Nanpuso Hotel - Part II

Dinner at the Nanpuso Hotel was spectacular! Obviously at this point on our trip we had already eaten our fair share of delicious Japanese food including sushi, yakitori and soba, but tonight was going to be something special! Tonight we were going to be feasting on more traditional Japanese fare, sampling a little bit of almost everything you could think of. Fresh sashimi, shrimp and vegetable tempura, charcoal broiled whole fish and our own personal little seafood hot pot just to name a few. As usual, all of the food was presented beautifully and they even served us a little plum wine to wash everything down.

Being the very important person that he is, Dean's name was put up in LIGHTS to let everyone know to stay clear of his personal private banquet room! They even spelled his name correctly in English! Here's a picture of Dean, his Mom and Matt in front of our banquet room before dinner.

All of us sat on the floor, with our food served to us on our own individual black lacquered trays. Looking at the above picture I still find it hard to believe that we were all lucky enough to be sitting together and enjoying this wonderful meal in Japan. Some of you may have noticed that Dean, Mark and Ryan are all dressed in regular clothes while the rest of us are in Japanese yukata. The reason for this is tied in to my comment from an earlier posting where I mentioned that thirteen of us instead of fourteen went up to the Nanpuso Hotel from Yumoto station. Again, I'll address this in a future posting.

As with almost every meal we had in Japan, Timmy and I ordered some sake with dinner. We then decided that this excellent meal deserved a toast to mark the occasion, hence the above picture. What made this toast even more meaningful was the fact that there was a picture of some cranes hanging in the background! There is a long entertaining story involving our onsen stay, cranes and our pal Richard. It's such a funny story (at least to me and Timmy) that it deserves it's own posting, which I plan to do some time in the near future.

So how do you end the perfect day at the onsen? Why, with a little snort of Johnny Walker Blue of course. A few of us who came up from Hawaii for this trip decided to buy a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue at the airport duty free shop before we left Hawaii. Most of us had never tried Johnny Walker Blue before, and we thought that it might be fun to bring the bottle along to the onsen for a little night cap.

Nanpuso Hotel - Part I

After arriving at Yumoto Station it was a short drive to the Nanpuso Hotel, our ultimate destination in Hakone. Yumoto Station seemed to be located at the mouth of the valley with the hot spring resorts and hotels located further up along the inner valley hillside. There were several ways for us to get to our hotel. Thanks to Dean once again, we lucked out and scored an inexpensive bus ride up for all thirteen of us. But wait you say, didn't we have fourteen people in our group? Why yes we did . . . more on this later.

The Nanpuso Hotel is a large facility, with both Japanese and American style rooms. Of course we all opted for the Japanese style room which you see above. Our room was basically one big tatami mat covered floor, with a small low table in the middle. Near the window there was a table with two chairs positioned in a way to give you a great view of the mountain and river. This one room serves as both living and sleeping area. Later in the evening hotel staff will come by to put away the table and lay out futon and pillows for sleeping. We checked into our rooms and then decided to have a soak in the hot springs before dinner.

Here's a picture of the men's outdoor bath. I got it from the hotel's website because obviously I couldn't bring a camera into the bath when we went for a dip. There were a bunch of different "pools" available for the men. The outdoor one shown above, and a few larger ones indoors. The women have their own separate set of baths that are secluded from the mens. As with most onsen in Japan, you will be expected to bathe fully naked, with the exception of a small vanity towel that you can use to try and cover yourself. All of the guys enjoyed a nice soak in the outdoor bath and then headed back upstairs for dinner.

Here's a shot of Rae and Mary in the women's changing area before they entered the women's bath. You put your clothes and personal items into the pink baskets before heading to the bathing area. I guess the women were a little more daring and took a few pictures before taking a bath.

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.