 And after tonight's talk we hope you'll join us for three additional talks in the series So on February 10, we're going to have On the Edge of the Arctic by a Barb and Whit doll And that's going to be at the library at 6 30 that Monday evening Next we'll have incredible India with Bill Doleger and that would be here at the senior center on Wednesday February 26th at 6 p.m. And then our final travel talk this season will be the ruby minds of Madagascar 1999 presented by Ella Chapin at the library at 6 30 p.m. On Monday March 16th We've got flyers for this along with some other information about the senior center here at the table We've also got water if anyone would like some in the back corner there if you need a Restroom there's a single stall around the orange corner there and through the lobby and to the right when you get toward the elevator There are additional restrooms There's a fire exit in the back. There are a couple steps Otherwise exits to the front and the side look at you out We're really thrilled to have Theresa Majo and Peter Kelman here to share their adventures from China I'm sorry If you're here for China, I apologize Okay, tonight, we are going to Japan with Peter and Theresa. We're thrilled to have you here. Thank you so much All right, you have to go get the lights There you go. All right, this will take 10 minutes of the clock right here. Just doing this. How do you do this? I'm doing this totally wrong There we go. Okay All right, can everyone hear me? Welcome everyone and thank you for coming here. You can have that. Okay Thank you also to msac and to the Kellogg-Hobbard Library for doing this great series and for inviting us Peter and I have a lot to cover tonight and we want to make sure we can answer all your questions So we're going to ask that you hold them until the end and that way other people like Barbara Dahl And perhaps other people in the audience who have been to Japan can help us answer the question since we are by no means Japanese Experts and Peter's going to begin What we want to share with you tonight are our personal Experiences and impressions of a country that is about as different from the United States as any advanced modern society could be As such our presentation will neither be a travelogue of the greatest tourist hits of Japan We went a lot of places. We're not going to tell you about Nor a chronologically organized slideshow of our trip Instead, it's good. We're doing this around some topics but before we get into the Subjective part we thought there's some objective facts that you would be helpful for you to know Most of these come from Wikipedia And so this is I'm calling this Japan by the numbers just gonna tip this up a little bit Japan is an island nation Actually, it's an archipelago of nearly 7,000 islands Five of which comprise the vast majority of the country's total area Honshu is the largest most populated and it's the only place that we went Honshu is the home of Tokyo Osaka Kyoto Hiroshima Among dozens of other large cities and as such it's probably what most Westerners think of when they say Japan Approximately two-thirds of Japan's terrain is mountainous and heavily forested Less than an eighth of its land is suitable for agriculture However, the Japanese appear to take advantage of every square inch of that arable land So the visitor is left with the impression of far more agricultural activity that might be expected from that one-eighth statistic Japan's population is about 125 million Which is well less than half of the US population Although its total landmass is less than 5% of the US land area So with so much of Japan's land being mountainous Forests and devoted to agriculture just 20% of it remains for living space Consequently Japan is among the most densely populated and urbanized countries in the world with over 90% of its population living in urban areas The last whoops, sorry Last fact is this as for its economy and this is an interesting point Despite Japan's lost two decades, it's 20 years of economic stagnation In the 90s and in the first decade of the 2000s It remains the third largest national economy in the world after the US and China We've organized our presentation into these five main topics Japan's service economy and its idiosyncratic system of etiquette and social norms What we call intimations of the sublime beauty and danger in Japan's natural and man-made landscape Close and persistent encounters with Japan's unique religious syncretism the special aesthetics of the Japanese Their arts and entertainment and our experiences with Japan's distinctive approaches to food and drink We're going to be doing this in a slightly different order than we have here We're going to start with Japan's service economy and its idiosyncratic system of etiquette and social norms Everywhere we went felt safe clean and accommodating even in big cities We saw a little or no trash on sidewalks streets subways and in other public spaces and yet Very few trash can or write containers or recycling containers anywhere Largely due to security concerns after the 1995 Sarin subway attacks As a result On our first day, I found myself holding on to an empty takeout coffee cup for hours Looking everywhere for a trash container So how do they keep everything so clean without trash containers? Well to begin with According to Japanese etiquette, it's rude to eat On trans public transportation or while walking in public one thing at a time So if you buy straight food, you should eat it where you bought it and then throw away the trash in the vendors trash container Ditto for vending machines, which generally are accompanied by bottle and can recycling containers Otherwise, most Japanese hold on to their wrappers and takeout containers Put them in their pockets and purses until they return to their home recycling but the main reason why Japan is So neat and clean are probably a combination of cultural values a sort of wah of cleanliness and the full employment legion of Uniformed street sweepers gardeners and trash collectors Employed to keep public spaces and buildings trash-free So much of Japan is about service The service economy accounts for three quarters of its total economic output and it seems as though Every aspect of its service economy is designed to make life simpler and Easier for its own citizens and for the increasing number of tourists coming to Japan Especially from other Asian countries and Australasia So we're going to talk about the two service sectors. We had the most direct experience with Transportation and accommodations, but this gives to this will give you a sense of how this is executed Efficiently and or in an organized way by an enormous number of incredibly polite and patient workers First let's consider Japan's transportation system its trains subways and buses The transportation system as I'm sure you know is incredibly efficient and always on time In fact, we had before we left for Japan about a Japanese train company Actually issuing a public apology because one of their trains departed 20 seconds early This same on-time performance applies to buses whether in large cities like Kyoto or small rural villages all of them featuring on board Real-time video displays and audio announcements of routes and stops Usually in multiple languages one of which is always English not just for Americans in English, but You know English is sort of the lingua franca of tourism Platforms and waiting rooms are comfortable and provide vending machines Any number of the unique Japanese vending machines found Absolutely everywhere in Japan offering almost anything you might eat or drink and Snacks of every conceivable or even inconceivable nature and Needless to say in train and bus stations and en route Transportation personnel always seem to be unruffled and helpful Many were quite young and passively multilingual and they were all polite to a fault Just as an example You know we knew of course about the Japanese custom of bowing But it was a puzzle and a delight to watch the train conductors Enter your car walk through it to the end Turn and bow to the entire car Every time they came in We don't have a picture of that because we thought it might be sort of rude to take to take it But we do have this picture of a sort of balletic Platform conductor Making sure that the trains run on time and that the passengers are loading properly One feature of Japan's rail system that might have first seemed out of character is the limited storage space Provided for large luggage on their long distance trains However, this even this feature seems to be designed for better customer service. It keeps the aisles clear provides more space space more space for leg room and overall comfortable seating and it limits the chaos of people Lugging large bags on and off the train stops So what do tourists do with their large luggage you might ask not to worry Japan offers a reliable reasonably priced Convenient and secure service which can be used to send luggage door-to-door nationwide often with next-day delivery Called Takuhai bin is available in almost every hotel and all but the most remote of Japan's small rural ends I've got to find my page here Yeah, what'd you do with my pages? Missing Okay, sorry Okay, so I'm gonna talk about accommodation. I'm gonna talk about places we stayed like this this is a Rural in called a ryokan. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly That's our best attempt anything we say here is our best attempt Okay Nearly all European style hotels and cities and traditional rural Japanese ends ryokan Are exceptionally neat and clean of course Including mandatory shoe removal and the wearing of indoor slippers which are provided and all of you verminters would feel very at home there They also Offer a ray and a ray of room amenities like yakuza's which are kind of lightweight cotton Komono and they also give you instructions on how to tie them And it's actually very important that you wrap your yakuza the right way because if you do it the incorrect way One way is the correct way in the other way is the way you do it at funerals I mean so you have to be you don't want to walk around like you're going to a funeral and the thing is it's very important actually to do it the right way because Once you are in an in You wear your yakuza everywhere to the dining room in the hallways everywhere. You rarely see anybody in Street clothes in a country in in the in the European style hotels the big hotels You will see people walking around the street clothes. Oh, you also see people walking around in their yakuza's Okay Okay, so now on to my favorite thing about Japanese Accommodations the bathrooms the hotel bathrooms are legit provide luxurious hand soaps modern showers and the incredible Japanese toilets which deserve special mention the seats are warm and Which is really nice in the middle of the night and the toilets provide both bidet and rear-end warm water cleaning The one problem we encountered with Japanese toilets Which are ubiquitous in Japan is that the controls sometimes are only in Japanese and And the controls aren't necessarily the same from toilet to toilet and I got into a big problem in the Tokyo train station once And as I said, they are ubiquitous these are these are available nice hotels We found one hiking on a mountainous trail. We found a Japanese toilet. Couldn't believe it Okay, so in addition to having these wonderful toilets the Japanese public restrooms are remarkably family friendly You will find in many of them the following items So this is a seat to hold your toddler so that you can pee This is a we size urinal and a we size sink for the we size pier and that upper Toilet seat is actually something you put down so the small bum can't fall through into the toilet I mean, it's so family-friendly and why hasn't anyone in the United States ever thought of any of this? Finally nearly all right Yeah, right Ryokan and many tourist hotels also provide these glorious communal and sometimes private hot tubs called onsen Which and they usually offer offer both indoor and outdoor Facilities and you're not allowed to take pictures inside the onsen so I had to download these from the internet And this particular photo is totally misleading because their gender separated so you can see that man and woman together They're totally their gender separated, but this photo An outdoor one is actually pretty representative of what the outdoor ones felt like and were like they were just extraordinary In the ryokan where the onsen custom originated the water comes from the natural non sulfuric hot water springs of the area Basically, Japan is one huge volcanic island. I had her set of islands And in the European style hotels of water is simply very hot chlorinated city water. I did not take this photo Because the traditional onsen weren't chlorinated they have very strict hygiene rules Which have become part of the onsen etiquette even from modern communal baths that use chlorinated water Thus every person is expected to wash themselves thoroughly before entering the bath and they sit on these low stools and At very low sinks and they're equipped with scrub brushes and soap and hand showers and my first time onsen I was so nervous I was so afraid of violating some rule that I just watched for quite a while with the Japanese women were doing and then Just did what they did which basically means you scrub every single inch of your body It seemed to us that a key to understanding why the Japanese are so good at providing services Like those that we just described and more Might be the idiosyncratic Japanese rules and social norms that regulate nearly all of their personal interactions Some of these rules may have clear practical primarily health rationales for example Japanese people are expected to work even when they have colds so they have rules about wearing masks and not blowing one's nose in public Other Japanese social conventions are more like what Westerners might consider to be modern Good manners or a simple consideration for others for example something some pretty good to me No loud phone conversations in public places Not raising your voice in anger or frustration in public or in front-punch form Still other aspects of Japanese etiquette may seem odd and inexplicable to Westerners such as using Both hands when giving and receiving things including exchanging business cards Don't point While speaking Don't leave a tip at your table. It's rude Place money on the small tray next to the cash register rather than handing it directly to the cashier Now some of these rules of etiquette may seem extreme or arcane to us But they are part of a Japanese culture that has been evolving for more than 2000 years and Despite greatly increased Western influences Japan has retained its distinct and Substantially different cultural values and social etiquette So in closing on this topic We both thought it was important to say that although we encountered a certain Formality governing our interactions with Japanese people. We also Experience a genuine friendliness among the people we encountered along the way for example these two men Trail guides we met on a train They spoke a little English more English than my I spoke Japanese and we had a friendly cultural exchange for a half hour or so During which they told us that they actually lived in the town we'd be walking through on the next day of our hike and Long behold on the next day Just as we were about to head out of that town onto one of the hardest sections of the trail There they were waving us down provisioning us with delicious Japanese snacks and Reassuring us that we could handle the challenge ahead pure friendliness We also experienced exceptional kindness and generosity from Taka our guide in Hiroshima who Delighted in conversation with us Brought us to her home We she wasn't paid to do that Treated us to an abbreviated Japanese tea ceremony a real one takes half a day and Then totally unexpectedly dressed Therese in one of her Taka's exquisite antique kimonos and a special mention of Our of our in-host at me at Miyajima, which is an ancient sacred island in Hiroshima Bay Who saved us from making a terrible social faux pas with Taka? I'm gonna let Therese tell the story which is a great anecdote about both Japanese etiquette and Japanese kindness so we Knew or we were told that it was it was acceptable to give your guide a tip But preferably with brand-new crisp notes and it had to be in an envelope So I went to a store and I bought what I thought were envelopes for giving money because on it There's like this nice little illustration that shows money goes in it So I bought this pretty purple black and black envelope But I also had learned that you're supposed to tie these things with a ribbon and we'll learn a little bit more About that in just a bit so I asked our Miyajima in proprietor if she had one She looked at my envelope and went So she gave me the proper and probably very expensive envelope It was decorated with this gorgeous red ribbon the color of which denotes Thank you, and I just couldn't have been more pleased that she saved me from that terrible embarrassment But her kindness was just and but the other thing was is that she thought it was fun So it wasn't like I had offended anybody which was nice What I'm going to do here. Oh Peter is going to change the slides But I'm going to segue into our experiences with food in Japan Which of course is one of the reasons why you go to Japan if you go there to eat the food We found the food to be Exquisitely prepared you're gonna hit the play honey. Oh, sorry There we go We sounded to be to be exquisitely prepared and presented Invented subtly flavored it was it's not spicy like other Asian foods And so this evening I'm just going to walk you through some of the highlights of our food trip so this was one of 13 Dishes that we ate in some a meal called the kaiseki Which is a many course meals anywhere from the 11 to 13 courses served in some of the ryokan's in which we stayed and its Special restaurants and cities it is the embodiment of Japanese food preparation and presentation The first time when we were served kaiseki was at the inn in which we stayed on Miyajima And we couldn't figure out why she was giving why she first didn't give us a menu I mean there were some people there who were not staying at the end red menus and Why she just kept bringing us dish after dish after dish until we were just stopped So the next night we almost didn't go back because we were so No, but we did but we told her we just didn't want so much food And I'm sure it was much to her dismay and I'm afraid we might even have insulted her a little bit Because it wasn't until we checked out of the hotel out of the inn that we realized our reservation had in fact included a kaiseki meal With each evening So the next time we had kaiseki we were ready for it which took place at a remote mountain ryokan And it was served in our room by the lovely young woman named Miwa who giggled it everything Peter said She thought he was a riot we sat or Nelt or whatever you call that Western challenged posture at a very low table which Miwa had set up for us She also set up our sleeping futons while we were in the on-sem We felt as if we had been transported back in time to a scene out of the movie shogun and After our talk you can take look take a look at the kaiseki menu with this is actually a couple of menus there Which was in English and in Japanese and Then another kaiseki meal we had relates to an important Japanese food beef You may have heard of wagyu beef which relates to any of the four special breeds of Japanese cattle the most Expensive and famous being Kobe, which we did not have over there But for a week of our trip We were joined by Peter's daughter and her family who were living in Shanghai at the time and they came over for the Kids spring break and with them we enjoyed a wagyu beef kaiseki 11 courses mostly involving beef and it was called yakiniku style meaning we Cooked several of the courses our cells on a grill that you can see in the middle of the table I will also point out here that we all look very comfortable because we are not sitting on the floor But we're sort of in the kind of pit and our feet are our legs are dangling Which is clearly an accommodation for Westerners although we did meet Japanese people told us that they don't really like sitting at the low tables either So you would think that all those courses would be beef overload Well, maybe my grandson did But the truth is is that each of the course was so inventive and delicate and I should add served in small portions You never were eating a ton in any particular course and even the baby loved it of course that she was born in Shanghai So she's used to Asian food Beef is also served in the form of sushi and it's quite popular as a street food In Takayama we eat sushi from a street vendor that was made with a beef a breed of Japanese beef called hira Which is named for the alpine region in which it was raised and I have to say it was mind-blowing I'd never tasted anything like that in my life and that is raw that is raw and it's incredibly tender and flavorful Street food can be found in any reasonably sized city and one of the most common street foods are Takoyaki or octopus balls which are not the testicles of the octopus but minced octopus meat battered and cooked in specially molded pans very delicious very delicious And another big street food is yakitori, which is essentially grilled meat on a stick. It's usually chicken, but sometimes beef or pork But my favorite street food in Japan is the ice cream It's soft serve ice cream and you know, I'm not a big soft serve fan I you know creamies I can take them or leave them, but this soft serve is Outstanding I think it's because they use real cream and lots of it and the flavors Green tea. I think that was my favorite black sesame strawberry and me and really tastes like strawberry Cherry chocolate and I'm eating mango here. It has actual mango bits in it and Then a great place to eat in Japan are the food markets Kanazawa on the northwest on the course line Sorry Where'd you just go here? Yeah, okay Is a famous first fish market Anthony Burden actually did a show there And we we ate our way through the market oysters ill liver ill liver mackerel crayfish tuna octopus and Strawberries strawberries are everywhere in Japan The fish markets in Japan were one of the outstanding places to get sushi Which in Japan is unlike any sushi we have ever had here in the States It tastes so fresh the texture is luxurious and the ways they presented our true words of art But sushi is actually both a high and low food art form in Japan our first night in Japan We stumbled and we're incredibly jet lagged into upon a sushi train Restaurant in which the dishes are color-coded by price and they go by you on a conveyor belt And you pull off the ones that you want and then they calculate the bill at the end by counting your dishes We also ate it one very high-end sushi place in Kanazawa Where there were only eight stools at the sushi bar and the price is kept coming over and correcting my chopstick form. I Mean she also was correcting other things too. She just kept correcting me But it was it was very funny. I did I wasn't offended at all I thought it was very funny sort of all part of the cultural experience and I don't know why she incorrect Peter because here. He is using really incorrect chopstick etiquette We're eating yakiniku style. This is a different restaurant and when you are not using your chopsticks You're supposed to use Your chopstick holder and he's not doing that Some other chopstick etiquette that's in general eating etiquette includes never ever stick your stop chopsticks vertically in your rice bowl Which can only be done in funerals Don't cross your chopstick which is also a symbol associated with death use the other end of the chopsticks to take food from a common dish We learned that from Barbara doll. Thank you very much before we came here went there Don't play with your chopsticks or rub them together Don't overuse the soy sauce with your sushi and be sure to use the correct sauce for the correct food And I actually think that was one of the things that madam sushi etiquette was trying to tell me Don't pour your own drink And only pour the drink of your companion. I swear we violated that one every time Okay, so Japan is not without its food oddities a case in point. This is fake food Restaurants and store windows are full of these weird unappetizing reproductions of Japanese food As strange as they are there's actually a good reason for them Many of the restaurant workers especially in the countryside in smaller cities don't speak other languages But thanks to fake food foreign tourists can literally point in the window to the dish They want and as an example of the quirky side of the Japanese aesthetic, which I'll talk to you about a little bit later You can find stores in Japanese that sell every variety of fake food including fake beer and fake wine So okonomiyaki is another quintessentially Japanese food It's a kind of pancake which can be found almost everywhere in the country on the street and dedicated Okonomiyaki diner type restaurants and then do it yourself okonomiyaki restaurants So Hiroshima lays claim to be the original okonomiyaki style in this rendering The ingredients are cooked in layers on the grill battered cabbage eggs pork belly Green onions and a special sauce, which is essentially Japanese mayonnaise and despite their ungainliness. They are really delicious and Hiroshima We sat at the grill I was sitting right on the other side of the grill there and watched our pancakes being made by this cook Well, Peter and he talked baseball translated by taka our lovely guide On our last night in in Japan we went to a do-it-yourself okonomiyaki restaurant where Peter played chef Making an Osaka style, which is where all the ingredients are combined in one batter And the waiter was extremely impressed with Peter's flipping skills and Peter was so inspired by the experience that he was Determined to have a Japanese dinner when we returned home So with the help of Barbara and Witt Dahl and Peter's brother who's pictured here We and his sister-in-law we served an eight and eleven of course kaisaki menu that included non traditionally Peter's delicious okonomiyaki and he is available for catering And then here's a picture of our table setting which we tried very hard to recreate the Japanese aesthetic Yeah So Next one The sublime in the landscape of Japan Shogun's Samurai and the atomic bomb Japan embodies the poetic idea of the sublime awe-inspiring nature that is so powerful and beyond human comprehension that it can be terrifying as We traveled through Japan by train Boston on foot We were often astonished by its beauty and impressed by the ingenious and mostly Respectful ways in which the Japanese have carved out of that rugged landscape Usable space our journey really began on this high-speed Shinkansen bullet train from Tokyo Which first ran along the southeastern coast of Japan through the Kanto plane the large flat area All around Tokyo 38 million people in that area a Very heavily populated and impressively very Impressively industrialized although at one point I looked inland and I could catch a glimpse of the iconic and breathtaking Mount Fuji in the distance Yes, there's this industrialized area. There's Mount Fuji Rising high above the Kanto plane In Nagoya we transferred to a somewhat slower wide view train for a truly scenic trip to Takayama We passed into a flat sparsely populated heavily cultivated Agricultural area followed by a gently slope gently sloping hills covered with thick tree plantations lumbering is very big in Japan and Then Surrounded on three sides The Hida range of the Japanese Alps Which before we knew it our train was climbing up into? winding around and occasionally passing through via tunnels Until we emerged on a broad plateau Surrounded by snow patch mountains the Alpine City of Takayama now the largest Japanese city by area not by the population And a tourist destination for Japanese and other mostly non-American tourists Takayama was founded as a castle fortress town in the late 16th century Toward the end of the Japanese warring states period Which some of you may be acquainted with from Japanese samurai movies This was a sculpture of a Japanese samurai warlord in that area On just give you a few kind of important facts Historical facts, which I think will help you when you see some of the rest of what we saw in today's Japan and there's a history fact sheet on your on your Chair for you to look at later, but this is a short very short version of it the history of Japan is unique among nations in that it was ruled nearly continuously for 675 years from the late 12th to the late 19th century by its military class Headed up by the shogun who was a feudal military dictator and The samurai who were feudal military nobility and officers The shogun held power over his large territory Through hundreds of local and regional feudal landowners called Daimyo Who were the equivalent of medieval European lords the Daimyo in turn? Commanded the samurai Whose principal loyalty however was actually to the shogun So if you've read James Clavalle's novel shogun or seen the miniseries this entire arrangement Probably sounds familiar to you. That's the end of the history lesson, but you're going to see why I gave it to you in a little bit So back to Takayama Where we spent a day and a half. Oh, sorry. There's just that's a shogun. It's an actual antique shogun I'm sorry samurai We spent a day Yeah and a half basically walking around the incredible picturesque and Surprisingly peaceful old town a lot of tourists, but it just seemed to Absorb and get the tourists just got calmer and calmer the longer they were there We certainly did with its tastefully flood-controlled river running right through it Chris crossed by a variety of artful wooden bridges flowing past streets of well-preserved samurai era buildings and Riverside vendors offering a variety of delicious and often surprising street food The the highlight of our time at Takayama was a leisurely three mile walk. We took above the old town Which from one end of the old town to the other a meandering path past majestic trees filled with unfamiliar birdsong Diverting at various points up into expansive Shinto shrines and burial grounds and past 13 Buddhist temples These were the first of many Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines We were to encounter often side by side during our travels in Japan and at this point If we hadn't read the signs on each we wouldn't have known which which shrines and which were temples Our trip to the Alps concluded with a spectacular bus ride from Takayama to the western coastal city of Kanazawa in which our bus wound its way through densely forested mountains on brilliantly engineered highways passing over long bridges and through even longer tunnels Occasionally to emerge in a small Modestly populated valley like the one containing the reconstructed traditional Hida village of Shirakawa with its grass sod roofs Takayama Was one of our first experience with the dramatic landscape in Japan. Now. Let's jump to our last such experience Our five-day Self-guided walk on the carefully preserved remnants of the Nakasendo a long-distance trail That linked the imperial capital of Kyoto at that time with the political capital of Ido, which is present-day Tokyo during the Ido period in the 17th century to the middle of the 18th 19th century Sorry. Yeah, 18th century 19th century, sorry 1603 to 1868, okay a remarkable 250 years of relative peace in Japan in Striking contrast to the Western world which was in a state of nearly constant warfare during that very same time Today's Nakasendo like the original meanders through forests over mountain paths and into villages Some of which feature buildings that have been preserved and or rebuilt in Ido period style The original Nakasendo was one of the five major roots Connecting Ido with the rest of the country that was established by the first of the Tokugawa Shogans during this time in order to ensure that the hundreds of his daimyo Would spend alternate years in Ido and in their own domains Leaving their wives to live full-time in Ido as hostages When the daimyo and their retinues made their biennial journeys To and from Ido from as far away as Nagasaki 600 miles to the southwest of Tokyo their journey could last as long as six months We spent five days walking our 33 miles of the Nakasendo an average of about seven walking day miles per day On day one we hiked up through the Magome togi pass the first of three mountain passes We would cross on our five-day walk The steep and winding path up It's one of the most challenging parts of the Nakasendo and it made clear to us why the daimyo and their retinue Traveled largely on foot or were carried in palanquins by porters riding horses would have been just too dangerous We passed the remnants of the lives and habits of 17th century Japan all along the route indicating everything from Worship to work our three hour five mile walk ended in sumago one of the 69 Historic post towns along the Nakasendo and among the first to be preserved during the 20th century By its townspeople who established three basic rules Do not sell Lend or demolish houses This day to this day's hike was quite long 12 miles six hours, but it was spectacular as you can see However, over the past 150 years much of the original Nakasendo has been replaced by highways large towns and even small cities in This photo if you if you could if you look closely you would notice signs of modern life All along the Nakasendo towns electric towers and bridges Also passing roads Infrastructure, this is a dam and industry lumber But the Nakasendo is always dominated by the sublime Natural beauty of the area on some days like this one We necessarily walked segments of the trail with connections between them provided by train bust or Ryokan van But when we were on the trail, it was as if we had entered a different world shrines statues On day three we have had a relatively short walk four miles three hours Although it included our highest elevation at the tori toge pass another one of the most difficult parts of the Nakasendo This is looking down from the past Along the day way, we repeatedly passed and were repassed by a gregarious group of young Singaporeans Who greatly admired our senior stamina and they took the best picture We have of the two of us on our trip at the highest point on the walk We encountered an ancient Shinto shrine replete with statuary Our destination in this day was Narai Once known as Narai of 1,000 ends the most prosperous of the original Nakasendo post towns During the Edo period the Daño and their retinue prepared or recovered here in the many specially built ends Before or after tackling the steep tori toge pass that we just had gone through Make a mental note of this Narai cemetery You're going to see it again in a moment in a very different state On day four We woke up to snow Which we certainly were not expecting Remember the cemetery from yesterday We took a snowy but short one-hour walk to Kiso Hirasawa the lack aware center of Japan We spent some time in lack aware shops admiring the very special work done there We bought a few small light affordable items Which you can look at over on the table afterwards And we caught a late-morning train that brought us to Karuizawa, I never can't say that one right an upscale Stow or maybe even an aspen like town which apparently has been bought up by Bill Gates and other Wealthy tech magnets There sorry It actually snowed most of the day So we were just as happy that we weren't walking on the trail We did however walk a mile or so in pretty heavy snow from the train station to our accommodations that evening We spent that night at a venerable Reocon which has a 400 year history Including carpeting and armchairs from the late 19th century Day five our last day on the Nakasendo was a true adventure Although the snow would stop falling at some point overnight. There was nearly a foot of accumulation but Being the intrepid Vermonters we set off through the snow. I was wearing supposedly water resistant sneakers The ten point five mile six hour hike Was on a relatively narrow forest trail that began by going up to and over Another pass and then down what is reputed to be quote one of the most beautiful sections of the Nakasendo and Certainly the least developed Along the way were sites of battles from the warring states period which had been brought to an end by the emergence of the Edo Shogun Ruins of Edo era teahouses and Waystations including Sekisho, which were checkpoints Established along the route to prevent hostage bound wives from escaping and guns from being smuggled into Edo by the Daimyo's for possible Insurrection as well as countless small shrines and memorials from ancient to modern times and of course views of the surrounding forests and The sublime jagged mountain peaks towering over the small city of Yokokawa It was all spectacularly beautiful and serenely quiet Just us and the chickadees on the trail Yes, no one else was crazy enough to attempt this in the relatively deep snow After six hours we arrived in Yokokawa our feet soaked in cold, but we were really glad we done Along with buried bloody battlefields of the past Even more terrible sources of danger have long lurked behind the sublime natural beauty of Japan Ever since prehistoric times Japan has experienced an average of three major earthquakes and tsunamis per century and much more recently Well and much more recently while continuously bombing Tokyo over a three-hour period I want you to actually listen to this very carefully during World War two the United States on a single day in the spring of 1945 Unleashed a deliberate and devastating firebombing that destroyed 16 square miles of central Tokyo left more than 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless Making it the single deadliest air raid of World War two more than Dresden more than Hiroshima more than Nagasaki and Finally Japan is the only country in the world to have ever suffered the devastation of an atomic bomb attack on August 6 and 9th 1945 the United States detonated two such awesomely destructive weapons One each over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing more than 200,000 most of whom were civilians But such numbers can't in any way convey the horror and tragedy of these events That requires a visit to Hiroshima The A-bomb dome in this picture What is what remained of a civic building at the epicenter of the atomic explosion? The city decided to keep it as a reminder of the nuclear devastation the peace Memorial Park where one can actually feel the loss of so many lives and Offer up hopes for peace which many people do by placing origami at the Children's Peace Monument and Finally, oh, sorry one must visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum To see and feel the pathos of the thousands of photographs Film clips and artifacts of the bombings exhibited Photographs of a bomb survivors suffering from burns and other injuries Deformed and melted everyday objects like a watch stopped at 8 15 AM and a child's tricycle a photograph of a human shadow etched in stone by the blast the belongings of now dead junior high students a Final diary entry a white wall stained by the black rain of the blast And perhaps no photograph as poignant as this one To us this was the saddest picture of the museum Children from a local school all were killed We should add that our visit was greatly enriched by our having a guide Who was born just four days after the A-bomb explosion and whose life was Significantly affected by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima The remarkable thing about visiting Hiroshima is to understand That the people of Japan do not seem to place blame for the tragedy that struck their country Instead they want to continually remind the people and the leaders of the world of the dangers posed by war and by nuclear weapons I'm gonna spend a few minutes talking about Japanese aesthetics there are and their entertainment The Japanese are justifiably known for their appreciation and expression of beauty There are many examples of Japanese fine art From calligraphy which originated with the Chinese the Japanese language is actually based on Chinese But became an art form in and of itself in the Edo period and also through the rise of Buddhism Buddhism also generated other important Japanese art forms like sculpture and paintings Scenes like this of the imperial court were influenced by the adoption of Buddhism by the emperor in the 9th century Eventually paintings along with screens sliding doors walls Became more decorative and less religious during the Edo period the 1600s starting in the 1600s And it captured scenes like this which looks like a sort of field hockey game And then the tea ceremony which is an art form in and of itself gave rise to the art of scrolls and every tea ceremony room You will see scrolls and they change them out depending on sort of I guess the mood or something They want to I'm not sure exactly why they change them out. Anyway Tea ceremonies also gave rise to lack of wear and ceramics But as I mentioned earlier the Japanese also have a very quirky aesthetic that brought the world hello kitty and strange street characters like these But what perhaps interested me in the most of was that was the Japanese art that could be found outside museums The evidence of artistic effort and sensibility everywhere we met and I'm going to start with something you Entirely utilitarian made into a work of art what I might call quotidian or everyday art and that's a manhole cover Every town and city in Japan has its own manhole cover design each one distinct elaborate and beautiful This one is from the town of Nara and it incorporates the deer. You can see it over on the left Which they can be considered to be sacred and which roam freely or bound sections of the city As you can see here with my granddaughter who is feeding one in the park Ordinary Japanese people take part in their own decorative arts efforts, which can include most famously origami This is a photo of a display case in our Hiroshima guy Taka's house containing her own origami work She she studied it and and she's one of many many Everyday Japanese people who who have learned how to do this as an art form She gave us several people pieces excuse me as did Random people on the street who just give away their origami and some of which we have here on the table here for you to look at later Taka also participates in another unique Japanese popular art form of doll making. This is a display case in her house The dolls in this photo are elaborate renderings of imperial court figures mostly emperors and emperors some musicians We saw these in her house and we saw and we came upon these kind of dolls in two other locations Because Japan has a national doll festival every March in which people from local towns make these dolls So we saw them on Miyajima and we also saw them in kind of Kanazawa. They're just remarkable Another quotidian and very popular Japanese art form is the art of ribbon making and gift wrapping So this is a display of wrapping for wedding gifts. It was a in a small local museum In Kanazawa and these were made by local people They're basically ribbons that are made specifically for wedding gifts And I'll give you a close-up of one of them. Those are two fish ribbons in the form of Koi or carp, which is a symbol for prosperity and happiness which is seems appropriate for a wedding gift and then another of Well-known form of Japanese art arts gardens Which are everywhere as part of temples and shrines museums public parks and also private homes There are different kinds of gardens Japanese gardens including tea gardens like this one here Which incorporates tea houses and shelters This is in the Hamariku Garden in Tokyo, and it's also a great example of urban Japanese garden art in the way They just sort of nested these gardens in in the middle of these incredible high Skyscrapers and what I'm just going to do right now is just sort of walk you through just some of the really beautiful gardens that we stroll through During our time in Japan with no real commentary. Just look just see them That's Hamariku also This is actually a I can't remember the name of it, but it's the famous bamboo forest in Kyoto and Since we were in Japan during Sakura or cherry blossom time I would be remiss if I didn't show you some of the gorgeous cherry blossoms We saw which truly are their own civil culture art form That's philosophers path in Kyoto. That's the river in Kyoto. That's it That's actually a plum tree and there's two beautiful blossoms. That's my granddaughter Quite by happenstance. We literally followed the cherry blossoms throughout our entire time in Japan by the time We got to Tokyo. They were on the wane, but they were still magnificent Another unique Japanese art form is the kimono That's actually the back of the kimono that Taka put on me Which are they only started being actually called kimonos in the 19th century But they were worn as early as the 8th century simple everyday garments But it was during the Edo period starting around 1600 when the cosoto as it was then called became a unifying cultural marker Every Japanese person wore it regardless of age gender or socioeconomic position Although as you can imagine the kimonos of the elite classes were substantially more elaborate than those of the working classes And here are a few historic kimonos on display in the Tokyo National Museum It's just a few Kimonos now are a bit of a cultural relic Taka who owned well at least a half a dozen exquisite mostly antique kimonos There some of them from her mother her grandmother told us that her daughter-in-law has no interest in them whatsoever Some people get married in kimonos although they're just as likely to get married in Western white brideswear and modern tuxedos But one place we saw kimonos being worn and this is another example of Japan's quirky kitschy side is on the streets Don by tourists Mostly Japanese I mean excuse me Chinese although not exclusively who rent them to walk around in them for the day and The rental is also apparently the thing to do for Japanese Graduating seniors who we saw everywhere in Kyoto one of the days that we were there both boys and girls outfitted Another place you can see kimonos is in Kabuki theater One of Japan's oldest and most celebrated kinds of performance our Kabuki developed in Kyoto in the early 17th century And it incorporates dance dramatic gestures and music Kabuki involves complex plot lines with dramas centering around court family and Military intrigues and to elaborate costumes to match the drama and this is me outside the theater I was not allowed to take any pictures inside the theater. So these are downloaded from the internet We attended a Kabuki performance and actually what we really attended was just like a tiny bit of it because the Kabuki performances go all day long But they have the balcony set up for tourists basically so that we can come in and watch it for an hour or so But down on the orchestra. These people go in and they go all day to watch these these performances It was really one of the strangest theater experiences. We've ever had The actors come on stage They find their places and then they pose and they say their lines and they rarely ever move from those original positions And it made us very hard for us to infer the plot because of course it was in Japanese and there was so little action We couldn't get any clues All the actors are men and the men who play female roles are called Onagata This is a poster offering a biography of one of the celebrated Onagata The actors vocalizations do not resemble normal human speech and I mean Japanese human speech and at Western they change pitch and active levels in mid-sentence and Some audience members shout out loud at various times Usually when an actor strikes a particularly dramatic pose And what we learned later is that they were shouting the stage name of the actor or if they really wanted to pay a compliment They were starting they were shouting the actor's father's stage name because Kabuki actors tend to be generational It was truly a spectacle unlike any other dramatic art. We've ever seen Of course another big performance art in Japan are the movies and this one And and one of the and the Japanese movie was was responsible for getting us to Japan at least in part in 2018 we took a msec film class with Rick Winston on post-war Japanese movies And it really inspired me in particular to want to visit world Japan But even before that we've been big fans of Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa Especially his samurai movies now those last two slides that I just showed you were taken at a Japanese film Museum that was housed within the movie studio towi Where many samurai genre films were and still are made in that place? You can walk among the samurai era sets and feel like to share Mofuni is going to jump out at you from one of the doorways The studio Was also an amusement park of sorts for for kids and our grandson got to learn some ninja warrior techniques. I Think it is safe to say that baseball Is a popular art form in Japan We went to the famous Tokyo Dome to see the Yuma Yuri Giants play and experienced how Japanese baseball games are a universe unto themselves Japanese fans baseball fans are truly fan addicts. They have individual songs that they sing for each player They bring their own marching bands to the stadium, but of course, they're incredibly polite They don't boo they don't harass the other teams and they're very loyal and here is a picture of a typical fan Now did I mention that they are incredibly loud? I don't know if you caught a glimpse of that young woman just at the very very end She is an example of what we found to be the strangest aspect of Japanese ball games the Yuriko Pretty young girls who carry 30 plus pound kegs of draft beer or other drinks on their backs and run And I mean run up and down the stadium steps smiling maniacally Waving their hands geisha style and then whipping out the spouts in the cups when someone flags them down We have never seen anything like it. All right, there's one Japanese entertainment that is impossible impossible to avoid and I'm guess you could say it's its own art form and that's shopping I'm going to give you just two examples so you can see the gamut of Japanese store shopping from the ridiculous to the sublime Now this is oh god. I'm never gonna pronounce this quickly. I'm a yaiyo kocho Which is basically a warren of city streets with discount stores We went on a Sunday and it was mobbed And these stores can go many stories high And have a funny little architecture to go with it. Okay now to the sublime which in some ways also ridiculous Mitsukoshi is Well first of all I had agreed to get Peter to go to it. He did not want to do this It's called the Harrods of Japan. It's the oldest department store in Asia It started out as a kimono seller in the 1600s We arrived at the main door which is outfitted with two lions. Let's see if I can there we go Worthy of the New York City Public Library and time for opening hour When the store is open for the day several employees I'll just go back there show you several employees come out to the grand entrance and read a formal greeting to the customers Waiting to enter and then they bow Then as you enter the store Another group of employees are lined up and bow to you as you walk through. It's utterly charming the store is a Study in tasteful ostentation if that makes any sense I found the ceilings lighting wall treatments elevator and stairways over the top and yet awe-inspiring Here's a picture they took of us in front of this enormous blown glass sculpture We went up to the floor that sold kimonos some of them costing more than $10,000 everything in the store is very expensive But through my persistence, we found something we could afford We bought a sake pitcher in two cups made by Kiara, which is a 400-year-old Japanese porcelain producer for only 37 dollars Definitely had to been the cheapest thing in the store Then we went down to the food court Which was the most enticing food court I have ever been in in my we've ever been in We bought pastries and coffee and a beef sushi snack for later That story I have to say was truly a highlight of our stay in Tokyo Cut this one a little short so that we give you time to ask questions. Sorry about that They they were everywhere we went the Shinto shrines and the Buddhist temples From the largest cities like Kyoto and Tokyo to the smallest villages in parks, forests and fields Or simply tucked into an urban neighborhood From the Shinto shrines deep in the sacred mountains of the Kippen insula To the enormous statue of the Buddha in the ancient imperial capital of Nara Literally everywhere and anywhere we went in Japan there. They were in fact, there are around 80,000 public Shinto shrines and more than 77,000 Buddhist temples in Japan and they're often found together Relatively modest Buddhist temples sitting within large expansive Shinto shrines featuring dozens if not hundreds of vermilion Tori Or fierce Shinto deities ornamenting otherwise simple Buddhist temples Where one can observe these Shinto influence ways which many Japanese seem to embrace their Buddhism Welcome to what is certainly the oldest and one of the most fascinating examples of religious syncretism in the world Please I'm gonna skip the next bit So let's go to Miyajima So I think you remember you may remember that Peter Talking about the fact that it wasn't clear to us. What was this shrine and what was a temple? It all became clear on Miyajima. This is a large island on Hiroshima Bay It's just a five-minute ferry ride from the mainland, but a world away from 21st century life This photo shows Miyajima's Mount Misen Which has been considered a sacred and a sacred object of worship since the ancient times We had read a bit about Miyajima literally Shrine Island and its UNESCO World Heritage Itsu Kushima Shrine But nothing could have prepared us for the vision of its gigantic vermilion Tori gate Standing in the sea guarding the island or the beautiful but frankly bizarre Baishou in Buddhist temple on the grounds of the Shinto shrine That's Peter with one of the peculiar Shinto guardians on the Daishou in temple You can figure out which one Peter is A Tori a Tori gate has been welcoming and guarding the island since the 12th century the present one known as Oh Tori It's nearly 55 feet high and more than 80 feet wide It's the eighth such Tori to be in this location since the 9th century This one was built in 1875 Out of Japanese camphor and cedar trees and it is still standing 150 years later Stands under its own weight of 60 tons The entire island of Miyajima is the precinct of the shrine and it is believed that the gods actually reside in the island Making it an object of veneration For centuries the island was considered to be so sacred that commoners were only allowed to pass to approach it Through by steering their boats through the Tori gate to purify them to this day Births and deaths are not allowed near the shrine and there is no burial site on the island Pregnant women are supposed to leave the island to give birth and people who are terminally Terminally ill must be removed from the island as well The entire itsukushi the shrine is dedicated to Shinto gods and goddesses of sea and storms There we go The multi-billion shrines suspended over the water multi-building shrines excuse me suspended over the water is Graceful and beautiful and you can see this is low tide, but the water at high tide comes in underneath the shrine the Daisho in Buddhist temple which is located within the shrine to precinct is without a doubt the craziest religious building we have ever visited this is a walk up to the temple and you pass Hundreds of these adorable little statues of a bodhichapa, which is a Buddhist saint called jizubosattu There's more there These are quite different from the regular jizo images Which are usually just shown as regular Buddhist monks Here the jizubosattu are wearing knit caps like babies which are made by parents who have lost their children They believe that if they take good care of the jizo images They will be taking good care of their lost children The temple building is relatively modest compared to what's inside Which is thousands of small statues of bodhichapas and protectors People also put bibs on the religious statuary to signify the care of children who have died You can see big religious statues all over Japan not only in shrines But along roadsides and even in people's gardens So I think we're going to just close and so there is some time for asking questions I want to close with this final observation Our conclusion about 21st century Japanese syncretism is that Buddhism particularly Zen Buddhism is Seriously waning in Japan because as in most economically advanced countries many people just don't have the time or psychic energy To spend in serious religious practice whether it be Zen Buddhism or monastic Christianity But on our visits we observed a genuine devotion Among Japanese both tourists and locals While visiting these same the same sites that we visited no no it's too far right okay And all of this led us to speculate that many Japanese maybe a bit like secular American Jews Me for example who celebrate Passover in Hanukkah's cultural events But don't observe the more deeply religious Jewish holidays or perhaps lapsed Catholics like Therese Who nevertheless celebrate Christmas and Easter again more as cultural touchstones than as articles of religious faith and Way at the end of this. Oh, there we are very good Or like our syncretized Judeo-Christian family Who found transcendent beauty in our remarkable trip to Japan? So thank you for letting us share with this with you. And as the Japanese say About 10 minutes for questions or comments from people who've been to Japan or people who haven't been And we're in our Japanese experts, so we might call on people been to Japan to help answer questions No idea no idea I went fast very fast through the other hike we did which was a pilgrimage where we went up actually quite high, but I actually don't know May June I mean May April March April Middle of March to middle of April We just went just this past spring yeah, so and we literally just followed the cherry blossoms through Japan Didn't tend to do that, but that's what happened the hike that we cut out was the the Shinto shrine hike On the keep an insula and that was very hard and we did only a small part of it We did less than we were It was toward the end of our trip it was in April There are some I mean it's mountainous, so they get mountain snow in April and May But we don't generally walk through it We weren't planning we weren't planning to walk with snow shoes. Yeah, we didn't have snow shoes. I didn't even have boots Yes You know there were a lot of Japanese Games and and and we never even saw karaoke or Sumo wrestling, so we were mostly on a cultural hot not a not a Yes recommend reading Yeah, yeah But but there's a lot of stuff to for people to look at on their way out here, and we'd be glad to lend you things Okay, I'm glad you said that Japan is a country that doesn't feel like they have to have of 3% growth every year what they care about is that everyone in their country has what they need It's not inexpensive, but it is not prohibitively expensive like you could start at $40 for a melon. No, no It's not like that at all. I mean it was not an inexpensive trip. I will tell you that I mean, but it wasn't like going to Central America But it was affordable. Yeah, I mean we it was a little more expensive for us because we were a little bit intimidated by the trains and so forth And so we had part of a plan for us by a by a travel Organization we were we didn't do any tours we were on our own But I will say this look it's a little bit like New York City All right, New York City you can go and you can spend a fortune if you know where to go You cannot spend a fortune and have a perfectly good time You can pay $5 for a bottle of water or 50 cents depending on where you go. It was like that when we were in Tokyo We we we spent very little money until actually our hotel in Tokyo was extremely affordable It was an apartment And you know we didn't need expensive restaurants Street food When we were with our son-in-law He took us to some very fancy very expensive restaurants Yes Well, they could they do have a fantastic cell phone coverage they don't have any shortage of I'm not sure Picture Oh, I know what you mean in Takayama. No, no those were Douglas furs those were huge several hundred year old trees. Yeah No, no, no natural No, it was natural Maybe maybe I don't know I missed that. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I can look we can look at the afterwards Harris did you observe Relationships where the male was pretty superior and We really didn't we only observed one relationship and that was talk and her husband, which was an extraordinary relationship it was an arranged marriage and And in fact They he had he had to provide paperwork because they were from Hiroshima That he was not in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing because back then they didn't want people to you know Because they were worried about fertility turned out he was but they lied, but it was an arranged marriage between his family and their families and It was just this remarkably respectful loving Couple, I mean I and that and I did not see in any, you know, male Superiority with him, but that was the only couple really doesn't know Shocking to us Yeah We just didn't observe it. I mean, you know, by the way, there were a lot of things we didn't observe that we've read about Like public drunkenness the only place we saw public drunkenness was at the ball game And that was because this that's because this one guy was sitting right near us This this one of the Eureka girls kept going by and every time she did that he would get another beer unbelievable There was somebody over here the question Well, yes Yeah I Know the drummers are here right now. They're in Vermont Yeah, but by the way speaking in which I don't know if any of you go to Florida at all in the winter but in Boca Raton is an Incredible Japanese garden that shows all the different styles of Japanese garden that we didn't have time to tell you about and And also has that festival And there's a tea ceremony and so we're incredibly worth going to Created by a Japanese American man who came Japanese man who came to Florida to start a pineapple farming of just prior to World War one We have a couple minutes Great great, you know, I mean Japanese gardens I mean if you want to go someplace and be peaceful and calm and meditate and be one with nature They just Every one of them is designed in a way to touch You and Nature Yeah, much Gaijin going bicycling. I've been seeing a lot of NHK videos recently. They're promoting the hell out of Packages of bicyclists for guidance, you know foreigners Well, let's see. Do you see we would have seen it in Tokyo. We saw you I wouldn't bicycle and key out of my life Oh Yeah, so here's the thing we in the cut in the mountainous areas We were hiking on places that you could not go on a bicycle. I mean if the if the People from the Ito area couldn't go on horses. Believe me. You couldn't go on bicycle Well, also, it just was too holy place to do that. Yeah. Yeah, we just didn't we didn't see it I mean, I'm not saying it didn't happen. I mean, I mean Japan you could spend a long time in Japan and You know if you want to see everything you'd have to spend months and months for years Yeah, and also I have to say we actually saw not that many Western travelers where we went I mean Hiroshima is where the first time we saw Americans and When we were in the car code, which we didn't get chance to show you which is the pilgrimage mountainous like There were backpacking Australians and some Americans. I mean we mostly saw Chinese tourists if we saw any tourists at all Yeah, if people have been traveling abroad lately I'm gonna say something a little I'm not gonna say it. Okay Do you remember when there used to be ugly Americans touring around New York and so forth They're ugly Chinese now They really are a Handful and we saw most of the tourists we saw were Chinese Yes But by the way Arish's point from before There is not a place in Japan that you cannot get cell phone coverage. There's not a place Japan You cannot get a internet internet connection They make sure that everybody has what they need Although let me say this is that it doesn't have the Wi-Fi culture that we have so You know, you can't just like walk into a cafe and get on Wi-Fi So what we ended up but what we ended up doing was renting a Wi-Fi device and then which connected to the cell towers And so we had so we had Wi-Fi everywhere we went so that we didn't have to pay for international phone Comment on their rigid customs. I mean I noticed when I was there as a clueless teenager They treated they were incredibly tolerant of their little kids and the little kids were holy cares And they're and they were also very tolerant of clueless American teenage They are very hot. They're a very tolerant people Right, right, they have the high expectations as well There's basically Japanese people basically have a uniform for life so they wear uniforms as children in their schools and Then they when they go to work you only see people in dark suits. I mean no Color, I mean gray would be considered probably, you know Radical to wear a gray suit versus a black suit And so I just all of a sudden realize one day sort of seeing the salary men and women in the street in their suits And then seeing the school children in their uniforms These people just have wear uniforms for their entire lives. I mean, that's what it felt like to me It was a little depressing I have to say and what I also noticed is that when the Japanese people are at leisure I mean, they're obviously not wearing suits, but they don't wear bright colors. You know, they wear muted Colors if you see an Asian person with bright colors, they're Chinese Yes Oh, right Well, it's then specifically it's then specifically and one of the really surprising things to me about being in Japan I wasn't prepared for is how Little Zen presence therein is in Japan that is not the Dom predominant Japanese practice It's pure land Buddhism or true pure land views. I think it's called that's The the the dominant and and the Zen temples are just closing. It's I was So the Buddhism is much is very this very inflected with Shintoism very Bright and orange and Joyous Okay, one more question and then we probably should wrap up here Let's wrap up here. Okay