The Kingston Trio: Rick's Pics

May 2006

Japan

What a thrill, my first time to Japan and with the Kingston Trio, no less! I’d been to Europe a couple of times but never to Japan, and was just dying to see what it would be like. And what better guides could I have than Bill and George, who had both been there several times over the years.

The flight over on JAL set the tone for the entire trip. Elegant, gracious, and delicious. Like dining at a fine restaurant in a strato-lounger with its own movie monitor. But that was only the beginning. Every detail of our trip had been worked out by the Blue Note organizers.

Guides from the club smoothed our way at check-ins, ticket stations and transfer points and were waiting to take us to each interview, soundcheck and performance. Our bags magically disappeared and reappeared in our rooms at the Hotel Hanshin and our guitars were waiting for us at the club. And added to that was the fact that the city was spotless. There wasn’t a single cigarette butt on the sidewalk and even the cement trucks looked like they had just been waxed!

I wanted to explore the city and headed out to get my first taste of Japan on my own, only to see, directly across the street from the hotel, the sure reminder that the world is growing ever smaller.

Did You Want Sushi With Your Fries?

But as for the city of Osaka itself – sprawling, massive, tangled
and brilliant all at the same time. From our hotel rooms we could
see the Umeda Tower across the tangle of elevated freeways.

And down on the street level there was a mix of modern, glass-encased shops, interwoven with small crooked alleys with shops that looked like shanties.

We wandered past a yard of miniature delivery
trucks that looked so like my son’s Tonka toys.

Bicycles are everywhere and there were rows of
them parked along the street wherever we went.

They have a saying in Japan:

“ The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”

This poster gets the point across:

There are Buddhist shrines and Shinto temples tucked
away in hidden courtyards all through the city. This one
was just at the corner and had a small fountain in the front.

When you have built up as far as you can, where do you go?
Underground! There are entire malls under the streets of Osaka.
Here are the ones beneath the Umeda Tower and out by the river.

And some of the underground passages are absolutely gorgeous; with sus-
spended gardens and waterways, like this one outside the Blue Note club .

     The gigs in Osaka were quite a test of our focus. Since very few Japanese
speak English, the patter between songs was greeted by dead silence.

Fortunately, Bill knew some phrases from his previous trips, one being,
“My life is the stage; the stage is my life” which was a slogan by some
   famous actress. Okay….well, it got a good laugh from the crowd anyway.

Now we were moving on to Nagoya and to get there we took the Bullet
  Train. Its strange nose reminded me of a squid, but then I’d been eating
quite a lot of seafood by this time and it may just have been me.

And talk about fast – we had thought that we would be able to take some
  pictures of the countryside on the trip, but everything zipped by so quickly!

The only thing I could get a picture of was a snow-covered mountain that
was so far off it didn’t disappear the minute we saw it. 200+ mph may
seem pretty slow on a plane, but it’s really zipping along on the ground.

  When we reached Nagoya we were handled with the same amazing
  efficiency that we had been shown in Osaka. The bags disappeared
  and met us at the beautiful Hotel Kanko. It was just across from this
very lovely square that had a tea house, stream and paddle-wheel.

The interesting thing about this very modern city its the way that it has
blended the old styles and the new. Just catty-corner from the small
teahouse is a restaurant that looks like a modern day reincarnation
of a tea house. Everything seems to be built with an eye to beauty.

And right down the street from us was a Kabuki Theater
and a very modern store which specialized in kimonos.

We did a radio interview the next morning and saw the beautiful
parkway that ran through the city interspersed with fountains.

But true to the old city style, there were many streets that were
narrow and filled with small shops selling everything from
the most elegant of kimonos to the tackiest of plastic trinkets.

We made the trip down to the large Shinto Shrine just on the edge of the Osu
shopping district. Quite a juxtaposition (my favorite word from the Kama Sutra).

And here is the main gate to the Osu Shopping district. I believe the
words on the archway mean, “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

The Osu shopping district is ten square blocks of stalls all squeezed together
and just crawling with people. We managed to stop at this little coffee shop
before going inside. If you can read it, the billboard invites you to enjoy:

“ The Taste Of Relax.”

We had soundcheck in the afternoon and were picked up by our club
liason who had learned her English in (would you believe it) North
Carolina. Our jaws just dropped when this petite Japanese woman
smiled and said with a perfect drawl, “Did y’awl come in the vay-in?”

The next day we went to see the Nagoya Castle. It's
the size of a small city surrounded by moats and walls.

The main building is a museum full of period. Right
After taking this picture of the shoji screen, I looked
up to see a sign that said “NO PHOTO.” Woops.

I liked this cutaway model of how the main castle was constructed.

The symbol of the dynasty was the Dolphin, and they were everywhere
from cornices on the buildings to small (only a foot tall) jade pieces.

I asked a curator to stand next to this Dolphin to give you an idea of its size.

Then it was all over, and we were packing our bags for the flight back home.
For my first time in Japan, it had been a great experience and left me eager
to come back again. And the Blue Note seemed pleased with what we had
   done, so maybe we'll the do the whole thing over again in a year or two!

      At least we could look forward to heading home in the comforts of those big
      reclining seats on JAL, and eating a big steak dinner with no unidentifiable
      or pickled side dishes. Yes, I'll have that with fries.