We’ve been in Japan for 3 weeks now and this country feels enormous, even though the internet assures me it is roughly the size of California. Our experiences have been varied and awesome and I think I am particularly struck by the stark difference between our favorites experiences in Kumamoto and those in Tokyo.
Kumamoto Highlight
We arrived in Kumamoto-shi (the city of Kumamoto) via shinkansen (bullet train) after taking an overnight ferry from Busan, South Korea. Much like Korea, it felt to be about 1.5 million degrees outside, and we dripped sweat everywhere we went (the humidity made it feel like you were walking in soup). I enjoyed the fact that there were far fewer tourists for our first stop in Japan and that our little neighborhood in Kumamoto had everything we could want (a castle, a grocery store, 7,000 7-elevens, a movie theater, a beautiful garden complete with koi, ramen, and, of course, bubble tea). And the lack of crowds allowed us to stumble up on my single favorite place in Japan so far.
Tatsuda Nature Park was touted by Google Maps as a “playground”. At some point much earlier in my research I had marked it on my map and as we entered our final full day in Kumamoto I really wanted to do a hike of some sort but the public transport to another hiking spot seemed, well, spotty at best, so we instead thought we’d just give this place a whirl. Best. Decision. Ever. The lady selling tickets was super nice and likely very bored because we were the only people there and, based upon the number of spider webs we walked though, no one had probably been there all day. It cost about 300 yen for both of us ($2).
Decidedly not a playground (at least not in the traditional sense), Tatsuda Nature Park is the site of the Taishohji Temple, which was the family temple of the Hosakawa clan. There are four mausoleums, a restored tea house, a bamboo forest, and, as far as I could tell, a gazillion little shrines and markers all over the main temple area. It was just absolutely gorgeous. And we had an entirely private viewing, just us and a dozen pesky mosquitoes (the only drawback to the whole experience).
Tokyo Highlight(s)
Where Kumamoto felt relatively quiet and calm, Tokyo was just a humming throng of humanity. Not everywhere, sure, but there were no private experiences to be had. Just too many dang people! The biggest difference, too, was that we were suddenly surrounded by other foreigners. But Tokyo was also amazing for all the activities and experiences available: animal cafes (we hung with mini pigs and dogs), capsule toy shops (soooo many little plastic balls), Senso-ji Temple, the Imperial Palace gardens, Ueno Zoo, museums, etc., etc. But our highlights, by far, were: TeamLab: Planets and the September Grand Sumo Tournament.
TeamLab: Planets
There are two TeamLab locations with two different art experiences. Planets promised a lot more of a “hands-on” experience and as I have a very “hands-on” child, I opted for this one (TeamLab: Borderless is also supposed to be amazing). We bought our tickets in advance but I was surprised that we didn’t need them as far in advance as sumo and Ghibli Park tickets (we had to get on the internet THE moment those tickets were available to even have a prayer of getting them). You have to book a specific time and there is a bit of line when you get there, even with a booking, but then we were let in and got to experience three main sections: Water, Forest, and Garden. The website had suggested bringing a change of clothes for children in the water section and only once CS got soaked did it become clear that they didn’t really WANT you to get soaked. Oh well. He had fun doing it anyway!
Water was followed by Forest, which combined elements of a playground (a slide, a climbing apparatus, a trampoline) with art and science. In one section you could color in a picture of an animal (I chose a frog and CS chose a snake) and they would scan it and then it would appear moving around on the floor and walls, multiplying. And when you stepped (or stomped) on these animals, they would explode into palettes of color. We had started with the stomping and only later realized that we were stomping other people’s creations. Wild!
We finished in Garden, which had live orchids suspended from the ceiling that would raise and lower and an outdoor part with these sort of spacey silver stones that you could rock and they would make sound (we came back to them as it got dark and they were lit up). These pictures don’t do most of the experience justice and they don’t even cover all we saw. Just a cool, cool place!
Grand Sumo Tournament
CS and I got a taste of sumo when we stopped to watch it through a window in Kumamoto, so we vaguely recognized a few wrestlers going into this experience. These are tickets I tried to book the moment they went live, using spotty WiFi in rural Fiji. The site was overloaded with traffic and I couldn’t even get past the initial page. Finally, after MANY attempts I did, only to find it was all sold out. So, I went the third party route (which costs twice as much) but we got tickets and it was totally worth it.
Our seats were not amazing but they weren’t awful and we could see all the action, which was great. Because the sport is traditional they don’t have big screens that do instant replays so you have to pay attention or you’ll miss it! We were there for the 13th day of the 15 day tournament and there were two front runners with 11-1 records (each wrestler battles just once a day): Onosato and Hoshoryo. These guys also happened to be the current yokozuna (top-ranked rikishi (sumo wrestlers)), so it was exciting to watch this, as it doesn’t often happen the top wrestlers actually end up at the very top in the same tournament. Sumo has a lot of ritual to it, with many elements of purification, such as rinsing their mouths with holy water, throwing salt into the ring to ward off evil spirits, and stomping to stamp out evil spirits. They also have to flip their arms to show they don’t have weapons and they only start fighting after doing an initial sort of greeting where they get down like they are going to wrestle and then don’t.
Our favorite wrestler, Kotozakura, had a great upset against Hoshoryo, giving the yokozuna is second loss. He was supposed to wrestle Onosato the next day but had to step down due to an injury so Onosato got a buy. CS were so hooked at this point that we watched the last two days of the tournament in our hotel room in Matsumoto!
