June 27, 2016 Sendai

We started the day taking the super-express bullet train to Sendai. We visited  Zuiho-den which was a temple built during the beginning of the Tokugawa era (1603-1867).  It had a mausoleum build for Date Masamune who was a feudal lord of the Sendai domain. This was a beautiful, peaceful temple and garden area. It has multiple mausoleums built for Masamune's subsequent feudal lords. Masamune was a fierce warrior and conquered much of the land he controlled. At his death he had an official income of 620,000 Koku . The original mausoleum was burned during the war, but has since been rebuilt. There are still many stone lanterns standing from the original building. We also visited a beautiful chilren's cemetary on the grounds. We visited  Zuiho-den which was a temple built during the beginning of the Tokugawa era (1603-1867).  It had a mausoleum build for Date Masamune who was a feudal lord of the Sendai domain. This was a beautiful, peaceful temple and garden area. It has multiple mausoleums built for Masamune's subsequent feudal lords. Masamune was a fierce warrior and conquered much of the land he controlled. At his death he had an official income of 620,000 Koku . The original mausoleum was burned during the war, but has since been rebuilt. There are still many stone lanterns standing from the original building. We also visited a beautiful chilren's cemetary on the grounds.

Zuniho-Den Temple

Original stone lanterns

View of Sendai

Date Matsamuse

We next went to Adoba Castle. It was the castle of Date Matsamuse. It has since burned down, but there is a great view of Sendai from there and a wonderful statue of Date Matsamuse. We had lunch there and departed for our next destination.

We were to visit Minamisanriku, starting at a community center that is supported by the NGO Peace Winds Japan. This area was hit hard by the Tsunami in 2011. There are currently 18,000 residents in the area, but they lost 800 in the tsuami. The city is still rebuilding 5 years later. The community center we visited was established to give the older people in the community a place to gather and do something productive for the community. The group that was working consisted of 4 woman and one man. They are making floor tiles to sell using reclaimed materials. The tiles will be sold to support the communities recovery efforts. This is supported by the organization Peace Winds. They go into areas that have been hit by a disaster and work to help the people rebuild some community ties. They particularly work with the elderly in the community.

The tiled floor of the building

The town residents who are working on this project

Peace Wind's building, shipping containers put together to make a building

The extent of the devastation in the area was unbelievable. The entire town that wasn't on the hillside was washed away. Luckily the schools were on hills. There are still many residents living in temporary housing. They are rebuilding the main shopping areas of the town on man-made hills. They hope that these will be high enough to withstand another tsunami. The townspeople had warning that the waves would be 10 meters, but they ended up being 30 meters high. They anticipate that the rebuilding process will take another 5 years. Because the population of the town is on the older side, they have to bring in workers from Sendai to do the heavy labor.

One very moving experience was to see a structure that has been left in place amidst the rebuilding. It was the emergency disaster building for the town. Apparently the workers all stayed at their posts during the entire tsunami to help warn the townspeople. Sadly they all lost their lives as the huge waves swept through the town. The town has left the skeleton of the building in place as a reminder of those who lost their lives in order to save other lives. There is also a shrine there to those brave men and women.

View from the hill above town

Big white building will be housing for residents

Picture of a before and after picture

Chile sent this Moai statue since they are have a sister city. This was to help with healing. There was another statue that was lost during the Tsunami

Temporary shopping area in town

Emergency preparedness building

Articles about Minamisanriku

Japan is facing big challenges as it's population ages.

After that very sobering, but hopeful visit, we checked into our hotel in Sendai and headed out to dinner at a local restaurant. We have been eating well on this trip.

June 26, 2016 Tokyo

June 26, 2016- Tokyo

Our first stop was the Tokyo-Edo museum. It is an amazing museum that had some prehistoric finds from the area, but mostly covered the Edo period from about the 1600 until the present. Tokyo used to be called Edo and the Tokugawa Shogunate moved the government to Edo in the 1600's. Prior to this time, Edo was a small fishing village, but once the shogun moved in, it became a bustling town. The daimyo, feudal lords, had to travel to Edo every other year to pay tribute to the shogun. Also the families of the daimyo were expected to live in Edo, basically being held hostage by the shogun. This was how the shogun kept control of the daimyo. Also, since the daimyo were expected to travel to Edo every other year, they put out a huge expense to make this trip. This was another way the shogun kept control. Another interesting thing is that since the daimyo's family lived in Edo, the heir to the Daimyo never really formed bonds with the people in their feudal domain. They had more of a connect to Edo and the exciting lives there.  This also was another form of control.

Pot from Jomon period in Japan (14,000-300 BCE)

Large Scale Model of Edo period house

Small model of bridge into Edo

Me lifting a set of waste buckets. They were heavy

Edo bookseller

Cute kids we met

The museum traced, in great detail, the evolution of Edo. Lots of small dioramas of what life would be like in Edo during the Tokugawa Shogunate and also after the Meji restoration when then emperor came back to power.

Our next stop was the Asakausa Kannon temple. Another Buddhist Temple in the middle of Tokyo. It was a sea of people and outside there was a huge shopping street, Nakamise Shopping Street, where you could get any Japanese souvenir you wanted. They are famous for their giant rice crackers, so I had to try them of course. We headed off to lunch at a local tempura restaurant. Then drove around Tokyo to do some sightseeing. Finally, we attended two lectures, 1st about the economy in Japan and the 2nd one was about the evolution of manga in Japan and the US.

Asakausa Kannon Temple

Back to the hotel and then we went out to an amazing sushi dinner. I've never tasted such good sushi and it was pretty cheap too. I'm a fatty tuna convert. Back to the hotel because we had to leave our hotel at 7:15am the next morning for our trip to Sendai on the bullet train.

June 25, 2016 Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo

June 25, 2015- Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo

We started the morning with breakfast and no coffee. Luckily I had my Via's with me. they only had tea at the Ryoken. After breakfast we visited a large temple complex in Nara called Kohfukuji Temple complex. There is a large 5 story pagoda at this temple complex, but much of it is under construction. The temple complex dates from 669 AD. It was relocated to it's present location in 710 AD. There is a beautiful museum that houses beautiful artifacts from the temple complex. It was built to deepen the viewers appreciation of Buddhism. At the temple complex there was a small memorial to children who have died. We watched a Japanese man worship there. They workshop there by dowsing the stature with water which is a symbol of purification. It was quite moving.

Shrine to children

From there we explored the streets of Nara a little bit. It's a small town and felt like an authentic Japanese town. We visited a historical merchant's house. It was interesting to see how real people would have lived 100 years ago.

Small Shinto shrine on the street

Typical Japanese house

Model merchant's house from 100 years ago

Lots of beautiful man hole covers in Nara.

Time to head back to Kyoto where we caught a bullet train to Tokyo. It took about 2 hours to travel to Tokyo from Kyoto. It was interesting to see the rice fields and the changing topography. We even got to see Mt. Fuji on the way.

Our hotel, the Royal Park Hotel Shiodome, had an amazing view of the city of Tokyo. Off to dinner at Dan, a local Kushiage dinner. It was a small restaurant that was closed for our dinner. Dinner consisted of many small plates of food fried in a breaking. It was pretty good, but definitely not the best dinner I've had so far. From there we scouted out a place for a nightcap. Everything is so small in Tokyo and many of the places were closed for private parties. We were finally successful with the help of our Japan profession, Elissa. The place we ended up had about 6 seats at the bar and 2 small tables. It was cozy, but interesting. The Japanese don't have much space to work with because of the topography of the area. They make the best of this by having restaurants and bars on all floors, sometimes 5 or more floors, of a building.

View of rice fields from the train

The Japanese people are also very polite and orderly. This is in sharp contrast to the Chinese. Getting on the trains in Japan is done in lines and you don't push. In China it was a free for all and if you don't push, you don't get on the train.  Lots of bowing is done in Japan as well. Another interesting thing I learned about Japan is that once a woman has a child, she no longer works. There is very little childcare in Japan and it's looked down upon for women to work. As a result, the productivity in Japan is going down and the economy hasn't picked back up after the downturn in the 1990's and 2000's. The birth rate in Japan is also very low. 1.3 children per family, so Japan will face a crisis in the near future as the work force ages and there aren't enough young people to replace the workers.

June 24, 2016 Kyoto and Nara

June 24, 2016- Kyoto and Nara

1st stop Byodin Temple in Kyoto. It was built in 1052. It is a Buddhist Temple that has was built by the regent Fujiwara no Yorimichi. The main attraction is Phoenix Hall. We weren't able to go into the hall, but there is a museum that has many of the statues including 26 statues of Worshipping Bodhisattvas that were originally in the hall. Lots of school children were visiting this temple today. They were very cute.

We took a bus outside of Kyoto to Obakusan Mampukuj Temple. It's the head temple in Japan of the Obakusan sect of Zen Buddhism. It is also the teaching monastery for the sect's student monks. It was built in 1592 and is in the style of the Ming dynasty temples. It has 23 main buildings. This was a less touristy temple. We walked through a neighborhood to get to the temple and there were some other small small temples along the way. Then we were off on the bus to Nara.

In Nara we visited one temple complex, the Todai-Ji Temple. We had been warned that there were a lot of deer in Nara. Boy, what a lot of deer. Apparently deer are sacred in Nara. They have close to 2000 deer roaming the streets. They are actually quite aggressive since there are people selling food to feed them. One of them actually tore off one of my travel companion's rain poncho. Lots of deer poop too. Combined with the torrential downpour, the deer poop was pretty gross.

This temple was built in the Nara period (710-794 AD) This temple was built to house a Vairocana Buddha (Buddha that shines throughout the world like the sun). This temple was built to reflect the importance of this Buddha. Most temples in Japan have been burned over the years. The Great Buddha (it was a very big Buddha) was burned in 1180 and again in 1567. The Great Buddha Hall was rebuilt during the Edo period. It was quite crowded and rained very hard. It rained so hard that there were rivers of water cascading off the roof. The rain stopped after a while and we headed to our hotel.

One of the guardians of the Buddha

We also visited Kasuga Shrine. It's a Shinto shrine first built in 768 AD for the Fujiwara family. It is famous for it's many stone lanterns leading up to the shrine. 

Our hotel was a traditional Japanese Ryoken. Of course we couldn't wear shoes in our rooms and we were supposed to wear traditional Japanese robes, yukatas. There was a nice bath there that we enjoyed as well. We were served a traditional dinner that was beautiful and delicious. We did find a little bar in Nara to check out after dinner. Everything is very small in Japan. The bar probably held 15 people and of course everyone smokes. Back to the hotel for a challenging sleep on a futon with a lot a buckwheat pillow. I was able to stack two more futons and a few quilts on top to soften it. Sleep was fleeting.

My new friend Anne

Our futon beds

Bathroom slippers