Tales From Japan

Stories of our travails in Tokyo

In Search Of…Kurohime

As you flock to the theaters this weekend to see the Star Trek prequel, I am thinking about Leonard Nimoy’s stint on a different TV show:  In Search of….  Each week Leonard with that great voice would narrate you through the discovery process of some ruin in  Turkey or a long forgotten Egyptian pharaoh.  Each episode would end with a cameo of Leonard looking oddly out of place without his pointy ears or his SS Enterprise uniform.  I used to find it hilarious the way his voice changed, just barely masking disbelief when had to do episodes on the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot.  I imagine that same voice now, reading this tale to you:

In Search of …the hidden treasures of Kurohime.

Nagano, which in Japanese means “the long plain”, is only a one and half hour shinkansen (bullet train) ride from Tokyo.  Nagano may best be known for its hosting of the 1998 Winter Olympics.  It appears to be a lovely town surrounded by tall mountains.  I say appears, because I have never set foot outside of the station.  From the station we caught a local train north to Kurohime, a small town that quickly gives way to farmland, and is surrounded by five mountains, the most favored of which is Kurohime, the black princess.  She possesses a lovely conical symmetry, capped in white.

This was our second trip out to Kurohime.  We spent our first Golden Week in Japan here.  At that time we had been invited  to stay in the Maeda’s cabin.  The Maeda’s were Pam’s host family when she was a foreign exchange student in Japan.  Maeda-san called a few weeks before Golden Week to inform us that the new cabin had been completed.  The new cabin, unlike the old one, had indoor plumbing, a heater, some insulation and three bedrooms.  The old cabin reminded me of boy scout camping trips…roughing it was the theme.  Yuko, Pam’s host sister, and her family would be coming up as well.  Maeda-san told Pam to hurry and make the train reservations, “the trains fill up quickly during Golden Week.”

We left out of Ueno Station which has a healthy number of shinkansen tracks.  We had hoped to leave Sunday morning, but were not able to get on a train until just after noon.  There is at least one shinkansen train leaving Ueno Station every five minutes.  The track with trains heading toward Nagano had a train leaving every 7 to 10 minutes.  The train we had reservations for was a typical shinkansen: 15 cars, 20 rows per car, 6 seats per row.  Go ahead, do the math; yep that is a lot of people.  And those are just the trains leaving for one destination from one station.

We are good little Japanese Holiday travelers; we have had five years to perfect this mode of transportation.  There are a number of keys to traveling in Japan. The first is my favorite:  pack light.  Number two: bring omiyagi – gifts for whomever you might see.  So we had gifts for Yuko’s boys, Yuko, her husband and of course Maeda-san.  And lastly, the obento.  All good Japanese travelers know you can’t really travel unless you have an obento – the small boxes that contain a meal.  For the record the stations at Kobe and Kyoto have the best obentos.

I have said it before but I will say it again, I love the shinkansen.  Its smooth, its fast, its convenient.  No security, no immigration, no customs, no long commutes to remote airports, no special passes for express ways, no gas stations or debates about who will drive which leg.  Everything runs on time.  Its all so wonderfully civilized.

Maeda-san met us at the station in Kurohime and took the scenic route to the new cabin.  And OH MY what a cabin it is!  We were shown to our room before saddling up to the table next to the large glass doors to take in the view and have some tea.  Sachan had spent three hours pondering trees.  “Will there be trees?”  “Will there be trees I can climb?” “Can I climb to the top?”  “Will you watch me?” “What kind of threes will they have?”  She was concerned when we had gotten out at the station as there were no trees there.  But she noticeably calmed down and became excited once we started driving up the mountain through the trees.  While we sipped our tea, Sachan began working her way around the house, giving each and every tree a test climb.  Sachan in search of the perfect climbing tree was a big like Goldilocks:  this is one is too big, this one is too small and this one is JUST right.  The just right one was in the front of the cabin, and had some limbs further up where she could stand and rock in the wind.

That evening Maeda-san fixed us sukiyaki.  Sukiyaki is a traditional Japanese dish that is generally cooked on a special hotplate that is set in the middle of the table.  Sukiyaki has a distinctively sweet taste as a result of the sauce which is a combination of soy sauce, sugar and mirin – a sweet rice wine vinegar.  Some of the sauce is placed in a large container on the hotplate.  To this is added some type of cabbage (usually a chinese cabbage like that found in bok choy or the napa cabbage found in kimchi), mushrooms (Maeda-san had gotten some of these lovely tall thin white ones that are in season right now), big cubes of tofu (grilled tofu with sukiyaki sauce is divine!), shirataki noodles (these are the noodles made from konyaku, a jelly like gelatinous mass with no taste), leeks, and some thinly sliced meat.  With chopsticks, everyone then pulls out bits and pieces of what they want.  Traditionally, each person has a small dipping bowl as part of their setting.  The bowl contains a raw egg that is beaten with the chops sticks (by the way, the next time you need to beat an egg, grab a set of chopsticks and use that instead of a fork…you won’t be disappointed with the results!).  Then the meat and vegetables that you pull out of the pot are dipped into the raw egg before being eaten.  Five years in Japan will help you adjust to runny scrambled eggs, but we aren’t ready to dip perfectly cooked veggies and meat into raw eggs.

What else is there to search for in Kurohime?  We had already found the perfect mountain, the perfect climbing tree, the perfect cabin, the perfect meal to end a day.  Well there is always the layers of Maeda-san’s mischievousness to uncover.  While Maeda-san was getting the ofuro ready for the girls I started washing the dishes.  Maeda-san came out and informed that I was doing it wrong.  Apparently I was erring in two ways:  I wasn’t listening to music, and I wasn’t drinking beer.  Ahhh, in search of a kindred spirit in the mountains…we can check that off the list.  I told Maeda-san to put on some music and to pour me whatever he was drinking.

Maeda-san will drink water.  He will drink tea.  He will drink coffee.  He will drink wine.  He will drink beer.  But what Maeda-san loves to drink is sho-cho.  Sho-chu is the high alcohol content uncle of sake.  Maeda-san always points out that drinking sho-chu is good for your stomach, acting as a digestif.  I am just a guy washing dishes; who am I to say no?

Maeda-san popped a CD in, grabbed two bottles, two glasses and headed for the table.  I had a feeling I was either in for a very long or a very short night.  That’s when those old familiar organ chords rang from the speakers in a prelude I had heard and known since I was a wee tot.  But these weren’t just any ol’ chords, these were chords I knew.  There was some distinctive guitar pickin’ accompanying those organ chords, and then started simultaneously as Maeda-san poured the first round:  Maeda-san and Brian jumping right in as Willie Nelson sang “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…” It was a truly beautiful, if slightly off key moment.  Maeda-san likes to top off his night cap with some hot water.  So he topped off our ochoko (small sake glasses – a glass a little bigger than a shot glass but smaller than a demitasse) of sho-chu with some hot water.  Willie and (rice) whiskey seems to work in any culture!

Things were going well.  From previous drinking experiences with Maeda-san I knew the key was not to let him fall behind.  His ability to count is the first  thing to go.  But when Pam came out of the bathroom with Samantha and asked, “Is that Willie?  And can you turn him down a bit I need to get Sachan to bed?” I was momentarily distracted and that was when Maeda-san counting took a bad turn… for me.  While he poured himself another ochoko of the regular sho-chu (which comes in at about 20% alcohol),  he filled my ochoko with Awamori.  Awamori is a special sho-chu found in Okinawa.  Maeda-san had recently been down to Okinawa on a business trip and brought a few bottles of Awamori back.  This awamori was checking in at 46% alcohol.  So while Maeda-san’s ochoko was half full with sho-chu, mine was topped off with Awamori.

Maeda-san is taking English lessons again.  So the music and the conversation turned to Monk, Armstrong and Coltrane, while I kept my hand over my glass pleading “kekko desu” (I am done!) every time he tried to pour more Awamori in my glass.  I went to bed with jazz still softly swinging in my head, a nose I couldn’t feel, and a happy stomach.

The second day brought more searches.  We headed out after an early breakfast for a walk through the woods, down to good sized pond covered with lilypads where Sachan and I talked about Monet’s lily pond and garden in Giverny.

We thought that the new cabin was going to be built where the old cabin was, but the old cabin is a few twists and turns in the road away.  It is now owned by a nephew and niece of Maeda-san’s who split their time there.  After another walk and lunch we played host to the relatives who were bored but decided to come up and be entertained by the foreigners.

Yuko’s family drove up from their home and got stuck in traffic.  But they arrived in time for supper which was a good thing since they had the grill and the food.  Yuko’s husband is a master of the grill.  He and his son set up the grill.  I was sent to the kitchen to start cutting things up. And then everyone adjourned to the front porch to chow down on a variety of grilled fish, seafood, vegetables, shellfish, beef, pork and IKA!  As you may well know by now, I love ika-squid!  Yuko and brought squid on a stick.  Lightly grilled and then dipped in a slightly spicy yakiniku sauce…quick, someone turn the Willie Nelson back on ’cause that is the only thing missing from making this perfect.

We would leave the next day but not before taking in the local sights:  another walk through the woods, a walk through the fields being prepared for spring planting, a stop by the elephant statues, a walk down to Lake Nojiriko, where the kids would go out on paddle boats, and lunch of soba noodles (buckwheat noodles for which Nagano is famous.)

If you are in search of a perfect vacation, I have to say that Kurohime may have it all.  Now if only we can figure out how to get out there this winter and do some skiing!

These Naumann elephants with their crowned shaped heads were indigenous to this area during the paleolithic age about 40,000 years ago.

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