Kabuki Tickets: Don't Leave Home Without Them

Matsuzaki-san handed me two tickets for today's kabuki program last week. She didn't want to be responsible for remembering to tuck the tickets in her purse on the big day. I should have promptly passed the buck and tickets to Fearless, the only member of my current circle of playmates who is not afflicted with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, but I attached them to my refrigerator with a cute magnet instead.

I remembered the tickets. Unfortunately, we were already in Yokohama at the time and Matsuzaki-san was squeezing her car into the narrowest elevator in a land of narrow elevators while Fearless and I held our combined breath.

We did eventually manage to gain entrance to the theater but you're going to have to wait a day or so to join me there.  First we're going to visit the Hotel New Grand since Matsuzaki-san went to so much trouble to park her car so she could treat us to lunch before the show.

By sheer happenstance, we ran into Matsuzaki's uncle in the hotel lobby, the first time they've crossed paths in a number of years. She's sixty-four so I'd peg him as an octagenarian. I find that age group quite adorable but I managed to resist the urge to hug him.

After Fearless and I took advantage of the photo op, Matsuzaki-san introduced us to Mr. Seto, a hotel employee of twenty years' standing who doesn't look a day over thirty.  Mr. Seto had quite a treat in store for the gaijin ladies.

He led us down a long corridor, past a fancy Gump's gift shop decked out for the holidays, into the original hotel which was erected in the late 1920s. The grand staircase had an "Art Deco meets the Arts and Crafts Movement" look to my admittedly less than discerning eye. We followed Mr. Seto up the stairs and into a small elevator that groaned as it lifted us to the third floor where (drum roll, please) we walked down a plushly carpeted hallway to a corner room.

Mr. Seto has the key to MacArthur's Suite!

Fearless and Peevish admire General MacArthur's desk

Photographs of General MacArthur decorate the suite nowadays

Back on the first floor, Mr. Seto let us peek into the room where Matsuzaki's wedding took place. This was as thrilling as seeing MacArthur's Suite, at least for me.

As we left Mr. Seto to check out the gift shop and return to the new part of the hotel to have lunch, he mentioned in passing that the "Imperial Couple" had visited the hotel for dinner last evening.

Fearless studies the hotel's history gallery

I believe Babe Ruth once visited the New Grand Hotel

And that's a young Emperor Hirohito, if I'm not mistaken

Maybe now you understand why it's going to take me a couple of days to get to the kabuki performance.

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!"

More Plum Blossoms and a Dash of History

This is Kairakuen from the perspective of Lake Senba. The plum orchard is hidden behind a grove of very tall cedars and there's a serene bamboo forest off to the left. That building near the top of the hill is the Kobuntei, Tokugawa Nariaki's private quarters. Writers and artists and some of his other clever subjects were invited to parties here. They composed poetry to entertain the elderly guests. (Note to great-nieces and -nephews: Sharpen your pencils. Aunt Kathy will be expecting continuous entertainment in her dotage.)

According to the garden guide, Kobun is another word for Japanese plum and originated in China. The Kobuntei completely burned down as a result of an aerial attack on August 2, 1945 and took three years to rebuild starting in 1955.

This is the last plum blossom picture you'll see this year, but not the last picture you'll see from the Mito adventure.

Welkom to My Children's Distant Relatives

Dank U wel for stopping by. I haven't a clue why so many Netherlanders have visited my blog in the past couple of months but I am thrilled nonetheless. My two oldest children, you see, are three-eighths Dutch and are saddled with a surname that translates to "keeper of the dyke". Their great-great-grandfather was your Queen's tailor before emigrating to the United States. De wereld is zo klein! De wereld, mijn dorp!

Yes, it really is a small world. The Netherlands and Japan enjoyed a friendship long before Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay. This relationship is described in David Mitchell's book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I recommend to anyone interested in history.

You would probably feel even more at home in Japan than I do. Your ancestors brought tulips here and many of the rivers, especially in urban areas, have concrete banks that make them look more like canals than rivers. I have not yet spied a windmill but that doesn't mean there aren't any.

Although I've never visited the Netherlands corporeally, my imagination has taken me to your lovely country often thanks to authors like Mary Mapes Dodge, John Irving, Jeffrey Lent, and someone else whose name escapes me and I'm too lazy to thumb through my reading log this morning. In my dreams I've raced down your frozen canals on silver skates more nights than I can count.

Zo, dank U wel.