the bouncey zone

We got to Yokohama okay. The convention has started.

I uploaded some video clips from the train rides. Look here: [LINK]

Nikko (日光) means sunlight. It’s also the name of the town where we’re spending 3 nights and 2 days before going to Yokohama for the convention. Tonight is the third night.

After sleeping off some of the jet lag, we got an early start on Tuesday. We hiked through a park near our hotel, along the main river, and into the old historic area. Then we toured the famous temples. I took many pictures.

We ate lunch at a little shop with plastic food in the window. Both of us had an interesting dish consisting of eggs, onions, and orange bits cooked together and served over rice. The lady running the place, who didn’t seem to speak more than a few words of English, went into fits of histerical giggling when I said the standard phrases “oishii desune” (it’s delicious) and “gochisoosama deshita” (it was a feast) at the right times.

After lunch I got a bottle of tea from a vending machine. It tasted like puffed wheat. Disgusting! But I was thirsty, so I drank it anyway. Sweating didn’t work very well that day due to humidity.

We walked along the trail with the little stone Jizo statues. Along the way we found a park with a water fountain. Slightly dehydrated at that point, we each drank about a liter of water and refilled a pair of empty bottles to use as canteens. The Jizo wore red hats and aprons. A river roared nearby, and there was a flood control station at the top of the trail. More pictures… Also more water on the way back.

Finally we walked back to the hotel for supper. It was their famous zen vegan spread — chunky mushroom soup with strips of chewy tofu, a tofu steak, shredded salad, brown rice, and some fruit. Dana wasn’t too thrilled with the meal, but I liked it.

We were exhausted, overheated, and thirsty. My heel had a big blister. Usually we end up having some kind of Death March on our vacations. At least this one was scenic and educational.

Today, Wednesday, we walked along a different path into the main part of town. I bought some bandages for my heel. We visited the official tourist information center, which had extensive exhibits explaining how the unusual stone walls stretching across the main river every so often are meant to slow down flash floods and to control erosion.

We ate lunch at Skylark. The waitress spoke rapidly with a high, nasal voice that blurred words together beyond recognition. We ended up pointing at the menu. Corn pizza and ice cream pancakes, both a little weird but very good.

In the afternoon we did a little shopping. At the Sanrio store we got a pair of cute Hello Kitty handkerchiefs. One of them depicted Kitty-san as the famous sleeping cat statue in the temple complex. Seeing the cat costs extra and is reported by most sources to be very disappointing, so we had skipped it. But I took a picture of a real cat sleeping in a store window.

Later we bought a pair of warm cake pastries filled with bean paste from a shop across the street from the Tobu Nikko station. We washed them down with little cups of that same roasted tea, which had been foisted upon us for free. This time the tea gave a nice counterpoint to the sweet pastry. It’s terrible as a sports drink, but not so bad with food…

The people working at all of those stores were perfectly polite and spoke clearly. I wish more sales clerks back home could learn from them. They also tended to blush and giggle when I asked any questions or offered any compliment in their language, even something that a Japanese customer would be required to say as part of the standard shopping ritual.

I know many of those standard phrases. Pimsleur drilled them into me, along with an intuitive sense of the grammar. It’s a great system for that, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to learn a new language. But I learned immediately on arrival that Pimsleur is badly lacking in two areas.

First, there is no writing practice integrated with the lessons. Japan relies heavily on written material when dealing with the public. I taught myself hiragana and katakana on the side, but I only know a dozen or two of the most basic kanji. Thus I’m reading grown-up signs and menus at a kindergarten level.

Second, it’s lacking in the breadth of vocabulary. I can catch the basic grammar and politeness level, but I don’t really know what they’re talking about. I think these problems are related. I’m going to study more on the train tomorrow.

Back at the hotel I let Dana unwind while I got directions to the nearest onsen, a traditional place to bathe in scalding hot water. This one was a short walk away, and it sold tickets through a vending machine. Luckily I could easily read the kanji for “big person 1 person” and paid the correct fee for one adult.

Here’s the procedure for using an onsen: First, get naked. Second, lather up and wash off. Dirty people aren’t allowed in the tub. Third, soak in water that isn’t quite boiling but sure feels like it. The place was empty except for myself for half an hour. It was all I could take without passing out from the heat.

Tonight it’s raining. Supper was a small bag of pretzels and a cup of water. Not really very hungry.

Next stop: Yokohama!

Sunday and Monday were merged into one very long day. This was due to a long airplane flight, adventures with the Tokyo train system, and (I suspect) a bit of time travel.

Every year around this time, Dana and I go on vacation to celebrate our anniversary. Usually it’s a week or so in the city has the good fortune to host Worldcon that year. This year it’s in Japan, so we decided to come early and see something scenic and with historic value. But first we had to get there.

The alarm clock blared at 4:00 AM on Sunday. Dana had been awake for almost an hour already, because Scott woke up and wanted to read stories. Maybe he knew that something unusual was happening. We were at the airport around 6:00 and flying to DFW two hours later. Scott stayed home with my mother.

We changed planes at DFW, and then flew halfway around the world. Somehow that involved flying over the Rocky Mountain states, western Canada, and Alaska. We came dangerously close to Sibera for a while.

The plane itself — I think it was a 777 — was very large and high-tech, with video screens in the back of every seat. Of course the seats were still uncomfortably small. The video system was buggy and needed to be rebooted twice, which also reset all of the reading lights. But it was more luxurious than most other planes used by airlines.

Along the way I reviewed 7 hours of Pimsleur Japanese lessons, did some hiragana writing practice, and watched the video screen. My favorite show was the one that displayed where in the world we were at the moment. It alternated between English and Japanese, which helped me learn a little more katakana.

They fed us on the plane. Real food, not just a handful of peanuts. I thought they stopped doing that many years ago.

Along the way we crossed into The Future. We landed at Narita at 1:00 PM on Monday afternoon.

There was much confusion as we figured out how to buy train tickets and looked for the correct train platform under the airport. I also bought a prepaid phone card and tried to us it to call home. It didn’t work, because I didn’t know how to use it. We took the train to Oshiage Station. Then we took a subway to Asakusa. More confusion — Tokyo blurs the distinction between train and subway.

We walked from the Asakusa subway to Asakusa Tobu train station. Another round of confusion. By then it was 5:00 PM; we had barely missed the best time to catch a train to Nikko, and the next one didn’t leave until 8:00. So we lugged our suitcases to a nearby curry shop for supper and rehydration. The curry was very good.

The bathroom in the train station was not so good. It had a traditional Japanese squat toilet, nothing to hold onto, single-ply paper, no soap, and no provisions for drying hands. It smelled frighteningly bad.

On the train to Nikko we had to change seats several times. Apparently the seats were reserved, and we didn’t know how to find ours. People kept politely asking us to move. Finally a helpful conductor put us in the right place.

We arrived in Nikko around 10:00 PM. A taxi took us to our hotel. The driver commented (in Japanese) that we must be Americans from the way we say “Nikko”. I’ll have to look into that further… He also helped us knock on doors and ring doorbells until someone answered at the hotel, and even made change for the 660 yen fare from the 10,000 yen note that I had handed him. He was very helpful.

After checking in at Nikko Park Lodge we tumbled into bed and slept. It’s not a fancy luxury resort, but it’s a nice place for budget travelers. At least it has private bathrooms.

Today (Tuesday) we walked all over town. More about that later.

Tonight I also upgraded and relocated my experimental zenphoto gallery.

My older Coppermine gallery still exists, and it even has some pics. It’s harder to use and maintain than zenphoto though.

I deleted about 4500 junk comments tonight. Then I upgraded wordpress to the latest version, activated the spam detection feature, and turned off comment moderation.

Let’s find out how well this works…

Katakana — カタカナ
Hiragana — ひらがな
Kanji “nihongo” — 日本語

Planning for the trip to Japan is going well. We have the Yokohama (worldcon) part mostly settled, airplane tickets have been arranged, and we have a general high-level plan for the rest of the trip. The basic idea is to explore Tokyo, take a soak in some scenic hot springs, visit a few historic sites, and possibly ride the shinkansen, in no particular order.

On the language side, my Japanese studies are in the home stretch. I’m in the last 1/3 of Pimsleur Japanese 3, and I can read katakana and hiragana without much trouble. (See wikipedia for more about the kana.) I can read only a few kanji though.

In other words, I can read Japanese at a 3 year old’s level.

The trip is less than 2 weeks away at this point. Scott will be staying with Grandma Faye.