Miyanoshita - April 21-25

Unfortunately the pleasure of being in a mountainous area is that while the views can be breath-taking they can also disappear in mists of fog and rain, and this is what we experienced for the first days. Since the point of visiting here is to go out in nature and view Fuji while hiking, we like many of our fellow travelers spent a good deal of time around the hotel enjoying it's very funky old world charm. German kitsch music playing all day long in the lobby; dark wooden nooks and crannies where old photographs and maps told of the history of this museum; an old-fashioned spirit in all bars tea rooms, and restaurants; lovely ponds and gardens outside every window and memorabilia in every nook and cranny. Everyone who was anyone has stayed here at some point including the same people who went to the Nara hotel....Helen Keller, Charlie Chaplin, the emperor amongst many and Nehru, John & Yoko (with kids), and others who are honored here.

In the lower level (many levels since this whole complex is built into the side of a small mountain), along with the two natural mineral water spa pools full sized swimming pool, and the wedding section, was the history museum of the hotel which we looked at most carefully. It was here that we saw all the registers stored in a locked bookcase...so we knew we'd see those signatures.... which we did when I returned to the front desk. There it was - May 1928 - Herbert Meyer from Leipzig and Walter Maron from Dresden signed in for a visit to room 92 in the hotel. It was a real thrill to see their signatures there after 85 years... and Eerie. I took photographs to bring home as 'proof' of their existence and that was it -- almost the last bit of our re-creation completed with signatures to prove it all.

Our first two nights of our stay we were eating authentic Japanese food in an old inn which was once part of a shogun's estate. We left our shoes and umbrellas at the entrance and were led to a private tatami-matted room where a low table and low chairs were available for us westerners. Our waitress, a beautiful woman who spoke absolutely no English, led us through a series of courses - 10 in all - some outstanding, some not so much to our liking...but this was something we wanted, so we ate it all using our chopsticks correctly, our moist towel correctly (not for neck or head, only for fingers), and felt only slightly self-conscious, though we were the only ones in the room. After two+ hours of changing courses, changing plates, and changing tastes (all carefully documented on the IPhone), we bid our hostess good night and walked back in the rain to our room. The second night was pretty much a repeat of the first except that our lovely hostess had been a three--month exchange student in Seattle and had been to the theater in NYC (she loves singing, and broadway shows). She was more able to explain what we were eating, and how to eat it, and had this most amusing giggle of delight when she and Bob could talk about theater.  

We were supposed to eat Japanese again on the 3rd night, but realized that our love of Japanese cuisine is more that which we get in America: tempura, teppanyaki, sushi and sashimi. We were less enamored of the many tofu-based foods or the other very 'mushy', or 'jellied', foods which we were supposed to relish and to enjoy. So for our last two nights we ate in the French restaurant - or more correctly, the Japanese version of a 'French' restaurant. Here we were in a large cavernous banquet hall which lacked all the charm of our intimate first evenings but which was where the boys would have eaten, and where the apprentice waiters and waitresses could practice their new skills at serving western food. Here too, a set menu was provided as we sat down and in a two hour window we went through all the courses with our fellow Japanese travelers. When you don't have all those changing bowls, plates and steaming servers, plain old china seems almost boring, but the food (while not totally French) was very good.

On the one day that promised sunshine, we hired a touring taxi, and guide, to take us on a ride following what the boys had done in the fog. We drove up and around Lake Ashi with our 'english-speaking' guide whose English was like my Greek - some words, some comprehension, but risky if one went off the main conversation or blank stares are returned. It is the end of cherry blossom time, and the trees are just beginning to bud so we were able to get many views of the lake...but no Mt. Fuji. As we got to the look-out point, and it started to rain again in earnest, our guide with a chuckle pointed to where we should see the famed mountain, and we imagined how splendid it must be since absolutely nothing was to be seen. We stopped at a series of tourist spots - where the cable car began, where the cog railway began, where steam was rising out of volcanic escape holes, and where the lake boat cruises began. This was exactly the same as any tourist mecca in any country: ticket windows, food kiosks, and a million snapping cameras. (We commented on the fact that this reminded us of Lake Como which led us to acknowledge that when traveling, one always finds a reference to sites one has visited in the past, which means that Japanese visiting Lake Como probably think of Lake Ashi.)

The two highlights beyond the lovely landscapes and the non-view of Mt. Fuji were: our stop at a Shinto shrine, supposedly favored by the current emperor, where we dropped a coin, made a wish, bowed, clapped and hoped it would all come true; and a stop at the Meissen Museum. What's the chance that in the mountains of Japan in a small nondescript town, there would be a museum to German porcelain. It was surreal. Here we were recreating the trip of two German boys who ate off of Meissen everyday of their lives and who had come to this remote part of Japan...and here was this museum. Of course we had to stop and I went in to chat with the proprietress - in German! The questions which rise up in the brain are why here, why Meissen, why in Japan. I took their brochure and hoped that some translation work by friends in Tokyo may solve this. But it was a great book-end to the whole trip since we depart the next day back to Tokyo for only a few days before boarding our ship back to America.

This stop was somewhat of a 'bust' because the weather refused to cooperate, but in terms of sensing that we were on the boy's trip it was probably one of the highlights: the same hotel, looking the same; the same geography pretty much unchanged; the names in the register and the Meissen museum....a great wrap-up to what has been a wonderful series of journeys of discovery.