Nagasaki Day 2, Kyushu Day 5

Our day was started bright and early with a failed trip to find a famous coffee house. Which made me sad.



That failure aside though we set off towards teramachi or temple row to look at, what else, temples.



We started with a temple whose name I absolutely do not know. I didn’t note it down and it isn’t my guidebook so…whoops. But I do know that it is on teramachi and it is bright red and done in a largely Chinese style.

It also had a nice Chinese lady inside who was making beads and who seemed rather disappointed at the poor turnout. She explained that the temple doesn’t usually get a lot of foreign visitors but mostly Japanese and Chinese ones. When I suggested that the poor turn out was probably because the Japanese were all spending time with their families for Obon she told me the opposite was true. Usually Obon was their busiest time of year as families are supposed to visit shrines together. This was quite sad news for me. I have been hearing stories for years about how the Buddhist temples are struggling to keep their income high enough to maintain the temples. Although the big and famous places draw a lot of attention from tourists, if perfectly pleasant but small temples like this one are in danger of closing that is a real shame.



Continuing the theme of the trip our old lady was only too happy to show us around the temple and explain some of the features to us. The most striking of these was a male and female dolphin fish pictured above (male) and below (female). I see male dolphin fish very often in Japanese architecture but this is the first time I have ever seen a female version. Apparently the ball in the mouth of the male represents male desire whilst the female is supposed to bring fertility and easy pregnancy. Both examples shown here are actually drums used in ceremonies at the temple.



Can I just point out how weird it is that every source translates this animal’s name as a dolphin fish? It shares not one characteristic with a dolphin at all. Dolphins have no scales, their tails are horizontal not vertical, they have different heads and bodies and the dolphin fish lacks a dorsal fin. At least the female version looks a little bit like a malformed whale but the male one looks like nothing so much as a dragon fish. What on earth it has to do with dolphins I will never understand.



By far the finest feature of this particular temple was its lovely gardens a few pictures of which are shown here.



Moving on from our mystery temple we moved onto a separate street to have a look at the famous “Meganebashi” or “Spectacles Bridge;” so called because the reflections in the water make it look like a pair of glasses. Apparently it is one of the oldest examples of an arched stone bridge in Japan. Sadly it is nowhere near as impressive as that fact sounds.



Here is Fran, pointing at her spectacles on Spectacles Bridge.

Moving back onto teramachi our next location was Sofukji (not to be confused with Shofuku-ji) one of the more spectacular, unusual and famous temples in Nagasaki.



Shofuku-ji was another Chinese temple that adopted the official Japanese form of Buddhism but it still has many examples of its Chinese heritage left behind such as the Ming style gate in spectacular red colours.



The main attraction of this temple is this giant pot in the courtyard. Nagasaki was once ravaged by a great famine that left many of the poor citizenry starving. The head of the temple along with a pioneering female philanthropist (pictured below) collected donations every day to make a gigantic cauldron of porridge that they would distribute to the poor. During one particularly bad winter this food aid was feeding more than a 1000 people a day and helping them stay alive.



Again, with such history and such an important social role it really is a shame that Buddhist temples are beginning to die out in Japan.



One of the things I noticed about the temple which struck me as unusual was the decorative bats that I spotted in a few places. Apparently bats are something of a symbol of good luck in Nagasaki, and nowhere else in Japan, for reasons that were not explained to me.



Our next two temples were Yasakusa and Kiyomizu which aren’t interesting in the slightest except that they bare the names of two much more famous temples in Kyoto which are also close together. This was another theme of travelling in Kyushu. In Kansai it is very rare for a name to be duplicated for two or more places but on the island there were all kinds of places with names we recognized from Kobe, Kyoto or Tokyo.



Lunchtime and we moved off temple row and into a more city like part of the city.



But first a quick stop in Shian-bashi area. Shian-bashi was, and still is to a lesser extent the red light or “pleasure” district of Nagasaki. In former times it was separated from the main city by a bridge. This bridge, known as the bridge of pondering gave its name to the area. Why the bridge of pondering? Well apparently in days of old men would pause for a second on the bridge and debate whether to press on or return to their wives at home. Seized by the spirit of the ages I also decided to ponder for a moment before pressing on in search of food, drink and cake.

Cake! Yes, cake. In fact not just any cake but the infamous Castella at the even more infamous Fukusaya Castella cake shop. Castella is a kind of sweet sponge cake introduced to Japan by the Portuguese. The origins of the name are widely debated but are believe to come from an area of Portugal with the similar sounding name of Castile. However confusingly Castile was then a part of Spain and in Castile they don’t make Castella.



Fukusaya Castella has being making this cake and operating as a shop continuously since 1624! That is an astonishingly long time for any shop to operate, let alone in one location and in the same building (albeit heavily renovated inside). I would be interested to know if anything in the U.K. even comes close but I doubt it. To put that in perspective imagine a Tudor building being used for its original purposes continuously for nearly 400years!

The shop is somewhat small and Spartan inside but that is because it basically consists of a counter and three stools. All of the activity goes on in the bakery itself, all they need the shop for is to sell you their one and only product, cake.

And what a cake it is. Honestly it may be the most perfect cake I have ever eaten. This is the platonic ideal of cake. There is no decoration, no icing or butter or any messing around, it is just pure sponge. But it is the nicest sponge I have ever eaten and I suspect it is impossible to make a sponge cake taste any better. It was moist, fluffy, sweet but not too sweet, with a deliciously complex after taste. It was just perfect. Utterly perfect.



Oh and look, more bats. I wonder what they are all about.

Full of cake and properly rested we decided to climb to Suwa-jinja.



It was a long climb. If nothing else a trip to Nagasaki will help you keep fit as there is simply no way to avoid climbing hundreds and thousands of steps.

Suwa-jinja lacked the cool Chinese influenced architecture of most Nagasaki temples and shrines but made up for it with its own unique attraction. Komainu, or prayer dogs.

These dogs are features of pretty much any Asian temple. They always stand in pairs, one with his mouth closed and the other with his mouth open. One is taking a breath and the other is breathing out but this breathing is in sync, as if they are taking the same breath. This concept of harmony so perfect that one breathes in while the other breathes out is known as “wa” and is a central idea in Japanese culture.



Furthermore one dog is always female whilst the other is male. Usually the male breathes in, an act of life and the female breathes out, an act of death symbolising the cyclical nature of life due to resurrection.



Komainu are descended from Chinese foo dogs or lion dogs which had the same purpose and are also displayed at temples but do not have the associations with wa.



Suwa-jinja is covered in hundreds of these dogs all over the place with radically different artistic styles and designs.




Some of the dogs even have special features such as this one, the kappa komainu.



And barring a failed trip to a temple we eventually got to later on (I'll tell you all about it tomorrow), a bath and a delicious dinner at an Izakaya that specialised in pork was all we did that day.

See Disney Sea

I’ve got some free time coming up at work so I’m going to finally get some write ups of what my parents and I did on their trip to Japan. No particular order, just some highlights and fun things in Japan.

So let’s start with what I got up to on the last day my parents were here.

We went to Disneyland!



Well actually we went to DisneySea. Tokyo is host to two Disney parks, Disney-land and Disney-sea. Disneyland is another version of the standard Magic Kingdom park that I have already been to four times, thrice in Florida and once in Paris. In contrast DisneySea is unique to Japan so whilst it would have been fun to see how Disneyland differs in Japan to a European or American flavour we thought we’d explore some novelty instead.



DisneySea is themed around a large lake with a series of “ports of call” arranged in a ring around this lake. The worlds included Mediterranean Harbor, Mysterious Island, Mermaid Lagoon, Arabian Coast, Lost River Delta, Port Discovery and American Waterfront.



You start with Mediterranean Harbor and the first thing that struck me was how good the actual design and decoration of the park. We’re all used to the term “theme park” but often this actual theme-ing is not very good and limited purely to the rides themselves. Universal Studios in Florida, for example, is very good at recreating the settings and worlds within its attractions and the lines waiting for them but much of the park itself just feels like a generic space. DisneySea has astonishingly good “theme-ing” and the only place I have been to which remotely compares is Universal Islands of Adventure. Every building and every view here is themed and often with a tremendous eye for detail and imagination. I don’t often say this regarding theme parks but the real attraction at DisneySea is just wandering around the park itself.




This theme-ing even extends to the train ride to the resort which features mickey shaped windows and mickey shaped train handles.




American Waterfront, Port Discovery and Mermaid Lagoon are particularly good.



American Waterfront is split into two sections. The first seeks to evoke a 1920’s/30’s New York Port and the second a New England fishing village from the same period. The New York Harbor is amazingly well recreated with a brilliant eye for detail and lots of subtle visual gags. It also boasts possibly the best example of forced perspective I’ve ever seen in the form of the S.S. Columbia, a replica sea liner that cannot possibly be the same size as a sea liner but seems to be so from every angle.



There are even replica period vehicles that people can cruise around in (if they want the slowest tour ever).



Port Discovery in contrast springs entirely from the fertile imagination of the Disney “Imagineers.” It’s a kind of futuristic floating city populated by startlingly original plane, boat and submarine designs. I was particularly fond of these fish submarines.



Mermaid Lagoon is based around Disney’s Little Mermaid and is an underground cave covered top to bottom in mosaics that Fran spent hours taking photos of. It is quite frankly stunning and the combined effect of the architecture, mosaics, music and lighting is nothing short of magical.



We went there on a Thursday two weeks prior to Golden Week, a time on the Japanese calendar when a lot of national holidays fall close together and thus a really busy time for tourism in Japan. But by going just beforehand and by going on a weekday we ensured that we had the entire park practically to ourselves. So empty was it that we managed to ride nearly every single ride in the park in less than three hours!



As great as this was though the rides themselves were not very impressive. Although apparently some of the independent theme parks in Japan have quite extreme rides all the theme parks I have been to here have really astonishingly tame rides. This is a bit of a disappointment for an adrenaline junkie like myself but the rides weren’t wholly disappointing.



The best of the bunch was the Tokyo version of the Tower of Terror. I have ridden the original Tower in Florida and the version in Paris. The Florida version is particularly nasty; an elevator ride that takes you up 13 stories and then pulls you down quickly with 3 times the force of gravity. My father is no wuss when it comes to theme parks, he has ridden the Kraken in Seaworld, Nemesis at Alton Towers and The Big One at Blackpool, yet once was enough for him with Terror Tower. This thing is genuinely stomach churning and one of the most extreme rides I have ever ridden and certainly the most extreme ride Disney have ever made.



Sadly in keeping with the overall theme of DisneySea their version of the Tower of Terror was much tamer, generating only 1g and feeling relatively sedate. Yet it makes up for it by being the most elaborately and effectively themed version of the ride. It has a unique back story about a real estate magnate and a haunted fertility idol, a giant room filled with “artifacts” the magnate had collected (that have some great in-jokes and gags) and well, just look at it. The Florida Tower may be a scarier ride but it doesn’t look anywhere near as scary as that grand gothic countenance.



The other two good rides were Indiana Jones and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Both of these are “dark rides” where the rider sits in a car and rides around looking at decorations, animatronics, etc. Think of an up market ghost train. Indiana Jones was the more exciting ride and properly jostled us about. It also had the single best animatronic I have ever seen. The resemblance to Harrison Ford is uncanny!



20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was a bit more sedate but it holds a special place in my heart because it genuinely tricked my family and I into thinking that we had gone underwater. I won’t spoil how the trick is done but it really is very clever.
The only real disappointment is “Raging Spirits,” a roller-coaster that has an annoying habit of stopping the cars when you want to go faster. It does have a loop-de-loop but overall it isn’t great.



But the real appeal of DisneySea is the shows. The rides are okay, the theme-ing is amazing but the shows are simply mind blowing.

Disney shows usually are pretty good but I genuinely feel that with DisneySea they have improved immensely. Most of the smaller shows could easily be expanded and made into a proper Broadway piece and the two big shows, well, words fail me to be honest.



Mystic Rhythms is a kind of South American/Jungle themed modern dance show. It starts off very slow, with people in animal costumes that range from very good to a bit naff wandering around a stage doing a pseudo-I’m pretending to be an animal-dance. It soon picks up though s the naffer costumes disappear acrobats emerge, natural spirits start wielding magical forces, tribes of warriors chant and pound on the stage, walls explode and generally it builds to a frenzied and spectacular climax. I’m not one for modern dance, I can appreciate the skill but generally the spectacle of dance leaves me a bit cold but this was absolutely mesmerizing; a feeling that was enhanced by the hypnotic and empathic music.

Big Band Beat was a Jazz and Big Band revue complete with top hated and fish-netted chorus line, plenty of tap and some appearances from Disney characters dancing and singing along. They weren’t the best big band I’ve ever seen but they were still pretty damn good and massive props have to go out to whoever was playing Mickey Mouse. Whoever that actress is she can play the drums and tap dance to a really high standard all whilst wearing a mouse costume and a giant head! The highlight was definitely a rendition of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” that used the tap dancers to great effect. My only complaint was that “Everybody Wants to be a Cat” was absent. What’s that all about Disney? You have a film all about Jazz and even have one of the characters from that film in your show but you don’t include any songs from that film? I think they missed an obvious trick there.



Over the Waves is a story about a cruise which is run by Mickey and Minnie and it is.

Um.

Energetic.


Finally the lagoon in the centre of the park is host to two shows a day. The Legend of Mythica and BraviSEAmo.

Putting these shows in the lagoon is a great idea and really hammers home how much theme park design has improved over the years as it means that there is a huge area where the audience can see what is going on. In the Florida parks there are always massive crowds at the parade routes making it hard to see. In DisneySea it is possible to see from a much greater area and so there are less crowds.



The Legend of Mythica may be the most overblown spectacle that has ever been produced by anyone ever. Words cannot do justice to this show. It seems like when designing what to include in a show the Disney Imagineers made a giant brainstorm chart of all their ideas. Then they used all of them.

To give some impression of just how big and overblown this thing is I will simply list a fraction of the stuff that happens.

Giant boats made to look like mythical creatures, giant eggs that reveal woman on extendable pillars singing, people in animal costumes dancing, audiences clapping, most of the main Disney characters dressed to look like knights, kites, waterskiing, jet skis that look like dragons, trapeze and acrobatics, giant robot hydras, dragons, unicorns and phoenixes that shoot water and fire, insanely catchy music, explosions, fireworks and more.

It is like being allowed for a walk in the mind of a six year old. I recommend it.

BraviSEAmo though is even more impressive although a damn sight simpler. This is the night show, also in the lagoon, and features all the usual lasers, dancers, music and lights that one would expect. But it is mostly all about two enormous structures.

The first is a boat that shoots water into the air and illuminates it in a variety of colours. It’s all very nice and sparkly and generally quite girly. Later the water begins to spurt into a shape that resembles a human form wearing a dress. This is the spirit of the water and it is in love with the spirit of fire.

The spirit of fire is the second structure and it is A GIANT ROBOT FIREBREATHING DRAGON!

…



…..

JAPAN HAS BUILT A GIANT ROBOT FIRE BREATHING DRAGON!

I mean, I…..it is a robot, and it breathes fire and…

Alright that is cool. That is just fantastic. There is not one person in the world you wouldn’t impress with a giant robot fire breathing dragon. Well done Disney.

It doesn’t just breathe fire either. It first starts underwater so all the audience can see is the boat/water spirit. Then, ever so slowly, the red arms start to rise from the water and eventually it begins to take the shape of a dragon.

I’m sorry, I’m welling up just remembering it. I think I may have to have a lie down.



Ahhh, that’s better.

Let’s talk about the food.

Food is always the area that Disney is weakest in as a rule. Not that their food is bad, but it is uninspiring and generally lacking in the same level of polish and imagination as goes into the rest of the park.



DisneySea is much the same but it does do the Florida parks one better in one respect. DisneySea is designed to be a more adult Disney park, hence the focus on shows. The upside to this is that in certain parts of the park they can sell beer.

WooHoo!

Of the two meals I had one was a meh, Mexican dish and the other an all you can eat buffet that had awesome deep fried catfish. What I mostly want to talk about though is some of the weirder food available. Namely curry popcorn…



…which sadly we didn’t try and Black Sesame churros which we did. I am quite a fan of black sesame, I like black sesame ice-cream and my favourite ramen flavor is black sesame. It’s quite a hard flavor to explain, kind of cakey with a cereal quality to it but also very tangy. My family were less keen on black sesame, the upshot being that I got to eat multiple churros.

Mmmmmmm, churros.



So, great shows, okay rides (but hey, no lines), brilliant theme-ing, strange food. All in all I liked DisneySea a lot. It is distinctly different from the Florida parks. It definitely has its own identity and individual flavor but it also is recognizably a Disney park with all the professionalism that entails.

I do have one big complaint to make. The park is laid out around a lagoon in a rough circle. But rather than being an o shape it is in fact a c shape with a wall preventing users from walking all the way around the lagoon. Why? That is just stupid and counter intuitive. It means people have to walk further and means it takes longer to get around the park. It is bad design and not something I expect from Disney.

I won’t end on that sour note though; instead let’s have a look at me meeting one of my all time heroes.



Scrooge McDuck. This guy is a bad ass. It’s a shame that none of my students know who he is.



Fran met Daisy Duck and the actors playing her and Donald did a great little play for the people waiting in the street. Daisy grabbed some beefy guy from the crowd and rubbed his muscles. Donald came over and challenged him to an arm wrestling match, which he won, before sweeping Daisy up and giving her a kiss. Really sweet and a nice touch.