This begins 23 posts that describe our November trip to China and Japan. They’re posted here in reverse-time order. If you’d like to read it in the order it was written, in an easier format (as two Word documents–I’m such a boomer), just email a request. Enjoy!

Sheesh, “The Pace of Modernization and Culture” sounds like a dissertation title. It’s not quite a dissertation but it could be, I suppose. It occurs to me that it is very dislocating or discombobulating to modernize a country quickly. How much better it was for the U.S., Britain, and western Europe to develop slowly, so that their cultures could also develop along with industrialization and urbanization.

Any country that’s developing now (or since 1945 in Japan’s case) has to leap from an agriculture-based economy to a service- or industry-based one while dramatically urbanizing. All the cultural norms of a rural society are changed, in education, family relationships, marriage requirements, roles of women, etc. All developing countries are struggling with this. It’s not easy. (Of course, it wasn’t easy the slow way either, but at least it was slower—am thinking of the Robber Barons, the rise of unions, industrial slums, etc.)

Apparently these two countries have never learned to get along. Of course, this seems to be true of many, many countries that are geographically close to each other (Ukraine-Russia, Turkey-Greece, Pakistan-India). These remind me of football rivalries but with hundreds if not thousands of years of aggravation and real weapons.

Anyway, Japan has historically had a pattern of adopting and adapting religions, mores, rituals, war tactics, cars, electronics equipment, etc. and making them Japanese. Many of the things that are typically thought of as Japanese have their origins in China. So, Chinese people say that Japanese people copied their tea ceremony, Japanese people say they adopted the idea of the tea ceremony, improved it and made it their own. This is a subtle but real difference that applies to many cultural elements of Japan.

More recently, Japan conducted itself badly when it invaded China in the 20th century (it’s not called the Rape of Nanking for nothing) and the Chinese are not about to forgive them for that—not that Japan is apologizing or anything.

Now, we have a modern Japan, the second-largest economy in the world with per capita income of $38,950 (2005) that seems to still be treated like a second-class citizen by the U.S., and China, the seventh-largest economy in the world (but so full of people that their per capita income is still around $3000 per year ($1740 in 2005)) that is also not very well-understood by the U.S. (are they friends or enemies, trading partners or potential future war opponents?). (Data from the World Bank website. U.S. per capita income is $43,560 in 2005.)

Regarding Japanese-U.S. relations, our Japanese friend was very clear about what scums we can be, and I was embarrassed for our country. When a high-ranking U.S. official recently visited China, our State Department didn’t even have the courtesy to tell Japan we were going there. We HAVE to know about each of these country’s sensitivities to the other and I would hope that we are VERY clear that Japan is a known ally and China is still kind of iffy. Then it makes sense to me to extend the courtesy to Japan that we are going to be in the neighborhood.

For more information about Japan and its relationship with the U.S., read Japan, A Reinterpretation, by Patrick Smith. It’s a bit of a slog, but I learned a lot.

All right, now we’re talkin’! This is a great city. It looks a lot like New York City. I LOVED the Ginza. It’s sort of Chicago’s Miracle Mile (only with more side streets involved) lighted like Times Square. We stopped in Sony’s showroom (gotta keep Jim moving, don’t want him getting too attracted to the big screen flat panels), a huge, crowded electronics store (oh no, not to the TVs again!), Mikimoto, a famous (well, to some people I guess) pearl jewelry store, the Tokyo Apple store (nothing new there), and had fun briefly browsing through a department store.

Latest fashions in Tokyo (for folks younger than me I hasten to add) include mini-skirts or hot pants coupled with boots or knee socks (a rather infantilizing look for young women if you ask me), or knee-length winter shorts with tights, and lots and lots of boots. For winter the department store was displaying many varieties of fur scarves and clip-on collars though we didn’t see any on the street yet. Unfortunately they were real, making them not only a non-PC purchase, but also too expensive!

Speaking of winter, Japan does a pretty good job of Christmas decorating—much better than London. Yes, Japan takes our Christmas season to its logical extreme: it’s a retail holiday, completely divorced from any religious connection. It’s our own fault, of course, so no whining allowed!

This is a very interesting moment in Japanese history. For about 600 years, Japan functioned as a feudal society with shoguns being the top political rulers. At the same time, emperors served as the religious leaders of the society. By the 1800s the various shogunates had been centralized, with one head shogun leading the pack. In 1868, the last Tokugawa shogun decided that, in order to modernize Japan so it could hold it’s own with the western powers that were forcing it to “open,” the political power and religious power needed to be held by one person. So, he agreed (with a bit of revolutionary civil war involved) to hand over his power to the then-Emperor, restoring all power to the Emperor whose name was Meiji. Got it?

We were amazingly lucky in our timing in Kyoto. Not only did we have near-perfect weather (around 60 and mostly sunny) but we hit the beginning of leaf-changing season. This happens to be my favorite part of autumn, when most leaves are still green, but a few early trees are red or yellow. I’ve seen photos of the same places we visited at peak season and the maples are truly red and spectacular, but I personally think that’s too much. Even Nature can be a little gaudy.

Rubric One: Temples are Buddhist, shrines are Shinto.
Rubric Two: Temples charge admission, shrines simply allow for donations.
Rubric Three: Shrines can be located at Buddhist temples.

Before the Meiji Restoration (believe me, 1868 is an important date to remember), it was OK to have Buddhist temples and shrines on the same property (as happens in Kiyumizu-dera), so it can get quite confusing. They both include similar architectural elements, though temples tend to be more elaborate. Buddhists worship inside the temples, people worship outside a Shinto shrine. Shinto shrines use torii gates (which is pronounced toree-ee and is probably redundant as the second i means “gate”) to separate the outside world from the shrine. (This language redundancy happens with other classes of buildings, too: Nijo-jo Castle where the second “jo” means “castle” or Ginkaku-ji Temple where “ji” means “temple.”) In identifying temples, seeing a Buddha helps of course.

As a religion, I like Shintoism better than Buddhism. I always feel that religions that sanction poverty and look to the next life for their reward are designed for controlling the masses. Shintoism puts a lot more emphasis on a spirit-filled world (sacred rocks, trees, animals, people). At least in China and Japan, both of these religions continue many of the forms and rituals that were designed to placate evil spirits. Hence, the step-over door sills (evil spirits are either tiny or can only shuffle), the “blocking walls” opposite doorways (evil spirits can’t make turns), and various guardian statues located in the lead temple of a temple site.

Just for our own record-keeping, here’s the list of places we visited: Tenryu-ji, Jojakko-ji, Togetsu-kyo (bridge), Kinkaku-ji, Jikko-in (where there is an amazing winter-blooming cherry tree), Shimogamo Jinja, Nijo-jo, Kiyumizu-dera—and Keio University where Jim gave a class lecture.

Fun Facts from Kyoto

All right, it’s true, Japan is expensive. It’s possible to have reasonably-priced meals, but you have to work hard to find them (we didn’t usually work that hard). Merchandise is expensive, except for tourist gewgaws.

In Kyoto, we occasionally see women in traditional kimono. This is far more common in Kyoto than in Tokyo. Women ranging from young (late teens) to old (and occasionally young men) were spotted everywhere in Kyoto, daytime and evening in traditional dress. Kimono are very expensive, and none too easy to walk in, but they were quite common in Kyoto.

Beaujolais Nouveau Day (November 15) doesn’t work like the Harry Potter release date. For the wine, midnight of wherever you are is good enough. Japan (and possibly Korea) seems to be obsessed with this wine as it was prominent everywhere, including on our flight from Seoul to San Francisco.

Most ATM machines and international cell phones don’t work in Japan for us poor Americans. Most of their ATM machines, especially in Kyoto, don’t belong to Cirrus or Plus networks. Their mobile phones use a band that neither Europe nor the U.S. uses. And, at least in Kyoto, there are not a lot of places that take credit cards. (Thank goodness Kozo was around or we would have been scrambling for yen.)

Elevator buttons are laid out in columns, from bottom to top. Most places (like in the U.S. and Europe) they are laid out in rows. This is an obvious relationship to the way Japanese is read. Books tend to be printed so that reading is from top to bottom, right to left, (our) back to front, which is the preferred arrangement. When necessary, words can be arranged horizontally, left to right, top to bottom, still (our) back to front.

Many restaurants are laid out in little rooms with each group assigned to its own room. Kozo worked especially hard to make sure that in the restaurants he picked out for us the seating was either in chairs or had leg-wells so we didn’t have to sit on our knees or cross-legged. However, we did have one lunch in Tokyo at a traditional table. Luckily we had a wall behind us so occasional leaning helped make it comfortable enough to get through the whole meal. Sadly (or comically), neither Jim nor I are especially graceful on the way up or down.

In Japan, they are NOT called Japanese maples but they sure are gorgeous. And in full season (a little after our departure), the areas around the temples and shrines are completely covered with brilliant red trees. (We saw pictures.)

How cool is this? I’m sitting on a bullet train traveling from Kyoto to Tokyo. But, this is only the second fastest train in the world. We took the mag lev train from downtown Shanghai to the Shanghai airport. THAT was the fastest. (The mag lev was only a 9-minute ride; fast but too short to appreciate fully.) Not that I can tell much difference between 340 km/hr and 430 km/hr. The seats in the bullet train are spacious (as were the mag lev seats), my computer is plugged into my seat and a food cart passes by periodically. And, although the mag lev is technologically quieter (since it’s not riding on rails), this bullet train is quite quiet, too. Makes me yearn for great train service in the U.S.

We made quite a lot of use of public transportation our three days here. All is clean, safe and efficient. There is quite a lot of English, but I still wouldn’t want to try traveling this way without a Japanese speaker. Often our map would list the street names and station names in English, but not all subway signs have English on them. On the other hand, given enough time, it is possible to figure it all out. This is not so true with walking. We were always accompanied, but I could rarely find street names for the lesser streets. And if I did, they were in Japanese only. So, I was too chicken to take a dusk walk on my own in Gion to see the geiko (geisha in Kyoto) as they go to work.

This entire trip has been one culinary adventure after another. First there were the days in China where we ate Chinese style food two times a day for sure, and, on our trek to Huangshan, three times a day (good thing I liked noodles). There were very few people who finished that trip and thought they might visit a Chinese restaurant in the next three months (of course, Jim was one of them).

The Japan section of the trip has been shorter, and although it is MUCH easier to find western food here (well, sort of western food—things are not always what they seem), I decided that when in Japan, eat like the Japanese. That was my plan, anyway. Turns out I can’t possibly eat like the Japanese because they have developed an entire repertoire of foods that, how shall I say this, don’t tickle my palate. There are two basic problems: the visuals and the textures. I tried a lot of foods that really did taste fine, but if I hadn’t had two guys coaxing me on, I never would have tried them at all. They looked yucky, let’s face it. Brown stringy things, a white paste, a whole little fish soaked in soy sauce. I had a “cooked” rule so only once did I eat raw fish, and that was tuna and knew I could do it. There are untold number of slimy foods, white, gray or brown foods, gelatinized foods, and unidentifiable vegetables and seafoods (sea urchin for sale). Of course, this isn’t much different than China, but in China we were always served tons of dishes family-style so you could pass on whatever you were too suspicious of.

Both China and Japan have no idea how to do desserts. I’m picky enough in the U.S. because I am partial to simple desserts—I generally prefer no more than two flavors so all the fancy-dancy desserts that dessert chefs put together are wasted on me. In China and Japan, a small roll filled with a sweet red bean curd is a favorite. I actually think it’s OK (it DOES meet the “two-flavor” rule), but it sure doesn’t fulfill this American’s sweet cravings. In China we ALWAYS had watermelon as a meal-ender. In Japan, because we were ordering differently, we usually didn’t bother with desserts.

This is my first trip to Japan. If nothing else, it is a welcome relief from China. It feels less crowded, is far richer, cleaner and safer, with better bathrooms (even the “eastern-style” ones are WAY cleaner), more English and with better manners (no spitting, no giant scrums instead of lines, no giant traffic jams).

I didn’t have much of an idea of what Kyoto would be like, but since all my reading indicated that the city has a reputation for preserving Japan’s cultural traditions and housing thousands of temples and shrines, I didn’t expect the bustling city I landed in.

It DOES have several districts where several hundred-year-old housing and local traditions remain, and there ARE a zillion temples and shrines, but there is also a large, normal, modern city where people live, work and play.

So we were very glad for the electric blankets on our twin beds, saw the famous mountains, watched a rather anemic sunrise, managed a feeble breakfast, walked back UP to the cable car, and finally got back to our big touring bus for our return to Shanghai (meeting our suitcases which started THEIR trip back down at 4 am which meant that we didn’t have access to toiletries or clothes or anything else we didn’t want to carry ourselves after we went to bed—good thing I had already decided to sleep in my clothes to stay warm!)

We made one stop on the ride back, touring a very small town named Hongcun, which was used in the film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, so it’s historic and interesting. However, as we walked through the streets (a euphemism for “narrow alleyways”), we discovered that most of the area was filled with tourist stores. Oh well….people gotta make money, I guess.

We were left on our own to tour for a bit and told to meet back up at the restaurant we could see just past the bridge we walked across to get to the town. Because Jim and I generally don’t like to backtrack in a tourist area like this (no point in seeing the stuff we already passed), we decided to try a more innovative route back to the restaurant. Well, it was innovative all right. We actually ended up leaving the scenic “old town,” walked through the actual “where people live and shop” part of town (why do all stores in China (except those in malls) look like garages?) and, after walking MUCH further than we needed to (by about 2 miles) we did manage to find the restaurant, and even arrived just before the food. Whew!

The most amusing part of this restaurant was that they only had 6 forks in the whole place. So, people in our group who had been relying on the availability of forks up until now (Jim and I are chopstick experts) had to triage the use of them here.

And finally, many hours later, we arrived back at the Shangri-la Hotel in Pudong, which almost caused culture shock after our time on Huangshan. After a fine dinner (in a hotel restaurant that had various buffet stations of foods from China (no thanks), Japan, U.S., Italy, Malaysia and India (and maybe more—I forget)), we slept on our cushy queen-sized bed in our heated hotel, dreaming of the next leg of our trip, Japan.