Travel – Page 15 – Travels with Owen

Tatami Mat Manufacture and Care

At our ryokan, we have beautiful tatami mats on the main floor, and in the dining areas. A wood or tile step before you enter the tatami room reminds guests to remove their slippers.

The tatami mat in dining room

While beautiful, tatami mats are expensive (one price quote was close to $1000 USD) and somewhat fragile, as well as hard to wash, although they are easy to vaccum or sweep. An errant pair of heels or careless movement of furniture can cause irreparable damage.

Tatami mat in bedroom with futons on top

The cost and care required is easier to understand once one has viewed the process used to create these classic Japanese floor coverings. Tatami mat manufacture video.

They give a warm, restful glow to any room they grace, but are a bit firm under a futon.

Traditional rice harvesting

Rice is a beautiful crop as you can see from these pictures. The bright yellow green plants pop against the dark green of the surrounding hills. Most of our team volunteered to harvest rice using traditional methods (second photo above). Ray and I opted out. As an ex-farmer and a farmer’s daughter, we had both put in enough hard work on farms that the prospect of farm work wasn’t appealing. The process is fascinating, however, as the video linked (under process) shows. Modern techniques have been adopted where the farmers can afford the equipment.

The workers from our team wore rubber boots, wellies as the Brits call them.

Japanese Vending Machines are a win

(A guest blog by Ray Shortridge)

Unlike Pachinko, playing the vending machine slots is a guaranteed win for the player.

Japan has the highest per capita number of vending machines in the world. Let’s focus on one vending machine commonly seen on the street, beverages. Here’s one stocked with a wide variety of types of drinks.

A player wins > 99% of the time, because the vending machine vendor maintains the machine assiduously. In Japan, one rarely encounters something broken. Although, if a machine lacks, sufficient coins to provide change, then it won’t let you play.

The bottom row of Boss cold coffee in a can products warrants closer attention. On a video commercial played in the subway car, I had seen Tommy Lee Jones evidently shilling Boss coffee. Well, if the Man In Black guy likes it, then I’ll give it a shot. Must be good.

I played against Boss, for 110¥, and selected the tan 3rd can from the left, cafe au lait. I WON! 😀😀😀 And it was delicious.

Slipper challenges

These red slippers are only for the bathroom.

These slippers are for the hallways inside the hotel. Inside the room, since we have tatami mats, we don’t wear slippers, just bare feet or socks.

And if that isn’t challenging enough, there’s this:

What you always needed: a slipper cleaning machine

Ghibli clock animation

While I didn’t get to see this clock in action, it goes through a full animation several times a day. (animation) This article describes the background of the clock and how it ended up in front of Nippon television headquarters.

Wrestling with Sumo

Sumo is a fun sport to watch but often a bit bewildering for non Japanese. Basically, whoever gets shoved out of the circle first or made to touch the ground with any body part except for the soles of their feet loses. There’s a tremendous amount of religious ceremony due to the sport’s Edo period beginning and its ties to Shinto religion. Here is one of the best explanations I found for neophyte attendees. Sumo basics

We went to one of the really big tournaments and the audience was really excited. The actual matches last only seconds, but the preparation and ritual before the match takes much longer.

It was a large crowd in a large stadium. Finding our seat was difficult as the ticket didn’t have a translation and the apparent entry gate wasn’t the right one. Fortunately, the stadium staff members were very helpful and spoke excellent English

The sumo wrestlers are huge! Yet, they move with surprising grace and agility. The extra weight they carry subtracts about 10 years from their life expectancy and leads to illnesses such as diabetes.

We’ve Got Big Drums

On the way to our workout/class for Taiko drumming, we spotted a fun workout gym. Now for the fun part. Here’s a sample of what we were trying to do. Fun video of Taiko drumming

Our instrctor uses the big drum. She played an amazing concert for us. I have video but we were asked not to share on line. (Close friends can ask for a link if you promise, like me, not to share it online. We not only have video of her but also of Ray and I )

Smaller drums in storage.

Pachinko, the Japanese alternative to casinos

Pachinko machines are sort of a vertical pinball machine. One of my coworkers collected antique models (at what I considered exorbitant prices). So I was excited to see Pachinko parlors near our hotel. The older models are classy in the same way as classic movies. The newer models are glitzier but the concept of play remains the same.

If you’re interested in playing pachinko, this link https://www.wikihow.com/Play-Pachinko gives a good description. From Wikipedia: “By 1994, the pachinko market in Japan was valued at ¥30 trillion (nearly $300 billion).
As of 2015, Japan’s pachinko market generates more gambling revenue than that of Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore combined.”

The entire Wikipedia article and references is at this link. Now, pachinko is spreading, mostly to other Asian countries, so it’s a trend to watch.

Awesome amenities

One of the most appealing things about travel is noticing little details that are different from one country to the next. Bathrooms and hotel amenities fall into that category in Japan.

Most Americans and Europeans fear the hole in the floor toilets seen occasionally at restaurants and department stores, simply because we’re unsure of how to use them. But the Japanese also have some of the most high tech plumbing on the planet, as is shown by this toilet menu from our hotel.

Also at the airport, I went into the bathroom marked “women” and immediately panicked when I saw all the infograms of a male figure using the various types of toilets. No need to fear, they are just there to indicate the type of toilet inside each cubicle. And unlike our toilet stalls, Japanese cubicles do not–at least so far– have spaces where the door closes that one could look into. They are very discreet.

Other fun amenities from our hotel include a tea pot (instead of a coffee pot), an earthquake torch (flashlight), and hooks and hangers on the wall to minimize space use. And of course, slippers and free toothbrushes and hairbrushes. And for those who are wondering about my toothpaste tablet experiment (from Lush). You chew the tablets a little bit and then brush. They taste a bit like a minty, baking soda, charcoal mix. Not bad and less for the TSA bag.

My favorite amenity at this hotel is a pre charged, preloaded cell phone that you can use to get around town with. It was a joy when we went off by ourselves.

The robes were a nice touch too. Well off to bed again to see if a can get a little more sleep. I slept 6 hours at my first stretch so the jet lag hasn’t been awful.

One other surprising aspect of. Japanese bathrooms is that all the toilet paper is one-ply, without perforations. It works fine but somehow the Japanese are able to tear it off in a perfect line. Mine looks like my dog Owen has been chewing on it.

Some of the Japanese bathrooms have music playing so others don’t hear your process. Itoya’s bathroom had nature sounds music. It was lovely. And one held one’s hand up to a wall panel to flush. Really slick. The hand dryers actually work perfectly here, and the bathroom stall locks are an engineering marvel. They swing smoothly into place to lock the door securely.