On the Road Again - Odawara

We began the morning of our fourth day in Japan by checking out of the Shiba Park Hotel for an overnight stay in Hakone. Thankfully we were able to leave our luggage with the front desk and take just an overnight bag with us on our hot springs adventure. We walked down to Hamamatsucho Station and first took the JR Keihin Tohoku Line to Shimbashi Station. Before transferring trains at Shimbashi, most of us bought bento box lunches for the train ride to Odawara. Eating a delicious bento on a leisurely train ride while watching the beautiful landscape roll by . . . another one of those things that needed to be done because we saw it on Soko ga Shiritai. Richard was the most daring of our group and purchased a beef tongue bento. The daring part of his purchase was the fact that this bento box came with it's own self heating apparatus strapped to the bottom of the box. The heater worked fine, and suffice it to say we were all very impressed, and a little frightened by Richard's lunch.

At Shimbashi station we transferred to the JR Tokaido Line and took a train to Odawara which is a city in Kanagawa prefecture. Our main objective in Odawara was Odawara Castle which you can see behind us in this group picture. The castle is a short walk from the station.

Odawara Castle was the stronghold of various daimyo through out Japanese history. From 1495 onward, five generations of the late Hojo clan held the castle. What made the castle significant was it's very strong defenses. Situated on a hill it was surrounded by moats with water on the low side and dry ditches on the hill side. Banks, walls and cliffs located all around the castle enabled it's defenders to repel attacks by the great warriors Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin. Eventually Toyotomi Hideyoshi took the castle in 1590 and awarded the holdings of the Hojo to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who in turn installed the Okubo Clan at Odawara. The original castle was eventually destroyed during the Meiji period with the current replica being built in 1960.

After touring Odawara castle we walked back to Odawara station. On our way back we decided to stop for lunch at a Soba restaurant along the way. As with many other times on this trip, we were very lucky that they were able to seat all fourteen of us together in a semi-private section of the restaurant.

Soba can be served both hot and cold, with a variety of different sauces and side dishes. Most of our group opted for cold soba with some type of side dish like shrimp tempura. I was very close to ordering this myself until I saw something on the menu I had always wanted to try, soba with duck sauce or Kamo Seiro. In this dish the noodles are served separately and then dipped into a rich duck sauce. The soba noodles were excellent of course, something I was beginning to take for granted in Japan where even the food from the convenience store was always delicious. The duck sauce was even better! Served warm, this very rich broth was extremely tasty with pieces of tender duck meat and negi floating around.

After an extremely satisfying lunch and some "beard papa" for dessert at the station (a popular Japanese pastry) it was off to Yumoto station and the hot springs of Hakone. Here's a picture of us at Odawara station before leaving for Hakone.

Memories of Manju and Mawashi

There are two fond memories that stand out from our dinner at Naruyama. The first is the birthday surprise we gave our friend Rae. Prior to leaving Hawaii, a few of us planned to do something nice for Rae during our Japan trip to celebrate her birthday. The original idea was to surprise her with a birthday cake after dinner at Naruyama. Surprise, surprise, cakes turned out to be hard to come by in the area of Tokyo that Naruyama was located in. So Dean, our always prepared guide and friend, managed to come up with a platter of manju as a last minute replacement. Rae seemed genuinely touched by our gesture and happily posed for this picture with her "birthday manju".

After making a wish and blowing out her candle (a match) Rae happily served up her birthday manju to all of us. It was a nice way to end the evening on our third official day in Japan!

The second memory was "fond" for another reason. It involves a deep dark secret that was never supposed to leave Japan. Blood oaths were made and vows were taken by all of us to never reveal what we saw that faithful night at Naruyama. "What happens in Japan, stays in Japan" we all agreed, promising to never speak again of what took place. Ignoring the anonymous death threats and numerous warnings from close friends and family, I have decided to post these pictures for your enjoyment. I do so at the risk of receiving severe bodily harm from the above nameless person who happens to be an expert martial artist. In an attempt to keep this person's identity a secret, I have gone to great lengths to "mask" his face, thus preventing anyone from realizing who he truly is.

The story is too painful to relive so I will spare everyone the details. Suffice it to say that the nameless person is wearing the mawashi that Taisho (Naruyama) actually wrestled in. A mawashi is the belt/g-string that sumo wrestlers or rikishi wear during their wrestling matches. It is not a very modest garment and is basically composed of a think fabric belt attached to a "thong" bikini. Our nameless friend was lucky enough to be wearing black boxer shorts which helped to "fill in the gaps" if you know what I mean. Taisho shared with me that he has never washed his mawashi . . . I wonder if our nameless friend knew that as well?

Naruyama - Taisho's Chankonabe

After finishing our tour of the Edo-Tokyo Museum, we headed over to "Nauryama" for a wonderful chankonabe dinner. The above picture is of our group standing in front of the Naruyama restaurant with it's namesake and owner Naruyama, a retired "Rikishi" or sumo wrestler. This is my second favorite group picture from our Japan trip. If for some reason you weren't quite able to pick out Naruyama in this picture, he would be the large fellow wearing the white apron and galoshes doing the sumo pose in front of us.

Chankonabe is a Japanese hot pot dish or stew that is usually prepared at your table. It is filled with a variety of different items that are simmered in a prepared broth. We tried the shio (salt) and kim chee chankonabe and both were excellent. Both nabes included chicken, pork, tofu, carrots, green onions and a whole bunch of other stuff I can't remember. The grand finale was the addition of udon noodles to the cooked down broth after all of the original items were eaten. Chankonabe's claim to fame is that it's the "caloric staple" of sumo wrestlers who eat vast quantities of the stuff as regular meals to keep up their weight and stamina. In the sumo world, chanko is usually prepared by a junior wrestler and often has a reputation of containing whatever is available to the cook. The Japanese consider chanko a nutritious food that it actually quite healthy if eaten in moderation. Of course, Rikishi do not eat in moderation, hence their massive size and girth. It is my understanding that a lunch of chankonabe is usually followed by a long nap.

Dinner at Naruyama was excellent. Besides the chankonabe we were treated to all sorts of other delicious dishes along with some tasty sake that went down a little too easy. There was a noticeable pattern that was beginning to take shape on this trip of always having great tasting food accompanied by delicious sake! Taisho (what we referred to Naruyama as) taught us a new word that night. On one of his visits to our table to check up on things, we asked him to have a drink with us. He gladly obliged and toasted us with the phrase "kanpai-ikki". Most of us were already aware that "kanpai" or "kampai" was the Japanese equivalent of "cheers" in English. What Taisho taught us was that by adding "ikki" after your toast it meant to down your drink as a shot! Ikki would end up being a very dangerous word while having dinner in Ginza on another night out. More on that to follow in a future post.

According to Dean and Mrs. Sakata, Naruyama had (or has) a father who was also a Rikishi that wrestled under the name Naruyama as well. This was Mrs. Sakata's favorite sumo wrestler when she was a young girl. In fact, the elder Naruyama made it to the rank of Yokozuna which is the highest rank in sumo wrestling. I must say that the younger Naruyama wasn't quite as big as you would expect a sumo wrestler to be. In fact based on the comparison between the two of them in this picture, I would put my money on Dean in a real fight. No offense or disrespect intended to Naruyama, especially since I would like to go back to his restaurant one day to enjoy his delicious chankonabe again.

Edo-Tokyo Museum

After touring the Sumo Museum it was a short walk to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Now this was a museum! Dean and his Mom had visited the museum on a prior trip to Japan and spent over four hours viewing the exhibits. When he offered it as an option for our Japan trip we all leaped at the chance to visit. The Edo-Tokyo Museum was founded on March 28,1993. The building tries to imitate a Japanese style elevated-floor warehouse. At its highest point, the building is over 62 meters. The museum grounds covers about 30,000 square meters and is more than twice the size of the field area inside the Tokyo Dome stadium. http://www.edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp/english/

Upon entering the exhibit area you are greeted by a replica of the old Nihonbashi Bridge. You cross this bridge to reach the permanent Edo exhibit. Nihonbashi Bridge was the doorway from Edo (current day Tokyo) to such places as Kyoto (to the west) and Nikko (to the north). The original Nohonbashi Bridge had a length of 51 meters and a width of 8 meters. The replica at the Edo-Tokyo Museum is of the same width as the original but of half the length.

Crossing the bridge was an awesome way to start our tour of the museum. What made the bridge even more significant was the fact that we had just walked over the modern day Nihonbashi Bridge the day before after touring the Imperial Palace outer grounds. (See picture below)

Most of the pictures I took at the museum came out very dark. This was because we were not allowed to take flash pictures inside the museum. We weren't quite sure if this was a restriction for the entire museum but to play it safe we all left our flashes off. So to supplement my personal pictures in this posting I have included pictures from the official Edo-Tokyo Museum website.

One of the neat things about the museum was the miniature models of different areas of significance in old Edo. The picture above is of a 1/30 scale representation of the the west side of the Ryogoku bridge. In old Edo it featured a large open area, originally designed as a firebreak. This soon became one of the most popular spots in the city, where numerous spectacle houses and street performances could be viewed. These models were extremely detailed down to the miniature people who were all appropriately garbed as well.

Although most of the exhibits in the museum were built to a reduced scale size, a few were actually built on a 1 to 1 scale of the actual building or monument including this one of the Nakamuraza Playhouse.

The above picture is of the entryway into the Nakamuraza Playhouse where Kabuki Theater was often performed. Above the roof is a banner proclaiming the permission to operate as given by the bakufu. (The government) Beautiful signboards above the door give the names of the plays showing as well as the names of the actors who were to appear.

Now I know that this posting was supposed to be about the Edo-"TOKYO" Museum and you've probably noticed that I haven't shown any pictures or mentioned anything about the Tokyo part of it. While I thought the Tokyo displays were great as well, I am a really big fan of old Japan, and the Edo displays really captured my interest and imagination. I'll leave the Tokyo part for another time and finish with this picture of Rei and Mrs. Sakata standing on a map of the Edo/Tokyo area.

Sumo Museum at the Ryogoku Kokugikan

Just like yesterday, today was a whirlwind of sightseeing from morning to night. After touring Sensoji Temple we had lunch in the Asakusa area and then proceeded by train to the Sumo Museum at Ryogoku Kokugikan. Ryogoku is an area of Tokyo where the Kokugikan (sumo stadium) is located and the surrounding area is full of sumo stables and chankonabe restaurants.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, sumo tournaments were held outdoors at shrines and temples. In 1909, the first permanent sumo hall was built in the Ryogoku area, where outdoor sumo events had been held for a long time prior. The current Kokugikan is the fourth permanent sumo stadium built in Tokyo. It has been in use since 1985 and is located next to Ryogoku Station.

Unfortunately we were unable to take pictures inside the museum so we had to be content with a few snapshots taken outside. One of the highlights of the museum was the pictures of all the prior Yokuzuna that were hung on the walls. Mrs. Sakata pointed out to us the Yokuzuna "Naruyama", who was her favorite as a child. What was neat about this was the fact that we had reservations to eat at "Naruyama" that night which is a chankonabe restaurant nearby. This restaurant is run by the son of the original Naruyama who was also a sumo wrestler that wrestled under the same name.

Now the question of the day is, in the picture above, where is the right hand of the middle sumo wrestler and why does the sumo wrestler on the far left look so upset?

As we approached the Kokugikan we were greeted by the sight of this huge tower called the Yagura-daiko or "tower drum". During sumo tournaments a huge drum that is mounted on top of the tall yagura (tower) is beaten loudly when the matches are about to begin.

I am told that the original yagura was over 50 feet high and was constructed of enormous cedar logs. The tower needed to be this high so that the sound of the drum would reflect off the surface of the nearby Sumida River and be heard all over the city. The current yagura seems to be made of more modern materials and comes equipped with an elevator.

The yagura-daiko is played twice a day during the tournament. The "yose-daiko" (coming drum set) is played early in the morning to gather people and the "hane-daiko" (leaving drum set) is played at the end of each day's matches to invite the audience to come back again the next day. http://www.sumo.or.jp/eng/museum/index.html