We love Japan and have been looking forward to visiting again. Pete is happily wearing his yakuta robe to breakfast after enjoying a soak in the hotel baths.
Traditional Japanese breakfasts include savory foods like seafood, pickles and rice.
We went to Nozawa Onsen, a small village five hours east of Tokyo. It was charming!
It's hard to believe that more than one car could fit on the narrow roads.
Initially this area was settled in the 8th century. We were first attracted to the village because it has 13 public baths, all fed by natural hot springs. This is the prettiest bath house.
The village had gotten more snow than usual, and snow was piled up along side the roads and on top of everything.
We stayed at a place called Villa Nozawa. It caters to skiers, and most of the clientele were friendly Australian families who make annual trips here.
This was the view from our window on our first morning. Villagers hadn’t tackled clearing the snow from their roofs yet, and it looked like a winter wonderland.
At the front of the lodge are wooden statues called dosojin, protective guardians who watch over roads and travelers. We learned that the dosojin are unique to the Nozawa Onsen area and we saw lots of them around the village.
The villagers had cleared their walkways, and there were a variety of snow creatures in front of the houses.
We had come to Nozawa Onsen to ski the light powder that Japan ski resorts are famous for. We rented ski gear but brought our own ski clothes, including new wool balaclavas to keep our faces warm.
The snow was incredible and we had an awesome time skiing here!
Pete is posing in front of a Torii gate. Before this was a ski resort, likely there was a Shinto shrine here with a Torii gate marking its entrance.
Here’s the view from a ski run looking down at the village.
With the cold temperatures here the snow doesn’t melt during the day. The trees looked like they were covered with frosting.
In Japan they know how to do things right. For example this ski lift had covered chairs that kept us warm as we rode up.
This is a persimmon tree with the fruit still on it.
And here are dried persimmons called hoshagaki that we bought in the village.
We spent three fabulous days of skiing, soaking and strolling. Then we took the train to Tokyo. We saw lots of evidence that 2015 is the year of the ram (or sheep).
We’ve only been to Tokyo once before, in 2001. This time we stayed in Shibuya in a modern hotel. Kristina is lounging in the outfit that we wore to the baths and to meals in the hotel.
We chose to stay in the happening Shibuya district where we enjoyed the hustle and bustle atmosphere and the lights at night.
We ate some delicious sushi like this aji and hamachi nigiri.
This sushi restaurant only had a stand up counter, which was fine since it got us closer to the sushi chef.
Of course we enjoyed Japanese draft beer.
This is our first time to be in Japan during the winter. While most of the trees and plants are bare this time of year, it was nice to see some camellias blooming.
There is so much contemporary architecture in Tokyo, such as the Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower.
We liked the woven texture on this building.
One of our favorite buildings was the Prada Epicenter designed by Herzog and de Meuron. It's five-sided.
Epicenter's diamond shaped concave and convex glass windows are like fun house mirrors.
Another highlight was Za Koenji Public Theatre designed by Toyo Ito. We liked the repeating portal lights throughout the building.
This shot is looking down the stairwell.
We also visited two Tadeo Ando buildings. Wikipedia describes his style as "creating a 'haiku' effect, emphasizing nothingness and empty space to represent the beauty of simplicity."
This is Martin Puryear’s Guardian Stone sculpture. It's made of carved granite. The temperatures in Tokyo were cool enough to require hats and gloves while we were outside, but it didn't feel too cold.
We went to the National Art Center to check out the building.
There was a wonderful Sho exhibit, the art form of calligraphy. There wasn’t much in English about the exhibit, just a few quotes from a Sho master. We were happy to just look at the images.
Some of the pieces were enormous.
As we were leaving the gallery, the sun was going down and this created beautiful light and shadows in the interior courtyard.
We experienced our first tea ceremony in Tokyo. This art form comes from Zen Buddhism. We liked drinking from the gorgeous tea bowls.
Here’s a closer look at the tokonoma, the tea house alcove with a hanging scroll. The grass floral arrangement has been looped into an enso circle shape, a Zen symbol for elegance and strength.
Our tea master has studied the Way of Tea for 28 years. We were glad she was patient with us newbie foreigners.
Japanese people have also mastered the art of hospitality. Our meal at Teppen started with a dish of fried chicken skin with ponzu sauce and a welcome note from the cook.
Teppen is a yakitori restaurant that offers primarily chicken skewers like these thighs with green onions and gizzards. We think they had made the serving dishes since they are perfect for their yakitori skewers.
The women owners and workers were extremely friendly and made our meal there memorable.
We shared the front counter with a Japanese mom and her two daughters.
When we had finished our meal they presented us with a sweet treat and a message written in chocolate sauce. Note that the king is bald and his partner has a brown ponytail!
We could have stayed longer in delightful Tokyo, but it was time for us to fly to South Korea. Our last visit to Seoul was in 2013 and we have been looking forward to visiting this city again. We learned that several new buildings had been completed, including Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), and we were eager to see them.
We walked all around these futuristic buildings that take up a city block. DDP is incredible!
The temperatures in Seoul never got above 37 degrees F. Notice the ice in the foreground - brr!
We liked the look of this Cosmic Egg sculpture.
These flowers were on top of the DDP. We wish we could have seen it at night when the whole place is lit up, but it was too cold!
Inside the DDP it was nice and warm. The interior also had lots of curves, but in white rather than metallic color.
Zaha Hadid's architecture firm also designed some cool furniture.
The bamboo flooring on the stairs complemented all the white walls.
Pete was amazed with all the automatic doors that were installed on slanted walls. These design challenges, plus the fact that construction unearthed some ruins resulted in the DDP taking over four years to build.
We've been looking forward to eating Korean food. Our first night in Seoul we went for Korean BBQ. Here you can see the table with all the sauces and vegetables we'll need for a barbeque feast.
Pete's just waiting for the grill to get hot so he can start cooking the pork belly.
The restaurant is well-equipped with exhaust fans that hang over the tables.
As we left the restaurant we saw these buckets of hot coals that were being readied for the next round of diners.
Another aspect of Seoul that makes it great for travelers is the subway system. It's huge with plenty of trains running. We liked to get out of the cold by traveling on the heated subway cars.
We took the subway to the neighborhood where we stayed during our 2013 visit so we could see the Jogyesa Temple again.
These colorful cloths are shaped like bodhi leaves and had wishes for the new year tied to them.
Namdaemun Market is one of the oldest markets in Seoul. It's packed with vendors selling consumer goods and food. Here's Pete with a skewer sampler. It had fish cake, sausage and perilla leaves, and had been freshly fried.
We bought some more dried persimmons, yum!
Kristina also bought some wash cloths to take to the jjimjilbang, the Korean bath house. It's a Korean tradition at the bath house to scrub your skin with rough cloths to slough off the dead cells.
We stayed in an Airbnb studio that was tiny but had everything we needed, including very efficient radient floor heating.
Less than five minutes away from our studio is Siloam, a huge jjimjilbang, where we went to soak as well as hang out in their fomentation rooms. Fomentation is similar to a sauna and typically includes a natural material with positive qualities as the flooring in the room. To use the fomentation rooms, you are given a uniform of shorts and a t-shirt. Here's Pete modeling his outfit while sitting on a massage chair.
Men and women wear differently colored uniforms. The men are always in some drab color, like brown or gray. The women usually have something more colorful. In this case it's orange as shown here by Kristina. Siloam also has a cafe that serves delicious dishes like ginseng chicken and pork kimchi stew for bargain rates - this lunch cost us less than $20.
After a lovely morning of soaking and feeling warm, we were ready to venture out for more sight-seeing. Another new building in Seoul is the City Hall designed by iArc Architects.
Inside City Hall is the world's largest vertical garden.
Up on the Sky Plaza there was an art exhibit of inflated sculptures that was fun to check out.
This is mandu jeongyol, a dumpling stew with mushrooms and kimchi.
And here's what it looks like when it's cooked.
We visited the Museum of Modern Contemporary Art (MMCA) and saw Lee Bul's impressive Civitas Solis II.
The MMCA also had another site-specific exhibit that we liked. Entitled Port of Reflections by Leondro Erlich, the artist has created a floating harbor with moored boats - with their 'reflections' on the imaginary water. If you look closely you can also see museum visitors looking up at the exhibit from below.
But now we have to pull up anchor in Seoul, as we are heading to Burma for a meditation retreat. Our next blog posting will be in a few weeks.
Traditional Japanese breakfasts include savory foods like seafood, pickles and rice.
We went to Nozawa Onsen, a small village five hours east of Tokyo. It was charming!
It's hard to believe that more than one car could fit on the narrow roads.
Initially this area was settled in the 8th century. We were first attracted to the village because it has 13 public baths, all fed by natural hot springs. This is the prettiest bath house.
The village had gotten more snow than usual, and snow was piled up along side the roads and on top of everything.
We stayed at a place called Villa Nozawa. It caters to skiers, and most of the clientele were friendly Australian families who make annual trips here.
This was the view from our window on our first morning. Villagers hadn’t tackled clearing the snow from their roofs yet, and it looked like a winter wonderland.
At the front of the lodge are wooden statues called dosojin, protective guardians who watch over roads and travelers. We learned that the dosojin are unique to the Nozawa Onsen area and we saw lots of them around the village.
The villagers had cleared their walkways, and there were a variety of snow creatures in front of the houses.
We had come to Nozawa Onsen to ski the light powder that Japan ski resorts are famous for. We rented ski gear but brought our own ski clothes, including new wool balaclavas to keep our faces warm.
The snow was incredible and we had an awesome time skiing here!
Pete is posing in front of a Torii gate. Before this was a ski resort, likely there was a Shinto shrine here with a Torii gate marking its entrance.
Here’s the view from a ski run looking down at the village.
With the cold temperatures here the snow doesn’t melt during the day. The trees looked like they were covered with frosting.
In Japan they know how to do things right. For example this ski lift had covered chairs that kept us warm as we rode up.
This is a persimmon tree with the fruit still on it.
And here are dried persimmons called hoshagaki that we bought in the village.
We spent three fabulous days of skiing, soaking and strolling. Then we took the train to Tokyo. We saw lots of evidence that 2015 is the year of the ram (or sheep).
We’ve only been to Tokyo once before, in 2001. This time we stayed in Shibuya in a modern hotel. Kristina is lounging in the outfit that we wore to the baths and to meals in the hotel.
We chose to stay in the happening Shibuya district where we enjoyed the hustle and bustle atmosphere and the lights at night.
We ate some delicious sushi like this aji and hamachi nigiri.
This sushi restaurant only had a stand up counter, which was fine since it got us closer to the sushi chef.
Of course we enjoyed Japanese draft beer.
This is our first time to be in Japan during the winter. While most of the trees and plants are bare this time of year, it was nice to see some camellias blooming.
There is so much contemporary architecture in Tokyo, such as the Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower.
We liked the woven texture on this building.
One of our favorite buildings was the Prada Epicenter designed by Herzog and de Meuron. It's five-sided.
Epicenter's diamond shaped concave and convex glass windows are like fun house mirrors.
Another highlight was Za Koenji Public Theatre designed by Toyo Ito. We liked the repeating portal lights throughout the building.
This shot is looking down the stairwell.
We also visited two Tadeo Ando buildings. Wikipedia describes his style as "creating a 'haiku' effect, emphasizing nothingness and empty space to represent the beauty of simplicity."
This is Martin Puryear’s Guardian Stone sculpture. It's made of carved granite. The temperatures in Tokyo were cool enough to require hats and gloves while we were outside, but it didn't feel too cold.
We went to the National Art Center to check out the building.
There was a wonderful Sho exhibit, the art form of calligraphy. There wasn’t much in English about the exhibit, just a few quotes from a Sho master. We were happy to just look at the images.
Some of the pieces were enormous.
As we were leaving the gallery, the sun was going down and this created beautiful light and shadows in the interior courtyard.
We experienced our first tea ceremony in Tokyo. This art form comes from Zen Buddhism. We liked drinking from the gorgeous tea bowls.
Here’s a closer look at the tokonoma, the tea house alcove with a hanging scroll. The grass floral arrangement has been looped into an enso circle shape, a Zen symbol for elegance and strength.
Our tea master has studied the Way of Tea for 28 years. We were glad she was patient with us newbie foreigners.
Japanese people have also mastered the art of hospitality. Our meal at Teppen started with a dish of fried chicken skin with ponzu sauce and a welcome note from the cook.
Teppen is a yakitori restaurant that offers primarily chicken skewers like these thighs with green onions and gizzards. We think they had made the serving dishes since they are perfect for their yakitori skewers.
The women owners and workers were extremely friendly and made our meal there memorable.
We shared the front counter with a Japanese mom and her two daughters.
When we had finished our meal they presented us with a sweet treat and a message written in chocolate sauce. Note that the king is bald and his partner has a brown ponytail!
We could have stayed longer in delightful Tokyo, but it was time for us to fly to South Korea. Our last visit to Seoul was in 2013 and we have been looking forward to visiting this city again. We learned that several new buildings had been completed, including Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), and we were eager to see them.
We walked all around these futuristic buildings that take up a city block. DDP is incredible!
The temperatures in Seoul never got above 37 degrees F. Notice the ice in the foreground - brr!
We liked the look of this Cosmic Egg sculpture.
These flowers were on top of the DDP. We wish we could have seen it at night when the whole place is lit up, but it was too cold!
Inside the DDP it was nice and warm. The interior also had lots of curves, but in white rather than metallic color.
Zaha Hadid's architecture firm also designed some cool furniture.
The bamboo flooring on the stairs complemented all the white walls.
Pete was amazed with all the automatic doors that were installed on slanted walls. These design challenges, plus the fact that construction unearthed some ruins resulted in the DDP taking over four years to build.
We've been looking forward to eating Korean food. Our first night in Seoul we went for Korean BBQ. Here you can see the table with all the sauces and vegetables we'll need for a barbeque feast.
Pete's just waiting for the grill to get hot so he can start cooking the pork belly.
The restaurant is well-equipped with exhaust fans that hang over the tables.
As we left the restaurant we saw these buckets of hot coals that were being readied for the next round of diners.
Another aspect of Seoul that makes it great for travelers is the subway system. It's huge with plenty of trains running. We liked to get out of the cold by traveling on the heated subway cars.
We took the subway to the neighborhood where we stayed during our 2013 visit so we could see the Jogyesa Temple again.
These colorful cloths are shaped like bodhi leaves and had wishes for the new year tied to them.
Namdaemun Market is one of the oldest markets in Seoul. It's packed with vendors selling consumer goods and food. Here's Pete with a skewer sampler. It had fish cake, sausage and perilla leaves, and had been freshly fried.
We bought some more dried persimmons, yum!
Kristina also bought some wash cloths to take to the jjimjilbang, the Korean bath house. It's a Korean tradition at the bath house to scrub your skin with rough cloths to slough off the dead cells.
We stayed in an Airbnb studio that was tiny but had everything we needed, including very efficient radient floor heating.
Less than five minutes away from our studio is Siloam, a huge jjimjilbang, where we went to soak as well as hang out in their fomentation rooms. Fomentation is similar to a sauna and typically includes a natural material with positive qualities as the flooring in the room. To use the fomentation rooms, you are given a uniform of shorts and a t-shirt. Here's Pete modeling his outfit while sitting on a massage chair.
Men and women wear differently colored uniforms. The men are always in some drab color, like brown or gray. The women usually have something more colorful. In this case it's orange as shown here by Kristina. Siloam also has a cafe that serves delicious dishes like ginseng chicken and pork kimchi stew for bargain rates - this lunch cost us less than $20.
After a lovely morning of soaking and feeling warm, we were ready to venture out for more sight-seeing. Another new building in Seoul is the City Hall designed by iArc Architects.
Inside City Hall is the world's largest vertical garden.
Up on the Sky Plaza there was an art exhibit of inflated sculptures that was fun to check out.
This is mandu jeongyol, a dumpling stew with mushrooms and kimchi.
And here's what it looks like when it's cooked.
We visited the Museum of Modern Contemporary Art (MMCA) and saw Lee Bul's impressive Civitas Solis II.
The MMCA also had another site-specific exhibit that we liked. Entitled Port of Reflections by Leondro Erlich, the artist has created a floating harbor with moored boats - with their 'reflections' on the imaginary water. If you look closely you can also see museum visitors looking up at the exhibit from below.
But now we have to pull up anchor in Seoul, as we are heading to Burma for a meditation retreat. Our next blog posting will be in a few weeks.
