Takayama Arrival

After a bit of strategic train hopping, I've finally reached Takayama! I reached the hostel just in time to check in before the front desk closed for the night. The nearby visitors map had an empty space in western New York, so I immediately picked a blue pushpin and announced my presence to the world.

The dorm room I'm to stay in for the next few nights is pretty nice, with a shared bathroom for four travelers. I'll probably make up my sightseeing plans as I go along tomorrow morning because I have every intention of sleeping right now!

 

Majestic Matsumoto

Today marked the start of my cross-country trip, as I left Tokyo (again) and began making my way south. The trek to my accommodations in Takayama was a long one, so I decided to break up the monotony of riding trains and took a slight detour to the city of Matsumoto in Nagano prefecture.

Matsumoto is well known for its beautiful castle, which is one of the most complete of Japan's remaining original castles (the keep is an original structure, built in 1504). I only had three hours in the city before I had to catch a train for Takayama, so I put my luggage in a rental locker and left the station. Surrounding the castle, bordering the moat, is a small park that I decided to walk through:

As I emerged from the park foliage, a magnificent sight came into view. I've seen many castles in Japan, but in my opinion even the highly-praised Himeji Castle doesn't come close to this.

After spending a few minutes taking it all in, I finally made my way to the gate and paid admission to enter the castle grounds.

There was a box of free pamphlets with a place to put a stamp for every castle visited in Japan. As I have no intention of visiting every castle this time around, I decided to stamp a few pages of the notebook I happened to be carrying with me.

A small garden lined the path to the castle that loomed ahead, often referred to as "crow castle" due to its black exterior.

As Matsumoto Castle existed in a time of both archery and firearms, small openings lined the walls on every floor, allowing for the use of both types of weapons. Slots in the floor above entryways were for the purpose of dropping rocks and whatnot on unsuspecting invaders.

The second floor of the castle featured a gun museum, which had some pretty intense looking armor as well as devastating firearms. Pictured below (under the armor photo) is what appears to be a hand rocket of sorts.

To say that the stairs within the castle were steep would be an understatement. I had to use both hands and feet to climb the ladder-like steps, ducking under large wooden crossbeams.

I eventually reached the top, where a few other visitors were taking a well-deserved rest after the climb.

Windows situated on every wall provided a magnificent view of the city:

After spending half an hour relaxing on the castle's top floor, I made my descent and emerged from the entrance to find a man in samurai armor waiting for me. Although I'm not a fan of touristy photos, the costumed person proved to be particularly convincing with his sword...

After my unenthusiastic photo-op, I briefly stopped by the gift shop and found these beauties: chili KitKats. I didn't buy any, since I plan on visiting the KitKat chocolatier in Tokyo at the end of my trip, but I thought it was a cool find regardless.

On my way back to the station I stumbled across Yohashira Shrine, located right in the city center. While there wasn't anything necessarily remarkable about it, the stroll through the shrine grounds was enjoyable.

My train wasn't scheduled to depart for another half hour, so I treated myself to a bowl of ramen (this seems to be a common theme).

 
 

Three Weeks of Free* Travel

Well it's technically not free since I paid $586 for it before I left Buffalo, but this little guy is going to pay for itself within the next week or so!

 

LAMBS Training Camp (Day 2)

The view that I woke up to this morning:

It's amazing what a slight change in weather can do to transform the scenery. Due to the phenomenal weather this morning, some of us went outside to walk around:

After our stroll outside, we headed back inside and regrouped with the others. The focus for this morning's practice was parade marching, with the main goal of having the band make it around corners without losing form.

At some point during the marching and rhythm routines, my turn to perform with the other alumni in front of the club had arrived. There were only two alumni cuica players in attendance, Sakiko and I, but we produced more than enough sound to maintain a balance with the other instrument sections. For the past two years, I've attempted to explain to both family and friends what kind of instrument a cuica actually is, and what kind of music my club performed. The following video will hopefully answer some of those questions:

After practice, I headed down to the dining hall to eat my final meal. While the training camp was in its entirety five days long, many of the alumni, myself included, decided to stay for only the weekend due to work (or in my case, travel). After finishing up a bit of packing, I went to the lobby to wait for the bus back to the station. There I found many of my fellow club mates passed out on the couches, trying to catch up on sleep.

I stood at the bus stop, watching some of the dancers move gracefully with Mount Fuji in the background. I'm glad I was able to see my club mates again and reacquaint myself with samba rhythms, if only for two days.

LAMBS Training Camp (Day 1)

When I studied abroad in Tokyo for a year, there were plenty of extracurricular activities at my university in which I could have participated. From the school football and rugby teams to the photography and scuba diving clubs, I could have joined practically any of them during the fall recruitment period. Yet I found myself on a Wednesday evening in a sound proof music room, strange drum-like instrument in hand, playing samba rhythms. LAMBS (the Latin American Music and Batucada Society), a club dedicated to the passionate music and dance of Brazilian samba, took me under their wing for a year. Coming from those tiring weekday practices and exciting festival performances were some of my most precious memories of my entire study abroad experience. Two years later, I found myself reunited with my club mates for their annual summer training camp at the base of Mount Fuji, as they prepared for their upcoming Asakusa Samba Carnival performance.

Arriving at the hotel midday, at the near-end of morning practice, we were able to see the newly recruited freshmen perform for the rest of the club. As they had only just joined LAMBS several months prior, it was refreshing to see them play their instruments and dance in confidence in front of the upperclassmen.

The hotel that the LAMBS training camp is held at each year provides three Japanese-style meals a day, which is always welcome after the numerous practices throughout the day that leaves everyone absolutely exhausted. Today's lunch was oyako-don, a savory chicken and egg rice bowl (the kanji for oyako literally mean "parent and child," referring to the dish's main ingredients). It's definitely a favorite of mine, though I was never quite able to get the recipe right back in Buffalo.

Looking out from the dining room, I could see Lake Shoji in all of its glory. As it was rather overcast today, a particular majestic mountain was hidden from view... Perhaps tomorrow will offer something a bit more picturesque?

After lunch, I threw on a pair of gym shorts and a tee, ready to get right back into the samba I had left behind two years ago. The afternoon practice was dedicated to the enredo, our club's theme for this summer's performance. With vocalists at the ready, we began.

As we created lively, percussion-heavy rhythms, dancers began their routines in the center of our drum circle, proudly presenting our club's flag throughout. The room was bursting with energy as the practice went on, much of it coming from the enthusiastic alumni.

At one point, Tsubasa and Keita, both alumni dancers, began juggling assorted tambourines for fun while we took a quick break.

A large assortment of traditional Japanese food was served for dinner, with fresh sashimi and delicious beef as its highlight. Everyone seemed a bit tired, but eating was able to remedy that, preparing us for the final stretch of evening practice.

After dinner, each instrument section had a brief group meeting to go over both standard and newly learned rhythm patterns. Although I hadn't touched my cuica in years, I was able to reproduce nearly all of the patterns flawlessly, to my surprise. I was rather happy to see the number of people huddled over their cuicas in the small room. While I had been one of three cuica players during my time in LAMBS, the new recruits and alumni increased our numbers to a healthy seven, more than enough to make ourselves heard amidst the booming of the large surdo drums.

Upon rejoining the others and reviewing the new signs, our cuica group was able to hold its own throughout the practice, another step closer to a successful performance in Asakusa. Since it was the last practice of the evening, everyone was running a bit low on fuel, but we all managed to give one final burst of energy to end the night on a good note.

After taking a nice, long soak in the hotel's bath, I wandered downstairs to the rec room where all the alcohol and snacks were kept. While initially empty, the room quickly filled up and became very lively. My iPad was brought out and an impromptu Fruit Ninja tournament began. As exhaustion and beer-induced drowsiness slowly caught up with me, I finally made a sleepy trek back to my bedroom to re-energize for the following day.

Hello, Shabu Shabu. Farewell, Tokyo!

When it comes to Japanese cuisine, I have a lot of favorites. I appreciate a good bowl of ramen. I rave about Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (never Tokyo's monjayaki though). One of my preferred "special occasion" meals however is shabu-shabu. Accomplished by cooking thinly sliced meat and vegetables by stirring them in a boiling pot of broth, shabu-shabu is one of those savory dishes that makes for a perfect end to a long work week. That being said, restaurants specializing in it are very popular on the weekends, so finding an open table is a task in itself. Meeting Keisuke in Nihonbashi late Friday night, we attempted to eat at a place that had favorable reviews online. As they were accepting no more customers, we relocated to nearby Shimbashi after Keisuke called ahead to make sure the shop there had room for us. Spending several frantic minutes searching the streets, we eventually found the shabu-shabu restaurant it time for our reservation.

While this restaurant wasn't offering all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu on Fridays, the portions we received were rather generous so it wasn't an issue. Placing the meat, glass noodles, mushrooms, bean sprouts, and other veggies into the pot, everything was perfectly cooked in a matter of seconds, ready to be eaten. Enjoying a couple of beers before heading back to the station, this truly was the perfect way to end my last night in Tokyo before departing for Mt. Fuji in the morning. Ciao, Tokyo!

Yet Another Tokyo Metro PSA

Why yes, I always make this face upon encountering someone who has fallen onto the tracks...

Osawa Homecoming

(Un)surprisingly enough, I don't have the best of luck catching the last train. As of this post, I've missed three trains, leaving me with options to either walk home or find a place to stay until the trains start up again in the morning. It's only been a week. However, after attending a small party near my old university, I lucked out and was able to stay over at my friend Ohannah's apartment (a much better solution than the 24/7 internet cafes I usually frequent). Ohannah lives rather close to where I used to live during my time as an exchange student, south of the university in Osawa. As such, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia as I passed by the familiar homes and businesses I had seen every day on my way to class. Even the local supermarket, Gourmet City, triggered flashbacks of the mundane grocery shopping that I enjoyed.

Strangely enough, many of the day's highlights were food related. After shopping for brownie ingredients, I watched Ohannah don a green coat as she cooked up some homemade dumplings, doing her best to dodge the splatter of hot oil.

I ate the delicious dumplings, using my old eating utensils and sitting near my old kotatsu and rice cooker (most of my belongings ended up going to Ohannah when I moved out of my apartment). Much of the afternoon was spent baking, and I was put to work mixing brownie batter. As I'm pretty much hopeless as far as baking techniques go (e.g. folding), much of my work was fairly inefficient. Luckily, since Ohannah is a master baker of sorts, the brownies were completed despite my shortcomings, ready to be handed out to her friends that were graduating tomorrow.

Shortly afterward, to my delight, dinner at Sushiro was suggested by Ohannah's friend, Jaycee. This conveyor belt sushi shop, located only five minutes from my old apartment by bicycle, was one of my favorite places to go whenever I needed a sushi fix. Snagging a strategic seat near the kitchen, we were able to get first pick of the sushi that slowly moved by. Grabbing plate after plate of salmon, tuna, and other rolls, I soon had a sizable stack of plates next to me marking my accomplishment.