I’ve been fortunate enough to make it to Japan a handful of times in the last few years, but when I heard that my Aikido group (Oregon Ki Society) was planning a trip to Japan that included both training with Sensei Shin’ichi Tohei and sightseeing, I couldn’t help but go along. My son was just old enough to participate in all the activities, so after discussing it with him I decided to take him along as well. The trip was almost two weeks and included time in Tokyo, Sapporo, and a few other places on the way.
The Social Element
This trip wasn’t just with folks from Oregon, there were others participating from California, Canada, and Hawaii, as well as a few other areas around the globe (the entire Northwest Ki Federation). The majority of these people I had trained with in some capacity at least once, but a few were new to me or at least brought family members I had not met before.
Being able to interact with all these people, both those I knew well and those I was meeting for the first time, was one of the best parts of the trip. Not to downplay Japan itself, but as I mentioned earlier (and as you can see in some of my articles on previous trips here), I’ve been to Japan a few times already so that the magic of a first or second trip is no longer there. I had even been to most of the cities we visited as well as a portion of the areas we toured. Having said that, I still had a great time.
If there is one thing that is a clear thread running through the Ki Society members, it’s a genuine interest in Japan’s culture and/or language in some form, and it was fun to see everybody’s reactions as well as talk to them about various aspects of Japanese culture and language.
Aikido Training and Injury
Being able to train with Sensei Shin’ichi Tohei, the head of the world Ki Society, is a rare and precious experience––though I was fortunate enough to train with him last year during the world camp––which is one reason I really wanted to go on this trip. We stayed in the Budoukan training center in Chiba which sports a huge dojo space, and the rooms had bunkbeds somewhat like what you find in a college dorm. Training was around five hours a day for three days. Tohei Sensei’s wonderful positive personality and easy-to-understand teaching style made this a delightful training experience that I will never forget. His English is quite good, and he puts in a lot of effort trying to make sure he works with everyone on the mat.
It was also nice to train with some other Japanese senseis, some that I had met before at world camp last year. You can see a little more about this event on Tohei Sensei’s Japanese blog here.
A few weeks before the trip I developed a problem with my knee, and being able to train without issues during this trip was a major concern. I was quite paranoid about things like taking stairs (always using a handrail) and overusing my knee, and I also kept it wrapped up using the tape I got at physical therapy.
Fortunately I was able to train without problems, and even managed to do countless hours of walking in the subsequent sightseeing and touring. An important part of training is understanding one’s limits, and this training helped me learn more about injuries and how I can train safely. Also seeing some other members with existing injuries made me see my problem (which was fortunately more discomfort than pain) as a relatively minor thing. I still haven’t completely healed, but if anything my knee is feeling better than it was before the trip.
Trip to Akihabara
In addition to the training, we had a pretty full sightseeing schedule including a few professionally planned tours to places like the Kegon falls, Toshogu Shrine, Goryokaku Tower, Okurayama Ski Jump Station, Hitsujioka Observation Hill, and Sengakuji Temple.
These were all fun to explore (and I took many pictures), but I looked forward to the unplanned time where I could explore the area freely.
For one of the free days I decided to take my son and a good friend that I train with to the city of Akihabara（秋葉原), the mecca of all things anime, manga, and electronic. We had a great time looking through countless figures and other merc related to anime or manga, as well as exploring the sprawling Yodobashi Camera, the largest electronics store in Japan. Though I have visited that store previously (and reported about it and other Akihabara travels here), it never gets old.
We did some other things in the area like getting coffee in a stylish cafe as well as hunting for (and eventually finding) an area that was rumored to have strange machines. While there wasn’t much of interest I wanted there (though I can’t say for sure since many of the items didn’t advertise their content), just seeing this somewhat famous (?) place was worth it.
One regret is that we ran out of time to visit a good arcade. The only ones we did find were filled with quirky games like one I tried out where a girl on waterskis shoots rockets at sharks and other oncoming enemies. The gameplay, requiring proper geometrical placement of your character, was unique, but it got old fast. I did get two cards from that one that served as a little souvenir, which is nice because I didn’t buy anything there on the trip to Akihabara except food and drinks. I also tried out a card-based Dragonball Z game involving a lot of fighting, though for some reason the cut scenes were much more frequent than the interactive parts (which basically involved timed button presses).
Food in Japan
As with other trips, food was one of my favorite parts of Japan. We sampled delicious ramen, sushi, croquettes, curry, udon, and a host of other things including cuisine from other cultures like Italy and China. Of course, we got many servings of delicious coffee and desserts. Each of the hotels we stayed in had wonderful breakfast buffets with a wide variety of American and Japanese foods (including desserts!)
Actually, we had both really good ramen as well as utterly BAD ramen. The latter was in an underground shopping center in downtown Sapporo, where we were surprised to find a massive pile of bean sprouts covering a small portion of noodles. The noodles themselves weren’t that bad, but the broth was a bit lacking, and the countless sprouts just looked ugly and made it hard to eat. There also wasn’t any egg or seaweed included. To make matters worse, for some reason one of the chefs was standing a few meters away, staring at me with a headband and arms crossed. After a few moments of seeing him I decided to say “Oishii desu yo!” (It’s delicious!) to try and get him off my back, and his glare seemed to ease off a bit. The ramen wasn’t actively distasteful, but it was less delicious than any other ramen I had in Japan.
I also had a piece of sushi that was one of the least pleasing, a cut of albacore that was so hard I just couldn’t get myself to eat it. One of the people with me did brave it and described it as “tasty, but crunchy”, so I’ll just say it’s a matter of taste and not bad quality.
Besides the food itself, some of the restaurants had a unique atmosphere or focus that was notable. The most memorable of these was a restaurant I stumbled upon that was billed as “the smallest standing bar in Japan”. While I didn’t go inside, a peek through a crack in the door showed me a tiny space that was roughly 2 meters wide and perhaps 4 times that long. Frankily it looked more like a closet than a bar, but there was the tiniest hint of a shelf on the right side that must have been where they put the drinks.
Part of becoming used to being in a foreign country is learning what sorts of foods you like so that you can comfortably eat in a variety of settings. While at some places I struggled to find a familiar dish, generally I was able to settle on something that satisfied my need for nutrition as well as taste.
My main food regret on this trip is that I didn’t get enough time to find an indian place to eat at. Indian food is one of my favorite cuisines, and I’ve had delicious food in Japan before.
Umihotaru: A rest area in the middle of Tokyo Bay
After writing the majority of this article, when I was half asleep and thinking about all the places I went, I remembered one experience that was one of the most unique: “Umihotaru”（海ほたる). Meaning “sea-firefly”, at first Umihotaru may seem like a typical grouping of restaurants and stores, but the special element is the location. It’s situated in the middle of the Tokyo Wan Aqua-Line Expressway (東京湾アクアライン連絡道), a roughly 15 kilometer road that crosses right through the middle of Tokyo Bay and connects Kawasaki city (Kanagawa prefecture) and Kisarazu city (Chiba prefecture).
The restaurants are somewhat run-of-the-mill (that was where we got the good ramen), but looking around outside in nearly any direction gives great views of the bay, and the design of the highway around there is quite interesting, making a pretzel shape. The entire structure looks a little bit like an aircraft carrier when viewed from afar.
We also had some really delicious yogurt there, but unfortunately ran out of time to try the foot bath that was nearby.
While I wouldn’t recommend driving all the way out here just to experience Umihotaru, if you happen to be driving down the Tokyo Wan Aqua-Line Expressway it’s a great place to enjoy yourself.
Crazy Karaoke
I’ve done Karaoke in Japan several times before, but one of the final days of the trip we went to a place that had an amazing price, especially given what was included. For two hours in a fairly large room that could fit around 10-15 people, we were charged 4300 yen a person (roughly $30). For just the ability to sing this would be a bit pricey, but of all things it included a complete self-serve bar with over 30 types of hard liquor, and also access to a bar in another room. There were even things like ice, water, and a few non-alcoholic juice drinks. The only disappointment was they lacked milk, so my favorite white russian was reduced to a black russian. To top things off, they would even order sushi from a nearby place and serve it, enough for around 300 yen per person. We ended up ordering a plate of tuna rolls, but I am not sure anybody touched them (it was right after a big dinner that was all-you-can-eat). One of the few added costs (that we didn’t partake in) was a set of extra high quality liquors on the top central shelf.
I am not sure if all-you-can-drink is even legal in the U.S., but if it was I could see this sort of thing costing 4x or more.
WIth several instances of all-you-can-drink, vending machines at every corner, and nearly any type of alcohol imaginable available at most convenience stores, this trip was a good test for my limits. As I got a bit of a headache on one of the first days after a night of (apparently) moderate drinking, I decided to be more careful for the rest of the trip and succeeded in not getting any more headaches or hangovers of any sort. Also, I was a good boy and always managed to get to sleep before 11pm to make sure I got enough sleep.
Shiroi Koibito Park
We visited the “Shiroi Koibito” (白い恋人) park in Sapporo that is themed on chocolate history and manufacture. “Shiroi Koibito” literally means “White Lover(s)”, though generally the title isn’t translated. The park oddly seemed to be heavily influenced by Disney World in terms of the atmosphere and how things were laid out, not to mention a show where animals play musical instruments. I guess this can be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective, and as a result the park is probably better for younger children.
Keep in mind while the park does claim to have “attractions”, there isn’t much more than gift shops, restaurants, factory tours, and short cookie-making courses. I think you could spend two or three hours there, but there isn’t enough to fill an entire day.
I happen to be pretty picky about chocolate, and their dark chocolate was especially savory and delicious, though their cracker-based sweets weren’t anything to write home about.
A side mission of this trip was finding a piano where I could practice a little, or even give a mini performance for some of my aikido mates. I happened to stumble on a nice piano on the second floor of the Shiroi Koibito park, though when I first discovered it, someone from our group was already playing wonderful classical music from memory. After they were done I sat down and played a few minutes of my usual improvisational style. I got a few people to sit and listen to me, and even had two or three people make remarks to me later in the day about my playing, so that mission was a success. (I did try to visit a piano store later in the week, but I arrived at a closed store, and upon closer inspection saw that Wednesday was one of their days off.)
Japanese to the Next Level
Several of my trips to Japan were with my wife, who generally helped smooth things over in the Japanese domain. But as she wasn’t able to make this one, I had more opportunities where I didn’t have a native speaker with me and had to figure things out.
Each day I tried to use my Japanese as much as possible, whether it was talking to somewhere in a hotel, airport, or store (like where I can find calligraphy brushes). I wasn’t striking up conversation with random people, but rather trying to make sure that I didn’t hesitate to use Japanese in order to achieve any exploration or shopping objectives.
Overall this was a great success and I managed to use language in a variety of situations to get the job done, and learned some things in the process.
It was also nice to see some of the folks from other areas surprised about my Japanese ability, which sometimes led to conversations about how I learned the language. On a few occasions I even used my language ability to help others achieve some important objective.
In one case I was asked to help unlock a room at a hotel, and so I went to the lobby to have a conversation with someone in the lobby. After having a brief conversation that proceeded smoothly, I heard a voice nearby saying “Oh, I didn’t know you knew Japanese!”. I turned around and looked to find Tohei Sensei standing there. That was definitely one of the high points of the trip. And then later that day, one of the Japanese senseis asked for help to explain the rules of a card game in Japanese that was being played at an event.
Ultimately this was more about having the courage and confidence to try to communicate as opposed to actually knowing the words (though in one case I had to show a photograph when I didn’t know the word for something). This itself is an important part of language learning, since without the confidence to try speaking, any vocabulary or grammar knowledge isn’t very helpful.
One of my pet peeves is when I try to speak in Japanese to a native but the other person responds in English. I think that is partially because Japanese people expect foreigners (which I clearly am) not to be able to understand properly, so they just use English to be safe, even if their English is quite rough. In some cases it might be because I mispronounced something, but I have gone on to have perfectly normal conversations with some natives, so I don’t think my language ability is a major factor in what causes this.
But part of learning to speak natively, or should I say integrate into a native culture in a foreign country, is being able to handle these situations with ease and without anger, by either just using English, or trying to aggressively use Japanese (in a polite way). Most of the time I did the latter and things worked out.
One thing I still need help with is learning to read hiragana/katakana/kanji in a variety of fonts. While I can read with typical fonts generally without issue, there are places like everyday restaurant menus that are a challenge for me to read, especially if I am not that familiar with the dishes that are being enumerated. One funny example of that was in an udon shop when I misread 釜玉 (kamatama) as 金玉（kintama). That got a laugh from the lady who worked there because the latter literally means “metal-ball(s)” and is a slang term for a certain male body part.
Calligraphy Experience
The last two times I came to Japan I took calligraphy lessons to help inform my calligraphy work that has been mostly (you guessed it) self-taught so far, and this time I managed to find a classroom with an open lesson near our hotel in Sapporo. It was normally 3000 yen per person (for around 90 minutes), but since I got my son and two friends to come with us, the teacher gave us a discount of 10000 yen total for all four.
My son only has a little calligraphy experience, and the other two people had none, so the teacher kept things pretty basic. That, plus the fact there were a bunch of other students ( around 6-8), meant that I wasn’t able to get a huge amount of guidance on my calligraphy. But that was totally fine since I was happy to help the others have this experience.
I ended up buying a good-looking brush from the teacher for around 3000 yen, and also bought two others in stores I came across, as well as a book about drawing characteristics in an artistic style. It was actually a bit challenging to find a good brush store in Sapporo near our hotel, but the Daimaru store had a really nice selection. While I realize that a good brush won’t magically allow me to draw better calligraphy, each brush has a different look and feel, and can help motivate me to focus more on what I am doing.
Final Thoughts
While there is always some frustration and stress in traveling, especially across the globe, this trip managed to pack a lot of enjoyment and discoveries into a nearly two week-long period. At times I wished there was more free time without all-day tours scheduled, but the advantage of the tour is being able to explore everything with a group that I get along with pretty well. The average restaurant in Japan doesn’t easily fit large groups, but the agents managed to schedule a few meals where we could all sit together.
At times I also wished that I packed lighter, which basically amounts to bringing less clothes. But that would mean either spending hours doing laundry, or wearing the same dirty clothes over and over, neither of which is ideal. I guess I could have left my camera and/or laptop home, but I used both enough for them to be worth the weight and space.
I do think that on my next trip to Japan, I’d like to stay in a single city for at least a week (or even a month!) so I can explore it on a deeper level, instead of quick highlights at a bunch of places. I’d also like to do some sort of activity where I can interact with more Japanese people, for example volunteering at a farm to help out with the work there. Taking a calligraphy class (or a few) by myself would allow me to build my skills at a deeper level.
Overall though, I was satisfied with my ability to use Japanese in Japan to achieve a variety of objectives, and I think this trip was a good stepping stone towards real fluency without ever having lived in Japan (if that is even possible…) Whether it was seeing a friend’s reaction to an unusual foreign food, a deep conversation with someone for whom I normally didn’t have such an opportunity, or exploring the exotic streets of Japan, I made a ton of great memories on this trip.
On a side topic, I think my son did a wonderful job on the trip, especially with things like organizing his luggage as well as helping navigate in a few places. He also did a great job with the extended training sessions, despite his young age. I hope this is a trip he will remember fondly many years from now.
Finally, after speaking with some of the great people who train in Vancouver (Canada) and Brighton (UK), I am hoping to visit those dojos in the next few years, as well as revisit Hawaii (a place filled with Japanese culture), which I had a great time in earlier this year.
You can find around 60 pictures from my trip in this post.