In the Footsteps of the Samurai

We are on the Shinkansen headed to Kyoto and using the opportunity to (finally) do some blogging. We just spent 2 nights at the Fujiya hotel in Hakone/Miyanoshita which was amazing. It was built in 1878, the oldest resort hotel in Japan. Everything about the hotel felt like we had stepped back in time, from the cedar wood smell in the hallways, to the uniformed porters complete with little round caps, to the old pictures on the walls of past guests (Helen Keller, Dwight Eisenhower, John Lennon with Yoko and Sean) including The Shining-style New Years Eve gatherings with everyone in tuxedos huddled together in the ballroom looking up at the camera (one from 1916 looked eerily like me; apparently I've always been the caretaker there). It was an amazing, magical kind of place (looking out of our sliding wooden panel window, through the rain and fog, across the tiled roofs at the forested mountain rising on the opposite side of the valley) and quite a contrast from our ultra modern, 32nd floor hotel in Tokyo.

We hiked a length of the old Tokkaido highway, which the samurai used to travel between Kyoto and Tokyo. I will have a hard time describing how cool this was. It's almost jungle-like how thick the forest is, but it sheltered us from the wind howling above. Everything was wet and muddy, and every step treacherous as we climbed up and back down the steepest trail I've ever climbed. It took us two hours to cover about two miles in the mud and thick vegetation, and we ended up at a 350 year old sake house. It was amazing to imagine the samurai who had travelled the same path for hundreds of years and rested with a cup of sake under the same roof.

And now we are traveling at 200+ miles per hour to Kyoto. These old vs new contrasts have been a defining characteristic of Japan for me so far. Everywhere you turn you are bumping into either really old and historic buildings or temples or hotels or hiking trails or customs (even the baseball park we went to in Tokyo was built in a the 1920s and had welcomed the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig) or you are bumping into the high- tech future, like the vending machines that are everywhere, the incredible public transportation system, the forests of skyscrapers in Tokyo and the vast underground complexes of walkways and restaurants and shops and, of course, the toilet seats that anticipate your every need.

We have an apartment that we've rented for a week in Kyoto and, despite the amazing Japanese hospitality we've encountered at the hotels (with no tipping!), we are looking forward to having our own place for a while, with a kitchen.

All for now. Love to everyone!