On The Road: Day One – Castles In The Air

Was that bacon? No, no…it was…oh, come on brain, kick in, this is breakfast food you’re smelling. It is not miso soup or that tofu dipped in vinegar. This is breakfast! Western, dipped in fat and smothered lovingly in grease. Think back to filthy diners on Elgin…no, wait, farther back…filthy diners on Yonge…stained smocks…waitresses reeking of cigarettes and divorce…coffee circles on the tables…and you sitting there awaiting your meal praying silently that whatever concoction they’ve placed on your plate this dim morning does not get up and walk towards the subway…these mornings before a shoot, cold Canadian mornings where no matter how warm you get, you could set yourself ablaze, you still can not detach the icicles from your nostrils but a warm cup of greasy spoon mud is a good starting point, runny eggs that come out of a bucket in some dirty closet near the men’s room, something that looks like bacon only it blinks and has green eyebrows and then there is the smell that was molesting my nose. Oh, what was it? Wait, it’s…it’s…sausage! Sweet sausage, phallic and high in cholesterol sausage sizzling and what sweet music such sounds of popping fat were today.

Okay, sausage is cooking outside the door but where is the door, where is this room and where am I? I always have the feeling that I’ve been kidnapped by the Taliban when I wake up and don’t recognize my surroundings. I mean, it could happen! The sound of a laughing child slides under the door now along with the sausage smell and for a moment the tricks of the mind tack me to Prince Arthur Street back home and the sound of my daughter’s feet stomping about the living room upstairs. Am I back home? Did I oversleep again? Did my daughter get breakfast? But now that is a man’s voice. That doesn’t sound like Todd unless he is really working on his Australian accent…and that woman’s voice? When did mom take a Japanese course? The hammer clicks and everything falls into place. Of course it is morning in Kakagawa and I am under the covers of a comfortable futon listening to the sounds of a family at the breakfast table.

I opened the door a creak with the inclination that revealing to much of myself in my early morning state in which I resemble a crack addict in the initial stages of withdrawal might cause Luke and Co. to flee for the earthquake bunker…if they had an earthquake bunker. Both Luke and his lovely wife who was at the stove avoiding the splatter of sausage grease greeted me with wide smiles and a hearty “good morning”, both having obviously been awake for much longer then I as they had the vocal power to produce the force needed to be able to annunciate the letter D which is about as far as I got. My good morning was more like “goornin” but thankfully such mutilation of the language is forgivable to those still cleaning out sleep gunk from their eye sockets. Their five-year-old son looked me over with mute curiosity, like finding the body of a dead woodchuck. I was a dead woodchuck, alright, as I dropped dead weight into the chair next to him in need of the coffee that was now boiling on the stove. Luke knows me so well, knows what keeps me alive, the oil this humane needs to be able to maintain any sort of level of functionality. He was the early riser at the hotel and I’d often meet him there in the lobby working on his third cigarette. The early morning hotel coffee was the best, untouched, virgin and waiting for me. Luke watched me consume quantities of coffee that were not scientifically possible for a man of my small frame to consume and with each of those small, blue cups I became more alert and sentences began to take shape where once was a college of words melded together to form something lacking in linguistic shape and punctuation. Luke poured the first cup and I sloshed it down as his son continued to study me as though I were a frog about to be dissected in science class. With the power of caffeine flowing I was able to start goofing around with him and his stern scrutiny of the strange in the house soon turned to laughter, play hitting and smiles as he warmed to me quicker then most of my students. He had a very unique look with his lineage being a cross between Asian and Australian and though Luke had told me he knew English he choose not to speak it around me. Most of the time I had no idea what he was saying and though I could have opted to break out the phrase book I choose the more interesting route of trying to decipher the language through gestures or the one or two English words he’d pepper into his slew of Japanese at the urging of his father. Luke talks to his son in English and he replies back in Japanese which Luke understands in part. I am not so well versed and so I used three of the words I knew best: sumo, samurai and ninja. To Luke’s son I was the Super Sumo Samurai Ninja, trained in all three ancient arts by three separate masters and now I travel the earth fighting crime and eating sausage. It’s a good life for the Super Sumo Samurai Ninja.

I forked the breakfast into my mouth compliment the chef, Luke’s wife, on her Western cooking skills. Luke had an entire shelf of goodies shipped to him from Australia and he packed away two Vegemite sandwiches by the time I finished my first cup of coffee. Japanese biscuits were also on the table begging to be toped with honey from the big, glass jar near the refrigerator. I yielded to this pleading. Over breakfast, and while Luke’s wife hung out the washing, we debated on the current stance of the weather giving way to something clearer. The plan for this day was to make it out to Himeji to see what is called the best castle in Japan. The sky at the moment was at a fork in the road between turning down the gray wet path or the sunny clear path. Luke suggested we gamble and I agreed seeing as I had come all this way and, rain or shine, it was best that I use the trip to the fullest extent. Stomach coated in honey and coffee, we four stepped outside to an already clearing sky sometime around 10am. I held the group up when I felt the warm morning air and rushed back inside to change shirts. Megan looked even worse for wear then before she was stuffed inside the travel bag to be met by the cajoling of my underwear and socks. They seldom get to see female faces on garments in such proximity. I didn’t have to heart to tell them that below the feminine face of Megs rests the body of a small boy. Megs went over my chest in one smooth motion and I flattened out the wrinkles looking down on her fixed gaze. It felt nice having my good friend with me, if only in shirt form, and I felt all tingly knowing that Meg’s eyeballs were so close to my nipples. I wonder if Michael Jackson feels this way when he pulls small boys onto him?

Bedecked in the Megan shirt, although covered up for the time being, I slid in next to Luke in the family’s small, Japanese car. I haven’t touched upon the compact sizes of Japanese vehicles but a comparison to, say, Matchbox model cars would not be so far fetched. I felt that should we ever become stuck somewhere I could lift this car above me like a nude Clark Kent in a farm field thrilling the Japanese with my feat of strength. The cars here are really oversized roller-skates put on the plus side they don’t take up much space and four or five of them could fit nicely into one regular sized parking space and you’d still have room for…for…oh, what overweight celebrity have I not made fun of yet. Rosie? No, done. Opera…nope, I got her to…think, McFly…Ah, yes…four of five of them could fit nicely into one regular sized parking space and you’d still have room for Sally Struthers. The scenery on the ride to Himeji was nothing but road and a few scattered hills, nothing like the train views on my work rides. Conversation was scarce during the drive to Himeji so I played around with Luke’s son while listening to the radio. Japanese talk radio is ridiculously comical to a foreigner like myself. Everything is so over dramatic, like every sentence is Sally Field’s Oscar speech turned up 170 decibels. Like the game shows described previous posts, Japanese radio has a wide array of wacky sound effects that seem at lot less peculiar in this format. After all, in the pioneering days of radio drama such effects were used on classics like the Lone Ranger, Little Orphan Annie and the Green Hornet. I tried to keep my giggling to a minimum afraid that I would insult Luke’s wife but the Japanese language can be innately comical but add some zippy sound effects to the mix and you have golden moments of comedy.

Himeji is one of the top tourist spots, if not the number one tourist spot, in the Hyogo prefecture. Home to 480,000 plus Himeji itself, as a city, is not much to look at. Restaurants and shopping arcades and jammed close together and the surroundings are very, well, Western. Much like Luke’s city, Himeji seems to have adopted much from the American influenced post war architecture. To the Western visitor the city of Himeji is not very appealing until you hit the Ōtemae-dōri (main street). Lined with statues and even at this early morning hour a boatload of tourists, the street, dotted with well groomed trees and tacky tourist shops, leads you to the place that brings all the tour buses into the city. You really cannot miss this attraction as it floats seemingly above you on a bed of cherry blossoms, a stunning view even at such a distance. This is Himeji castle.






Himeji Castle is one of the oldest medieval castles remaining in Japan. Construction on the massive structure at the foot of Mount Himeji began in 1333 with completion of the grounds and castle keep being reached sometime in the mid-1340s. The modern day castle was fortified and expanded by our castle building machine Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1580. The now iconic three-story tower was errected around this time. When Toyotomi’s armies fell during the Battle of Sekigahara, Hideyoshi turned Himeji over to the new shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ieyasu continued the expansion of the grounds and the current form of the castle was completed in 1618. Over the centuries the castle would see wars and battles and would become the main lodgings to over 48 lords. In 1871 the castle was sold at auction for a mere 23 yen and would go on to be uninhibited before becoming the popular tourist destination that it is today. Although the surrounding area around the castle was bombed twice during World War II the castle survived and still stands in it’s reconstructed form though restorations have been going on here and there since the 1950s.









At this time of year dozens of Sakura bloom around the castle keep and this just might attract more Japanese then the castle above the trees.


The grounds were flooded with people and it looked like the scene of a rock concert, everybody vying for the best spot for their flower party. It was easy to loose Luke and his family in the crowds as I would stop every few paces to snap another picture of the castle that seemed to be hovering in the air over the trees if not just resting snuggly upon them as though it were weightless.


We paid our entrance fee, some guy in a really bad samurai costume tore my ticket and started up the path maze leading to the main entrance. The maze is in the form of spiral and leads you into many dead end walls forcing you to turn around and try another way. The maze was built as a defensive structure (although it was never needed) but now tourist had the aid of red arrows pointing them in the right direction. This is one of the many old structures in Japan that do not allow you to wear your shoes inside so you join a group of hoping people struggling to remove their footwear before entering the castle. You are given plastic bags to place your shoes in and Luke said they once issued slippers but people have decided to not return them so now it is sock feet or bust. Honestly the interior of the castle was a disappointment. Now, I am sure it is quite majestic but today the crowd was just overwhelming and you risked being trampled should you want to stop and observe your surroundings. The steep climb to the top of the tower was a dangerous one when you factored in all the people pushing and shoving and all the wonderful ways you could damage your unprotected toes be it either being crushed by the mob or banged onto wooden raiser supports in the floor.


I did manage to catch a glimpse of the weapon holders, gun holes and a samurai costume display before being pushed forward. To further my annoyance there was this electronic voice that boomed out on loudspeakers all over the castle reminding us that the castle was crowded so follow the equally loud guides or to not smoke or that food was prohibited. This voice, the crowds and the cold slippery floor on my un-shoed feet made me just want to push and ram my way to the top, see what there was to see and hurry back out into the sun where I could freely move. The view from the top is worth the climb, however, unlike the Statue of Liberty to which I compared this upward hike.


You were able to see all the pink and white below and the ant sized people living it up under the blossoms.









I was more interested in the close up views I now had of the castle architecture. There was a shrine at the top of the castle where everybody simply could not be mollified by ringing the bell once and so a gong would mix with the crowd noise every few seconds and the electronic voice intruded on the entire scene and my camera and I had had enough and a rush and a push and I was back at the gate putting my shoes back on and heading out for open ground.




Luke’s son was getting tired and so we started back out to find some lunch but, wait, I had nearly forgot. I handed Luke the camera, my bag, coat and sweater (he felt like a donkey) and he snapped the first shots of the Megan Shirt series there in the shadow of the castle and in the branches of blossoms. Megs, it begins!

After a quick lunch of Chinese food in a little hidden away place by the train station, Luke and I parted ways with his wife and sleepy son so we could make another trip. A short drive behind the castle takes you to the less touristy Engyoji, a mountaintop grouping of temples and shrines that may have been a pleasant hike if the weather had stayed as sunny as it had been that morning. Instead the clouds had moved in and with them came the chilly winds and threats of rain.



A cable car took us to the top of the mountain and I celebrated at the fact that I would not have to make another mountain climb before, yup, I had to make another mountain climb. The car just takes you to a toll gate and then it is uphill, downhill and back uphill again before you reach the complex at the top of Mount Shosha.




The path up is lined with Thousand-Armed Kannon statues which are all different.


I could not quite understand the meaning behind the rocks with carvings of large feet on them but I did enjoy the bell tower nearby…until the road used to push the large log into the bell nearly took my head off.









This area has attracted a few more tourists in recent years as it was the place where the Last Samurai was filmed. Although I scoured the area Tom Cruise was nowhere to be found but here I was walking in the footsteps of Scientology greatness. A couch jumping champion may very well have stood in this very spot. The wood building, or Daiko-do, is the only remaining one of it’s kind in Japan.





There are a few spots of interested around the main attraction, a gravesite that Luke pointed out as being that of the man who built Himeji Castle and what I found most interesting where the rows of what had to be over 500 small Buddha statues rounding the path near the main temple. Luke did not like the idea of me climbing about sacred sites but I wasn’t walking where others feared to tread as some of the statues had outfits made for them and toys and dolls laid out around them. I met up with a few Canucks from Toronto near the rows of Buddha and neither of us could figure out the significance of their numbers. My guide book had no information. The sun was no going down and we didn’t want to have to hike down the mountain in the dark if we missed the last cable car so we went back down a different path and rode the car back down the mountain with the sun lowering over the city.

I’d mentioned that morning that I had not had the Japanese favorite Tempura and Luke’s wonderful wife had cooked us up a batch and it was hot and waiting for us when we returned home. Tempura is basically anything you can think of (although mostly sea food) fried in salty batter. I once say a news program where some guy runs a shop in New York City where he fries anything for those willing to eat it. Twinkies and Snickers bars were the popular fired items. I wonder if he got his idea from Tempura. Although I am not one for fish the day had left me with a huge hungry hole to fill and I ate the salty stuff down. As Luke said, Tempura is not something you want to eat all the time as it is not the most healthy of Japanese dishes but it made for an interesting evening of cuisine which we toped off with coffee and chocolate covered almonds and eggs sent from Australia. You forgot Western holidays like Easter, as I did St. Patrick’s Day, really easily when you are implanted in another land. I decided to head off to sleep early and was out before even the kid was sent off to bed. Sleep here was such a welcome change from my normal evening practice of forming a blocked of pillows and blankets to shut out the train noise. Early that morning I was awoken by a car alarm. Somebody up there doesn’t want me to get to sleep. Between the beeps and my whooping cough I managed to slide into slumber with another day on the road behind me.