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Puti in Japan, Part 2 of 3
(Continued from part 1)
The streets around us are quite narrow and follow the spaghetti layout typical to Tokyo. The appearance of the city is no accident, as it was purposefully built so in the historic times to slow down the attacking enemies. It is quite opposite to Kyoto, which has a rectangular grid of streets familiar from western cities. I like the meandering streets and the irregular jumble of building styles, but my wife, who is a city planning architect, often disagrees with what she sees there.
In the hot and steamy weather I have to drink much, and I often get out of the house and visit the nearby 24-hour convenient stores to buy this or that beverage, as if the stores were an extension of the living room. I also like to get out to read a book, as the house is quite small and cramped for five persons, but my reading is often interrupted by rain, mosquitoes, or the sunset feeling so premature for the season. The house has an air-conditioning machine, but we have not used it much, as it is quite hard to find a setting that lets us feel comfortable but does not make us catch cold. (I had the machine once blowing cold air on my neck over a night. Next morning I woke up with a high fever and intolerable pain in my neck and shoulders.)
We bought Japan Rail Passes to let our family to travel in the national railway network freely without further payments. The passes are available only from foreign countries. They are valid also for most of the Shinkansen trains, but not for any private railways. If the railway line contains a private section, a surcharge is required.
We used our rail passes quite a lot. First we visited the city of Kanazawa. On a Japanese scale the city is quite small, only about 300 000 inhabitants, but it is famous of its university. The city is located on the west coast, and due to the (relative) scarcity of people is therefore more spacious than the east coast cities. The district surrounding Kanazawa has the largest snowfalls in the world, up to the point that sometimes people have to leave their homes through second-floor windows or a roof hatch, as the building is nearly buried in snow. Maintaining urban traffic is quite a stunt, too.
Our friend, a professor of mathematics, had us stay in his home and showed us the city. Kanazawa has an old town with preserved cities and streets and we walked there for an afternoon. We also enjoyed a seaside drive with the professor's open car. We visited a beach with bare rock instead of sand, and caught sea shells which we ate later as a dinner. (As far as I remember, sea shells were the earliest main food in the history of Japanese people, excluding Ainus who had a diet of their own).
(Continued...)
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Language pair: Finnish; Thai
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