Roving Japan

Day 76 Photoset

Our first stop today was at the “Worlds Largest” kiln fired pot. The pot is HUGE. They made the pot on the site, then built the kiln around it. When it was finished, they tore down the kiln and hoped the tourists would follow. I don’t think they really have… Especially since it doesn’t face the road and no one bothers to advertise it.

A little bit up the road, we found the “Worlds Largest” shi-shi dogs. Again, they were built on-site with their kilns built up around them. These dogs DO get some attention since they are facing a well trafficked intersection.

After the giant pot and shi-shi dogs, Hirofumi took us to his favorite pottery place. It’s a small family business that still makes everything by hand. The nice people let us explore and take a ton of pictures. I especially liked watching one old man who was cutting little groves into the sides of some cups. I had previously thought that the groves were made by potters fingers, but I guess I was wrong. The cups are made in a mould and come out totally smooth. Then this guy cuts the groves to make them look more interesting.

The cups the guy was working on were hand-made tea cups for use while eating sushi. These particular cups have a slightly different shape than a normal tea cup, and they are a little thicker. Hiro told us that this factory is one of only 5 remaining in Japan that still makes hand-made sushi tea cups.

At another station, a man was painting plates and cups with ink. The style of glaze they are using comes out looking cracked. The ink then seeps into the cracks making them easier to see. The effect is like a spiderweb of dark lines all over the cup. It looks like its old, but that’s actually how they are intended, and the cracks are just an aesthetic, its not actually cracked or damaged.

In the back of the building, a fresh batch of cups was just being pulled out of the oven. As we got closer, we started hearing *ting-ting-ting*, like tiny little chimes. The guy showing us around said that the sound comes from the cups as the glaze cracks. It’s really neat sounding.

While looking at the cups, I noticed that some of the glaze had dripped down the side. The guy shook his head and said, “Ya, this batch is mostly garbage now. They cooked for too long and the glaze ran, so they are worthless.”

Risa and I couldn’t believe it. These cups are perfectly fine, just a minor blemish! No big deal! He liked that we seemed to care, so he let us take three of the “garbage” cups home! Woohoo! We were really excited, and the cups continued to make their ting-ting-ting noises for the next hour or so. Risa especially enjoyed putting one cup on each ear and listening to the music.

The day at the factory wasn’t without a little drama. During our visit, it started to rain. As soon as the drops started falling, everyone ran outside and starting bringing in the drying dishes. It was amazing to see them work so fast. Even the old lady grabbed a huge plank of cups! We wanted to help, but we didn’t have their uber skills.

One of the coolest things that this business makes is a custom tea cup. Hiro has worked with them and gotten them to produce custom cups with your name written on the side. Hiro was here to pick up some cups for his friends, and also put in a new order for us! Risa and I will be getting a couple of tea cups with our names written on the side. Mine will say “Su-Ko-To” in hiragana, and Risa will get her kanji written on the side. Pretty cool! We’re getting so much free stuff here, it’s amazing. We will probably have to ship it all back to Tokyo.

For dinner tonight, all the girls made gyoza. I think that they made about 150 of the little pot stickers. It was really good!

At the onsen, I lasted 9min in the Sauna. I’m almost over 10minutes!

Day 75 Photoset

This morning was super relaxing. The Itoh family doesn’t get up very early. Breakfasts is served around 10am, and with plenty of coffee. I love it!

The Itoh clan is pretty big. There is Mr and Mrs Itoh, their son Hirofumi, and daughter Hasumi who has a little baby daughter of her own. Hasumi’s husband is working in Vietnam right now. His company sent him there for a 3 month assignment, which turned into 6 months, and then 10 months. The baby is 11 months old, so he’s barely seen his daughter. Kind of sad. When I asked her if she has considered moving to Vietnam, she told me that her husband doesn’t want them living in such a dirty city. Not good for the health of the new baby I guess. Supposedly he is coming back soon, unless they extend his stay… again.

Finally, there is Mr Itohs father. He’s 93, can’t hear very well, but still has an active life and actually drives himself around. I hope I can still drive when I’m 93! Mr Itoh the elder was quite successful in his younger years. The local economy is centered around pottery manufacturing, and it was Grandpa Itoh who invented the machines that local and international factories use to pump out plates!

The younger Mr Itoh is a successful plate designer. He has a little workshop where he puts together new patterns and designs which he then sells to various companies. He’s not very busy right now, but the big garage in the secondary house is full of boxes of his plates. I guess the busy season starts in October.

Hirofumi used to be a salary man, but he quit his job and moved back home to start his own business. His current passion is a website that he uses to sell hand-made silver jewelry from Peru. I spent a good chunk of the morning with Hiro, helping him out with his site. I figure that if we are going to be here a while, I might as well help out!

After an excellent lunch of Eel, Mr Itoh took Risa and I to one of the bigger manufacturing plants around Sue. This particular plant works with Mr Itoh a lot, and they use the machines that Mr Itoh’s father invented!

Inside the factory there are a ton of things going on. It was like walking through an episode of How It’s Made. I love factory tours in general because I think the machines are neat, but this place was extra special because we basically were allowed to wander around at our leisure.

They make plates in a couple of different ways. Injection molds, and two kinds of spinning machines that use either a positive, or negative mold of the final shape. The machines are mesmerizing. It takes about 5 seconds to spin out the clay, and it’s a never ending process. Also, each machine has several steps, cutting the clay, dropping the clay, spinning the clay, removing extra clay, picking up the wet plate, then drying the plate. It’s really cool. I took a bunch of photos.

The plates we saw being produced are going to be sent out to clients all over the world. One of the big clients is a hotel chain in America, although they didn’t say who. This plant also makes plates for Noritake. Next time you go to the store and see a Noritake plate, there is a good chance it was made here. Same goes for the plates at your next hotel! The only difference between the Noritake plates and the hotel plates are the designs printed on the ceramic. Oh, and Noritake is SUPER picky about which plates they buy. They only use about 30% of the plates they purchase. The rest get tossed.

The tossed plates also made an impression with me. There were thousands of seemingly normal looking plates that were stacked outside. All of them were garbage. Something was wrong, either a bad shape, or a bad glaze, or another defect. They said that about 30% of the plates are garbage. It sure was a sad looking pile. They looked fine to me!

After the big factory, Mr Itoh took us to another factory that his friend owns. This other place was much much smaller. The typical client orders around 1,000 items, were as the other factory deals in 10’s of thousands per order.

Everything in the smaller factory was the same, just… smaller. The machines were basically the same, but it was the end of the day so everything was shut down. The owner was super nice and he let us look around and ask all of our questions, but we didn’t stay too long. I don’t like making people hang around after work!

When we were finished at the smaller factory we went back home and caught the final Sumo matches of the day. Kotooshu is still doing well, I hope he wins!

Later, Mr. Itoh surprised us by offering to give us our choice of really really nice tea cups and saucers. He gave us the choice between 5 different designs, but I think we are leaning towards the black and gold pattern. What do you think?

At 8:15 we were off to the Onsen again. This time I lasted a couple of minutes longer in the Sauna. I am going to try to improve my time by 2 minutes each day. I am at 7 minutes now. Some of those guys sit in there for like 20 minutes. Crazy.

Day 74 Photoset

There was a solar eclipse today! I had totally forgotten about it, but this morning when Yasunobu took us to the nearby temple, the sky was getting darker and through the clouds we could see the sun being cut into a crescent. I tried to take a photo, but I don’t know… you can SORTA see it.

The temple that Yasunobu took us too was really neat. In the back, there is an almost secret house where you can drink traditional tea and relax. The house was once a country retreat for a millionaire. After he died, they somehow moved the entire building to the temple grounds and it is now open to the public. It’s a really impressive experience. There is a very formal, very polite woman who brings the tea and sweets to you in a traditional tatami room. After tea, we were free to wander around, so we took our time and poked our heads into every room we could find.

Through one of the doors, we could access the main temple. I’m not sure if we were supposed to go this way, but I did anyway and Risa and Yasunobu didn’t stop me… so… it was ok right? The part of the temple we entered was the administrative area. Big tatami rooms with tables and chairs. This is the area where real temple business happens. We’ve always seen the front end of a temple, so it was super cool to see the “back-stage” area. After a while, we started to get nervous that maybe we weren’t supposed to be there… so we left. Yasunobu said he had never gone this way because he wasn’t sure if he was allowed. He figured that since it was ME who went first, if we got caught, he could blame the foreigner! It was a classic case of GaijinSmash.

When we were done exploring the temple, Yasunobu took us to his store. We were impressed by the clothes he makes. He started out making children’s clothes, but has since expanded to women’s clothes. It’s all top quality and very classy looking. Yasunobu makes custom clothes as well, so one section of the store is devoted to fabrics that customers can pick out as they order a dress, shirt, or jacket.

The store is due to close soon. Yasunobu doesn’t want the keep the retail shop. Starting soon he will just work out of his apartment making custom clothes for existing customers. We felt lucky that we got to see his store before he shuts it down!

Our final stop of the day was the Toyota automobile museum. This place was amazing. They had cars from all over the world, dating back to before the model-t. They had vehicles I had never heard of, like the motorized tricycle, and a car that ran on coal. I especially liked the area that had an electric car, a steam car, and a gasoline car. You could really tell that during this time, all technology was being tried. Kind of like seeing VHS vs Betamax or Bluray vs HDDVD.

One things for sure, cars took a nose-dive in esthetics in the 60’s. The body designs and most notably the PAINT became drab and boring. I took a ton of pictures of the old cars, but when we hit the 60’s, there was nothing worth photographing. I did, however, like following the logos. Seeing how some logos changed a lot (Toyota, Mazda) while others, (Honda, Subaru) are pretty close to the same.

The car museum took us a couple of hours to get through, and then it was on to the train station.

Our new home is in Sue city, with Risa’s friends the Itoh’s. Risa met the Itoh family while studying in England in junior high school and she’s stayed in contact ever since.

The Itoh’s are super nice, and they have an entire extra building on their property that we are using as a guest house. I say “guest house” but it’s actually a lot more like a hotel. There is a huge garage space downstairs, and the upstairs is just like a hostel or business hotel. Rooms with little bathrooms, and even a “public” bathroom and shower area. It’s pretty bizarre, but it’s nice to have so much space to ourselves!

The best part? We get our own laundry machines! Woohoo!

At precisely 8:15pm every day, Mr. Itoh goes to the local onsen. Even though it was our first day with the family, and we had only been there for a couple of hours, at 8:15, we loaded up in Mr Itoh’s car and were off to the onsen. Nothing like getting to know your new host, like hanging out naked.

Mr. Itoh’s personal favorite thing to do at the onsen is to sit in the sauna and talk politics with his friends. For me, however, 5min in that hell box was plenty of time. After that I had to get out. Mr. Itoh usually does 10min in the sauna, then jumps in the cold water bath. Then repeats it 4 or 5 times. He’s crazy.

We are planning on staying here for a couple of days (which will probably mean several more trips to the onsen), then we will be back on the road.

Day 73 Photoset

Last night we talked it over, and we decided that we wanted to try to get tickets to the Sumo tournament in Nagoya. After all, this seemed like a rare opportunity, might as well right?

Yasunobu took us to the stadium early this morning so we could buy tickets. We bought 2 tickets for the cheap seats and decided to come back around 2 o’clock. Technically we could have gone in right away, but the good wrestlers don’t come out until 5pm. We used the extra time to hit up an outdoors store and buy 2 new hiking poles. One has been broken since Kyushu, and we forgot the other one at Yousuke’s house.

Sumo tournaments are interesting. They aren’t elimination or bracket based. Instead, it’s a 15 day round robin tournament where everyone wrestles everyone and whoever has the best record wins. No medals for 2nd place. If there is a tie, then the top two have a single match to determine the winner. There are a ton of ranks, and it’s all very confusing at first, but I found a nice page that can explain things about the sport way better than I can. [Learn a bit about Sumo]

When we got to the stadium, we saw low ranked sumo guys walking around in yukatta. These guys are BIG and they aren’t even the top level! I think it’s kind of interesting that the low rank guys take the trains, or drive themselves to the stadium just like the fans.

As we got closer, there was a weird announcement being broadcasted to the folks entering the stadium. Apparently you are forbidden from bringing YOUR OWN food, because of the risk of “food poisoning.” Risa and I both thought this was a pretty stupid rule considering the fact that the chances of someone getting food poisoning from their own cooking is incredibly low. Especially since we are talking about Japanese people, who generally know how to cook. If they want people to buy the expensive stadium food, the tournament officials should have just banned outside food, no need to make such a ridiculous warning.

Inside, we ended up sitting in two different places. Our first seat was fantastic. Right in the middle, next to the TV camera’s. It was like getting 50yd line seats, albeit in the upper deck. Unfortunately for us, after a couple of hours, a lady came by saying we were sitting in her seat. We were confused, because the usher had told us we could sit in this area… but sure enough, her tickets said she belonged in our seats. Dang! Since she arrived so late, there weren’t a lot of other places to sit, but we found a couple that weren’t too bad. A couple of rows farther away, and more to the side… maybe 20yd line-ish?

Just to bring in another sports reference, have you ever been to a baseball game and sat in the outfield bleachers? That’s where the rowdy drunks sit. It’s also where you can have the most fun. Our 2nd seat was in the sumo equivalent of the bleachers. The folks over here really got into the cheering. They would yell the name of the guy they were supporting, hold up signs with his name, and generally act loud. One old man was yelling “Gambare!” (good luck) but he wasn’t directing it to anyone. His wife smacked him and told him “You can’t just yell good luck! You have to say their name too! Who are you even cheering for?!” It was a lot of fun.

We ended up sitting next to a lady who was there with her young son. I had a little fun with them, explaining that I was actually the little brother of one of the top ranked wrestlers, Kotooshu. If you didn’t know already, Kotooshu is my doppelganger. I look a LOT like him. Just 100lbs lighter, and about a foot shorter. (Kotooshu used to be my facebook profile pic. My own sister didn’t realize it wasn’t me. She thought I photoshoped my face onto a sumo body) Anyway, I told the lady that I usually sit right next to the ring, but I had forgotten Kotooshu’s cell phone number and couldn’t talk to him about getting my REAL tickets.

The lady looked at me, took off her glasses, looked me right in the eye and said, “Really!? You DO look like him!” I laughed, and then told her it was a joke. I totally had her though. What do you think?

Later, when Kotooshu came out, we all yelled “KOTOOSHU! GAMBARE!” (Good luck!) Then I yelled “Kotooshu aniki! Gambare!” (aniki means “big brother”). After making so much noise for Kotooshu, the folks in front of us started yelling for the other guy. So we had a battle back and forth yelling for our guy.

Kotooshu Wins! The other guy put his hand down!

In the end, Kotooshu won… barely. But he remains undefeated and has a chance to win this tournament!

All in all, the tournament was a lot of fun. We spent a good 4 hours there, and saw a lot of matches. Sumo is a one-shot deal. There is a lot of “pre-game”, but the actual match is only played once. This makes each match extremely exciting, and it also gives you a chance to see a lot of different wrestlers during the course of the day.

Sumo is currently losing a bit of popularity in Japan. Of the top ranked wrestlers, only 1 or 2 are actually Japanese. The top 2 wrestlers are Mongolian, and my doppelganger is Bulgarian. It makes it hard for the Japanese to really get into the sport, when the champions aren’t from Japan.

To boost ticket sales, children get in for only $2. That means the mom and kid next to us got a full day of sumo for just $30 or so. I’d say it was a pretty good deal. There were actually quite a few kids, so maybe there will be a lot more Sumo fans in the future?

For dinner tonight, Machiko made some really awesome fish. It tasted as good as it looked. Yum!!

Day 72 Photoset

Yasunobu is a successful tailor with his own shop in Nagoya. He designs and makes all his clothes in his studio room in his apartment. His wife Machiko makes handmade silver jewelry which she sells in their shop as well. Since Yasunobu is into fashion design and fabrics, he took us to a cool area in Nagoya called Arimatsu.

Hippies like to tie up some cloth and dump it in a bucket of dye, soak it, untie it, and call it good. Whatever random patterns emerge, its acceptable. Things are a little different in Arimatsu.

The people in Arimatsu have been making a specialize and precision form of tied-ye for hundreds of years. Their methods are detailed and extremely time consuming, but they produce really amazing patterns.

Yasunobu took us to the Arimatsu tie-dye museum where we got to watch some volunteers demonstrate the knot tieing. We also got to see a lot of examples of the different patterns they can produce with different knots.

I never knew that tiedye could be so precise. They aren’t making random designs, everything has been planned beforehand. The blank fabric is layed out on a table, and the pattern designer makes a dot wherever he wants a knot tied. The knot tiers then go about tieing the hundreds, or thousands of knots by hand. It’s amazing.

Yasunobu has two daughters, Saho and Miki. Saho is a fashion designer like her father. She is also a part time English teacher so I can talk with her without needing a lot of translation. This afternoon, Risa and I went with Saho to checkout downtown Nagoya.

Our first stop was Nagoya castle. This castle is pretty big, but it’s not an original. Inside they have the standard castle museum stuff. Samurai suits, and historical artifacts from the original castle and the surrounding area. However, they also had a few things that stuck out. The first was a fun “castle construction” simulator. You basically had to pretend to help pull large stones to be used in the castle wall. There was a gauge on the side that told you how strong you were. It was fun, and I’m proud to say that Risa and I were both stronger than the guy who went before us! Haha!

It was also interesting to learn that when the castle was originally built, the various subjected areas around Nagoya would donate stone to use in the construction. The lords of those smaller areas would stamp the stones with their symbol so that the main lord in Nagoya would know who donated what. We didn’t notice these markings when we got to the castle, but sure enough, as we left we could see the old markings on the stones from a bunch of different lords.

The castle is right next to the main Nagoya stadium. Right now the famous “Nagoya Sumo Basho” is going on. This is one of the main 4 sumo tournaments in Japan. We saw some sumo guys walking around, and Risa and I are trying to decide if we should splurge and buy a ticket! We didn’t have time to go today, but maybe tomorrow? It sure would be cool!

While we were out with Saho, Risa and I wanted to go see the store that sells Saho’s clothes. So we jumped on a train and went to Nagoya’s shopping arcade. This arcade is much like the covered arcade in Osaka, only with about 25% the number of people. Of course, just because they don’t have as many people, doesn’t mean they don’t have a few crazy’s. While Risa was in the bathroom, one old man in a cowboy hat was particularly interested in me. He kept saying “Hallo! America? HI!” I talked back to him in Japanese, and he talked back in broken English. He asked where I was from in America, and I told him Oregon. “Colorado!” “No… Oregon” “Oh! OK!” He had a pen and paper with him, so I drew a map of America and showed him where Oregon is. The best part was when I was getting my picture taken with him, Risa came out of the bathroom and was like, “Um… who’s that guy?”

We eventually made it to Saho’s store, and Risa finally got a chance to wear something other than her hiking clothes. She tried on one of Saho’s dresses, and really liked it. Too bad for us, it was kind of expensive! Good for Saho, bad for us! It was a nice dress though!

We wandered around the shopping arcade for a while, ate some ice cream, then left to go to the Nagoya port where we could watch the summer fireworks show.

We didn’t quite make it all the way to the main viewing area, but we did manage to get some cool seats. We climbed up a ladder and sat on a tall cement wall that gave us a clear view of the show. As a cool bonus, we also had the giant ferris wheel in view, so we could see the fireworks and the lights of the ferris wheel together. It was really fun!

For dinner, Machiko made us her famous spring rolls. Yasunobu explained that it was THIS dish that made him want to marry her, and after tasting it, we don’t blame him!