Kafka on the shore

Japan in London

Three weeks back at home

how, where can we hope to find

Japan in London?

Part of my fortunate workload at present is to edit, catalogue and store all the photographs and videos we shot during our month-long tour. It’s wonderful to relive the moments and taste the food but oh the withdrawal symptoms! So this Saturday since we had to go into town, we decided to recapture some of those elements of Japan that are available in the city.

Several years ago we dined very well with friends at an extremely unpretentious restaurant in Brewer Street so I walked along there and while perusing the menu was approached by a young Japanese man who said “I really like this place.” That’s good news and he was soon followed by another (Japanese) customer who engaged me in conversation – just like in Japan – wanting to know my interest in Ten Ten Tei. I mentioned that I’d eaten there once a while ago, had just come back from Japan and was looking to replicate the delights of dining there in London. “You can’t do better than this,” he said, “it’s genuine, simple Japanese food, well prepared and served.” I thanked him and said I’d be back with my wife later – which we will. He then wanted to know where we’d been in Japan and was amazed at the itinerary, saying we’d been to parts of Japan he hadn’t. But then I guess that’s true of many visitors to the UK who have been to places I haven’t here. So a good start with reminders of Japanese friendliness and the confirmation of another good place to eat. It seems not to have its own website but has a Facebook page.

Dee rejoined me for a trip to Arrigato which again has no website but you can get a good picture from reviews on Yelp! We browsed the shelves, looked at taro root, burdock and other ingredients we had tasted, ogled the excellent bento boxes for lunch, saw sushi, noodles and soup being consumed by others and vowed to go back there to eat. In the meantime we stocked up on enoki mushrooms, konbu (seaweed), the super-addictive torpedo rice cracker and peanut snack and checked out the tea stocks for future reference. This included packs of Fuji matcha (green powdered tea) in fabulous retro style. Arrigato is smaller and has less variety than the Japan Centre on Regent Street but was less busy and probably an easier place to shop. And of course you can buy online from the Japan Centre website but you miss the fun of browsing.

On the roof of the Brunei Gallery at SOAS (the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University) is a Japanese inspired garden which we had intended to visit before our trip so today seemed like a good day to remedy that. It got better too as in the gallery was an exhibition called Treasures from the Tenri Central Library which covered 1000 years of art in Japanese books. A brilliant display of drawings, watercolours, woodblock prints and illustrations from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. There are some great representative images here. Exquisite work that recalled some of our museum and gallery visits in Japan and well worth a visit by anyone with an interest in the production and illustration of books.

Then it was up to the roof garden a small but beautiful area with significant elements of Japanese garden planning in this case strongly reminiscent of Tofukuji in Kyoto with raked gravel with boulders, squares of limestone alternating with beds of thyme and a scented wisteria as an arcade over a restful bench. The calm was slightly disturbed by shouts form the roof of nearby Senate House where someone was abseiling down the building.

Back in the gallery we could have taken part in calligraphy and origami demonstrations which are going on until the end of June and also include Gagaku music, the tea ceremony, sake tasting and lectures using the exhibition as a resource. However, welcome though this discovery had been we were also intent on visiting the Wellcome Collection only half a mile away where there is an exhibition Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan which closes at the end of June.

It’s an attitude-altering, mind-expanding exhibition that presents the work of untrained and self-taught artists all of whom live in the care of the state – as the exhibition brochure says “in social welfare facilities”. The clay and papier-mâché models and sculptures, tapestries made from leftover scraps of thread, paintings and drawings on cardboard and paper factory offcuts, demonstrate the creativity of those who might be considered disadvantaged in modern society. They may be raw but the variety, impact and lasting impression left by this exhibition makes them very definitely works of art in that they communicate ideas and emotions to the viewer. The pieces exhibited ranged from bold life-sized depictions of the artist and friends to obsessively meticulous drawings of imaginary cities of the future. It served to give us a new interest in “outsider” or “raw art” which is increasingly recognized as a genre worthy of study. There’s a good discussion in RawVision magazine. If you can get to the exhibition before the end of June, do. It’s well worth it. And the Wellcome Collection itself is another superb relatively unsung museum of science and the mind. As its slogan says it’s “The free destination for the incurably curious”.

Sunday had a Murakami dimension too. We took the grandchildren to Chislehurst Caves which involved walking in semi-darkness through (part of) 20 mile labyrinth of chalk caverns under south east London. Dampness, darkness and lots of dead ends brought several passages from Haruki back to mind. Labyrinths in the mind or physical ones to be crawled through recur in 1Q84, Kafka on the shore and several other of his books and stories.

So we did discover several aspects of Japan in London last weekend and look forward to meeting a dear friend for dinner and reminiscence in the excellent Watatsumi restaurant on Friday.

In Japan

It’s not all about the beef

In two Kobe days

can we find the real source of

Haruki’s ideas?

A taxi delivered us to Takamatsu Station bright and early – too early again for the train we’d selected with the fewest interchanges but at the gate they insisted that if we took the 09:33 Marine Liner we could get a direct train to Shin-Kobe soon after arrival in Okayama. Soon after we were seated the train attendant, as they are called, came up to us with this piece of paper with times and platforms for our interchange – without being asked and in English.

It was just another example of the superb service we are receiving from all quarters. The train ride was under grey clouds that nearly touched the roof. So going back across the Seto-Ohashi bridge on the train was interesting as we took the lower deck which would have afforded views but for the grey. We were very impressed that a journey from a different island across the bridge and round the coast of over 150 miles had been accomplished in under two hours door to door in a combination of local train and shinkansen. Drizzle turned to a downpour as we arrived in Kobe, dropped our luggage of at the very stylish Hotel b Kobe and set off on a circular city bus tour to get our bearings.

We got off the bus to visit a lovely little museum of glass bead work. We are just not used to finding a museum on the second floor of a smart downtown office block but that’s where the Kobe Lampwork Glass Museum is. With an excellent display on the long history of using glass beads for decoration it then reveals the many styles and techniques used by modern beadworkers. With the rain lessened a little as we made our way out after a fascinating hour, we then got back to the real work of the day. Just round the corner is the Higashi Yuenchi park which is home to memorials to the great Hanshin earthquake of 1995.

Murakami wrote a collection of short stories called after the quake which feature people affected in various ways by the after effects of the massive earthquake. Being in the park with it’s monuments showing the scale of the disaster and expressing the hope and determination of the people of Kobe to overcome it was extremely moving especially with the latest Tohoko tsunami so fresh in our thoughts. Juggling camera, bags and umbrella was not easy but I hope we can give some indication of what it meant.

The 60 cm drop at the left edge of the trellis A flame of hope burns Memorials line the park

shows the effect of the earthquake

As the rain worsened, we decided there was only a choice of two places to visit next – the aquarium or a sake brewery tour. Hey we’ve seen lots of fish on our plates and in ponds and have only a vague notion of how sake is made so the truly educational option wins out. We hail a passing cab, opining that it’s much too far to walk – and how. The driver was a bit confused but kept on heading north along the shore road with yen flipping over alarmingly on the meter. However he did take us to the right place even if he wasn’t quite sure and hovered at the gate getting wet until an official was able to reassure him that this was indeed the Kaku Masamune Brewery which we had selected on the map we obtained from the Tourist Information at the station because our coupons gave us a free tasting and a free sake vessel each. The tour was fascinating as we followed a group of Japanese visitors who were led round by an obviously hilarious guide as sides were frequently split with laughter. It was a potentially hazardous tour evidently- and that was before any sake was consumed. A young lady came to our rescue and took us to a viewing room where a ten-minute video helpfully put into context all the equipment we had just seen.

We took a train back into town and with light drizzle replacing the torrents we walked around Sannomiya, the central shopping and entertainment area of Kobe, had a beer or two and dinner of cook- it- on- the-hibachi Kobe beef and vegetables. Heresy we know, but on this tasting – admittedly not in a gourmet restaurant – Hida beef has the edge. Then drawn as always to a bar with a Spanish flag and the promise of a glass of tempranillo we were drawn into conversation with three young people, two of whom had been to study English in Hampstead three years ago. It turned into a bit of a night of great hilarity – proving again how friendly and welcoming we have found people on this trip.

Thursday was a complete contrast with brilliant blue skies and temperatures well over 20 degrees and there are almost as many umbrellas in the streets, now taking on the role of parasol. The tradition of all those bamboo umbrellas in wood block prints is maintained today on the streets of modern Japan. We planned today to look for formative influences in Ashiya the Kobe suburb where Haruki lived from an early age. A couple of stops along the line to Osaka and we get off in a pleasant, probably quite affluent suburb. Did the sun always shine this brightly over the young Murakami? The reception desk staff at the hotel next to the station were wonderfully helpful in pointing us towards the library Haruki used to frequent, his Junior High School and the monkey cage which features in a story in the collection The Elephant Vanishes. The young ladies did inform us that the monkey was dead. In fact the park used to have parakeets and monkeys in cages but they were closed for economic reasons in 2010 – fate of monkeys unknown but probably properly transferred into alternative care. We strode through the elegant suburban streets and found the library with little trouble and the park was right next door. I’d have been happy to locate and photograph the exterior but we were warmly invited in, presented meishi and blog address and were introduced to a librarian who hadn’t met Haruki but had had some considerable contact with his mother. We asked about the house he grew up in to be told it had gone but there were some older houses in the area that are similar. His Junior High School was also just a few blocks along the road. In Uchide Park with a witty touch the council has added a panel to the cage with a monkey reading Murakami’s book Kafka on the Shore.

Leafy Ashiya The Library

The monkey cage Kafka-reading monkey Ashiya Junior High School

We looked for other connections and saw a few houses of the type he might have lived in. Coffee in a quaint coffee house served by a lady who must be in her eighties and back to the station to explore central Kobe further. As we’re actually on holiday too this involved a ride in a cable car to the Nunobiki Herb Gardens. The ride gives great views over the whole sprawl of Kobe and down to the port where we were headed next. Very well organized there’s a sloping path from the top cable car station to the middle point. It gave us an opportunity to indulge in some more Japanese ice-cream with fresh strawberries as they are at the height of their season and local honey. The variety of plants was excellent with many unfamiliar species and varieties among the more common and some beautiful flower beds displays gave us a restful and relaxing break.

There are a number of references to the Kobe harbour area so we caught the circular tour bus to Meriken Park and were met by an enormous dancing fish designed by Frank Gehry and construction supervised by Tadao Ando – being made of steelmesh it was of great interest to us David Begbie admirers. Just beyond it was another earthquake memorial with a whole section of the collapsed harbour wall to remind visitors of just how awesome the power of the earth can be.

The rest of the harbour area is devoted to retail and entertainment and we had a leisurely beer watching young and trendy people come and go in stylish, outlandish and downright weird wardrobe choice. Many Japanese people have real recognizable style. Others have style that’s sometimes hard to interpret. Back to the hotel to change and out for a quiet okonomiyaki dinner – Katie was right, Kyoto rules when it comes to this mix of rösti and vegetable pancake. This was OK but the previous one was much tastier. We’ve enjoyed a couple of days in Kobe getting close to the environment that helped form Murakami and therebyinfluenced his writings. It’s a very European feeling, lively city and it’s been a fun visit even if we’ve as so often only scratched the surface.

In Japan

Scampering around Shikoku

Can we find Kafka

on Shikoku’s shores and hills

or will he escape?

First of all I (Dee) would like to thank everyone for their birthday wishes and for the cards and gifts received before we left.

Although the train service is good we decided to rent a car in Okayama to drive to Takematsu, our next stop and one of the main places to feature in Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore. We checked the location with the front desk who sent us to Okayama Station. I’d seen a Times Rent a Car Office in a street about a minute from the hotel but their webcheck told us to go to the station. So we do. And the Times Rent a Car office says we’re just for returns, you have to pick cars up just round from the hotel. Well it’s sunny and it’s exercise, but then they offer to drive us to the pick up point. Our baggage is still at the hotel but we accept. It’ll save us some time and we are now entering a period of serious hunting for Murakami places.

Installed in another Mazda Axela with its copious boot we set off on another sunny morning for the delights of Shikoku. The first of these was a stop at a service area as several of these are referred to in Kafka. Not this particular one but we wanted to know what they were like – excellent facilities, mediocre coffee, but warm loo seats and a peaceful garden to gather strength for the next stretch. Lots of trucks were parked up to so it could have been a stop for Nakata and Hoshino. Our next pleasure was crossing the Seto-Ohashi Bridge, the longest double-decker bridge in the world. We’d seen it yesterday from the ferry to Naoshima and now we were on it, all thirteen kilometres of it. Splendid, flying from island to island across the Inland Sea was exhilarating and you can see from it, unlike a lot of expressway travel. The toll was quite steep at ¥4800 but there is a lot of bridge to pay for.

Once in Takamatsu SatNav Lady – new car but no better sense of direction – delivers us to the back of the hotel where there is no visible means of access so I drive forward and we find ourselves in a pedestrianized shopping mall – oops! Creeping across it amid startled shoppers and speeding cyclists we come to a road again and escape with some relief. It takes a few false turns down side streets before once again gaining access to the front of the hotel from the correct direction – U-turns are very rare and often prevented by central barriers or cones that even I wasn’t going to take on.

Our room wasn’t ready this time but we left our luggage and went off to garden number three on our hit list, the Ritsurin Koen which was about five minutes drive up the road and had good parking so we strolled for two hours in this fascinating mixture of the South Garden – a traditional Japanese strolling garden with the usual calm atmosphere, borrowed landscape, tea houses, lanterns and bridges and the contrasting North Garden which is in a more modern style imitative of European park layouts. On discussing it later we both agreed that the traditional was much more to our liking – so the lawn’s coming up when we get back.

After going back to check in we drove down to Takamatsu Station which features in the book and photographed it and several hotels of the type Kafka might have stayed in on first arrival. Then it was find Colonel Sanders and Johnny Walker – 50% success rate. Yashima Shrine is thought to be the model for passages of action in the book so we went there and then drove round the coast looking for Kafka’s shore. Many beautiful coves presented themselves but no fishermen came to talk to us. Lots of crows did however. (For those who haven’t read it the hero converses frequently with a crow.) As the sun goes down we make our way back to the hotel – front entrance first time, this time – and are parked from a turntable into a vertical rotary stacking garage for the night – good value at ¥1000.

An evening stroll through the pedestrian area resulted in us being approached by a gentleman who had probably had a few too many after leaving the office so we politely declined his offer to buy us a drink and shot some of the shady side streets where Nakata’s deals could have taken place. Dinner and back to blogging duties.

Tuesday morning sees us set of for Tokushima where Hoshino and Yakata arrive in Shikoku and stay at a hotel near the station. We find possible locations there and then head for the mountains behind Kochi where Kafka spent several bewildering passages in dense, steep, tumbling forest. We found plenty of that and some fabulous mountain scenery. The comparison with European mountains is interesting with the vista softened here by the presence of deciduous trees and bamboo so high up, particularly at this time of year with their fresh unfurling foliage. We passed through what appeared to be a ghost town but did have a working post office and phone box and parked cars so we assume life was present. It was all very Murakami again.

Descending from the mountains we stopped frequently as photo opportunities presented themselves to the amusement and extreme courtesy of a truck driver who repeatedly overtook us while we were stopped and then pulled in to passing places to let us go by him. It was another amazing display of generosity and selflessness. As we approached Takamatsu again we went off to find another temple alluded to in the book and saw one of the pilgrims arriving. Shikoku is famous, among many other things, for an 88 temple, 1200 km pilgrimage which many Shingon Buddhist followers make each year and this pilgrim was on foot and dressed in the traditional manner rather than in a coach party.

We had to get the car back by six as we resume rail travel tomorrow so down to the port area, another easy and friendly drop off and back to the hotel for an onsen visit on the roof while our laundry swirled around in the free laundry. The communal bath was a first – separate male and female baths here but the ritual of a thorough cleansing shower followed by wallowing in hot, briny water, cold tubs for a contrast and for men an interior and exterior option so you could see and hear the city go by while lying up to your neck in water.

We asked reception for a recommendation for dinner and they didn’t fail us with Kokon restaurant. The sashimi dish the chef prepared was a work of art in itself and he and his assistant combined our phrase-books and their mobile phone apps to tell us exactly what we were eating. Squid, mackerel, sea bream, tuna, abalone, cuttlefish adorned the dish of ice with radish, shiso leaf and an intricately carved cucumber. When our tempura arrived it was already accompanied by a note prepared with the ingredients.

What service, what a delight!

Getting ready

Planning a dream trip

Long planned, will this year

see a dream trip to Japan

be reality?

Ever since I was lucky enough to make trips to China and Japan in the late seventies and early eighties, I’ve dreamed about going back – especially to Japan. Those trips were work – a party from the Inner London Education Authority was invited by the Ministries of Education in Beijing and Tokyo to run a series of lectures and workshops for teachers. They worked us hard and I think we gave them value for money but there was only a very little time for sightseeing. But what I did manage to see of Japan in particular gave me a lasting hunger to return.

Then discovering more of Japan through its literature provided a way of staving off the hunger. An earlier Japan was evoked in novels by Kobo Abe, Akutagawa, Kawabata and Tanizaki who each brought the country to life through superb description and the painting of atmosphere. In the sixties there was a cult following for Yukio Mishima who gave completely new insights into a different Japan. And then I discovered Murakami (Haruki that is) and the desire to visit and explore grew stronger with every new book. The twin wishes to return to Japan myself and to share my excitement for the country with Dee who is equally hooked, have grown steadily. Time, budget and circumstances have contrived against it until now.

Somehow this year I will celebrate a major milestone birthday – my biblical span is up. I can’t really believe it but my birth certificate has inscribed in that beautiful, long-lost functionary script my date of birth in July 1943. So it must be true. We’ll actually be in Japan for Dee’s birthday but perhaps I’ll join in early and, who knows, just carry on until the due date.

Our Murakami pursuit will take us on a Wild Sheep Chase and a right old Dance, Dance, Dance in Hokkaido in the north, extensive forays into Tokyo and several other parts of Honshu and down to Shikoku to pursue Kafka, Nakata and Johnnie Walker from Kafka on the Shore. In addition to this we were both in the process of reading Tan Twan Eng’s Booker candidate Garden of the Evening Mists and an existing interest in Japanese gardens, reawakened on a recent visit to Tatton Park, became even stronger. So a lovely gift of a few years ago 1001 Gardens You Must Visit Before You Die came off the shelf and the itinerary expanded to include at least three of the country’s most highly regarded gardens: Kenrokuen at Kanazawa on the western China Sea coast; Korakuen in Okayama overlooking the Inland Sea and Ritsurin Koen in Takamatsu on Shikoku Island. Well at least we’d intended to go to Takamatsu since Kafka on the Shore is largely set there.

Early in 2013 it became clear that a space in our work schedules would permit a sensible length trip to Japan in April and May. It would also afford us an opportunity of visiting my son and daughter-in-law who are living in Hong Kong. We had been working for some time on an itinerary that would take in many of the locations we knew through reading – especially those of Murakami. We needed a month to do it justice. We’d picked the most expensive time to travel since we include Golden Week in our dates with no less than five national holidays and the time when all Japanese go travelling. It’s also of course smack in the middle of hanami – the cherry blossom viewing season.

Ah well, best bite the bullet (train) and see what can be done.

Then the other day walking to meet some fellow Watford supporters for a City ‘Orns monthly drinks and dinner I came across this in the middle of Bloomsbury!

IMAG0137 — Cherry trees are blooming in Bloomsbury
March 2013

Who needs to go to Japan?