Japan Trip- May, 2001

(Kawagoe Sightseeing)

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Kawagoe is called "Little Edo." It is a modern, Japanese city connected to Tokyo by rail and high way, but it contains the ruins of a Shogun Retainer's castle as well as warehouse architecture from the 1700's.

But that's not why I like Kawagoe, I like to go there because of the sweet potato. Yes, the sweet potato has been adopted by the tourist section of Kawagoe as the recipient of Kawagoeian ingenuity. They make soft cookies, springy cakes, ice cream puffs, dried chips, smooth pastes, beers ("Potato Lager"), noodles, glutinous rice balls and pickles out of sweet potatoes. The main "ancient warehouse" street is laden with shops trying to outdo each other over sweet potato products. Oh yeah, and they like to give you tastes.

After lunch, Naoto and I went by Taxi to two famous Kawagoe sites. The first is Kawagoe castle. This is a Japanese style castle, meaning it is a "ranch" style castle with beautiful gardens and outbuildings nearby for guards and concubines. Here's a picture of me standing in front of it. When we got there, we found out it was closed on Tuesdays. Luckily, I've seen castles before, so it wasn't too disappointing. Although the big folklore and history museum also being closed on Tuesdays made me a little sad. (Why in the world would you close tourist attractions on a Tuesday?)

The second site I wanted to see was a Shrine/Temple area that is supposedly the site where a famous Japanese folksong took place. This folksong is very, very pretty, but very, very strange. The words go somewhat like this.

Torriance Torriance, Koko wa doko no hoso michi ja (go down the path, go down the path, what narrow path is this?) ten-jin sama no hosomichi ja (it's the shrine god's path) chotto toushite kudashanse go-yo no nai mono toushasenu (Please go down the path a little errandless people, don't go ) kono ko no nanatsu no iwai ni o fuda osemete maerimasu (We are going to celebrate this child's seventh birthday by (something I don't really get here) iki wa yoi yoi, kaeri wa kowai kowai nagara mo torriance, torriance (going is easy, but coming back is scary eventhough its scary, go down the path)

I could find nothing really disturbing or scary about going down the path, but then again, I wasn't being confronted by the Shogun's Retainer's guard in 17th Century Japan. Finally, we traipsed over to this famous Zen temple called Kitain. The cool thing about his temple is the fact that 200 years ago, a bunch of bored monks decided to start making status of monks in various poses. I think Kitatin must not have been known for the seriousness of its monks because the statues are in various irreverent poses such as gossiping, picking one's nose, massaging a friend, and other such non-religious actions. It was great!

All in all, it was a very pleasant, relaxing trip. Naoto's parents have never been so eager to hang out with us before! I think they took me out to eat about five times, running the entire gamut of family restaurant options: Chinese, Traditional Japanese, Buckwheat noodles, and my personal favorite: breaded pork cutlet. Naoto's father even sat through a Japanese-subtitled viewing of "The Haunting" with me one night while Naoto was out carousing with his buddies.

I imagine all the attention will end once I've actually given birth to the Suzuki heir.

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