Koedo – Sept 23rd

Today was a busy day, despite having no official plans. Okaasan and Yukiko have offered to take me and a few friends to Kawagoe on the end of the Seibu-Shinjuku line, to see 小江戸, or Little Edo. Hans is stuck with various duties around the temple, as it’s the season for ohaka-maeri (going to visit and maintain the family grave). In fact, Okaasan has invited me to come with the family for their ohaka-maeri tomorrow afternoon. Feeling honored, I gratefully accepted, even though she said it would probably bore me. Josh and his wife, however, were free, and were happy to tag along for the day.

While we were waiting for Josh and Asuka at the station, I noticed a short European-looking fellow resembling an older Joe Pesci wandering around a bit. He quickly fixed his eyes on me and waded through the crowd in my direction. “Excuse me, do you know how to buy a ticket to this station?” He handed me a sheet of paper with a small hand-drawn map of the train line to a station about halfway down the Shinjuku line. Obligingly, walked him up to the 切符売り場 (ticket machines) to show him how to read the huge overhead map and how to figure out how much the trip will cost. He called his friend over, a larger Australian fellow, and I explained the process to them. As it turns out, they would be riding the same 急行 (express train) as we were, so I told them that once my friends had arrived, I’d show them through the gate to the right platform.

Josh and Asuka showed up, and after some brief introductions, We all went through the turnstyles and up to the platform. On the train, the two travelers (who I had learned were only here for a few days on layover on their way back home from a tour through Europe) peppered me with various questions about my experience with Japan and my ability with the language. As they disembarked I wished them luck on their travels. Observing my Japanese travel companion’s faces while I was talking to the foreigners, it was obvious that they were a bit uncomfortable about strangers; I find it interesting the way that the concepts of 内 (uchi, inside) and 外 (soto, outside) make themselves apparent in Japanese social practices. Whereas a Japanese person wouldn’t deny help to a person who asked for it, they would probably much sooner end the exchange once their services had been rendered. My friendly banter with the two foreigners was an act of kindness, if not an entirely Japanese thing to do. Doesn’t matter to me, I made them feel a little more comfortable in a strange land, and probably earned a few karmic points today.

We reached the end of the Seibu-Shinjuku line in about 40 minutes or so. After a short walk from the station, we were soon surrounded by old-style edo-era buildings and shops. The atmosphere was a mixture of traditional and modern elements. Rickshaws intermingled with cars on the narrow streets, satellite dishes capped ancient-looking roofs, the smell of dried fish and okonomiyaki interrupted the rows of large plastic ice-cream cones. A very anachronistic experience, to say the least.

We ducked into a few different shops, with a variety of yam-related goods for sale. The sweet potato is a specialty of Kawagoe, so there were all kinds of sweets and goods made from the purple tuber. We took a look into a knife shop, where the shopkeep, a man of at least 60 years, demonstrated to me the proper way to sharpen a blade using the special sharpening stones. The knives were unbelievably sharp; just by the weight of the blade, I was able to glide the knife through a thick piece of daikon with absolutely no effort. I have never felt anything cut that easily, and that includes a hot knife through butter.

Looking for lunch, we found a side-alley row of shops, including a small okonomiyaki kitchen. We ordered our lunch there, and what came was something like a okonomiyaki taco. They were so delicious that Josh and I went back for seconds. We hung out by the stand a bit longer, talking about all sorts of random things. Afterwards, we did some more walking around, marveling at the various foodstands (cucumber on a stick, anyone?), shops, and even stopping at a few shrines and temples in the area. We found a particularly interesting statue of an emaciated Buddha seated in full lotus surrounded by a garden of lotus plants.

We also stopped by an old house that had been turned into a kind of museum. Only having to pay 50 yen to enter, I was able to see the kind of 和室 (Japanese-style rooms) that people exclusively lived in for centuries before the western modernization. There were also smaller buildings in the back housing memorabilia from days gone by, like a fireman’s uniform and water-reservoir, over 100 years old. After a quick rest, we decided to start heading back home. On the way back to the station, we grabbed some sweet-potato ice cream, which was surprisingly good. We all fell asleep on the train back home, but woke up just in time to depart at our station; gotta love that internal clock that tells you to wake up and get the hell off the train. Okaasan somehow managed to conjure up a delicious dinner, after which I promptly fell into a coma. Days like this prove that you learn so much more outside the classroom.