Today was laundry day. I went to a laundromat instead of doing laundry at the hotel. It was too early to check into the hotel so I thought I’d take my chances at a laundromat.
All the machines looked super large and the pictures above the machines showed the number of blankets each machine would take. So maybe people only use this for large items they can’t do at home. Still, I was there and I probably looked silly toting my suitcase around anyway. Might as well do laundry there.
I put my translation app on camera mode and tried to figure out how it all worked. All the machines were combo washer dryers. This is technology I am skeptical about, but here we go.
Step 1 – put laundry in machine, close door and remember machine number. Check. I shut the machine door and the central control (my name for it) started talking to me in Japanese.
Step 2 – go to central control machine, select “English”, put in machine number – machine will flash green so you can be sure you have the right machine. Green flash – check.
Step 3 – select “wash and dry”, put money in and receive change.
Crap, machine took coins or 1,000 yen bills. My laundry would be 1,300 yen and I had 900 in coins or a 2,000 bill. Another lady was in the laundromat. I show her the 2,000 bill and pointed at the machine. It took a minute but she understood. She ran out to her car and came back with two 1,000 bills to make change. I was grateful. Step 3 – check.
After successfully paying, my machine started to spin. I’m pretty sureOh shit – I forgot the laundry detergent. The door was locked tighter than a safe at the bank. I peered in and there were suds. Did this automatically provide soap too? I hope so. I suppose clothes washed in just water are still cleaner than clothes not washed at all? And I suppose I could wash them again at the hotel if this was a $9 experience just for my blog.
Later I did the math. I feel this was very expensive coin laundry. Maybe I should have used the laundry at the hotel. Too late, the laundry is no longer mine until central control releases it.
Central Control
I heard a 5 second song and then the door of my machine clicked. My laundry was dry and smelled clean!
I decided to stay one night in Ueda since I wasn’t sure how I was going to get from the retreat center to Ueda or what time. I didn’t want to have to rush to meet my train or miss it because my timing was off. It would take me two trains and a bus to get from Ueda to Hirayu Onsen. I was able to come back to Ueda with my teacher and friend by taxi. I also got to have lunch with them before they departed to Tokyo and I departed to laundry
After doing laundry, I was only slightly early to check in to my hotel. I was able to check in early. I booked a massage for 6:40pm so I had over three hours to kill. Sara and Michael had headed off to get ice cream when I left them so I still had ice cream running around in my brain. I mapped ice cream and picked a location nearby. It was a restaurant that served a lot of things. Ice cream was not one of them. They had shaved ice. Close enough. I got a mulberry milk ice. The menu advertised it was high in antioxidants. I’ll take my toxic sugar with a side of antioxidants please. They cancel each other out, right? It was stupid sized and delicious.
Then what? I went to the art museum because the internet told me they had a great shop with things from local artists. Lots of things, but nothing I wanted. Since I was shopping now, where else coukd I go? I went to two other gift shops. They were full of boxed snacks. When Japanese travel they buy these as gifts, either as a memento of where they traveled to or as a gift to others from their home town. I think it’s a great gift idea, but I don’t have room in my suitcase for boxed mystery food. One box had a picture of a green grape, another of an apple. I was pretty sure both of them probably were sweet and might resemble the flavor of that fruit. The rest of the boxes and bags were a complete mystery. The rest of the things in the shops were sake, samurai themed toys, other toys, trinkets, t-shirts and hats. There was a huge samurai theme since the Ueda Castle nearby dates back to this times of samurais.
After my massage, I went in search of steak. I had seen several on my wander around town. I went to two steak places that had people eating in them, but they told me they were closed. It was a little before 8:00pm. Even restaurants in Granby are open past 8:00. I went to a Korean BBQ place. Every item I would want was for a minimum of two people. I gave up the hope of steak. My next goal was to find a place that would serve me any food.
I went to the street near the train station where I ate the last time I was in Ueda. Two more restaurants were full of people, but closed. I still have emergencheese in my suitcase, but I’m pretty sure I should throw that away, not eat it. I think I’ll go to bed without dinner before eating emergencheese. The last restaurant on the street welcomed me in and even fished an English menu out of the back somewhere. No steak. So, I chose a cabbage and pork omelet. I never would have put those three things together on my own, but it was good once I scraped the dried fish flakes off the top.
I got up early this morning. I’ve been getting up early every morning. I’m not a morning person so it is weird to be awake before 6:00 each day. Today it was extra nice. It would give me time to explore Ueda before I left after lunch. Plus, I had no need to hang out in my smoking room.
I walked to the Ueda castle. It was originally built in 1583. Now it is part of a park and museum. It was so peaceful walking around the park. There were other people, but it seemed private compared to Tokyo. I took pictures and wandered. I heard drums off in the distance so I walked towards those. I imagined they were the big ceremonial drums. They stopped long before I could find them.
I also walked to the Historic Street. It looked like Japan from the 1500’s. I enjoyed the walk through the alley neighborhood to get to the historic street as much as I enjoyed the historic street. I love getting a glimpse of where people live. I always try to imagine what life might be like I lived there, rode my bike to that shop and ate at that restaurant. A bakery was open on the historic street, but none of the shops. It was still fun to walk down the street trying to imagine what life was like back then.
For lunch I met up with my spiritual teacher and one of my past classmates. She was not only one of his past students, but is now his translator and workshop organizer when he teaches in Japan. The main reason I am here is to attend one of these classes. I have met this class many times both in Japan, in Colorado and on zooms. So I was excited and honored to see them again and spend a week paying witness to their growth and their journey in person.
We left Ueda and headed up to the retreat center where the class will be. The class consists of 2 men and 10 women. A few minutes after I was shown to my room the guys came to say hi and take me to see where the girls were staying. Most everyone was there. I was welcomed with hugs and huge smiles. Those that spoke minimal English told me they were glad I came. The others told me in Japanese. Even through the language barrier, I knew they were grateful I came all this way to be with them. My heart was full and my happy tears were many.
Today was a travel day. In Japan you can have your luggage shipped from one hotel to the next. I asked my hotel about this. They looked up the address of where I was going and said they could not do same day shipping. It would get there the next day. My smaller bag was not big enough for a change of clothes, all my chargers, my toiletries, etc. I decided to travel with my suitcase.
In the morning I walked around the area of my hotel so I could explore without my suitcase as long as possible. I found a shrine near the hotel and a park which were both peaceful and beautiful.
An area near the hotel was a well guarded secret. Every entrance had guards in front of it. After walking by dozens of entrances all blocked off and guarded, I started to guess it was an area of government buildings. Eventually, I learned it was the National Diet Building. It is the center of political activity in Japan. It is where their House of Representatives and House of Councilors meet.
I also noticed many small buses and vans just parked on the streets nearby. They were all the same colors, white with a bright aqua blue. They all looked like they came out of the 1950’s. The windows in the back were covered with a heavy steel aqua colored mesh. Was this to keep prisoners in or to keep politicians safe from attacks from the outside? Upon doing some on-line searching, I found out they are police busses. They can be used for transporting prisoners or transporting police to an event where many police are needed. They can be used as mobile command centers as well.
So I still don’t know why there were so many in this area, but I was pretty sure something important was going on.
I had to check out at 10:00 and my shinkensen train (fast train) wasn’t until a little after 1:00. In theory, it would take a half hour to get to the station the shinkensen left from. What should I do for 2.5 hours? There was a big park next to the station. What could be more fun than taking your suitcase for a romantic stroll through the park on a lovely Saturday morning?
It took a few tries to figure out the best way to navigate the escalators with the suitcase. Too far in one direction and it might fall off the step when the step appears. Too far in the other direction and you’ll get squished by it when the step appears. Then when the ride comes to an end, you better be ready to give a good shove or it gets stuck on the transition and the person behind you runs into you. There were plenty of escalators to practice my technique on the way to the park.
There was also one giant staircase leaving the station just to make sure I got a good arm workout for the day. Then all the different sidewalk paver textures, street crosswalks and the park trail rounded out the workout as I use various muscles to push, pull, drag, lift, and skitter my suitcase along. I hoped the wheels would survive Japan. I need an adult sized version of the suitcase some kids have that they can sit or ride on. Why aren’t there more ride-on suitcases? So, of course, I got on line and looked up ride-on suitcases. There are quite a few options. One was a scooter suitcase. That’s what I need.
I felt silly taking my suitcase through the park, but I wasn’t the only one. I saw quite a few other people enjoying the day with their luggage. I sat on a bench by the lake and watched people in pink and white paddle boats paddle slowly by. You could hear children’s laughter echoing from all parts of the park. The sound of footsteps all around as some people wandered and some were out for their mid-morning jog. And the sounds of conversations filled the air as well.
I couldn’t fathom taking my suitcase out to lunch so I reached to the bottom of my purse and pulled out the emergencheese – individually packaged cheese I had shoved in there in case of a food emergency. What if the plane only had fish? I’d have emergencheese. What if my hotel restaurant wasn’t open and I couldn’t find another place to eat? Emergencheese. What if you were in a park and didn’t want to look for a restaurant and then shove your suitcase into that restaurant? You guessed it – Emergencheese. It did the trick but was completely unexciting.
I gave myself plenty of time to find my train. My train name was the Asama, but of course none of the signs said Asama. I followed the signs to the shinkansen assuming all the fast trains were in the same location. There was a big sign above the gate to the shinkansen that had a lot of the train names, departure times and platform numbers on it. There were no trains past 12:30 shown yet, but I felt I was headed in the right direction. I went in the ticket office and asked what platform mine would leave from – platform 19.
I got to the gate, put my ticket in. The machine sucked my ticket in and spit it out farther ahead, but the gate didn’t open. A train employee nearby instructed me about what I did wrong in Japanese. I scooted backwards until I was out the gate and got in line to see her since I had no idea what she said or what to do. Each shinkensen ticket comes with a local ticket as well. I needed to put both in at the same time. It would have taken me a half hour of trying other wrong ways before I would have thought of trying that…..
I put both in. They both got sucked up and spit out. The gate opened and I was free to go find Platform 19.
I got to Ueda and found my hotel with no problem. Again, the hotel had an automated machine with a guy standing behind it helping me push all the correct buttons. He took my key out of the machine and proudly exclaimed “one smoking room”. No, I didn’t book a smoking room. I asked if there were any non-smoking rooms I could switch too. He told me they were fully booked. I looked at my email booking confirmation. Oh, right there – smoking. I can’t believe I did that. I can’t argue with it now. I checked online for quite a while. I used Agoda, Google Maps, Hotels.com and Airbnb. Not only was this hotel fully booked, every hotel in the entire town was fully booked.
I opened the window in my room and sprayed the room/fabric spray they gave me. The spray did nothing. I did some laundry, shoved my clean clothes in my suitcase and vowed to not open it again until I had to. I doubt the room would have ruined my clothes since no one was actively smoking in my room, but better safe than sorry.
I found a delightful place for dinner that had a caprese salad. It was really good. The woman that made the salad was excited to tell me she made the mozzarella that day and showed me pictures of the process. I find most people I have come into contact with want to welcome me and have an interaction with me even if small. People are quite friendly here, especially outside the big city.
I decided to keep my window open all night. There didn’t seem to be too many bugs to make this a problem. When the train went by, it sounded like a jet plane was landing in my room. Either I was too tired to care or the trains stopped running at night, because they didn’t keep me awake.
Rraine Drops 