Kanazawa or Bust

Aside from a touch of malaise, Paresh and I are doing fine. We are choosing our exertions carefully but also mindful that this experience has an expiration date, so we have to balance that against our instincts to go full R&R mode. I have received several messages of concern (hi, Mom), and I appreciate them. We are taking care of each other and monitoring our needs closely, and I want to assure everyone that we are managing the situation with care and caution.

I suspected going into this day that it would be the grandest test of our railway navigation skills yet, and that forecast proved true in more ways than one. We narrowly avoided a snafu with the timing of our taxi ride to Shin-Osaka station where we would start the day on the shinkansen to Himeji, but our prior experience with this exact train allowed us to make quick work of finding the platform on arrival. A short 28 minutes later, we disembarked at our destination, offloaded our luggage, and started the trek on foot to Himeji Castle.

Not so fast. As if on cue, a downpour forced us to take shelter in—where else?—a nearby Burger King, where we corroborated our confusion over the flourishing of obviously inferior American chains in Japan. As the rain showed no sign of playing along with the meteorologists’ predictions of a short duration, a nearby 7-Eleven provided us with the necessary umbrellas to continue the journey. We both commented that it had been a considerable amount of time since we had seen a rainstorm so forceful, and even with overhead cover, it was tough to remain entirely unscathed.

Himeji Castle is the largest castle in Japan and earned its spot on the itinerary not only for its majestic grandeur, but also its familiarity to me as a prominent site in Japanese history. I certainly do not consider myself any type of expert or even a hobbyist when it comes to feudal Japan, but I have accrued a passing acquaintance with many of the central figures of the period through video games and my own curiosities about the subject. I have certainly been aware that these stories to which I’ve been introduced are often exaggerated, overly dramatized and embellished, or otherwise contorted beyond historical recognition, so I looked forward to replacing the digital representations in my mind with an experience with the bona fide place. Perusing the floors of the castle, I felt the lingering echoes of history narrated by the architectural choices, the ornamentation, and the scattering of placards offering information to visitors. It is difficult not to feel mystified by the practical reality of city-to-city migration in the sixteenth century, where a procession of people would accompany daimyo to important affairs of state and would themselves require sustenance and accommodations for the multi-week journey by foot or on horseback. It is cliché, but there was no Uber to call in 1561. The mere act of moving from one place to another was a dangerous, calculated risk that demanded careful planning and meticulous execution.

With a short amount of time to kill, we were fortunate on the walk back to the station to discover Kuumaku Coffee, a quaint third-wave coffee shop tucked into a quiet back alley that specializes in siphon brewing, a method that has managed to remain elusive to even the nerdiest of enthusiasts but enjoys more ubiquity in Japan. I’ll attempt an elevator speech and hope nobody stops reading: siphon brewing involves heating a lower chamber of water until it is forced through a siphon into an upper chamber that contains ground coffee, which triggers the actual brewing process. When the heat at the bottom is removed, the resulting vacuum draws the brewed coffee back into the lower chamber and completes the brew. This was a fun little moment of overlap for me (longtime barista) and Paresh (longtime chemist) to pause and engage in mutual nerddom.

Himeji Castle down, cue the gauntlet. Our shinkansen ride back to Osaka went off uneventfully, but then our fortunes changed. The railway snaking up to Kanazawa, our next stop on this great Japanese adventure, is owned and operated by a different company, JR West, with entirely different procedures for ticket acquisition and fare management, plus a notable decline in the ease of use. After failing multiple times to use the designated terminals to “receive” the tickets we had purchased ahead of time (I still couldn’t tell you why), being turned away from a ticket counter with little advice on how to proceed, and watching the clock tick perilously close to our boarding time, we were availed by a gentle, matter-of-fact clerk at JR West who handed us our boarding credentials with minutes to spare. Are we having fun yet?

With a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it transfer period at Tsuruga looming, we weren’t yet out of the woods. Fortunately, the age-old wisdom of “follow the crowd” prevailed, and we boarded our penultimate train for these two weeks (our last will take us back to Tokyo in several days’ time).

Kanazawa is a cozy seaside city with a noteworthily quieter atmosphere than the cities we’ve visited thus far, which was somewhat by design. Our days here will be focused on a slightly less frenetic pace, time spent visiting lush gardens and meditative spaces, and doing a lot of our favorite activity: eating. Among the celebrated cuisines here, seafood shines brightest, and we look forward to seeing what the city has to offer.

Today’s posting is a little short on photographic evidence since a good portion of the day involved sitting on the train. But tomorrow should be a return to regular pace in that regard. I’m touched by the messages and comments I’ve read from any and all of you who have taken a moment out of your day to live a little bit of this adventure alongside us. It’s gratifying to know that pieces of our experiences are resonating with you. I’m truly happy to write this blog just for myself, but to have others riding shotgun on the trip is a real treat that means the world to me. More from Kanazawa soon.