Michie's House

Checking out of our Kanazawa hotel rooms this morning, we tried checking our bags at the front desk. But the best they would do was to allow us to leave them in a corner of the lobby. Not very secure. However, when we came back a while later, we found that at least 50 other (mostly Japanese) hotel guests had done essentially the same thing. Theft, or crime in general, is not a big problem in Japan.

Our tour leader, Mariko, divided us into groups of two or three and put us into taxi cabs. Each cab driver was given an address for a Japanese home. Our driver wasn't entirely certain of the address, but he went to the door for us to verify that we were in the right place. We had no idea where we were going, other than that we were visiting the home of a Japanese person or family who had agreed to host us for a couple hours.

It turned out that our hostess was Michie, a retired elementary school teacher about our age. Her English was quite good, so we had no trouble conversing. We left our shoes at the door, of course, and she welcomed us into her very Western-looking living room. There were two small sofas, coffee table, a dining room table and chairs, and some other furnishings. We sat on the sofas and she served us cherry blossom tea and mochis with bean paste filling.

We talked about our careers, our families, and travel. Michie has traveled quite a bit herself. She has a son who, with his family, used to live upstairs. They now live in the house next door.

Michie was proud to show us her home, beginning with a nice galley-style kitchen. A unique feature was a storage cupboard under a trap door in the floor.

A second ground floor room is a traditional tatami room. It is the size of six mats and has almost no furniture other than a small shrine and a nook with a scroll painting.

Upstairs was a rather large room with a bed, small sofa, and kitchenette. This was the area in which her son had lived. Her own room was smaller and much more sparsely furnished -- only a bed and a desk. But she did have a spacious walk-in closet.

Finally, what used to be her daughters' room is now a guest room in which she stores her collection of kimonos. A formal kimono that she had purchased for her older daughter's graduation hangs on the wall as a decoration. She told us that she had paid nearly as much for it as she paid for her car. She uses the car almost everyday, but her daughter has only worn the kimono on three occasions.

Michi showed us several other kimonos and explained a great deal about them. Different kimonos are appropriate for different seasons and different occasions. A kimono she wore to her daughter's wedding would be highly inappropriate at the wedding of a friend or coworker, and a winter kimono would not be worn in the summer, etc. She probably has at least a dozen, and they are all very expensive.

Finally, Michi tried to teach us a sort of card game that is played with miniature cards with twelve suits based on the twelve months of the year. We only got through one abbreviated hand when the taxi arrived to take us back.

Lunch was included at a restaurant in the food court of a large shopping center very close to our hotel. We wished we had known about this place earlier, because there were all sorts of reasonably priced eating places in what they called a "food resort."

We had a little over an hour and a half to kill before we had to be in the station to catch our train. We spent some of that time in the shopping center. There was a big crowd around some sort of person in a cartoon character costume. We thought it was for kids to have their picture taken with the character, and some were.

But we soon discovered that adults also wanted their photo taken this way. People in their 20s and 30s had brought their plush toy versions of the character to "meet" the full-sized character. Some were in cosplay costumes related to the character. The adults were bigger kids than the kids!

The shopping center was crowded, but nowhere more than the Pokemon store. People of all ages were scooping up plush toys, shirts, caps, etc.

There was also a large music store with instruments of every kind, from grand pianos to Suzuki violins for little kids, as well as enough drum sets and guitars to outfit a number of rock bands.

Marveling at the interest in cute characters, we left the shopping center and returned to one of the venues for the music festival. We heard a pretty good cellist, though his instrument was more Asian in appearance than the cellos we see had home. It had a shiny lacquer finish, and the sound seemed less rich and mellow than a classical cello.

We also sat in briefly on a woodwind quintet that was definitely not professional. However, they were easier to listen to than the bagpiper or the polka band we happened to pass by on the way from one venue to the next.

The train to Kyoto was not a bullet, and we had to make one stop to change trains along the way. It's a holiday weekend, and the trains are as crowded as the shopping centers. When we arrived in Kyoto, the mass of humanity in the railway station was nearly overwhelming.

Our Kyoto hotel seems quite nice, and after a brief orientation walk around the neighborhood, we enjoyed a group dinner together before calling it a day.