cushions on the tatamis. There’s glass openings at the bottom of the sliding doors, which become rice-paper after 60cm or so. It’s very uncomfortable for us, but it feels like you’re a samurai of sorts, and it’s cool. Food was expensive but original and pretty good. One more tick on our list. The knees and back won’t withstand a lot more of those tortures.

Then we walked to Kinkaku-ji, the golden temple. Yeah… Same feeling as previously: not flooded with gasping awe. Nice yes, but you see it and you think ‘ok, what next?’. It’s a lovely pavilion whose 2nd and 3rd floors are all golden (inside and out), so it looks pretty spectacular what with the wooden hill backdrop and lake and what have you. But that’s it. And you can’t go in. So you follow the crowd, most of which seems to be made up of Chinese groups, along the narrow path which takes you round the back and up the hillock to exit by drink-vending machines and ice-cream stalls.

What was much more interesting we thought was our walking through the locals streets to go from the train stations to the temples and vice-versa. Very endearing. Extremely quiet, again, but far from dead: there’s all the life you want there, it just goes on as if no one wanted to awaken a nearby monster. Lots of houses, even shabby ones, seem to have a garden of sorts, with Japanese pine trees most likely. The atmosphere is just right, just lovely. No one laughs at you for being a foreigner (a Chinese kid on the train did have to point out to her parents ‘waiguoren’ as she looked at me; when I replied ‘ni ye shi waiguoren’, which means ‘you too are a foreigner’, she clammed up).

Yep, we like it.

The bikes and motorbikes don’t appear to be secured. Looks weird, wrong and wonderful. I saw a few big bikes on the road today: Hayabusas, Super Fours and ZZ1400s. All Japanese. I’m still to spot a non Jap bike.

One of the questions that we had before arriving was ‘how long before we beg for non Japanese food?’. So far we’re still happily eating away at the local cuisine, which is very varied and subtle and delicious. Breakfast at the hotel is a dream.

Speaking of which, it’s nearly time to meet up with Dom and Kat on the bridge over the river Kamo. I have a feeling I’m going to zap and gobble up one of those scrumptious pancakes. I know I’m bad. Bad boy.

 

 

First steps, first impressions

Impressed, that’s the first impression.

Coming to Kyoto may have given us a misrepresenting image of Japan, but here it’s deliciously nice. Most striking of all is how quiet and silent things are compared to any Asian place of similar attraction. In China, places like Kyoto were a nightmarish rave party with conflicting musics on speakers, tourist guides on megaphones, lasers, and a lot of kitsch.

Kyoto is serene, calm, beautiful in a small and wooden way. The sun is shining and we’re getting more sunburns here than in Laos, even though it’s a good 20 degrees less.

Tradition seems big here, but not AGAINST the new, not as a show either, just because. There’s quite a lot of women walking around in geisha-like kimonos, some men in kimonos. Most eateries are your typical cliché: curtains, bamboo slats, wood, plants, gravel. Some are very surprising: cliché then get in and you’ve got any kind of atmosphere you want. Yesterday we ended up in a bohemian-jazzy cocktail bar playing all sorts of reggae (it’d have been jazz and blues in Europe no doubt). There was no list, you just gave the name of a drink and they cocktailed it for you. Alex had a very nice mojito, I a tequila sunrise (in the land of the rising sun, what else really?).

Today, we had lunch in a first cliched restaurant which was so 70s inside it was confusing.

Then we had dessert (mochi, naturally – I had about 10 yesterday) in a tiny tiny thing of a room which had a mochi display, 5 or 6 aquariums and handmade kaleidoscope. Just like in mantas and films, Japan seems to mix things in a way that we can’t or won’t mix things – and they make it look very cool indeed. As if there was no overarching notion of what goes with what. Of course there must be, but as it is we don’t know it and so much the better. She then insisted that we had the mochi there and then in her microscopic shop and gave us genmai tea (at 5 when we went for macha near the orange gate shrine we were also given free hoji tea at the end – won’t complain).

After the cocktail last night we ate in a Japanese pancake eatery. It was beyond BRILLIANT. Very nice atmosphere too, more traditional with the hotplate and the cook, then your own hotplate and the orders fizzing past, the clouds of steam above the cook, she rushing around all the time for this or that ingredient, popping out from behind the hotplate to tell you the loo is busy and will you please wait.

Today we heard a guy who laughed like in a manga. So they exist!

We spent the afternoon walking in and around Fushimi Inari shrine, aka the orange-gate walkway: hundreds of orange gates often near-touching each other helping your way along the path to the top of the hill. The path snakes through forests of pine and bamboo trees and stops several times at various shrines, full as well of orange and stone gates ranging from tiny to quite substantial. And there’s always stone dogs guarding them.

So far so very very nice. Peaceful despite the crowd, peaceful when there’s no one, but never the impression that it’s dead. It’s alive and very well and yet it’s quiet, tranquil, soothing.

We’re knackered from all the walking, activity which we haven’t done since we’re in Laos. But it’s lovely, crisp and sunny during the day, very chilly in the evening.

Turns out we’re having dinner tomorrow with Dom and Kat, two colleagues of Alex now posted in Beijing. Alex was a  deskmate of Dom pre-2007, and he saw from FB we were in Kyoto. How funny innit!

PS: nearly forgot the two bad points – the automatically heated toilet seat and the wall so close to the loo I have to do the splits to wipe me bum.

JAPAN

Gooday. Or should I say ‘Konichua’?

This evening we’re flying off to Japan. Alex will be able to rest, hopefully, after a number of tough weeks at work. It had always been her idea to go. In China already, but it had never materialised. This time it has and I’m looking forward to it.

It’s been a while since I’ve had that feeling: not knowing what to expect. I know it’s ‘different’, I know most stereotypes and have a lot of images in my head. But what’s so nice about this trip is the uncertainty as to what we will actually discover there. How much will the clichés be true? What will stand out in the end? Japan is sure to mess up with what I think it’ll be, and that’s a lovely feeling.

Besides it’ll be spring, with mixed temperatures. In the Japanese Alps, it’ll even be cold. Snow-capped peaks and all that. I realised yesterday that since September-October 2012 I haven’t had any of that, and it’s been missed. Going under the blanket in a rush because the air in the room is chilly. Feeling the gentle bite of a cold breeze on your skin. Wrapping up warm in a coat, a woollen scarf.

Japan, here we come.

 

 

On learning to speak Foreign

My mother tongue is French. Another way to say that, despite some scattered evidence to the contrary, I was destined to be bad at languages. Not to mention accents.

Then, as a reward for being a good French Literature student, I was given an Erasmus sholarship to study English abroad. I had the choice between two destinations: Glasgow, and Berlin. At the time, I laughed: ‘English in Berlin, you philistines: they speak GERMAN over there!’ So I moved to Glasgow, and realised straight away they probably spoke a language closer to English in Germany than in the working-class capital of Scotland. Ah well…

That I speak English at all now, 14 years after discovering Partick, is all down to my in-house teacher and wife, a lovely Derbyshire girl.

It was a long process, learning English. But now I write books in Alex Ferguson’s idiom and am also a translator, so you could say I’m sorted.

And one may feel that, English being the international language, the world is his oyster. But that’s just a label. The truth is most of the world speaks Foreign. As a tourist, that fact adds exoticism to a destination. ‘Oh, they don’t speak English, how cute’.

But what if you live where they speak Foreign?

So far, I have called home three Foreign-speaking countries: Slovakia, China and Laos. I spent 9 months in the first, 3 years in the second, and so far a year in Laos (out of 2-ish).

I’ve always been a bit annoyed by Brits who go to France on hol and can’t even be bothered to learn to say ‘bonjour’ and ‘merci’. Or Frenchpeople who will not lower themselves to articulate a ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in the anglo-saxon world.

So my take on living abroad has always been that I had to learn Foreign. It’s a show of respect, plus it has the additional advantage of making things easier with locals. Finally, each language having its own take on things, its own way of working, organising and showing the world, it’s plain fascinating.

These truths still hold true. Even more so since I learnt Mandarin, and am now discovering more and more of Lao. These two languages work in such different ways to European ones they are showing me new planets.

Having said that, how long will the Foreign-language learning honeymoon last?

Personally, I find it criminal to have lived in the same place for donkey’s years and not be able to speak the language. And I used to think that even ‘short stays’ merited that one learnt it. But I don’t know anymore.

I’m gonna try NOT to justify laziness, but let’s say I can see why career expats may grow out of bothering.

FIRST it’s not easy, especially with weird Foreign languages – which means ALL of them.

SECOND, say you learn for three years and get to what you feel is a decent level, but then leave to start all over again somewhere else…

THIRD, what you feel is a decent level may or may not enable you to have meaningful chats with locals. This important issue touches on what you want to ‘learn’ Foreign for: token-learning or with a view to exchanging your views on Plato and the latest Fields’ medal winner?

FOURTH, some country nationals don’t particularly reward you for making the effort. France for one. China. Laos… And counting.

FIFTH, while learning you still want a social life. So you hang out with those you can understand, and who can understand you. Mostly, other expats. Provided you get to a decent-enough level after 2 years, decent enough to form a friendship with locals that is, you’ll hit three potential walls: first, your social life is sorted, and you don’t have a lot more time for other friendships/activities to form. Second, you may come to realise the extent of the culture gap between you and ‘them’. It’s 100% normal that different people should be different, but it’s not always conducive to a great human experience. I enjoy karaoke, but not weekly. I dont’ like manic screaming. I don’t like betting money when playing cards while sitting out in sticky 30+ weather. If your conception of entertainment is not the same as that of those you want to befriend, something’ll have to give. The third wall is that just when you may start forming a meaningful frienship with a local, you will have to pack your bags and go somewhere else.

SIXTH, I’m married. And faithful. Both serious impediments to learning Foreign. After all, as I said at the start, my English is where it’s at now thanks to what we French people call ‘pillow-learning’. In other words, having a local partner is the best way ever to learn Foreign. Because you feel connected to his/her place, you want to learn more about your partner’s culture etc (I discovered that, in fact, it’s not always the case – but it’s mine: when I embrace a person, I embrace him/her, but also what made him/her). Also because you have a speaking dictionary next to you – very helpful.

From my experience, the expats who mix the most are 90% of the time those sexually-romantically involved with a Foreign speaker. Their partner comes with a ‘readymade’ group of friends, a network, and they help the expat smooth his/her way into local culture.

When I left Slovakia, after a great time, I spoke pidgin Slovak – forget cases and declensions. Enough to get by on the basics of everyday life. No formal lessons.

When I arrived in China, I took lessons for 2 months. After 2 months it struck me it was going to be a struggle to enjoy my stay in the country, and especially in Chongqing. The lack of affinity (which I wasn’t expecting at all and shocked me a fair bit) made me stop the tuitions. Luckily, being a ‘learn on the street’ kind of guy, when I left China I was able to speak quite a bit.

Laos is different. The people’s reactions to my trying to come up with Lao are pretty similar to those in China, but I enjoy Laos a LOT more than the Middle Empire, so I’m still learning after a year. Besides, my teacher is really fun and we’re three buddies wrestling with the quirks of the language together.

I can’t say I agree with expats who don’t make any effort. But I’ll reserve judgment until I’m 60 or so, after living in 10  different countries speaking 10 widly different languages.

In Denis Mandarin: Wo juede waiguoren yao xue waiguohua. Dan shi wo bu neng shuo waiguo-le ruguo bu xihuan zhege guo.

In Denis Lao: Koy kit va mod tuk khon tong hien pasa falang. Teva ha hien pasa falang, koy tong mak pathet niang.

In Denis Slovak: Kurva!