For starters Japan is clean.  Up down left right inside outside.  Clean.  Also tidy.  I eyeballed every sidewalk in every city we visited and managed to find one gum wrapper on a sidewalk in Kanazawa, exiled and isolated by its peers.  And here is the weird thing: no trash cans.  They expect you to pocket your popsicle wrapper and toss it at home.  And everyone plays right along.  No floggings for litterbugs because there aren’t any.  Also no graffiti.

The iron foundries of Japan fashion manhole covers of such fanciful design that they tempt you to pry one up and take it home.  Round ones.  Oblong ones.  Blue ones.  Green ones.  Elaborate ones.  I never expected to be writing about manhole covers of all things in this blog, but heck these are really some terrific manhole covers.

Ambulances are Doctor Cars.

We have checked into four hotels along the way, each with a bathroom smaller than the last.  This one measures four feet by five-and-half feet.  The bathtub occupies half of that footprint, the toidy and the sink another aggregate fraction.  When it happens that Jane and I need to brush our teeth coincidentally, I stand in the tub.  They try to compensate for the cramped space with elaborate plumbing gadgets and multi-function toilets controlled by button panels bolted to the walls, but the instructions are in Japanese characters and I am protective of that region where the sun don’t shine so dare touch nothing but the flush button, signified by a little whirlpool.

This hotel also sports sex segregated communal baths down on the second floor where you can lather up with no risk of boinking your knee on the sink, then rinse off and sigh into a giant pool of scalding water, the best sleeping potion ever.

Professor Hidesaburo Ueno brought home a young Japanese Akita dog in 1924 and formed a prompt bond with his pet, named Hachiko, who followed him to Tokyo’s Shibaru Station every morning, then trotted back to greet his train every evening.  A year later, on May 21, 1925, Professional Ueno suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at the University and died mid-lecture, yet faithful Hachiko returned to Shibaru Station every afternoon at the same time for the next nine years, nine months, and fifteen days, until he died on March 8, 1935.

Once the commuters of Tokyo learned Hachiko’s story via an article published about him in the newspaper, they brought him bits of food every day.  When he died they erected a statue of Hachiko outside the station and there line up daily to snap selfies with this canine symbol of loyalty and enduring affection.

Sumo wrestlers live in stables with their fellows where they train together, sleep together, pump iron together, and eat together, as in eat and eat and eat together.  The seasoned wrestlers, who have eaten themselves from large to ginormous, assign all of the scut chores to the rookies and maul them in the practice ring without mercy.  No point in babying them; their professional lives play out in seconds-long bouts of violent collisions determined by balance, strength, technique, and mass.  

Top wrestlers meet in six annual tournaments lasting three weeks.  Each wrestler faces off in fifteen bouts, never meeting the same opponent twice.  Win eight or more bouts and advance in the standings.  Keep winning enough and you become that tournament’s champion.  In September of last year, 363 pound Ozekei Takakeisho won it all.  He and others at his level make generous livings.  Most don’t.

In this young man’s game, some manage early retirement by giving demonstrations to groups of tourists.  Our gentle giant challenged volunteers to move him.  Jane and I double teamed him.  We couldn’t even budge the smile off his face.

Geisha houses work like sumo stables.  The house mother governs admission and training.  Nobody tosses a geisha neophyte out of the ring, but unless she masters the rigors of singing, dancing, drumming, tea-making, and conversation, the house mother excuses her and wishes her better luck elsewhere.  

The geisha’s skills are the obverse of the sumo wrestler’s.  Delicacy, not force.  Extended precision, not a burst of impact.  Portion control, not gorging.  No aspect of her nightly performances can suggest sexual seduction.  Every confidence shared must remain confidential.  She employs all her technique and all her tact with one aim: to entertain clients, to make them feel happy and safe and appreciated.  Try that every night of your professional life.

Both of these ancient arts thrive in today’s Japan where conformity and discipline and subjugation of individuality govern everything.  Nearly.

Saionji Kintsune built Kyoto’s Golden Pavilion back in 1397 and slathered gold leaf over the top two stories.  History happened — shoguns wars fires — so the Golden Pavilion was rebuilt a time or two, most recently in 1950.  As you know, even your pure gold degrades over time.  They re-gilded the whole thing a decade ago for a million bucks.

We spent and hour with a Buddhist monk named Obayashi in an airy pavilion at Senkoji Temple perched on a verdant hilltop above the Oigawa River.  He told us a few things about Zen Buddhism and led us in two meditations.  The best part of our visit though was his own humble humorous generous radiant self.

The Japanese have been mining sulphur high on the slopes of the mountain above Hakone for decades.  You can ride a swinging gondola to the top and peer down into the hellish smoking mine pits as you near the summit.  Stinky!  If you hard boil an egg in sulfurous water the shell turns black, and if you eat one of those black-shelled eggs, seven years are added to the span of your life.  Suckers line up at a hard-boiled-egg window there to purchase life extensions.  What the heck we lined up with them.  The charcoal color of the shell is admittedly a little off-putting but the vendors provide a salt packet for you so our eggs tasted  just fine.

Spirits and gods are believed to inhabit mountains and rivers and forests and trees and rocks here, in the case of Mount Fuji a shy lass who wraps herself in misty clouds so as to shroud her beautiful form from greedy eyes.  She made an exception for us one bright morning, peeling back her diaphanous garment to expose a soft sloping shoulder.