In 1997, after not having travelled abroad for several years, I went to Thailand on an Earthwatch dig, but intentionally built into my itinerary a week in Japan after the dig, figuring, wrongly, I'd never be in Asia again so I might as well spend time in Japan. A friend from Brown had lived and taught English there, and she gave me a letter of introduction to a minshuku in Kyoto; I made my reservation in Tokyo at a ryokan I found online. And at the dig a young Japanese participant arranged for Mr. Sakai, an older Japanese man who had little English to take me to his family home on my way to Kyoto from Tokyo. This is my journal from that time:
I am sitting on a cushion on the floor of my little room in the Ryokan Sawanoya. It is truly a ryokan. Three floors, of about six rooms a floor, tatami mats neatly laid out. This is a four-tatami single room, with an alcove for TV and a little closet, actually, two, one for the linens and one for clothes. The futon, with pillow and quilt, looks inviting indeed.
The ryokan is about three blocks into a quiet residential neighborhood near Uueno Park, in "the old part" of Tokyo. Sakei-san insisted on coming with me here, and deposited me on the doorstep; he'll be back at 9 a.m. and he'll show me a few Tokyo sights before taking me off to his village outside Nagoya, where his wife, his mother, and his two young sons live. I am promised shabu-shabu for dinner tomorrow.
The couple who run the ryokan, and who have run it for many years, apparently, are gregarious and speak reasonably good English. They have a lot of publications put out by the Japanese Inn Group and others, and a lot of left-behind paperbacks. Since I left most of my luggage in the Tokyo train station, the better to navigate the subway to the ryokan, I don't have anything to read but the Japan guidebook which I'd already read most of what I need in. Now I must memorize a few phrases in Japanese. Just when I thought I'd gotten the hang of sawadee-KA and the yes and no and thank you signs, too, in Thai.
It's cold; thank heavens I do have my heavy coat, nuisance though it's been to haul around. I went out from the ryokan to a little neighborhood restaurant about 3 blocks away: a "small" sake, a pork cutlet with rice and cabbage pickled, and miso soup, all for 1080 yen, i.e., about $10, which isn't bad. It would cost as much at home. Before deciding that my developing cold was not being helped by the cold wind, I walked around the neighborhood a bit. It looks very much like a neighborhood in, say, Columbus Ave. area of NYC. A NEIGHBORHOOD. Not suburbia, but not urban either, really.
The only animals I've seen are: two dogs on leashes. One collared cat meowing to be let into his home. And two dogs trotting purposefully and evenly along a rice paddy mound-border in the distance as we travelled into Tokyo by train. This is all such a relief from the multitudes of needy beasts in Bangkok.
Well, that was a bust. In spite of being fortified with saki, I couldn't get into that hot tub! I washed and rinsed dutifully, but putting my foot in for more than five seconds was agony. And there were no help bars around the edges in case I got in and couldn't get out! So I showered well, but no hot tub. We'll see what happens at the hot springs in Nagoya!