Japanese Villages

Our backpacking trip is beginning to end:  we are finally in our last destination before beginning the flights home.  

We also know this because, as pretty as they are, we don't want to see anymore temples for awhile.

Indoor firepit with fish "grilling"

One of my favorite things we have done so far was "for our anniversary" (the only way to convince Liban it was worth the money).  We stayed in a traditional Gassho-style ryokan for a night.  (Interpretation:  a traditional home in a village with a thatched roof, sliding screen doors that turn open spaces into individual rooms, an open fire pit in the middle of the living room floor for warmth, and a family that still lives there.)  The village of Ainokura itself is being preserved by locals for both their homes as well as tourism, and there are about 20 houses in the village, 12 of them in the Gassho-style.  We'd visited other places with similar homes, but not with the remoteness, quietness, or tourist-less-ness, so it was quite a treat.  We literally spent most of the day sitting on benches and looking at the mountains, the village below us, and waterfalls.  The other part of the day we spent eating and getting to know the other guests in the ryokan.  It was lovely.

Then we went to Kanazawa, where we relaxed on a mostly-empty beach and drooled over the antique, totally unaffordable Kutani pottery.  We toured the neighborhood where all the samurai used to live and saw one of the remaining houses with sketched paper screens and a backyard garden to die for.  My favorite activity was probably touring the Myouryuji Temple.  Temples were often used as a protection for palaces and a dwelling in addition to being a place of worship.  In this temple, we got to see hidden staircases and secret passageways as well as techniques samurai used to both hide and attack.  I'd post pictures, except that we were not allowed to take any!

I want a backyard garden like this, please.

After all that, we came to Tokyo on the overnight bus and arrived early this morning.  There is an disaster training center that has an earthquake simulator, so we went there.  Because our tour group consisted of mainly 60+ year old Japanese men, Liban and I were chosen to be the "models" of how to follow instructions.  Never mind that the instructions were given in only Japanese!  They had us sit at a table and when we felt the ground shake to move under the table and hang onto the legs.  So we did, and it wasn't so bad.  Then she told us she was turning it up, and we experienced what a 7.0 earthquake would be like.  It was a lot more movement than I expected. Then she said, "now wait, BIG earthquake now" and demonstrated a 9.0.  I could hang onto the table but my knees were sliding back and forth about 6 inches with every shake and I felt like I had no control.  It was crazy, and coming from a part of the US where we hardly ever have earthquakes, I now have a much greater appreciation of them and understanding of the destruction they can cause.

Going to the National Museum of Modern Art was really interesting, too.  I'm familiar with many styles and mediums in modern art, but I haven't seen those styles done by Japanese artists using Japanese subjects.  That was cool, and I don't know why American art museums don't show this progression within their "Asian art" section that usually consists of calligraphy and watercolor bamboo/samurai paintings. 

Finally, we ended our evening by having dinner with Yumi.  Yumi is one of my sister's best friends from college, and she spent a lot of weekends at our house.  It's been 8 years since I saw her last, and it was so good to catch up, introduce her to Liban, invite her to India, and have a delicious seafood dinner.