Christmas in Kamakura

Have you ever wondered how a Japanese family decorates their home during the Christmas season? I have so I leaped at the chance to visit Matsuzaki-san's house in Kamakura a few days after Thanksgiving. We hadn't even pulled our decorations out of the closet yet but her house was decked out with wreaths, stockings, and all sorts of cute ceramic snowmen and angels.

Most of her decorations were things you'd find scattered around a typical American home during the holidays. I would guess she picked up lots of these doodads over the course of twenty plus years of Shonan Club gift exchanges.

The quantity of decorations astounded me more than anything else. "Where do you store everything?" She said that's a bit of a problem. Japanese houses are quite small by American standards but her walls are lined with pretty storage cabinets that soar to the ceiling.  Not an inch of space is wasted.

A few of the decorations have such a Matsuzaki flair that I'm fairly certain she didn't pick them up at a gift exchange with American military spouses.

The linen table runners, for instance, feature holly embroidered on linen dyed her signature purple.

And purple was the primary ornament color on the tree in her new sun porch.

I was in such a holiday mood by the time I left her house that I decided to tackle that quilted Christmas tree skirt I've been thinking about for the past decade.  I wonder if I have any purple fabric in my stash?

A Delightful Japanese Garden

Matsuzaki-san is refreshingly eccentric. Although she has tossed her purple eye makeup since becoming a grandmother, there's still a purple sheen in her hair and fun artwork dangling from her earlobes.

It should not, therefore, have come as such a surprise that her garden and home are filled with whimsy. But it did. About ten seconds after we stepped out of Yuka's car in front of Matsuzaki-san's house, Fearless and I were fumbling through our purses for our cameras. When Matsuzaki-san was beckoning us into her foyer, we just ignored her and continued to snap pictures of the patio garden that runs along the side of her house.

This is not one of those raked-gravel-solemn-stone gardens we've grown accustomed to admiring when we visit Zen temples.  There's not a koi pond in sight.

But there are turtles and lots of them. Her father collected turtles. She tells us she turned up her nose at his collection when she was growing up. Then he passed away and she grew fond of turtles because they remind her of him. Fearless and I know exactly what she means because we, too, have lost our fathers and treasure our memories of them.  I think I'll scatter pennies in my garden when I get back to Norfolk or wherever it is we eventually call home.

I've spotted a few of these teacups filled with birdseed in American gardens but I've never noticed one perched on an inverted vase. There are a few crystal vases gathering dust in storage. I've never been good at remembering to fill them with flowers so maybe it's time to glue them to a few of Grandma's teacups.

Hey! I think I've just come up with 2012 Christmas gift ideas for my siblings. Please remind me of this when my stuff comes out of storage next summer.

This is the second time I've spotted these happy half-bricks in Kamakura. Matsuzaki-san is going to try to remember where she bought them so I can pick up a few for myself. She tells me the solar lights cost only 350 yen and change color like the Jackson Cascades. You can bet I'll be picking up at least a dozen of those pronto.

I know you want to see the inside of her house, especially since she has her Christmas decorations up, but you'll have to wait a day or so while I make an appearance at another JAW party and try to finish my reading assignment for book club.

Gearing Up for the Year of the Dragon: Peevish Takes Another Stab at Kimekomi

Fearless and I were treated to a swell time by Matsuzaki last week. She asked her friend, who teaches kimekomi in Tokyo, to show us how to make dragons for our upcoming special birthday year. The Year of the Dragon will be even more special for me than for Fearless because she'll be a mere forty-eight while I will celebrate the beginning of what the Japanese refer to as my "second life" when I turn sixty next July. Fearless is already tired of hearing me refer to myself as extra-special so she'll probably be ready to strangle me by the time the Year of the Dragon actually arrives.

I love the fact that turning sixty is cause for celebration here. If questioned about my age back home, I'd be mumbling behind my hand. Just my luck to get old a decade or so after America knocked Wisdom off its pedestal.

At any rate, we gathered at Matsuzaki's house in Kamakura. That in itself is worth a couple more posts but today I'll stick to kimekomi which, as most of you know by now, involves tucking small pieces of fabric into crevices carved into a small object filled with sawdust.

This is what our dragons are supposed to look like upon completion:

This is what I found inside the box of supplies the teacher distributed:

This is the teacher. She's using a sharp little spatula to smooth the crevices before filling them with glue. She doesn't speak a lick of English but Matsuzaki-san is an excellent translator.

Yuka-san and Matsuzaki-san

You might recall that Matsuzaki-san operated a shop until last June where she sold all sorts of items -- tote bags, skirts, table runners, jackets, book covers, etc. -- she fashioned from scraps of old obis and kimono. She has, in short, nimbler fingers than most. The teacher gave each of us a pair of tiny scissors for cutting the excess fabric after the crevices were stuffed, but Matsuzaki-san was the only one of us permitted to touch the scissors. I picked mine up at one point but the teacher told me in no uncertain terms to drop them. Remember how I said she doesn't speak a lick of English? Yet I knew exactly what she was telling me. It was all in the tone of voice, hauntingly reminiscent of Nicholas Cage declaiming, "Put The Bunny Down!"

Teacher snipping excess fabric

Jamming fabric into crevice after excess fabric is snipped

We covered the dragons' bodies today and will meet again soon to finish this project. Everyone else placed their fabric in the direction that was shown in the example but I glued mine in place upside down to look more like real dragon scales. Not that there is such a thing as a real dragon, of course.

This is what my dragon looked like at the end of the lesson:

So far, so good.

Kencho-ji with Ishii

Ishii-san and I went searching for bush clover in Kamakura today. We didn't see much of that but we did see a whole lot of other things, munched on some very yummy fresh rice crackers, and walked our usual zillion miles.

Ishii read somewhere that Kencho-ji temple in Kita-Kamakura is a good place to see bush clover. Our route took us past Haruki-san's kimono exhibit so of course we took a little detour. Haruki and his wife were so gracious. They remembered my name! He pronounces "Kathy" the same way Yuuko Kaji does, with a very soft "th" that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Ishii was wearing a lovely sashiko vest for the occasion, a long duster she spent a year creating. I wish I had taken some closeup pictures so you could see her exquisite craftsmanship. I, on the other hand, had spent the morning shelving books at the base thrift shop in a sleeveless shirt and found a ratty cardigan in the trunk of my car to cover my bare shoulders, something I feel as compelled to do when I am out and about in Japan as when I visited the Vatican at the age of fifteen.  (As the day grew warmer, the sweater grew increasingly loathsome.  I'm going to abandon it at the thrift shop the next time I shelve books.)

Karamon at Kencho-ji

Kencho-ji, constructed in the 13th century, is the oldest Zen training monastery in Japan -- surely you've heard this before -- and the first-ranked of the five great Zen temples of Kamakura. This was my third visit since March 2007 yet I still took a dozen pictures of the statue of fasting Buddha and the dragon picture (unryu-zu) on the Hatto ceiling. No matter where you stand in the room, the dragon's eyes seem to follow you. This is quite eerie and, so far, impossible to capture in a photograph.

Fasting Buddha

The map provided by the man at the ticket booth showed a garden near the rear of the temple grounds. This seemed like an obvious place to find bush clover so off we went. Except we skirted the building on the left when we should have marched directly through the building straight ahead and, lo and behold, we were behind the garden with no way to get through the tall hedge. That's when Ishii-san got that innocent look on her face that I really ought to recognize by now, the "As long as we're on this path, let's just take a little stroll and see what we can see" look. Those "little strolls" never fail to turn into arduous physical activity. Not that I'm complaining.

Today's "little stroll" took us eventually to the last building on the map, the Hanso-bo, which I think means "8,000 of the steepest steps you will ever climb".  Seriously, even those cute 10-year old school children in their bright yellow caps were huffing and puffing by the time they reached the fourth or fifth flight of stairs.  Japanese landscape designers must all take a special class in Deceptive Neverending Stairs because I can't count the number of times I've scampered up 80 steps only to discover another 80 steps across a short plateau and then yet another 80 steps camouflaged by a leafy maple tree.  Wheeze, gasp.

This is the first time Ishii-san has been to the Hanso-bo.  Her husband knows about those steps which is why I am here with her today and he's not.  

More often than not there's some sort of visual reward for scaling all those steps and today is a more often rather than a not. Thank God.

The Hanso-bo is a shrine that was moved here from Shizuoka in 1890 to protect the temple in the valley below. The final stretch of hillside beneath the shrine is littered with statues of winged creatures called tengu which look like a cross between warrior angels and the Wicked Witch of the West's flying monkey minions.

There's a viewing platform next to the shrine which offers a lovely view of Mt. Fuji on a clear day.  Today we couldn't see Mt. Fuji so I might just have to reprise that ascent.  But you can be darn sure I'll borrow a couple of cell phones and a kid who's willing to scamper up those steps ahead of me to scout out the view.

Ishii-san and Tengu

We spotted a patch of bush clover as we were working our way back toward the temple entrance but it had already finished blooming and that made us laugh. The bush clover seems relatively immune to the effects of the recent Typhoon Roke. Lots of other plants have leaves that are turning brown and shriveling up compliments of all the salt the typhoon carried from the sea to land.

An Art Deco Fairy Tale: The Teien Museum nee Asaka Family Residence

Once upon a time, in 1910 in other words, there was a prince named Yasuhiko Asaka who married the eighth daughter of Emperor Meiji. Her name was Princess Nobuko. The emperor granted them 33,000 square meters of imperial land in Shirokanedai in 1921. Not the most timely of wedding gifts, but nevertheless surely much appreciated.

The prince went off to France to study military affairs in 1922 and was forced to extend his stay when he was involved in a car accident the following spring. His devoted wife rushed to Paris to nurse him back to health. It was a long convalescence that just happened to coincide with the golden age of art deco in France. The prince felt well enough to attend the Art Deco Exposition in Paris on July 9, 1925 with Princess Nobuko at his side. Alas, his boss must have seen their picture in the newspaper as they were called back to Japan before the end of the year.

They decided to build a house incorporating the best of the art deco styles on their land in Shirokanedai.  The house was completed in 1933.  Sadly, Princess Nobuko passed away that November but the house continued to serve as the Asaka Family residence until the end of World War II.  Prince Yasuhiko renounced his membership in the imperial family when the new constitution was adopted.  (This was the constitution that cut married princesses out of the imperial family.  Most people call it a constitution, but I think of it as "MacArthur's Misogyny".  One wonders if this was his response to being spurned by a princess or two.)

Ishii-san at Asaka Residence

Once the Asaka Family vacated the premises, the house was put to various uses. Sometimes it was the official residence of the prime minister or foreign minister, and it was once used as the state guesthouse. Half of a century after its completion, on October 1, 1983, it became the Teien (Garden) Museum. The museum's concept proposed a new form of art appreciation, where art and the space in which the art is displayed complement each other.

Ishii-san and I skipped the exhibit -- Glasses Admired by the Russian Tsars -- and toured the garden instead but I hope to return for the Art Deco exhibit this October.  

The garden itself is no great shakes by Japanese garden standards but the vast lawn is sprinkled with a half dozen or more interesting and whimsical sculptures.

I did not see a single lotus plant.  That was something of a relief.

Chairs are scattered around the vast lawn behind the house.

Ishii-san is always such a good sport!

A lovely Japanese-style garden takes up about a third of the space

Cafe Kanetanaka at the entrance to the museum grounds serves small portion lunches, priced accordingly, meaning you can easily rationalize ordering dessert from both quantity and cost perspectives. I, of course, can easily rationalize ordering dessert from any perspective.

Dragonflies and Natural Habitats: Another Adventure with Ishii-san

Ishii-san was something of a homebody when we first met four years ago. Our relationship has been mutually beneficial, or at least that's what I tell myself. She's made me less fearful about nature and I've made her less fearful about venturing more than ten miles from home. A year ago she waved off any and all suggestions that would take us beyond Yokohama and now she is willing to go exploring in the far reaches of Tokyo. I can't take all the credit, of course. She's a grandmother now and the fact that little Misato resides in Tokyo is what we call "powerful motivation".

A few weeks ago we zipped up to South Tokyo to check out the Institute of Nature Study, a branch of the National Museum of Nature and Science. This 200,000 square meter natural habitat has been left undisturbed for over sixty years so it offers a glimpse of what Tokyo might look like if people didn't live there.

Ishii-san snagged me a brochure printed in English which I'll pass along to my home-schooling pals to help them plan a field trip. (I have a surprising number of home-schooling friends and acquaintances these days because they tend to be knitters, at least in this part of the world. They also tend to be quite brainy, droll, and witty which is one of the main reasons I skip happily off to the coffee shop with yarn in hand on Monday and Thursday evenings.)

The nature stuff in the brochure didn't interest me all that much but the history section is worth repeating to jog my memory when my kids put me in a nursing home and present me with this blog in book form (hint, hint).

Nearly 600 years ago this piece of land belonged to the district lord, Shirokane Choja, who built a house and surrounded it with earthworks that can still be seen today. Lord Matsudaira took over the property during the Edo Period, after 1664, and created a garden with ponds. Two hundred years later, during the Meiji Era, the navy and army built warehouses here to store gunpowder but the land reverted to residential use in 1917 when it became an Imperial estate called Shirokane goryochi. The natural environment has been conserved since then and the area was designated as a national monument and historic site in 1949.

We checked out the exhibits in the Visitor Hall before exploring the grounds.  Half of the exhibit area was devoted to dragonflies which I find about as frightening as butterflies, ie, very.  All that erratic flitting is what I find disturbing.  Dragonflies are quite benign when they are pinned down in glass cases or captured in magnified photographs.

I would not care to meet the big one on the right in the wild.

Who knew they climb out of hard cases like cicadas?  Not me.

A natural habitat in Tokyo after more than 60 years

The Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, housed in the Art Deco mansion built by Prince Asaka in 1933, is right next door to the Institute for Nature Study. We decided to check out that garden while we were in the area and have lunch in the museum cafe. Stay tuned.

Hakkeijima and Sweaty

The camera sat on the kitchen counter all weekend, charging away. She thought it was charging, that is, but nothing happened when she pressed the on button just inside the entrance to Hakkeijima today. The same thing happened the last time she visited a garden with Ishii-san. Push, push, push. Nothing, nothing, nothing. But that was the old camera and today she is carrying the new camera.

Desperate times call for desperate measures so Peevish "borrowed" an image from the Hakkeijima website to illustrate this post. Unfortunately, the only image that halfway illustrates the extent of the hydrangea garden on the island is a map. The hydrangea garden, laced with shady paths, is that dark green area on the right side of the map. If this was a topographical map, you'd see that the hydrangea garden is built around a hill and that those paths take go ever upward to a plateau at the top where a lovely rose garden is ringed with benches.

From the top of the hill most visitors get a panoramic view of the eight scenic views (hakkei) of the island (jima).  One of today's visitors, however, was too busy searching her tote bag for a towel, mopping her forehead and neck with the towel she finally found, and then wringing out the towel before returning it to her bag to gaze placidly at the famous scenic views.

There is an amusement park on the island and an aquarium.  Ishii-san remembers the time she took her parents to the aquarium.  Her mother loved the dolphins.

The doctor says Ishii-san's mother should be completely healed in two more months.  Until then she must wear a stiff corset and is prohibited from carrying anything, including groceries.  So far she has fallen once and snuck off to the grocery store on her own once.  What a pistol.  Maybe Ishii-san should offer to reward her for following the doctor's orders with another visit to the aquarium.

There is an ice cream shop on the island.  This is when a functioning camera would have come in most handy.  The Ancient Mariner might not believe that there is such a thing as an okonomiyaji ice cream cone embellished with tiny shrimp.

Time to solve the camera problem.  There's a quilting bee on tomorrow's docket.  

The Thing About Book Clubs

Mimi hosted book club tonight in her semi-empty house. Her furniture is enroute to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina so we draped ourselves on the familiar loaner couch and chairs that have graced all of our homes here at one time or another during the coming and going phases, helped her clear out her liquor cabinet, and talked about Half Broke Horses, Jeanette Walls' biographical novel about her grandmother Lily who grew up on ranches in Texas and New Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century.

The book reminded me of Sandra Day O'Connor's autobiography, Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American West, which I read aloud to my father-in-law a few years ago.  Stuart also grew up on a cattle ranch in the American West and pronounced O'Connor's book "authentic".  He would surely say the same about Half Broke Horses. It is incredible to imagine that less than one hundred years ago a 14-year old girl was riding a horse across two states to take a teaching job in a one-room schoolhouse.  These days we're afraid to let our 14-year old daughters walk half a mile to school on their own.  What happened?


You see a bush; I see a weed

 Book clubs force me to read books I would never in a million years pull off a shelf if left to my own choices. With the notable exceptions of Three Cups of Tea and Eat, Love, Pray, I have never resented the time spent on a book club assignment because reading books chosen by other people forces me to see life from new perspectives. New perspectives appeal to me.  That might be why I've enjoyed living in Japan for four of the past five years.

Tomorrow I'm going to see Ishii-san, her mother's health permitting, and admire some flowers while catching up on my friend's life since her mother was released from the hospital a week ago, five weeks after back surgery.  Her mother is 83 and her father is 90.  I wish my parents had lived to be that old, and I remember the joys, sorrows, trials, and tribulations of caring for my father-in-law when he was in his nineties.  How will our perspectives be the same?  How will they differ?  Is there some sort of universal help I can offer?

I'm sure the answers lie within the pages of a book.  Unfortunately, I haven't read that one yet. 

Sashiko by Ishii

Ishii-san made the Sashiko vest she is wearing in this picture (left).  Sashiko is a running stitch technique traditionally used to reinforce or repair torn fabric but nowadays is also often used for decorative purposes.

Sashiko literally means "little stabs" which seems appropriate since I'm sure my fingers would look like pincushions if I attempted this or any other form of embroidery.

The white cotton thread on the traditional indigo blue cloth gives sashiko its distinctive appearance.  Sometimes red thread is used although I suspect the red color might be a novice seamstress's blood rather than dye.

According to Wikipedia, many Sashiko patterns derive from Chinese designs, but just as many were developed by the Japanese themselves. The artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) published the book New Forms for Design in 1824, and these designs have inspired many Sashiko patterns.

Ishii-san has given me two lovely examples of her work, a small wall hanging and a quilted square.  My challenge is to quilt or knit something equally remarkable for her in return so I'm going to take a break from writing to work on my "skills".

If you'd like to know more about Sashiko and see some examples, click here.

Ofuna: Better Late Than Never

The USS Blue Ridge returned to port today after several days of "exercising" off Japan's coast but, since the Seventh Fleet does not embrace the concept of compensatory time, Pip and I had no hope of glimpsing the Ancient Mariner until evening.  Some women wail and wring their hands at a time like this.  Me?  I turned cartwheels and pirouettes around the fabulous roses in Verny Park enroute to another incredible adventure with Ishii-san.  Pouting is impossible when it's springtime on the Miura Peninsula.

Except.  But.  However.  When I pulled out my camera to capture the total sensory overload of acres of roses at their peakiest peak, the camera would not turn on.  The battery seemed to be loose.  The miniscule pin which holds the battery in place refused to snap into position.

So you are just going to have to use your imagination today as you travel with Ishii-san and I to Ofuna, just two stops past the Kamakura station and technically part of Kamakura City. Ofuna is a train junction where you can catch a ride north to Tokyo and beyond or head west toward Hakone and the Izu Peninsula.  I've changed trains there before but never exited the station until today.

The enormous Kannon bust overlooking the station from a nearby hilltop is worth a closer look but today our destination was Flower World Ofuna Botanical Garden, a 15-minute walk from the station.  There were a number of signposts to guide our steps but Ishii-san took pains to bring a detailed map as well.  We did not want to spent eight hours hiking in circles around Ofuna.  Although I can think of worse ways to spend a day.        

Kurihama poppies because I can't bear to post this without a flower picture

We pay 350 yen to enter the garden.  There are hundreds of tempting potted plants for sale just inside the gate and next time I'll take a sturdy bag to carry a few home.  There is a shady path lined by maples that order me to come back in the fall to admire them in their glory.  We wander into two small buildings and see an exhibition of azalea bonsai in one and hydrangea bonsai in the other.  I thought I knew a lot about hydrangea thanks to my friend Jill, but here are at least a dozen varieties she's never mentioned.  How long will this exhibition last?  How can I lure the Ancient Mariner into coming here with his fancypants camera to capture these hydrangea for Jill?

Outside again we wind back and forth across an acre of peony beds.  There are as many peony varieties as hydrangea it seems.  The magenta with white flecks are especially captivating.  I decide I want to plant a lot of peonies when we return to the States.  Where do they grow best?

Canals filled with irises wind around and through the garden.  It will be another couple of weeks before the irises hit their stride, yet another reason to return to Ofuna.

We enter a tropical greenhouse.  Many of the plants in there are slightly frightening.  There are four or five rooms in the greenhouse and the air gets warmer as we move from one into the next so I think there is a theme but I can't tell you what it is.  The last chamber is cooler, perhaps because we are walking between pools filled with specimen water lilies in breathtaking colors.  I thought all water liles were white but I see blue, lavender, pink, magenta, yellow, and green.  Hmmm.  Is there a climate somewhere on earth where both peonies and water lilies thrive?  Or maybe the Ancient Mariner will want to spend his retirement constructing a greenhouse for me.  Probably not.

At last we enter the rose garden.  A lot of people are sitting on benches in the gazebo at the center of the garden, feasting their eyes on the roses, but we are on the move.  We spend time admiring each variety, sticking our noses into the ones that seem especially fragrant.  I remember my Grandma Sykes and her roses and the brandy snifter in which the most perfect roses floated.

Just outside the rose garden we see hundreds and hundreds of lilies on the verge of blooming.  I pat myself on the back for recognizing them as lilies.  I think about the first lily I ever planted, a "Kiss Me Kate" that bloomed the spring my Kate graduated from high school.  This planting hundreds together rather than scattering a few in a perennial bed seems like a good idea.  Note to self:  be sure retirement home sits on at least two acres of land.

Near the garden exit a bed of delphiniums and foxgloves makes us pause.  The delphiniums come up to my chest and some of the foxgloves are my height, which was 5'8" before I commenced the shrinking process.

Yet again, I am grateful to my friend and "student" Ishii-san for sharing another special corner of her amazing country with me. 

To Sleep, Perchance on Gel

Ishii-san and I went to Kurihama today to see what was blooming at Flower World. We caught the tail end of the tulips, glimpsed surprisingly early hydrangea, but mainly feasted our eyes on poppies, poppies, and more poppies. It was like walking through the Monet print that adorned the wall over my parents' couch.

We rode a train across the park for 200 yen and then hiked back over the hill. This turned out to be a tactical error. The 2,000 meter path is marked off in 100 meter increments and I couldn't help but notice -- wheeze, gasp -- that we walked uphill for 1,400 meters before descending 600 meters to the poppy field.

"I feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I am so sleepy. Do you remember how she fell asleep in that field of poppies just as they glimpsed the Emerald City? I know just how she felt! Opium is really powerful."

You might recall that Ishii-san was a junior high science teacher before her retirement. She informed me, politely of course, that opium poppies are blue. My sleepiness had more to do with hiking uphill for 1,400 meters after gorging myself on ramen and gyoza than inhaling the nectar of red, orange, pink, and yellow poppies.

Visiting Kurihama is always a pleasure. I should do it more often since it's only a short train ride from the base and Flower World is just four or five blocks from the train station. There are hundreds of interesting shops and restaurants to explore between the train station and Flower World.

We stopped in a two-story mall to buy drinks and find out what cream puff fillings Beard Papa's is offering this month (banana, green tea, and whipped cream in addition to the traditional custard). A display of blue pads caught my eye. Ishii-san explained that these gel-filled pads will be spread on beds across Japan this summer to help people stay cool at night since energy conservation measures in the wake of the earthquake/tsunami rule out air conditioners.

Don't tell the Ancient Mariner, but I think I've found the perfect gift for Father's Day.

A Tale of Two Visits: Isshii Explains It All, Including Soy Sauce Fermentation

The Radiation Rebels took about a hundred pictures on the grounds of the "shrine" they discovered just inside the main entrance to Yokohama's Mitsuike Park when they went there to view cherry blossoms on April 7.

"Check out these totem poles! I don't think I've ever seen totem poles outside a shrine before." "Me neither. How interesting."

"These statues flanking the entrance are quite unique," noted Flat Dylan.

We could not resist entering the "shrine" compound. The entrance gate framed a lovely view of the blossoming cherry trees. We crossed a large courtyard of fine gravel to check out the octagonal gazebo in the center of a long, narrow garden that meandered along the compound's right wall. We inspected rows of pots arranged against the back wall, glanced at a few rather stark outdoor sculptures, and gave a passing nod to the wooden building on our right as we moseyed back through the entrance to see what else Mitsuike Park had to offer.

Four days later I retraced my steps, this time with Isshii-san in tow. She quickly set the record straight. "This is not a shrine! This is an example of a traditional Korean home."

There's a lot to be said for exploring museums and historical sites with someone who can actually read and translate all those intriguing little signs. Take those pots. It turns out they were used for food storage by a typical Korean family of an unknown era. Unknown to me, that is, since I'm pretty sure Isshii-san tossed a few dates around while I was busy trying to digest all the other interesting information she was sharing, like the fact that soy sauce requires a seven-year fermentation period so seven of those pots would have contained soy sauce at various stages of fermentation.

We doffed our shoes to enter the traditional Korean house. There is quite an art to this shoe-doffing procedure. Longtime readers might recall College Boy chastising his father for letting a shoe-clad foot touch a temple step on New Year's Eve. He would have cringed to see his mother wobble between her sock foot on the elevated floor and her shoe foot on the entry stone. To avoid falling flat on her face, she instinctively pulled that shoe foot level with that sock foot and broke a cultural taboo. Whoops! Sumimasen! Gomen nasai! Whichever works, that's what I meant to impart to all those nimbler tourists.  At least I didn't knock over one of those pretty screens.  This time.

The beautiful floor tainted by a gaijin's shoe

The bed used in summer months

“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
- Dr. Seuss, "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!"

Celebrating Hanami with Ishii-san at Mitsuike Park

Ishii had never visited Mitsuike Park before I dragged her there to see cherry blossoms on the second Sunday in April. Our trip was much smoother than the one I took with the Radiation Rebels a few days earlier because Ishii knew we did not have to change train lines in Yokohama to reach Tsurumi.  We just hopped off the Keikyu express train in Yokohama, stayed put on the platform for two or three minutes, then jumped on the first local train that pulled up to the platform.

Also -- and please don't mention this to Weather or Sunshine -- Ishii knows how to get around on buses so we completely avoided that hour-long mountain trek.  We forked over 210 yen for a ten-minute bus ride that put us within two blocks of one of the park entrances.  Heh, heh.  

The park entrance nearest the bus stop

We feasted on our eyes on cherry blossoms while one of us nibbled on bread we'd picked up at the bakery in the Keikyu Tsurumi station. The other one of us wolfed down an egg salad sandwich and a loaf of banana bread large enough to feed a Japanese family of four for three days. You can figure out for yourself which one of us did which.

Our hanami adventure was truncated to slightly over four hours because I had a hair appointment and Ishii wanted to cast her vote before the polls closed (of course I am now enamored with the concept of Sunday elections). But Ishii whipped out a map showing a recommended three-hour hike that cuts across Mitsuike Park and we agreed we'll need to take that hike in the near future. We also agreed that we'll need to tack another two hours onto the estimated timeframe because one of us tends to stop abruptly to ask questions and take pictures. I'll let you figure out which one that is.