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If it's Tuesday, This Must be Kyoto
The thing about having a two-week Japan Rail Pass is that it's tempting to pack more travel, activities, meet-ups, etc. into the fortnight of "free" travel than is really compatible with sleep, let alone writing. And that has been my own case. I simply haven't had time to blog, because I've been out there engaging in eminently bloggable activities. However, there's a school of thought that living is even more important than writing about it afterwards, so perhaps it's not such a tragedy. I may forget some of the details, but here goes my account of a fairly hectic week.
It begins with my bidding Mami a farewell as grateful as it was fond at Sapporo station, and making my way to Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture in northern Honshu, home of the writer Kenji Miyazawa, who features in my forthcoming book as someone avowedly influenced by British children's literature (or at least Lewis Carroll). He lived in Iwate his whole life (apart from a brief and it seems rather unhappy sojourn in Tokyo), and that remote and sparsely populated prefecture became transformed in his imagination into the dreamland - his word - of Ihatov, the setting for his many fantasy stories. He was unsuccessful in his own lifetime, though, and died at 37 (cf. Van Gogh).
I think it's fair to say that Hanamaki has made up for this lack of recognition since. It was already clear at Shin-Hanamaki station that this is a very Kenji-orientated town - going by the omiyage shop, etc.
I took a taxi to the ryokan, and the taxi driver pointed out various Kenji-related sites, as well as letting drop that his grandmother's brother had even met the great man. But, as he also pointed out, Kenji is only one of Hanamaki's famous sons, the other being the baseball player, Ohtani Shōhei. We agreed that genius comes in many different forms.
The last pear in a grove planted by Kenji
Ohtani's high school - where the bus stopped so that we could pay our respects
The ryokan was part of an onsen village a few miles out of Hanamaki, full of misty rain, humidity, fast-running streams and old-world-going-on-slightly-musty pleasures. It was far from any shops or restaurants or even convenience stores, and it was touch and go whether I'd get any dinner (apparently I hadn't ordered any when I booked in months ago, no doubt imagining naively that I'd be able to grab something cheap from a Lawson's), but in the end they served me something in my room that, while it didn't meet Hokkaido standards of sashimi freshness, was perfectly fine. Having massacred most of the mosquitos over the course of the evening, I slept well on the futon, and on the whole I liked the place - but the tap delivered only a trickle of yellow water, which forced me eek out the bottle of water they'd provided me with, and the sencha that awaited me on arrival.
I'd booked a ride on the "Yamaneko and Donguri" (Mountain Cat and Acorn) bus - named after a Kenji short story. The bus turned up to a stop near the ryokan, looking suitably Taishou era in style, and off we went to visit various Kenji-relevant sites. (We also visited the house of Kotaro Takamura, which was interesting to me as he was a friend of Bernard Leach, potter and modifier of kotatsus for long-legged foreigners.) The passengers were just me and a couple of older women. They were a bit wary at first, but we soon became pals. I should perhaps note that, throughout the time I was in Hokkaido and Iwate I didn't see another person who didn't at least appear to be Japanese. Tourists are now allowed into Japan, but only in groups, where they are strictly herded along by someone holding aloft a furled umbrella. I promise I do realise how lucky I am.
For my purposes, the highlight was a visit to the so-called "English Shore", a name Kenji gave to a stretch of the Kitakami river where layers of mudstone were sometimes revealed (although no longer, because the river is now higher), and which he claimed reminded him of the White Cliffs of Dover. No doubt you can see the resemblance.
The English Shore now and in Kenji's time
On Monday night I came back to Tokyo for a night, and set out again the next morning for Kansai and the second leg of my two-week pass. My base of operations was the Nishonomiya flat of my friend Sarah, who's currently teaching at Kobe Jogakuin for a year. She very kindly let me go in and out to meet various friends over the next few days, though in between we had a few very convivial meals in Nishinomiya itself. Of course, I'm wildly jealous of the Kobe Jogakuin gig, but it's hard to bear a grudge against someone so generous and just plain nice.
First up was meeting two friends from Bristol - Moe and Ayako (my former tenant) in Kyoto. Ayako had asked if I'd rather go to see the famous golden temple or a moss garden, and of course, being a moss-maven, I opted for the moss, so we found ourselves hiking up to Sanzenin, on the outskirts of Kyoto, in the kind of hot and humid conditions that the Japanese call "mushiatsui" (lit. "steamy heat"). It provides great conditions for moss, of course, and in fact I was growing some on my clothes before a couple of hours were up. But it was worth it for the jade-like result.
Afterwards, Ayako took us through a field of red shiso (which is much like the green shiso used as a garnish with sushi, but often used to make a summer drink), where little green frogs were nested like emeralds among the leaves, very beautifully. Ayako will be returning to Europe shortly, to live (on another working holiday visa) in Ireland, so I have hopes of seeing her there fairly soon.
Since her time in Bristol, Moe has taken up her former job in Osaka - that of a nurse working with people with brain injuries - which does sound a fascinating specialism. (Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat was one of the big books of my teenage years.) One thing she mentioned over lunch was that, at her hospital, there is a leftover of the days when German was regarded as the language of science and medicine, which was very much the case when Japan first Westernised in the Meiji era. For example, the hospital slang in Osaka for water, die and eat is wasser, sterben and essen. An interesting survival, don't you think? It was news to Ayako, too.
Wednesday was an Osaka day, and it came in three parts. First was a tour of Osaka Prefectural Library under the aegis of Yasuko Doi, who showed me and my anthropologist friend Eriko round their fabulous collection of Japanese children's books, which runs from the earliest days (Iwaya Sazanami's Kogane-maru, etc.) to the latest manga. Unlike the otherwise-excellent collection at the National Diet Library in Ueno, they don't bind the collections, but preserve the spines, the obi (the little strips of paper that go round many Japanese books like the wide belt of a kimono), and other seeming ephemera, which are often of great subsequent interest. For a research (rather than a lending) library this is surely the way to go?
In the afternoon, Moe took me round some interesting parts of Osaka, beginning with the Korean quarter near and under Tsuruhashi. We ate Korean barbecue, which was structured much like the Ghengis Khan I'd had in Hokkaido the week before, and was just as delicious. The slightly underworld feeling of the subterranean stalls in that area was something quite new to me - and actually pretty amazing.
After that, she surprised me by having booked a session at a shop where they get you to make (or at least decorate) the kind of plastic food that is displayed in the windows of Japanese restaurants, so you can see what to expect inside. I'm very poor at this kind of thing generally, but by dint of being very easy the task I was set was found to be within my limits, and I emerged the owner of two uncannily realistic takoyaki.
Moe shows off her creation
Finally we wound up in Nihonbashi, which Moe described as a "little Akihabara", and certainly it had that vibe, even down to the maids lining the streets handing out flyers for their cafes. I'd never before seen such a LARGE advertisement for male masturbation aids as this one - have you?
Of course, I couldn't resist getting a T-shirt with Sayaka from Madoka Magica and the phrase "奇跡も魔法もあるんだよ！" ("Miracles and magic are real!") - which is wrapped in four-ply irony in context, but kind of upbeat all the same.
At the end of the day I went to spend the evening with Eriko in Minoh, and had a quiet night there after a quiet supper in, which was just what I needed by then.
On Thursday I returned to Nishinomiya in time to go to Kobe Jogakuin, where I gave a lecture and a more informal talk to some of Sarah's students. It's a pretty campus, up on in the hills, and seems (like TWCU) to be a place for "ojousan" (young ladies) - or that's the vibe I got. I don't have many photos to show, you'll be pleased to hear, but here's one of me and Sarah that was tweeted out later, just to prove I was there.
The next day I met my friend Yoko, her daughter Linda (whom you may remember from when she stayed with me in Bristol in February) and her husband in Kobe. We visited the Trick House, one of the Ijinkan (foreigners' houses), that were used by Western merchants back in the Meiji days when Kobe was one of a few treaty ports, the rest of the country being closed to foreigners at that time. I'd visited a few before with Yuka, notably one that involved dressing up as Sherlock Holmes, but the Trick House - a place of optical illusions made for the Insta generation, was a lot of fun, and a great way to pass half an hour:
We went straight from there to a teppanyaki restaurant, where I splashed out and had my first ever Kobe beef - which was amazing. My only regret is that it meant walking past this chicken karaage vending machine:
The teppanyaki place (Zen by name, if not nature) was very swish, with a view of the Rokko hills and the kind of chef who does tricks with his salt pot as well as cooking up some amazing food.
The others of the party had slightly cheaper beef - mine's the one on the right - you can see where they massaged the cow...
Halfway through the meal, the restaurant was suddenly abuzz with the news that Shinzou Abe had been shot - an event that was certainly shocking, though I have to say that people have reacted a bit less - and certainly seem to be "over" it more quickly - than I expected. (Barring one man I saw making a very angry speech about it at Nagoya station yesterday.) It's not entirely unprecedented: even my book mentions the assassination of a Japanese Prime Minister, albeit in 1932; and I suppose he's not even the most famous Abe to be the victim of a political assassination. Still. Perhaps there will be more repercussions down the line.
After lunch I was picked up by my friend Mitsuko, who drove me to her home in the deep countryside of Hyougo Prefecture - an area that in places looks like some kind of Edo-era Brigadoon, with its terraced rice fields and mist-scarfed hills:
It's an area rich in kofun, the large burial mounds that were used in Japan in the 4th and 5th centuries. I'd long been interested in these, as they appeared so similar in some ways to Neolithic sites of Britain, and this impression was only reinforced on closer acquaintance. Luckily, Mitsuko had worked as a volunteer at a local group of mounds (Higashiyama), and was able to borrow a key to get us inside. These ones are one the small side, apparently, and placed right next to a high school (or rather vice versa), so that we visited them to the sound of the kids doing music practice about 100 metres away, but there were still genuine West Kennet-cum-Maes-Howe vibes.
Afterwards we visited a friend of Mitsuko who is a shamisen player and gave us a small concert, which was wonderful. And yes, I got to play the shamisen, and yes I recorded a bit, and no I'm not putting that here. At one point, I said to the friend, "I hear they used to make shamisen from cat skins." She replied, "That's right, but of course we don't do that any more." Then added: "These days, we use dogs." I don't think she was kidding.
Then to Mitsuko's for the night - beer and sake and Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and a night on the tatami under her kamidana.
The following day was Saturday. We visited a local shrine haunted by bees, and saw a very cute ema (prayer plaque) featuring a request to be more like Madoka from Pretty Cure:
Then Mitsuko took me to Kakogawa station, where I met Yuka and her younger son. For lunch, we went to Soumen no Sato (Cold Noodle Village), a place where you can learn all about cold noodles, watch them being made (a process that brought Panorama's spaghetti harvest somewhat to mind), and of course eat them, using the time honoured method of picking them out of a flume of cold water. It's even more time-honoured for the flume to be made of bamboo, but whatever. It's pretty darned fun.
Click to the video to see my efforts, if you wish
When the historical reconstruction looks exactly like the modern-day demonstration
We just had time to pop to nearby Himeji Castle (which I'd spurned in favour of Cold Noodle Village, because who wouldn't?). We couldn't go in, but I tried to take a picture that looked as if I were standing cheesily in front of a picture of the castle rather than the real thing. Did I succeed?
And finally, yesterday I came to Nagoya, mostly to fulfil a long-held ambition and see the sumo - the Nagoya basho having begun last night. Tickets aren't easy to get hold of, but I blagged one through the good offices of Inside Japan Tours, the Bristol company that arranged my very first trip to Japan in 2015, and which happens to have its Bristol office in Nagoya, rather conveniently for me.
Nagoya isn't really a tourist city, but it has many things to recommend it on my short acquaintance. The castle (near where the sumo was being held) is pretty impressive, even if it doesn't quite reach Himeji standards, and there's something rather fine about the pre-War city hall, too:
This little fellow also caught my eye:
But who am I kidding? Of course the other main destination was culinary - a trip to Misokatsu Yabaton, and a taste of Nagoya's most famous dish: katsu cutlet in miso. I had both kinds: swimming in miso tare, and just with an insouciant stripe of a thicker sauce. I was still trying to decide which I preferred when suddenly there wasn't any left, but I can report that both were delicious.
The sumo was everything I could have wished. My seat was fairly far back, but I could see more clearly than the photographs suggest, and it was great to see all my favourite rikishi doing their stuff. In fact, most of "my" rikishi won, with the exception of Ura: Tochinoshin, Aoiyama, Ichinojou, Tobizaru, and most importantly my particular favourite, Mitakeumi - who is currently in kadoban (i.e. he needs a winning record this tournament to retain his ozeki status, having lost two months ago when he was suffering an injury). It was great to see him get off to a confident start. Also, my less worthy impulse towards Schadenfreude was sated by the fact that both the other ozeki and the sole yokozuna all lost. You might even say that the tournament was Mitakeumi's to lose, were there not 14 days to go...
For those non-sumo fans whose eyes glazed over just now, just take it from me that it was a good event - and it was of course wonderful to be in the place itself and to see the zabutons flying when Abi beat Terunofuji in the final bout.
Anyway, it's now morning in Nagoya, I've had my hotel breakfast of muesli and what the menu called "functional yogurt", and am about to squeeze the last drop from my Railpass to go back to Tokyo, where my life will be considerably more sedate, at least if things go according to plan.
And how was your week?
It begins with my bidding Mami a farewell as grateful as it was fond at Sapporo station, and making my way to Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture in northern Honshu, home of the writer Kenji Miyazawa, who features in my forthcoming book as someone avowedly influenced by British children's literature (or at least Lewis Carroll). He lived in Iwate his whole life (apart from a brief and it seems rather unhappy sojourn in Tokyo), and that remote and sparsely populated prefecture became transformed in his imagination into the dreamland - his word - of Ihatov, the setting for his many fantasy stories. He was unsuccessful in his own lifetime, though, and died at 37 (cf. Van Gogh).
I think it's fair to say that Hanamaki has made up for this lack of recognition since. It was already clear at Shin-Hanamaki station that this is a very Kenji-orientated town - going by the omiyage shop, etc.
I took a taxi to the ryokan, and the taxi driver pointed out various Kenji-related sites, as well as letting drop that his grandmother's brother had even met the great man. But, as he also pointed out, Kenji is only one of Hanamaki's famous sons, the other being the baseball player, Ohtani Shōhei. We agreed that genius comes in many different forms.
The last pear in a grove planted by Kenji
Ohtani's high school - where the bus stopped so that we could pay our respects
The ryokan was part of an onsen village a few miles out of Hanamaki, full of misty rain, humidity, fast-running streams and old-world-going-on-slightly-musty pleasures. It was far from any shops or restaurants or even convenience stores, and it was touch and go whether I'd get any dinner (apparently I hadn't ordered any when I booked in months ago, no doubt imagining naively that I'd be able to grab something cheap from a Lawson's), but in the end they served me something in my room that, while it didn't meet Hokkaido standards of sashimi freshness, was perfectly fine. Having massacred most of the mosquitos over the course of the evening, I slept well on the futon, and on the whole I liked the place - but the tap delivered only a trickle of yellow water, which forced me eek out the bottle of water they'd provided me with, and the sencha that awaited me on arrival.
I'd booked a ride on the "Yamaneko and Donguri" (Mountain Cat and Acorn) bus - named after a Kenji short story. The bus turned up to a stop near the ryokan, looking suitably Taishou era in style, and off we went to visit various Kenji-relevant sites. (We also visited the house of Kotaro Takamura, which was interesting to me as he was a friend of Bernard Leach, potter and modifier of kotatsus for long-legged foreigners.) The passengers were just me and a couple of older women. They were a bit wary at first, but we soon became pals. I should perhaps note that, throughout the time I was in Hokkaido and Iwate I didn't see another person who didn't at least appear to be Japanese. Tourists are now allowed into Japan, but only in groups, where they are strictly herded along by someone holding aloft a furled umbrella. I promise I do realise how lucky I am.
For my purposes, the highlight was a visit to the so-called "English Shore", a name Kenji gave to a stretch of the Kitakami river where layers of mudstone were sometimes revealed (although no longer, because the river is now higher), and which he claimed reminded him of the White Cliffs of Dover. No doubt you can see the resemblance.
The English Shore now and in Kenji's time
On Monday night I came back to Tokyo for a night, and set out again the next morning for Kansai and the second leg of my two-week pass. My base of operations was the Nishonomiya flat of my friend Sarah, who's currently teaching at Kobe Jogakuin for a year. She very kindly let me go in and out to meet various friends over the next few days, though in between we had a few very convivial meals in Nishinomiya itself. Of course, I'm wildly jealous of the Kobe Jogakuin gig, but it's hard to bear a grudge against someone so generous and just plain nice.
First up was meeting two friends from Bristol - Moe and Ayako (my former tenant) in Kyoto. Ayako had asked if I'd rather go to see the famous golden temple or a moss garden, and of course, being a moss-maven, I opted for the moss, so we found ourselves hiking up to Sanzenin, on the outskirts of Kyoto, in the kind of hot and humid conditions that the Japanese call "mushiatsui" (lit. "steamy heat"). It provides great conditions for moss, of course, and in fact I was growing some on my clothes before a couple of hours were up. But it was worth it for the jade-like result.
Afterwards, Ayako took us through a field of red shiso (which is much like the green shiso used as a garnish with sushi, but often used to make a summer drink), where little green frogs were nested like emeralds among the leaves, very beautifully. Ayako will be returning to Europe shortly, to live (on another working holiday visa) in Ireland, so I have hopes of seeing her there fairly soon.
Since her time in Bristol, Moe has taken up her former job in Osaka - that of a nurse working with people with brain injuries - which does sound a fascinating specialism. (Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat was one of the big books of my teenage years.) One thing she mentioned over lunch was that, at her hospital, there is a leftover of the days when German was regarded as the language of science and medicine, which was very much the case when Japan first Westernised in the Meiji era. For example, the hospital slang in Osaka for water, die and eat is wasser, sterben and essen. An interesting survival, don't you think? It was news to Ayako, too.
Wednesday was an Osaka day, and it came in three parts. First was a tour of Osaka Prefectural Library under the aegis of Yasuko Doi, who showed me and my anthropologist friend Eriko round their fabulous collection of Japanese children's books, which runs from the earliest days (Iwaya Sazanami's Kogane-maru, etc.) to the latest manga. Unlike the otherwise-excellent collection at the National Diet Library in Ueno, they don't bind the collections, but preserve the spines, the obi (the little strips of paper that go round many Japanese books like the wide belt of a kimono), and other seeming ephemera, which are often of great subsequent interest. For a research (rather than a lending) library this is surely the way to go?
In the afternoon, Moe took me round some interesting parts of Osaka, beginning with the Korean quarter near and under Tsuruhashi. We ate Korean barbecue, which was structured much like the Ghengis Khan I'd had in Hokkaido the week before, and was just as delicious. The slightly underworld feeling of the subterranean stalls in that area was something quite new to me - and actually pretty amazing.
After that, she surprised me by having booked a session at a shop where they get you to make (or at least decorate) the kind of plastic food that is displayed in the windows of Japanese restaurants, so you can see what to expect inside. I'm very poor at this kind of thing generally, but by dint of being very easy the task I was set was found to be within my limits, and I emerged the owner of two uncannily realistic takoyaki.
Moe shows off her creation
Finally we wound up in Nihonbashi, which Moe described as a "little Akihabara", and certainly it had that vibe, even down to the maids lining the streets handing out flyers for their cafes. I'd never before seen such a LARGE advertisement for male masturbation aids as this one - have you?
Of course, I couldn't resist getting a T-shirt with Sayaka from Madoka Magica and the phrase "奇跡も魔法もあるんだよ！" ("Miracles and magic are real!") - which is wrapped in four-ply irony in context, but kind of upbeat all the same.
At the end of the day I went to spend the evening with Eriko in Minoh, and had a quiet night there after a quiet supper in, which was just what I needed by then.
On Thursday I returned to Nishinomiya in time to go to Kobe Jogakuin, where I gave a lecture and a more informal talk to some of Sarah's students. It's a pretty campus, up on in the hills, and seems (like TWCU) to be a place for "ojousan" (young ladies) - or that's the vibe I got. I don't have many photos to show, you'll be pleased to hear, but here's one of me and Sarah that was tweeted out later, just to prove I was there.
The next day I met my friend Yoko, her daughter Linda (whom you may remember from when she stayed with me in Bristol in February) and her husband in Kobe. We visited the Trick House, one of the Ijinkan (foreigners' houses), that were used by Western merchants back in the Meiji days when Kobe was one of a few treaty ports, the rest of the country being closed to foreigners at that time. I'd visited a few before with Yuka, notably one that involved dressing up as Sherlock Holmes, but the Trick House - a place of optical illusions made for the Insta generation, was a lot of fun, and a great way to pass half an hour:
We went straight from there to a teppanyaki restaurant, where I splashed out and had my first ever Kobe beef - which was amazing. My only regret is that it meant walking past this chicken karaage vending machine:
The teppanyaki place (Zen by name, if not nature) was very swish, with a view of the Rokko hills and the kind of chef who does tricks with his salt pot as well as cooking up some amazing food.
The others of the party had slightly cheaper beef - mine's the one on the right - you can see where they massaged the cow...
Halfway through the meal, the restaurant was suddenly abuzz with the news that Shinzou Abe had been shot - an event that was certainly shocking, though I have to say that people have reacted a bit less - and certainly seem to be "over" it more quickly - than I expected. (Barring one man I saw making a very angry speech about it at Nagoya station yesterday.) It's not entirely unprecedented: even my book mentions the assassination of a Japanese Prime Minister, albeit in 1932; and I suppose he's not even the most famous Abe to be the victim of a political assassination. Still. Perhaps there will be more repercussions down the line.
After lunch I was picked up by my friend Mitsuko, who drove me to her home in the deep countryside of Hyougo Prefecture - an area that in places looks like some kind of Edo-era Brigadoon, with its terraced rice fields and mist-scarfed hills:
It's an area rich in kofun, the large burial mounds that were used in Japan in the 4th and 5th centuries. I'd long been interested in these, as they appeared so similar in some ways to Neolithic sites of Britain, and this impression was only reinforced on closer acquaintance. Luckily, Mitsuko had worked as a volunteer at a local group of mounds (Higashiyama), and was able to borrow a key to get us inside. These ones are one the small side, apparently, and placed right next to a high school (or rather vice versa), so that we visited them to the sound of the kids doing music practice about 100 metres away, but there were still genuine West Kennet-cum-Maes-Howe vibes.
Afterwards we visited a friend of Mitsuko who is a shamisen player and gave us a small concert, which was wonderful. And yes, I got to play the shamisen, and yes I recorded a bit, and no I'm not putting that here. At one point, I said to the friend, "I hear they used to make shamisen from cat skins." She replied, "That's right, but of course we don't do that any more." Then added: "These days, we use dogs." I don't think she was kidding.
Then to Mitsuko's for the night - beer and sake and Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and a night on the tatami under her kamidana.
The following day was Saturday. We visited a local shrine haunted by bees, and saw a very cute ema (prayer plaque) featuring a request to be more like Madoka from Pretty Cure:
Then Mitsuko took me to Kakogawa station, where I met Yuka and her younger son. For lunch, we went to Soumen no Sato (Cold Noodle Village), a place where you can learn all about cold noodles, watch them being made (a process that brought Panorama's spaghetti harvest somewhat to mind), and of course eat them, using the time honoured method of picking them out of a flume of cold water. It's even more time-honoured for the flume to be made of bamboo, but whatever. It's pretty darned fun.
Click to the video to see my efforts, if you wish
When the historical reconstruction looks exactly like the modern-day demonstration
We just had time to pop to nearby Himeji Castle (which I'd spurned in favour of Cold Noodle Village, because who wouldn't?). We couldn't go in, but I tried to take a picture that looked as if I were standing cheesily in front of a picture of the castle rather than the real thing. Did I succeed?
And finally, yesterday I came to Nagoya, mostly to fulfil a long-held ambition and see the sumo - the Nagoya basho having begun last night. Tickets aren't easy to get hold of, but I blagged one through the good offices of Inside Japan Tours, the Bristol company that arranged my very first trip to Japan in 2015, and which happens to have its Bristol office in Nagoya, rather conveniently for me.
Nagoya isn't really a tourist city, but it has many things to recommend it on my short acquaintance. The castle (near where the sumo was being held) is pretty impressive, even if it doesn't quite reach Himeji standards, and there's something rather fine about the pre-War city hall, too:
This little fellow also caught my eye:
But who am I kidding? Of course the other main destination was culinary - a trip to Misokatsu Yabaton, and a taste of Nagoya's most famous dish: katsu cutlet in miso. I had both kinds: swimming in miso tare, and just with an insouciant stripe of a thicker sauce. I was still trying to decide which I preferred when suddenly there wasn't any left, but I can report that both were delicious.
The sumo was everything I could have wished. My seat was fairly far back, but I could see more clearly than the photographs suggest, and it was great to see all my favourite rikishi doing their stuff. In fact, most of "my" rikishi won, with the exception of Ura: Tochinoshin, Aoiyama, Ichinojou, Tobizaru, and most importantly my particular favourite, Mitakeumi - who is currently in kadoban (i.e. he needs a winning record this tournament to retain his ozeki status, having lost two months ago when he was suffering an injury). It was great to see him get off to a confident start. Also, my less worthy impulse towards Schadenfreude was sated by the fact that both the other ozeki and the sole yokozuna all lost. You might even say that the tournament was Mitakeumi's to lose, were there not 14 days to go...
For those non-sumo fans whose eyes glazed over just now, just take it from me that it was a good event - and it was of course wonderful to be in the place itself and to see the zabutons flying when Abi beat Terunofuji in the final bout.
Anyway, it's now morning in Nagoya, I've had my hotel breakfast of muesli and what the menu called "functional yogurt", and am about to squeeze the last drop from my Railpass to go back to Tokyo, where my life will be considerably more sedate, at least if things go according to plan.
And how was your week?