Kobe and Hamamastu

After a leisurely day in Kobe, we met up, on the 14th, with our friends Miwa and Lee, who accompanied us to the Junichiro Tanizaki museum in Ashiyagawa. Tanizaki is a well-known novelist and philosopher in Japan. His books are nearly all available in English translation, and K has been especially interested in his perspective on the aesthetics of daily life in Japanese culture. We learned a great deal about Tanizaki’s life and times at the museum—an accomplishment that would not have been possible without the Japanese language skills of Miwa and Lee. Although there was a small English-language flier, all the exhibits and photographs were labeled and described in Japanese. We also learned that next door, at a city museum, there was an exhibit focused on the life and work of an artist, Koide, who was a friend of Tanizaki and who illustrated Tanizaki’s books. So of course we also went to see that exhibit, as well. Koide’s old studio building, a small, airy two-story Japanese house, has been moved to the site too, and rests right between the two museums. It was a fascinating afternoon during which we learned a great deal about these people, their work, and their times in and about Osaka, Kobe, and Ashiya.

At Tanizaki Museum

At the end of the day, we drove with Miwa and Lee to central Kobe, where we had dinner at a buffet-style restaurant on the top floor of the huge Daimaru department store. The buffet featured a variety of traditional foods, and had a home-cooked feel. We found a quiet table where we could have a good conversation, allowing us to catch up on events of the past couple of years since we have seen Miwa and Lee, share photographs of our grandchildren, and generally enjoy their good company. Afterward, they dropped us at our hotel, which was not far from the restaurant.

Sorakuen

Old teahouse at Sorakuen

While in Kobe, we also walked from our hotel to Sorakuen, a traditional Japanese landscape garden near the center of Kobe. We have been there in years past, but wanted to see it again. In addition to the permanent fixtures there (an hold teahouse and boathouse, an old Western-style house and stable, etc.), the garden had a display of various kinds of peonies, many of them with colorful umbrellas standing over them. We weren’t quite certain of the purpose of the exhibit, but it appeared to be a way of showing different varieties of the plants. Interestingly, although it’s January, many of them were blooming, as were a few camellias in the garden.

Friends in Hamamastu

On Jan. 15th, we were back on the Shinkansen, traveling to Hamamatsu. We arrived around noon and left our bags at the hotel near the station. We then walked to another nearby hotel, one we have stayed in several times, and had lunch there. We had the afternoon to ourselves before meeting a group of old Hamamatsu friends whom we know from our work with Seirei Christopher University over the years. All of them except our friend Makoto are now retired, some living some distance away now, but they all meet up whenever we are in town. Once again, we had a lovely dinner, this time in a private dining room, with course after course of colorful, delicious Japanese dishes, and lots of reminiscing about good times we have shared over the years. We met these people in the early and mid 1990s, so we go back nearly 20 years with most of them.

A delightful family

Part of a wonderful lunch in a lovely spot

Dessert!

At the bird and flower park

On the 16th, Makoto and his family picked us up at the hotel and took us to The Oriental Terrace, a beautiful restaurant overlooking a small lake in Hamamatsu. There we had yet another lovely meal, again in a private room, and enjoyed getting reacquainted with Makoto’s family, whom we also had not seen for two years. And we had never met daughter Kana, who will celebrate her second birthday in the spring. After lunch, they took us on an outing chosen by their 13-year-old son Daisuke—a bird and flower park with large aviary/greenhouses filled with colorful, exotic birds (parrots, flamingos, penguins, etc.), many species of owls, a myriad of hanging plant baskets, and huge pools with koi and many varieties of water lilies. The kids were able to touch and feed many of the birds, including emus in a large enclosure (like a corral, actually). As always, we hated to say good-bye to this young family when they finally delivered us to our hotel.

Yesterday (January 17) was a special day in at least two ways. First, it was the 16th anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake that devastated much of Kobe and the surrounding area (including our old stomping grounds at Kwansei Gakuin University) in 1995. There was a lot of TV coverage of memorials, speeches, and the like, commemorating the day. More than 6,000 people died when the earthquake occurred around 5:45 in the morning; the death toll would no doubt have been much higher if it had happened an hour or two later, when the freeways and trains would have been packed. Second, we were on a Shinkansen train, from Hamamatsu to Kyoto that was an hour late! We’ve heard mixed discussion about the reason—we passed through a heavy snowstorm along the way, which may well have slowed the trains (and some were actually cancelled), but we also heard on TV that there may have been a software failure in the scheduling/controlling system. So we aren’t sure exactly what really happened, but it was nevertheless a very unusual thing.

After arriving in Kyoto, we dropped our bags at our hotel (Karasuma Kyoto Hotel) and went out to explore some nearby shops. We had lunch atop the Daimaru Department Store, and wandered through the Nishiki, Teramachi, and Shinkyogoku covered shopping arcades. Afterward we had a cup of tea at Starbucks (in our hotel lobby!) and later dinner at a Chinese restaurant on the second floor of the hotel. Today (Jan. 18) we’re off again to wander about Kyoto.