Flat Stanley in Tokyo: Trains and Baseball

Now we are in Tokyo. Tokyo is the capital of Japan just like Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States.

More than 36 million people live in Tokyo. Do you know how many people live in Washington, D.C.? The answer is 4 million.

To see the difference, let's pretend one of you is all the people who live in Washington, D.C. Now let's pretend that nine of you are all the people who live in Tokyo. That's a big difference!

Riding a train to Tokyo was easy and fun. Trains are a good way to get around in Japan. Grownups ride trains to go to work and children of all ages go to school by train. One man I saw on the train was going fishing.

Most of the train stations in and around Tokyo have signs in English. When the signs are not in English, friendly Japanese people usually offer to help you get to where you want to go. Most Japanese students study English in junior high school and many of them like to practice speaking English with American and British visitors.

Friendly Japanese people on train platform

If no one is around to help us, we just hop on a train and go where it takes us. Japan is such a safe country that we never worry about getting lost. It is fun to go exploring in a safe country like Japan!

No one talks on their cell phone while riding a train in Japan. Manners are always important but especially so in countries like Japan and cities like Tokyo where millions of people must share such a small amount of space.

I saw lots of people taking naps on the train. Other people were reading books or knitting or playing silent electronic games or texting on their cell phones. I had a book to read (Nate the Great and the Hungry Book Club) but decided to look out the window instead. We arrived in Tokyo just thirty minutes after we left Yokohama.

Ryan's friends took me to an afternoon baseball game. The Yomiuri Giants were playing the Hanshin Tigers at the Tokyo Dome.  I saw a ferris wheel and a roller coaster next to the Tokyo Dome but I didn't get a chance to ride them. 

“Besuboru” (BEH-SU-BOH-RU) is very popular in Japan, where it has been played for more than one hundred years.  The real Japanese name is yakyu (YAH-KEE-YOU), which combines the Japanese letters for “fielding” and “ball.” The first professional baseball team was formed by a man named Hiroshi Hiraoka when he returned to Japan after studying in the United States.  Hiraoka and his co-workers founded the Shimbashi Athletic Club in Tokyo in 1878. The first high school baseball team, Ichiko, started playing in 1886.

Little League baseball

Just like in the United States, people of all ages play baseball in Japan, from little league to the major league Nippon Professional Baseball or NPB.

Many Japanese major leaguers have played for U.S. baseball teams. The most famous are Hideo Nomo (Dodgers), Ichiro Suzuki (Mariners), and Hideki Matsui (Yankees). There are 12 major league teams in Japan, divided into two leagues – Central and Pacific – and they play a “Japan Series” just like the U.S. “World Series” to crown a champion each year.

The most famous team in Japan is the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants. They are like the New York Yankees in American baseball.  Their main rival is the Osaka Hanshin Tigers. The Tigers are like the Boston Red Sox in our country.  Whenever the Giants play the Tigers in Japan, it is like the Yankees against the Red Sox in the U.S. Each team has very devoted fans.

Tigers' cheering section at Tokyo Dome

Baseball fans in Japan really get into the game. Their cheering sections take up the whole bleacher sections.  They are led by a cheer conductor who wears white gloves and stands in the middle of the section next to their band.  They all stand and sing or chant the entire time their team is up to bat.  Then they sit quietly while the other team’s batters are up.

The fans especially like to dress up in outfits like the uniforms that their favorite team wears.
 

Hello Kitty souvenirs

The Tokyo Dome is a great place to watch a baseball game. The fans are fun. The souvenirs are really cool. And the food is yummy!

What fun things will we do tomorrow?  I can hardly wait to find out.

"English Conversation is Fun!"

That's what Takuya told his mother, Yumiko, shortly before we parted ways in Yokohama last week. Yumiko, Artistic, and I got off the train to visit the quilt show while Takuya continued on to his college in Tokyo.

Yumiko told us that Takuya had never chatted with a native English speaker before our twenty-five minute train ride from Yokosuka to Yokohama. Since I was one of the two native English speakers in question, and unquestionably the chattiest, forgive me if I seem unduly tickled over introducing a 26-year old man-boy to the joys of witty repartee.

Yumiko and Takuya on Yokosukachuo platform

Takuya probably took me for something of a dimwit but I don't mind that as long as he enjoyed our conversation. Here are a few highlights.

On the train platform
Peevish: What do you study at college?
Takuya: Electric ... machines.
P: Oh, like computers?
T: Yes.
P: And toasters?
T: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Somewhere around Kamiooka
P:  I want to be in a flash mob on a Japanese train.  Do you know "flash mob"?
T: (quizzical look and head shake) Flash mob?
P: YouTube?
T: YouTube!
P: Everyone sings and dances. Amsterdam?
T: Train station?
P: Yes!
T: Airport?
P: Yes! What song could we get everyone to sing? Jingle Bells?
T: Do-Re-Mi!
P: Sound of Music?

We hummed a few bars.

But you probably already assumed that.

This flash mob idea is rapidly gathering momentum. Artistic Explorer is not keen on the idea, so I am going to have to trick her into the train on the appointed day. The video just won't be the same without her.

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. 

On The Tenth Annual Tokyo Quilt Show, Stout Amish Women, and Riding the Green Car

This started out as a short paragraph introducing a slide show of dozens of quilts I photographed at the Tokyo Quilt Show last week before my camera's battery expired.  But brevity has never been my strong point.  While assembling the slide show – a tedious task without College Boy here to point out shortcuts while rolling his eyes at my ineptitude – I realized that only two of you would ever get around to viewing those pictures.  This thought was a bit irksome at the cost (time as money)/benefit level so I extracted a few pictures to share with everyone.

Our quilt show party this year included seven American and four Japanese ladies. Usually the Americans travel to Tokyo on the Keikyu train line which, during the morning rush hour, means dangling from a strap and trying to score a pocket of oxygen in a crush of commuters until at least Yokohama and sometimes as far as Shinagawa. Knowing we were going to be on our feet all day wandering around the Tokyo Dome, we decided to spend an extra 950 yen for reserved seats on the JR train line. Had I known how easy it is to reserve a seat, I might have read a lot more books on my journeys last year. We bought the upgrades at an electronic kiosk on the train platform, climbed on a green car when the train pulled into the station, found vacant seats (they were plentiful), and then pressed our train cards against the little screens over our seats until the lights changed from red to green. Take note, AmTrak.

We went to the quilt show on a Wednesday to avoid the weekend crowds. A lot of other people had the same idea.

Quilt shows always seem to feature a special exhibit that you’re not allowed to photograph. The Obama quilts at the 2009 Yokohama show are a prime example.  This time it was Amish quilts from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on loan from German and Australian collectors. The exhibit also included photographs of modern Amish people (is that an oxymoron?) and two stout Caucasian women in Amish attire stitching a quilt for the edification of throngs of onlookers. “They can’t be real Amish women,” I observed, “since you can’t get from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Tokyo via horse-and-buggy.” Artistic Explorer suggested the ladies were Mennonites.

In any case, the Amish exhibit made me feel queasy, like I had swallowed a mouthful of scrapple.  What would Homer think if he traveled through time and space to find himself gazing at relics of Ancient Greece in the British Museum?  A little queasy I think.  Just before beating a hasty retreat from that exhibit, I had the distinct impression I was viewing the remnants of US culture from the other side of the planet several hundred of years after my country ceased to exist.  This was not one of the remnants I would choose were I running that museum.

And yes, I do believe I just compared myself to Homer. Eyes are rolling in heaven today.

Here are a few things that tickled my fancy:

A quilted bag in the shape of a guitar

This quilt (above) recalls a pilgrimage to some of Japan's most famous shrines and temples. Nowadays pilgrimages are mostly undertaken by retired Japanese over the age of 60 with the aim of making merit for their next life. My friend Nagasaki-san's husband made one of these pilgrimages with his 80-year old mother and then did it all over again on foot. What a lovely tradition.



The Jazz Quilt



This one is made of linen squares.  I bet it's fun to iron.

The London Underground

Lavish color carried the day in the Original Design category

Vendors' stalls horse-shoed the exhibit three aisles deep on three sides. Two different vendors offered Peko-chan and Poko-chan dolls but were asking 25,000 yen (about $300 these days) per pair. Too pricey for the likes of me. Dr. T thinks I can get them a lot cheaper if I track down the shops where the vendors normally conduct business.

Oh boy. A new quest.

And here's that slide show for Geraldine and JoAnn:

Observation of a Designated Driver

Preparing tortilla soup, a winter salad with homemade lemon poppyseed dressing, and cheesecakes (peppermint and white chocolate raspberry) for thirty Shonan ladies and transporting all that food and kitchen paraphernalia across base last Friday morning left me almost too pooped to participate in our semi-annual dinner outing with the Japanese Navy medical admirals in Yokohama that night. But we had expanded our guest list to include the new U.S. Naval Hospital Commanding Officer and his wife, a genuinely nice couple, so I took a ten-minute nap and ran a brush through my bob while the Ancient Mariner raced to the Navy Exchange in search of gift bags to be filled with odds and ends from our closets, cupboards, and liquor cabinet.

I'm glad I rallied. We spent a lovely evening with our old and new friends at a Chinese restaurant on the 28th floor of Yokohama's Sky Building and then squeezed into a train car crammed with Japanese party animals for the return trip to Yokosuka. The train was so crowded that people who might normally be characterized as falling down drunk could not possibly fall down. I think I was the only member of our party who noticed this . . .

Our Kind of Town, Osaka Is

Japanese history teachers have it rough compared to their American counterparts. Just think: three years ago the Commonwealth of Virginia celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Settlement while 2010 marks 1,300 years since Nara was established as Japan's first permanent capital. One thousand three hundred years. That boggles my mind.

Although most U.S. military families stationed here visit Nara during their first 6-9 months in Japan, usually as a sidetrip from Kyoto, that was not one of our travel priorities.  Reports from friends and acquaintances, you see, always included an amusing anecdote or two about Nara's aggressive deer population. On the outside I chuckled empathetically but on the inside I whipped out a black magic marker and crossed Nara off my "must see" list.

Little did we know that we'd back in Japan in time to celebrate Nara's 1300th anniversary, the rare sort of event bound to pit the the historian me against the large mammal phobic me.  Chalk up one round for the historian.  When the Ancient Mariner asked how I wanted to celebrate our wedding anniversary, I voted for Nara and he said "Whatever you want." The man's a keeper.

(Note: the author defines a large mammal as any creature possessing teeth and legs, weighing more than 18 pounds, and not called Mel.)

All the hotels and inns in Nara were fully booked the first weekend in December (see 1300th anniversary, above) but Nara is less than an hour by train from both Kyoto and Osaka, both of which offer plentiful lodging options.  We'd been to Kyoto - twice in my case - but not to Osaka, the third largest city in Japan after Tokyo and Yokohama, and the tenth most populous metropolitan area in the world according to the United Nations .  My student, Dr. T, tipped the scale by touting Osaka's reputation as Tenka no Daidokoro, the country's kitchen.  He encouraged us to seek lodging in the vicinity of Namba station where we'd have our pick of hundreds of restaurants within a few yards of the Kintetsu train line that would transport us to Nara in under an hour.  Teaching is such a rewarding profession. 

A bit giddy at the prospect of not spending another Friday in what passes for an office on a crowded barge while the USS Blue Ridge is under repair in dry dock, the Ancient Mariner was up for an adventure.  For the first time, we did not purchase our Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets in advance.  We simply rode a mid-afternoon train to Shinagawa and bought our tickets at a kiosk outside the Shinkansen entrance.  We had our choice of reserved and non-reserved seats on dozens of trains departing at 15-minute intervals.  This was so simple that I'm a little embarrassed we haven't tried it sooner.

Two and a half hours after settling into our assigned seats in Tokyo we arrived at Shin-Osaka station and followed the signs to the subway where we squeezed ourselves and one small rolling suitcase into a car crammed with rush hour commuters.  Just fourteen minutes later we debarked at Namba station and strolled through an underground shopping arcade, Namba Walk, in the general direction of the hotel according to the map Mr. Keeper had the foresight to print from the Hotel Orientale's website before we left Yokosuka.

When we eventually poked our heads above ground, it looked like we had somehow journeyed through the center of the earth and emerged in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip: flashing neon, pachinko parlors as far as the eye could see in every direction, and girls wearing sandwich boards promoting restaurants and karaoke bars.  An elderly policeman pointed us toward the Hotel Orientale but we walked right past the tasteful entrance because we were so busy gawking at the people partying in the street (me) and restaurant menus (Mr. Keeper).  Thanks to a cute sandwich-board girl at the second intersection, we only had to retrace our steps for half a block to enter the hotel, a surprisingly quiet and genteel establishment.

Stuffed animal Christmas tree in Namba Walk

"Your relatives would love Osaka," opined the Ancient Mariner as he relaxed with a Kirin after knotting the tie on the yukata he found in the bottom drawer.

"Some more than others, but I see your point.  Let's skip Osaka Castle this time so we'll have a good excuse to come back, with or without relatives.  I could easily spend a week just exploring the shops in Namba Walk, assuming I survive the Nara deer tomorrow."

"Don't worry.  I'll protect you." 

As I said, the man's a keeper.

'Tis the Season: Yokohama Quilt Festival

The stockings are hung on the  sideboard with care, the scent of Yankee Candle's Mountain Pine is in the air, and the front and side fences are tastefully festooned with lights.  The ornaments are on the tree, a process I actually managed to enjoy this year once I quit grousing about the choreness of the task and embraced my inner nostalgia wallower.  As I draped and tucked the ten yards of burgundy brocade that's passed as a faux tree skirt for the past decade, I chuckled through my annual mantra:  By next year I will quilt a real tree skirt.
   
Ah, yes.  This is where I segue to the Yokohama Quilt Festival which I visited with some friends on the day after Thanksgiving.  This was my third year of experiencing this annual extravaganza at the Pacifico convention center in Minato-mirai.  Everything about it continues to appeal to me although I talked myself out of buying three tons of fabric this time.  I'm still working up the nerve to slice up the six tons of fabric I brought home last year.

Here are some of the quilts that caught my eye. If you aren't interested in quilts, don't bother looking. But if you are interested, please bear in mind that at least half the quilts on display were off-limits to photographers. So what you are seeing is the tip of the iceberg.

As is so often the case these days, getting to the quilt show was half the fun. The dozen or so times I've been to Minato-mirai in the past, I've switched from train to subway in Yokohama and landed in the basement of the shopping center at the foot of Landmark Tower. This time Yuko met us halfway to Yokohama and suggested changing to a local train. We debarked at Hinode-cho station then strolled a pleasant ten minutes to our destination.

No, we did not check out this pie shop. Yet.

Crossing Paths with a Black Cat

Two consecutive days tied to the Navy base for the C7FOSA and Shonan parties had me feeling as caged in as the Sykes monkey in the Lincoln Park Zoo, the one that's the spitting image of my brother Tom, so a trio of Knit Wits in search of a navigator to the Yamato Shrine Sale didn't have to ask me twice.

This shrine sale is a leave-the-base-by-6:15am-and-be-home-by-noon Saturday morning adventure. It suits my schedule nicely since it dovetails with the Ancient Mariner's Saturday morning Seventh Fleet meeting schedule.

Olga was in search of antique Kokeshi dolls but Cari, Debbie, and I weren't looking for anything in particular. The planets and stars must have been in perfect alignment on the third Saturday in October because every third or fourth stall was offering a trinket that whispered, "Buy me, buy me." Fortunately for our bank accounts, Driver Debbie reined us in ten minutes after we arrived at the shrine sale by buying a chest of drawers that consumed 85 percent of her car's trunk space. One of us pointed out that we could stow a slew of cut-rate obis and Kokeshi dolls in those drawers if the chest was rotated to face outward but Driver Debbie ignored us.

What's a shopper to do? Hmmm. Those eight skeins of yarn are hand-dyed in a color that matches my oldest boy's eyes on a sunny day. Maybe I can squish them under the chest. Maybe I can knit a sweater before Christmas. Maybe I am correct on the first count and delusional on the second.

Then I saw the Obento carrier inscribed with Japanese characters. It's the same size as the one I use to deliver meals to families with new babies. Someone who lives in the Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk might want to take this off my hands eventually. If not, who cares? Everyone needs four Obento carriers, right? I decided to buy it even if it meant holding it on my lap all the way back to Yokosuka.

"Oh, we aren't going straight back to the base," announced Cari. "We're going to detour to China Pete's."

China Pete's is a wonderful shop near Machida, a Tokyo suburb, that supplies ceramics of every sort to the Navy Exchange. The Navy Exchange, of course, marks everything up exorbitantly so buying directly from China Pete's is a cheap thrill in more ways than one.

"Gosh, these Japanese teacups would make nice little soup bowls. I could use about twenty of them but they come in sets of five with a matching teapot and I don't drink tea." "Use the teapots as prizes in your next four blog contests." "Good idea! But how will I get them back to the base? The car is already stuffed to the brim with shrine sale finds." "Use Black Cat. It's like Federal Express and will bring the boxes to your house."

So that's what I did. For my next trick I think I'll try shipping luggage to my destination via Black Cat like the savvy Japanese train riders do.

Sometimes I Can't Help Gawking . . .

Like every time I walk past a man who is wearing worker pants. And you thought I visited gardens to check out the foliage. I have yet to see a man who looks bad in a pair of these pants. At least from the waist down.

I spend an unbelievable amount of time trying to decipher ads posted in train cars. This is one of the few that made perfect sense to me.

I make it a rule not to gawk at my fellow train passengers but, as someone once said, rules are made to be broken.

That's Chip (or maybe Dale) dangling from a cell phone tucked inside a businessman's pocket. Apparently I broke my Do Not Gawk at fellow passengers rule twice this week. So far.

It was impossible to look away when Godzilla gave birth to twin girls on the top of a hill in Kurihama. It looked like a breech delivery. No wonder she was roaring.