Category: Silently in Japan

Post by Ella We stumbled upon the red light district Walked along the river

This morning the weather was sunny and in seventies.  We walked along a river path under the cherry blossoms and wandered through a flower market where the pink azaleas and deep red Japanese maple prepared us for the colorful art that was to follow in the Kagoshima Museum of Art. The big exhibit featured paintings by…

And we’re not talking Tom Cruise, we’re talking Saigo Takamori, born in 1828 in Kagoshima, the son of a low-ranking samurai.  After his military training he served under Shimazu Nariakura the local Satsuma daimyo.  When Shimazu died, Saigo was disgraced and exiled.  He attempted suicide, but maybe his heart wasn’t into it because he was reinstated and returned…

Post by Ella Back in Kagoshima proper after our venture in Sengan-en, time for a real meal. While staring at our phones, a woman (let’s call her Mae) rushed over and poked her nose between the two of us.  “I Help?” Or more like “I Help!” Demanding to help. Okay sure. We mimed eating. Mae…

Mochi, a no gluten, no cholesterol, all carb gelatinous rice ball. Plain, it tastes like you’d suspect rice flour would taste. With filling, like red bean paste or chocolate cream or matcha, it’s a one-squishy-sticky-bite with just enough sweet to call it a dessert. Sticky as in peanut-butter-sticks-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth sticky.  The texture and stickiness varies according to…

Post by Ella The day was beautiful. Temps in the high 60’s, blue skies The pair of Satsuma-ware vases (photo below)are an exact replica of the set presented to Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, by the 29th head of the Shimadzu family, Tadayoshi in 1896. The originals were made by the 12th generation…

Post by Ella The Cat Shrine at Sengan-en (mentioned by Grubb in his “Span of the clan” post) “enshrines the two cats that safely returned from the battlefield out of seven that were taken”. Were they warrior cats? I searched for an answer. It seems cats were taken to do battle with rodents. Hungry combatants…

The Shimazu-shi were the daimyo, or feudal lords, of Satsuma (Kagoshima), Ōsumi, and Hyūga provinces in Japan from the 13th century until the mid-19th.  In other words, the Shimazu family were landholding magnates for around 500 years.  The span of this clan makes European dynasties look like brief historical blips. The feudal narrative of the Shimazu clan…

Post by Ella

Post by The Nerdy one Did you know…iPhone users…your built-in calculator has a currency converter. I’m not sure how often the calculator has its conversion rates updated, but most sources say once a day. 

Celebrating the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, Malcolm Lowry might have been under the volcano, but after taking a ferry from Kagoshima to Sakurajima this morning, we were on the volcano.   And it’s still active. After the ferry docked in Sakurajima, the island created by the volcano with the same name, we took…

Post by Ella Kagoshima is a small town of 600,000 people. Compare that to Osaka city with nearly 3 million and Tokyo city with 14 million.  Our hotel in Kagoshima is not in an area with many restaurants so we relied on google maps to locate a few choices. We walked into a tiny place…

Okonomiyaki is a savory Japanese pancake, usually made with a batter of flour, eggs, and dashi (Japanese broth or water), and then filled with shredded cabbage. Usually meat or seafood is folded in. Very thick. More than an inch I’d say. The topping is a Japanese mayo. Bonito flakes are available if you’d like to…

Post by Ella What a deal. Luggage forwarding service (known as Takkyubin) is common all over Japan. I’ve used it three times now. From Osaka, we forwarded one suitcase to Fujiya Mae, our ryokan on our 4th night of our hike. We exchanged dirty underwear and socks for clean and stuffed little trinkets we’d picked…

There’s always a minor sense of relief when we make it through the fleet of taxis (not to mention armada of buses) bunched around an historic site.  So there was a little spring to our step leaving the Osaka Castle and trekking to the subway where we caught a metro that took us to within a…