Matsumoto

On day 2 in Nagano Prefecture, Stephen & Skye took me on a day trip to their first home in Japan, lovely Matsumoto. To create a parallel for my GTA readers, Matsumoto could be the Niagara Falls of Nagano. It houses a beautiful black and white castle that is more than 400 years old, surrounded by a large moat full of koi with a distinctive red bridge over it.

There are also some lovely gift shops, including “Wabi-Sabi” where I bought some tabi socks and Stephen & Skye bought me a pair of threaded, easy-to-disassemble travel chopsticks in a lovely silk pouch. And some lovely tea shops, including Salon-as-Salon, on the second floor over a hairdressing salon on the main strip (just down the way from Wabi-Sabi). And the delightful Sushi Ten, which I wrote about earlier as being the place I first tried fried avocado. Now, for some history about the castle…

Inui Kotenshu: This minor keep is called Inui Kotenshu, because it stands inui or north-west of the Main Tower. Although it appears to have three stories, it actually has four. One floor is hidden from outside view. Inui-Kotenshu is connected to the Main Tower via a roofed passage. The keep is structurally different from the Main Tower through the use of numerous round pillars: ten pass through the first and second floors, and twelve pass through the third and fourth floors. These pillars were rough-hewn by adzes – an axe-like tool – and made from several types of wood including hemlock, spruce, fir or Japanese cypress.

Yazama & Teppozama: Each floor is fitted with holes for firing weapons. The long rectangular holes, called “Yazama,” were for shooting arrows at the attacking enemy. The square ones, called “Teppozama,” were for firing muskets. Prior to the introduction of firearms from Europe, only Yazama were used in castle construction. After the introduction of firearms Yazama and Teppozama were used in combination. At Matsumoto, there are 60 Yazamas and 55 Teppozamas.

The Sixth Floor: The sixth floor lies 22.1 meters above the ground and could be covered with 16 pieces of rush-woven “tatami”. It was designed to be used as the headquarters of the War Lord (daimyo) if the castle was under attack. Lowered from the ceiling, the Goddess of Nijuroku-yashin (26th night Goddess of the month) is enshrined. There is a legend connected to the Goddess. On the night of January 26, 228, in a vision, one of the young vassals on duty saw a woman dressed in beautiful clothes. Handing him a brocade bag, she said, “if the Lord of the castle enshrines me with 600kg of rice on the 26th night of every month, I will protect the castle from fire and enemy.” It is believed that because the bag was deified the castle was preserved and has survived to be the oldest castle in its original form.

Moon-Viewing Wing: The Moon-Viewing Room has openings to the east, north and south. It is connected to the Main Tower on its western side. With a beautiful exterior vermillion balcony and a vaulted ceiling, an air of refinement is presented here. The openness and refinement reflect the period in which the wing was built – an era of peace following the turbulent age of the warring states. This room was built under the direction of Lord Naomasa Matsudaira, a grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu – the first Shogun of the Tokugawa period. Currently only two castles, Okayama and Matsumoto, have a moon-viewing wing.

Japan & Food: Vending Machine Cuisine

My readers have spoken, and I have listened! Darren requested food photos. Ask, and ye shall receive!

Eating in restaurants is for when you’ve got company. For solo, bachelorette-style eats, you want vending machines! When I travel alone, I make up little games for myself – little challenges to be met, little tasks to accomplish – to stay entertained and help push through the jet lag.

Today’s challenge was a culinary one: to make it through the entire day trying to eat only food that a) could be purchased at either a vending machine or street vendor, and b) had little or no English translations on the packaging. Basically, I was playing Russian roulette with breakfast, lunch and dinner. No clue what kind of tasty comestibles I was putting in my mouth at all.

Here is the list of vending machine beverages I drank today, and my impressions of them:

1. Georgia Hot (coffee): I wasn’t fully awake when I bought this, and having only experienced cold vending machines in Canada, I actually yelped when I picked it out of the dispensing tray and it was hot to the touch. My first real WTF?! moment in Japan. Sugary, but acceptable coffee. Recommended.
2. Calpis (lemonade): Bought this mid-morning, to wash the coffee taste after my mouth. Was hoping for a nice, tart, cool bottle of lemon drink. It was also hot. Hot lemonade?! Second WTF moment. Tasted surprisingly good, though. Recommended.
3. Minute Maid Morning Banana: The one thing the Japanese palate can cope with that mine rebels at is consistency. Why can’t they understand that giving food the viscosity of chunky slime is nasty? This beverage comes in a little pouch with a narrow capped spout, sort of like a Capri Sun. You can’t actually see what’s inside before you drink it. I put it to my lips, sucked, and nearly spat it out all over the sidewalk when I got banana-flavoured chunky goo on my tongue, thick like chewy curdled milk. Third WTF moment. Mega gross. Not recommended.
4. Boss Coffee Rainbow Mountain Blend: I thought Darren was hallucinating when he suggested I look out for the “coffee with the moustache guy on it”, because there were no machines selling such a can anywhere near Shinjuku or Shibuya. But once I reached Akihabara, there it was. Boss. Lots of it. The marketers would have us believe “Shintory Boss is the boss of them all since 1992″. I passed over the blue and yellow cans and tried the rainbow can, and I can say it seems to be the sugariest of them all. Darker roast and bolder flavour than the other coffee, though. Recommended.
5. Pocari Sweat: Although I have to give them snaps for their bold marketing campaign (who wouldn’t want to drink sweat?), this drink was quite bland. The closest thing to it would be watery Gatorade or flat Sprite. Meh. Not recommended.
6. Karada-Meguri-Cha (tea from Coca-Cola): this blend of 8 traditional chinese herbs and 4 natural tea leaves tastes like ass. Not recommended.

For “breakfast” (I’m going to use quotes around all of these meals, because my inner clock is so messed up that breakfast felt like dinner and vice versa) I had some rice gluten balls filled with red bean paste and possibly chestnut paste. One had sesame seeds on it, another appeared to have coffee beans or something in the skin, one was green, another pink. They all kind of tasted the same, actually.

For “second breakfast” I had more glutinous balls, smaller ones on skewers, covered in thick, gelatinous red bean paste. I also had a triangle of rice with some salmon inside and a cunningly overpackaged piece of seaweed to wrap it in.

For “lunch” I had two mystery foods, both unexpectedly involving hot dogs. One was a rolled-up pastry that looked like a sort of cheese blintz/crepe thing, but was more like a piggy-in-a-blanket, with a surprise hot dog tucked into the cheesy center. To get some veggies I bought what looked like little chains of mini-corn but are actually green corn husks tied together with string, wrapped around… something. I have not yet opened them to discover the mystery, but my scooby-sense tells me it will either be rice, red bean paste, fish, or some combination of the three. I followed it up with dessert in the form of strawberries in what looked like a chocolate shell, but on closer inspection proved to be yet more gelatinous red bean paste.

Now, Z warned me not to eat any fugu, on account of my sensation of impending doom as I prepared for this trip, but she was non-specific as to the consumption of crazy exploding bombs. So I ate one for “dinner”. See below for details of how they are made – inside my cooked bomb thing there was a whole quail egg, a one-inch long diagonal slice of hot dog (disturbingly finger-esque), and some pink stuff, all covered in a liberal coating of mayonnaise and green onions. I ate it 9 hours ago and haven’t regurgitated it yet, so I guess it was okay.