- Samurai, Swords and Sashimi
- 28 November 05
- Travel
- 3 Comments
The Japanese sensibility and spiritualism extends to their gardens. What I didn't know is how well cared for and little havens these are. They can be found even on the roof of apartment buildings - as this one was directly across the road from my hotel room.
A little further along and the view from my hotel room shows off another building with a temple(?) on the roof - the white building on the right is a sneak peek into the embassy of good ol' Uncle Sam. Lucky I ain't a spy.
My hotel is located in the heart of the embassy district, and all my business meetings will be within walking distance from here to the various Japanese Ministries.
One of the interesting and typical Japanesey things I found was the umbrella stands. One takes your umbrella, places in a stand - where one then looks the umbrella in place and then off you go with your key. The key is not to protect the brolly from being stolen, crime is rare and people leave their expensive racing push bikes everywhere not bothering to lock them, but rather so that you don't pick up the wrong umbrella - they do tend to be pretty similar after all.
We had a series of preparatory meetings today prior to the formal round of discussions and bilaterals later this week (ah wlecome to the wonderful world of diplomacy). Our Japaneses colleagues are currently preoccupied with a major scandal that has takem hold here, whilst it would be imprudent to say too much I understand it has already involved a case of hari kari. After this prep meeting, I only had time to do a couple of thingss:
a) go to a samurai sword store; and
b) eat dinner somewhere reasonably off the beaten track.
Firstly, here's a pic of some armour in the Japanese sword store front window - I was not allowed to take pics in the store.
The place is a veritable treasure trove of swords and armour, dating back to circa 1185. We were shown around the ground floor, and then taken to the 3rd floor and worked our way down back down to the ground floor. Truly, it was absolutely fascinating to look at the craftsmanship, engraving across all these swords...and armour and ancient saddles of the samurai as well. Each sword takes a year to complete, and there are only 200 odd craftsman still plying their trade today, producing swords to such exacting standards using traditional methods. Looking at the 1185 sword it is just impossible to imagine that someone close to 1000 years ago could produce something of this quality. True works of art, and priced to match $250K to $500K.
After that visit it was time to break free from the shackles and find an authentic Japanese restaurant. We wander around the area around the hotel, for a while and eventually found a place that was below ground floor level - and seemed somewhat surprised to find a couple of caucasians walk in off the street - always a good sign. It was helped by the fact that the manager had very limited English skills and we had even worse....make that no Japanese skills at all. Nonetheless, we had a lovely sashimi (tuna, salmon, octupus), tempura vegetables and beef carpaccio (the manager's choice and what an inspired choice it was). here's our two inspired chefs hard at work to feed me.
It looked and felt very authentic...heck it was authentic, the 5 beers and 5 sakes each no doubt added to that feeling. The price per head was very reasonable and half that if I'd dined at the hotel.
Tomorrow, meetings permitting (and the effects of the sake having worn off) the fish markets and shopping at Ginza! <<Older Main Newer>>
comments
Nice to see you have wandered off the track for a change
I had a spout of bonsai tree growing and topiary garden ... but felt it was like ‘trying to control nature herself’ which is impossible. So stopped.
Hope you didn’t purchase a sword with hari kari in mind.
Please at least learn basic greetings and words of thanks - Aussies are not THAT ill-polite. Sayoonara.
Posted by Anonymous on 29.11.05 at 01.27pm
I had heard the same thing about Japanese honesty and how people can leave anything laying around and it is not touched. I found the rooftop gardens fascinating - they look like entire landscapes, not just a pot or two here and there. Leave it to the Japanese to do something so utterly beautiful and creative.
Posted by Karen Winters on 07.12.05 at 05.04am
I am Geisha with skill of Samurai. How come I wasn’t invited on this trip?
Posted by Pink Fifi on 18.12.05 at 01.32am