First up was a trip down to the Ikegami neighborhood in the extreme south of Tokyo. This is where Rieko lives. While most of the city I've seen is dominated by big buildings, Ikegami is more of a bedroom community. You might remember me referring to Yanaka as shitamachi - "downtown." Ikegami doesn't really qualify, because it was a southern outpost during the Edo era. I'm pretty sure it was the first station of the Tokaido Road outside Edo at that time. I liked the neighborhood - it was like seeing a really nice section of Brooklyn after spending a lot of time in Manhattan. The scale was more human and the atmosphere was friendly. Just one of those intangibles you notice when you walk through a neighborhood. And there were a lot of neat old buildings interspersed among the newer ones.
This was also my first foray off the subway I'm familiar with. I traveled south on the Asakusa line to Gotanda Station to transfer to the JR (Japan Rail) Ikegami line, which is all above-ground. It was great to see the little houses and businesses as I passed by. There's less navigation help aboard the trains, but there are still signs in English at every station. Rieko was waiting for me when I arrived at Ikegami Station. It was reminiscent of some of the little commuter rail stations out west of Philadelphia.
We walked from the station to Honmon-ji Temple. Along the way, Rieko pointed out lots of things that helped identify this as the neighborhood where she lives - "this is the shop where I rent videos," "my brother lives down this street," "this is the elementary school where I went to first grade." If we hadn't been pressed for time, I would have loved to really explore the area and see all the little stuff that makes it a living neighborhood.
But pressed for time we were, so on we went. Honmon-ji is a small temple compared to some of the larger ones in Tokyo, but it's also the home of the "Pure Land" sect of Buddhism. Its major proponent and most popular figure was Nichiren. After his enlightenment to the tenets he set forth, he was seen as an agitator and exiled to a far-off island. But the local people caused enough of a ruckus that his exile was rescinded and he was allowed to return. After many years of traveling the country and teaching his philosophy, he came to Ikegami, where he died at the top of a hill. This is the site of Honmon-ji Temple.
Honmon-ji is also the scene of one of Hasui Kawase's famous woodblock prints, "Ikegami Honmon-ji Temple." I took a picture that shows roughly the same scene - I'll include a side-by-side.
After Honmon-ji, we hit the trains to go to Chiba, the prefecture northeast of Tokyo. Along the way, we passed a bit of a landmark - Tokyo Disney. Right away, I knew something was different.... The castle, which looks very much like the one in Florida, is tiny. It's maybe 70 or 80 feet tall. And Space Mountain is more like Space Molehill. I wasn't going to say anything, but Rieko asked... she didn't seem particularly crestfallen, so I didn't feel like I was wrong to tell her the truth. I'm sure the place has its charms, but from the train, it looked like a miniature imitation.
And why were we gong to Chiba, you might ask? Well.... after seeing the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants playing on TV, I thought it would be great to head out to a Japanese beis-baru game. It's tough to get tickets to the Giants (they're Japanese baseball's equivalent of the Yankees), so we opted instead to travel out to Chiba to see the Marines play the Fukuoka Hawks. The Marines play in Chiba Marines Stadium, a nice ballpark that seats about 30,000. It's built up high on the sides, but has an open top. They play on artificial turf. The play was decidedly Triple-A level, but what made it a blast was the fans. We were in the half-full reserved seats in the lower level on the third-base side, but you couldn't have begged a seat out in the bleachers. That's where the faithful gather. All the seats in right field were taken up by people in white Chiba Marines jerseys. The seats in left were populated by fans in black Fukuoka Hawks jerseys.
Each group of fans cheers when their team is at bat. They might applaud a bit when one of their fielders makes a nice play, but it seems that there's an unspoken rule that you don't strike up an organized cheer or song unless your team is batting. And I mean it when I say organized cheers and songs. Each group has a horn section and big taiko drums. They cheer each batter, they sing songs, and they go nuts when their team scores a run. But, curiously, they don't seem to know about the Seventh-Inning Stretch or "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," which would have been off the scale for unintentional comedy.
The Marines were down 2-0 after the top of the first, but came back big with a 5-run fourth inning. That was all of the scoring.
Odd things I noticed.... the pitchers for some reason throw roughly 1 out of every 10 pitches in the dirt... The count is expressed in "strikes and balls" instead of "balls and strikes..." The girls who sell beer don't carry around a tray of warm beer in cups covered with saran wrap - they have actual freezing-cold mini-kegs on their backs, complete with little CO2 cylinders. You get a cold 16-ounce (give or take) draft beer for your six bucks... Even though it's an open-air stadium, there's no smoking in the seating area. And people really don't smoke. They go up to a designated smoking area on the mezzanine... Foul territory (at this stadium, at least) looks to be about the size of a football field... People don't kill each other for foul balls. Most of the time, they let them drop and whoever gets the ball on the bounce keeps it... They still use funny-looking bullpen carts to bring in relief pitchers... In this land that seems to have cutesy cartoon characters for everything short of the Emperor, there were no mascots on the field or in the stands... The Marines' manager is Bobby Valentine, former manager of the New York Mets.
Tomorrow is the big trip to Hakone to see Mount Fuji and the Tokaido Road. It will involve leaving Tokyo by 7:00 AM, hiking roughly four miles in hilly terrain, and dealing with cooler weather in the mountains. I can't wait!
Enjoy the pictures!
