Lioness in Japan

It feels like forever since my summer “wedding research” trips but I felt so nostalgic when I looked over the photos the other day and had to put this up here…

So, the Mount Fuji area didn’t really tick all the boxes for our second wedding party — traditional Japanese ryokans don’t really cater for all-night-long drunken Aussie-type nuptials. But we thought a slice of Japan up north could possibly bend the rules a bit for us…

This is the “highway” from Chitose Airport to Hirafu, Niseko, a very small town in Hokkaido where a cluster of gaijins (foreigners) have re-created this nook into a bohemian village full of charming pensions to cater to the highlight of the year — snow season! This part of Japan has the best powder to offer and you can glide down the slopes from December to early May.

Outside the snow season, Niseko still has lots of offer besides skiing and it was a joy to explore the area during the summer. We went up in July to see what it would be like to have a wedding there…

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“Babe, how did you find this?” asked an intrigued kangaroo who was referring to this…

Ogano Elementary School was the starting point for our half-marathon at the 40th Ogano Flower Run Road Race last weekend and it was a far cry from the bustling festiveness of our previous run around Yamanaka-ko.

Well, I’ve to say that Runnet.jp has indeed a very detailed list of runs you can apply for. In a bid to train for the Tokyo Marathon in Feb 2011 (which we didn’t get picked…*sad face*), I wanted to take part in a half-marathon once a month till then so for October, the Ogano Road Race was the only one that was still available for registration and wasn’t too far from Tokyo. By the way, Ogano is a teeny tiny town next to Chichibu, Saitama — it was so out of the way that it didn’t even have a train station; yup, only buses went there so we rented a car to make things easier.

What initially felt like we were crashing a school’s Sports Day turned out to be quite an experience. We couldn’t believe that the kangaroo’s Japanese teacher actually watched a TV show that featured this very same road race in Ogano. How it got onto TV was an absolute mystery…

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Dasvidania means goodbye in Russian and it was one of the few words I’d learned. I used spasiba (means thank you) sometimes and it would crack up the kangaroo’s work mates. And I knew zdravstvujtye (pronounced as zdrah-stvooy-tee) as hello from watching Hollywood movies but apparently it’s a very formal hello and nobody really uses it in daily life. I did hear it in restaurants and shops, though.

Aside from my failed attempts to pick up more Russian, my short jaunt in Moscow had to come to an end and unfortunately it was quite rainy.

We headed to the Tretyakov Gallery to have a taste of Russian art since it was highly recommended by the kangaroo’s boss. Soviet art was a little dark and mournful and I found even the pre-Soviet paintings to be sort of the same but with more dramatic scenes of war and suffering. We paid for the audio service that was a large walkie-talkie like contraption where you key in the number beside the painting and it will spout explanations in your chosen language — highly recommended as it made our visit much more meaningful with historical anecdotes to make sense of what we saw.

No pictures, I’m afraid as it wasn’t allowed.

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You wouldn’t believe the number of people who asked me this. I think no one has a good clue as to what is Russian cuisine and if Moscow has a thriving restaurant scene or not.

I would describe Moscow’s wining and dining as “emerging”. Having eaten in Tokyo, Moscow’s food scene is a little lacking in pizazz and quality, but I still ate pretty well.

The other question I got was, “What are you going to eat there?” I had no idea and was just going to wing it. I had a lot of work to take care of before the trip so I couldn’t let that worry me as a vegetarian. I figured there would be supermarkets and surely I could customize my meals with vigorous hand gestures.

Like I mentioned, Japanese is all the rage in Moscow and Asian fusion cuisine is rather popular too, according to the Lonely Planet. You would find sushi rolls on almost any appetizer menu, be it a Japanese joint or not and spring rolls seem to be a universal crowd pleaser. I found wraps to be pretty ubiquitous and there were heaps of Italian places.

Two places stood out in my memory of Moscow food-wise awere an Indian restaurant, Maharaja, and Moscow’s possibly sole vegetarian restaurant, Jagannath.

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You know that old Robbie Williams’ song, “Let Me Entertain You”? I felt that Moscow lured me into its dungeons of fun the way Robbie does in that tune. With its nouveau riche class hungry for more than just “regular”, Moscow offers an array of entertainment to stave off boredom…

The kangaroo surprised me with a night at a U2 concert at the Luzhniki Stadium – whoooooooo! You know he already gave me an iPad, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience….

At this point when we took this picture, I only knew that a “Russian band” was going to come on but strangely had Snow Patrol as the opening act.

“Babe, you really didn’t see any of the U2 posters in the metro and all the way to the stadium?” asked an incredulous kangaroo. Uh-hem, yes, my eyesight is definitely not the best — that’s why I suck at tennis (who can possibly see that yellow ball coming at ya?!) and driving.

U2 was AWESOME. AMAZING. INSPIRING.

It was in the f—ing rain but they still rocked it out like professionals. No, they were rock gods. Bono is so amazing live.

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Much like my trips to Seoul and Beijing, I would fly together with the kangaroo but he works hard in the day while I play tourist on my own.

I didn’t do a whole lot of research before I arrived in Moscow and relied on a 10- year-old Moscow Lonely Planet (we bought a 2009 version but it was first published in 2000). It was very good with maps but there were some things that were out of date, which was similar to my experience in Hiroshima while using one.

So in the morning, I would prepare brekkie for both of us and contemplate what to do later on.

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You know that there’s something up when you are told, “The company is calling the cab driver every hour just to check if we are okay.” Moscow definitely had a dark edge though I think what I saw mostly was a positive energy that oozed with newly-found wealth and economic dynamism.

The kangaroo also stressed that I shouldn’t wear my engagement ring in case I got mugged and that I should send him an SMS every two hours when I was sight-seeing alone while he was in the office.

On the way from the airport to our service apartment, I just gazed at the cars that zoomed past and signs in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. I was definitely in unfamiliar territory. In Japan, the signs and names of stations are also in English alphabets, or romaji.

Our digs for two weeks:

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I must say that of all the places I’ve visited in Japan, Sado Island came in first as being the most quaintly quirky.

There were the usual stuff like temples and pretty gardens:

But there were some off-the-wall sutff here…

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Damn, those T-shirts just make me wanna laugh! They were so fabulous and we were totally rockin’ them on Sado Island.

Like all places in Japan, there is something or some food that is unique to the area (can be anything from apples to wasabi to animals) and Sado Island’s mascot is the rare toki bird that is part of the ibis species.

I wish I could show you a photo of a real toki but they were hidden away from noise and prying human eyes because they are an endangered species — seen and treated much like pandas. Tokis have trouble conceiving and have Chinese names like Yan Yan and Ying Ying. Apprently, tokis are also exchanged as diplomatic gifts between Japan and China.

If you’ve travelled around Japan abit, you would notice that a whole industry of tourist souvenirs will be built around the said mascot, and my oh my, were there tons of toki things.

FYI, toki also means time in Japanese. So time is toki…get it, get it? *Groan*…

Don’t worry I didn’t buy any of this tourist crap. But I did buy this: Sado Island 100 per cent pure sea salt.

I love making food and am a bit of a health freak so good unrefined salt would tickle my culinary geek bone. There were kelp and ume (sour plum) flavoured salt — probably great for accompanying tempura — but they were a bit too Japanese for what I cook at home.

Our trip was very well-planned and mapped out almost to the hour but the salt shop was something we stumbled upon.

It was super old school and only one guy was part of the whole salt assembly line…

It was wood-fired — damn!

And there were buckets of salt lying around.

Next to the salt shop was a famous rock formation called fu-fu (means couple)…

And it was fitting for our friend who was getting married.

I couldn’t resist striking a pose in front of this Sado Island icon.

To be continued…

My friend was going to move to San Francisco in mid-July, and she just got engaged, so a hen weekend holiday to Sado Island was organized in her honour.

Sado Island is one of those tucked away places that maybe gaijins would be more attracted to exploring — for the very fact that it is a lot less crowded and has a more untouched feel to it. It’s also not a convenient location (subway -> shinkansen -> overnight hotel stay -> ferry -> Sado Island) which would not lure your average Tokyoite.

Like all hen parties, this one was unique in its own right, complete with identical T-shirts and number tagging. I was sanban (number three) — there were eight of us in all — as we joked that we were like a tour group, and so, “marked” attendance before we set off to another location (ichiban, niban, sanban, yonban…). Corny, I know! LOL!

The T-shirts caused an absolute riot wherever we went — the locals would ask us why we wore the same T-shirts and were curious that there was such a thing as a hen party which is a something that doesn’t exist in Japanese culture. People just got married without any grand send-off because the wedding itself is probably a big enough party, I reckon.

Isn’t this gorgeous?

Sado Island is just off the coast of Niigata, by the way, and is about two hours on the shinkansen from Tokyo and another hour on the Jetfoil ferry (highly recommended as it’s the fastest way to get there).

I’ve never been part of such a big group of women travelling together and I must say it was one of the best times I’d ever had.