My gentleman-friend came to see me and we spent two fantastic weeks running around Tokyo and Kyoto and Nara. For the first time since September my sense of needing to be on guard and alert in a strange place twenty-four hours a day melted away and I truly relaxed- I felt like a hedgehog that had been curled up for months finally straightening out. It was so nice to see Japan through fresh eyes, and to realize that scenery and things I had come to completely ignore were, in fact, extraordinary and exotic.
I may not approve of selfies, but will accept shadows.
We went to the mountains near Nagano, and it was strange to watch the landscape change from the late fall of Tokyo to deep winter from the Shinkansen windows.
Mountains!!
We stayed in a traditional ryokan (inn) in a snow monkey park, a short walk outside a town whose drains sent up great clouds of steam from the hot springs. Like everything, the path was perfectly groomed and the late afternoon light on the wet snow made a golden, dreamlike atmosphere.
That my photographs did not pick up.
The ryokan was built into the side of a hill next to a stream and a geyser. I'd never seen a geyser before; it was just sort of there, sending up steam and roaring. It would have been less strange, I thought, if there were barriers and signs and safety tape. I suppose the Japanese approach to geysers is the same as typhoons-- it's a thing that happens, and people are trusted to have enough sense not to jump in them or go out in them, respectively.
Oh look, there's a geyser.
I expected to see monkeys, but seeing them sauntering around our feet as if we were furniture was unnerving and amazing. Their faces are so sweet, so human and yet so not, I did not know how to think about them. A cat, I will approach and try to make friends with; a wild beast, like a raccoon I will be quiet around and try not to frighten. These monkeys were neither friendly nor afraid; they did not give a damn. It was a strange feeling, and as cliche as it sounds, humbling. I think it's good to not know quite where you stand once in a while.
Of course, they were so fluffy I just wanted to hug them; I knew I never could.
We stood outside and watched the night come down and the younger monkeys tumbling around and playing in the snow. It was lovely to be in the mountains watching the day fade without light or noise or air pollution. The ryokan looked like this:
Definition of inviting
After an amazing traditional meal we went and parked in the onsen (hot bath) outside, along with half a dozen monkeys. The water, coming as it did directly out of the ground, smelled like sulfur and felt amazing; it was just this side of bearable to sit in. The snow came down; the monkeys stuck to the edges like fluffy limpets, holding their babies' heads above water with blissed out looks on their scarlet faces. It was quite magical and quite strange. After a while some couples came out with selfie sticks and flash cameras so we went up to our tatami room and slept like peaceful bricks.
In the morning we went to the designated monkey park at feeding time. There were the gorgeous mountains and the adorable monkeys and dozens of tourists in new winter gear and high heeled shoes snap-snap-snapping away.
Each speck is a monkey! I was one of the offending tourists, except my winter gear is old.
Here is one more gratuitous geyser picture:
Just a geyser, no bigs.
We had a lovely New Years Eve in a weirdly subdued Shibuya (the signs announced that there would be NO countdown and there damn well wasn't) and went to Hatsumode, which is the massively crowded, quiet visit to shrines on New Years Day. I bought a charm for Controlling One's Fate and asked Emperor Meiji to keep an eye on me. He was a liberal sort of guy, I don't suppose he'd disapprove of my ill-mannered western tail too much.
We went back to beautiful Kyoto in the Shinkansen, which was a lot nicer than the Night Bus. In fact, the seats were designed for human spines and the bentos we got in the station were designed by true artists. We passed Mt Fuji, which looked like a painting.
Hi Fujisan!
And hung out with some deer in Nara:
Messengers of the gods!
These hairy little bastards know that tourists love them and hang around cadging 'deer crackers' and head butting you if you don't deliver fast enough. Like the snow monkeys, they just wander around without the slightest regard or interest in humans (except in their cracker-dispensing capacity). I felt less guilty about their domestication than I did about the snow monkeys; perhaps it was their blank, unintelligent gazes. They stand in the temples, they stand in the roads, they stand around the ponds, they snooze under trees and we saw a few actually bounding through the woods, which was refreshing.
And they give the best side eye of any beast, human or otherwise.
I'll have to continue this in another segment; I made a tacit promise to write about some bands and that's its own entry. Soon this time!
-I
