This is my third night in Matsumoto. When I made this arrangement I thought of Matsumoto as a kind of mountain retreat where I could chill out before my workshop begins. There are mountains all around but it is much more urban than I expected. So, I’ve been sightseeing but taking it much easier than the last two weeks.

View from my hotel.

Matsumoto was the birthplace of Yayoi Kusama, an artist whose work is at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and all over the world. The city museum of art has a permanent exhibition of her work and was one of the attractions for me. Here are pictures of work outside the museum. A tour group was there posing as I arrived. I never understood the gestures.

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No photography was allowed inside the museum. For the most part I didn’t care, but I really wanted to photograph inside her mirrored corridor. The guards kept a tight watch on me. The room was about 20 or 25 feet long and not much wider than the span of my outstretched arms. Both openings had red curtains hanging to the sides. The walls, ceiling and a narrow area on either side of the openings were mirrored. At about waist height on the long walls there was a shelf with small red and white polka dot stuffed shapes. Looking into the mirrors the curtains became columns and even I became a column and everything stretched to infinity. Fantastic. I was alone in the corridor, except for the guards watching me from outside and I wanted to stay forever. I walked through the entire exhibit and decided to go back to the corridor. As I was about to enter several people went into the exhibit before me. I walked past them, past her early art work, and went back into the mirrored corridor. The first woman entered, spent the entire time looking at herself in the mirror, fixing her hair, her backpack and quickly walked out. I don’t think she ever saw the space around her. Two other people walked through quickly, never looking. I wonder if the guards think about this kind of stuff. And I wanted to talk to someone about it. That‘s the downside of traveling alone.

Another feature of Matsumoto is an ukiyoe museum (woodblock prints), supposedly with the largest collection of prints in Japan. However the exhibition space was small so disappointing. I enjoyed the prints but the exhibit I saw in Hiroshima had three times as many.

The most widely promoted tourist site is Matsumoto Castle. It was described as having steep, narrow stairways inside. I did not go in. I am phobic about steep stairways. But it is certainly beautiful.

Nearby was a funny street with old buildings and shops dedicated to frogs. I had soup and salad lunch in a bakery cafe, no frogs.

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My favorite discovery was an Inari shrine boxed in by tall buildings near my hotel.

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I got off the train at Nagoya, leaving my family to go on to Tokyo and home, tomorrow. I am on a different train going to Takayama, in the mountains of Gifu. This is the first rainy day of the trip. I’m happy to be on the train and won’t do much sightseeing. This is the day to do laundry.

Lunchbox, Ekiben

Inside lunch box

Rain

Lunch, rain and the train.

Inside lunch box

Rain

Lunchbox, Ekiben

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More rain pictures. Passing some wonderful scenery but giving up on pictures.

The train got in about an hour late. I didn’t know Japanese trains could ever be late. But something delayed us early in the trip. There was an announcement of which I understood nothing. My hotel is about a half block from the station. I walked to the hotel, did my laundry and listened to last night’s Rachel Maddow, then went out for a walk in the rain.

We will be leaving Kyoto on May 14, so all together we went to the train station to arrange for our seats on the Shinkansen. Then we got on a local train to Arashiyama. On the map it looked like there were two stops in Arashiyama. When everyone got off at the first stop I said we should stay on to the next one. Of course the train didn’t stop; it went a long distance through a tunnel and suddenly we were in the mountains. We got off at the first stop and took the return train. But I wasn’t sorry we took the extra side trip. I really wanted to go sit on a rock in the river. (It’s very hot here during the day.)

Again we split up. I started walking toward Tenryuji along with hundreds of others, and the family went to the Monkey Park. I explored a small garden which turned out to be a restaurant then went on to Hongon in, a sub temple of Tenryuji with a wonderful garden, which was almost empty.

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I left just as my family returned, we had lunch together then went to Tenryuji where I sat in the garden while they explored the temple and climbed the mountain behind the garden. I had done all this in 2007 or 2008 when I was better able to climb.

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My last trip to Japan was in 2013. I wanted to return, but I knew that if I returned by myself it would be the same trip. Having them with me has made this a much different trip. They interact differently with other people; I see things through their eyes making much new and exciting; and have gotten to see many things I would have missed had I been alone. We went for dinner to Kyoto Tower. I had never been there and not at night. We had a taxi driver who played rock and roll for us and ate at the food court.

We are in a Japanese house here in Kyoto. R & S are sleeping on futons on the floor. Charna and I have separate rooms, each with two beds that almost entirely fill the room. It’s not a great setup; the second bed is a nuisance. But my floor is tatami covered and I like that. Next to our house is a pot garden with interesting decorations.

Today, Steve went bicycling all over Kyoto; Charna stayed at our new house, and Robin and I went to the Imperial Palace Garden where Charna met us later. The palace grounds have now been designated a national park and much use is made of them by the public. Many of the buildings were open this week in honor of the accession of the new emperor.

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We met up with Steve and went on to the Nishiki Market filled with food and people. Much of the food was mysterious as is much else here in Japan. Dinner was in an interesting tofu restaurant.

Robin, Steve and Charna went to Miyajima. I went to the Prefectural Art Museum where I spent several hours looking at an ukiyoe exhibit of Kuniyoshi, Yoshitoshi and some of their followers. I loved this exhibit of woodblock prints that was set up to highlight the skill of the Yoshi family and their students. Instead of showing each artist separately the exhibit was divided into four categories: warriors, beautiful women, ghosts and murders, and satire on current events.

I had lunch back at the train station and spent time walking around. I particularly enjoyed watching the bean paste cakes being made.

At 15:22 we all got on the train to Kyoto.

Looking forward to our first ride on the Shinkansen, but with regrets for all the things we hadn’t had time to see in Tokyo, we moved on. We weren’t sure if we would have to take the local train with all of our luggage or if we would be able to take a taxi. Using Japanese SIM cards in our phones enables us to contact each other and to use WiFi everywhere, but we are not able to make calls, local or otherwise. So getting taxis became a challenge. But the force was with us and within minutes of reaching the main street we got a cab. There are two main stations in Tokyo for the Shinkansen. Both seemed to be equidistant from our little house so I opted for the one where there might be less traffic. Tokyo is huge and we went into an area where we had never been. It was an amazing ride. First, mile after mile of tall buildings. This is no Chicago or even New York with dense centers and lower rising peripheries. This is all “downtown”. There was one area where three levels of roadway rose above us and then we immediately descended to an underground tollway that went on for more miles. I don’t think we have anything like this in the states.

The train ride was uneventful, but we did get to see Mt. Fuji.

We stayed at the Vista Hotel in Hiroshima, which was a luxurious change from our little house in Tokyo. Arrived just in time to check in. Then the family went to the Peace Memorial while I went to Shukkeien garden. I went to the A-bomb Peace Memorial on a previous trip, when it affected me deeply. I think every American should see it, but probably once is enough. Shukkeien garden was destroyed by the bombing with the exception of one bridge.

It’s much different now.

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