Day 3 - Yokohama, Odawara Castle and Karaoke!

Photos Here

Day 3 started rather late. We slept well and met up with Masaki in the afternoon.
We took the train to Yokohama and went to a store "Uniqlo" to get Wayne some thermals, in preparation for our trip to Sapporo, as we will probably be outside for long periods of time and it's very cold there.
The "Heattech" is Japanese technology and is very warm. They had a lot of it. They even had slacks with the technology.
I'm wondering is Sapporo will be super crowded this year, since the winter olympics are taking place so nearby in South Korea.
After the store, we met Masaki's friend Koji. He works in an office for studying and reducing environmental impact during construction.
He works a typical 12 hour Japanese work day. Not even joking. 12 hours is the minimum people work. Because of this, they don't eat supper until after 9PM. That's the usual dinner time.
Koji likes his job a lot, he said, so it doesn't bother him.
Masaki talks a lot about how he thinks it's not good for a lot of people, though because they're only working hard for corporations that don't value new ideas or workers that stand out.
He said in South Korea, the work culture encourages people to be different and come up with innovations, but in Japan, keeping the status quo is more important for many corporations.
But whatever restrictions on their expression at work may be, the Japanese people more than make up for it in their food, art, and hobbies. People are unique everywhere, and Japan is no exception. They each decorated their store-fronts and houses uniquely. There are no cookie-cutter houses or yards.
I wonder if working in restaurants or small shops is a better  quality of life. A lot of places don't open until 10AM and they close at 7PM or 8PM, so, just by hours it's better.
There are SO many shops in such a small space.
It's kind of awesome. And it makes sense based on how the population moves. If there were only 1 shop of , say, a bakery, that means it would have to be really large to hold all the capacity and would be more expensive and risky to operate. But, if you have 3 or 4 little bakeries every couple blocks or so, combined, it's the same space, but it's spread out to reduce wait times and improves the quality that can be achieved in each bakery.
There aren't a lot of bakeries in Japan, but it's just an example.
Some grocery stores are rather large, but the only place I saw those bigger markets were out of town.

Anyway, to get back to Yokohama and our time with Masaki and Koji, we ate lunch at a small Soba/Udon shop in the mall at the Yokohama station.
Masaki was asking us what we wanted to try.
I said, "Something with vegetables". A gentleman with his wife and daughter, who were seated next to us said what I wanted. "It's good. Vegetables." with a thumbs up, a laugh, and a smile. His daughter was eating the same thing. It was very good. I got it Udon style, instead of Soba.
The difference is Soba has smaller noodles you dunk in a more concentrated broth. Udon has thicker noodles already in the thinner broth.
It had preserved and fresh green beans and what looked like unopened fern fronds. It was very good.
The gentleman asked how I liked it, "Oishi" (I'm probably spelling that wrong, but it means "delicious"). My Japanese vocabulary is so small. I'm trying to improve it a little every day.
Anyway, they were a very kind family. As they got up to leave, the daughter, about 10 years old, said, "Have a nice day" in English.
Which was a very nice thing for them to do.

While eating lunch, we learned about Koji. On the weekend and in his free time, he plays the clarinet in a 50 piece orchestra. They are working on Brahms third symphony now, but his favorite is Tchaikovsky.
We also learned he likes to travel and wants to go to Egypt next.
He's been friends with Masaki since high school.

The mall is HUGE. HUGE. Yokohama is the 8th largest city in Japan, I think. It was 8 levels high, has a garden rooftop, which was lovely. and it is at least 3 entire blocks wide.

The mind boggles.

They have everything. Including the chain bakery Cozi Corner, which harbors Masaki's favorite dessert: an eclair. We went there with Koji.
They were well made eclairs with just-set custard in different flavors.
It's the best eclaire I've had in years. Wayne never had one before, and I tried to buy him one when we visited Salem, Oregon, but the patisserie there was truly awful. In every sense. The dough, the filling, the sweetness, the frosting on top. It was basically a tough roll filled with overly sweet cupcake frosting, but...
Not this Japanese eclair.
Of course, it was executed to perfection.
They even offer to bag it for you with dry ice if you are travelling far.

As Masaki explained, Japanese people are extremely picky about the quality of their food. If a place doesn't make it well, they don't survive. Even if they do make it well, if they don't make it special, they don't survive.

Anyway, we took our eclairs up to the rooftop of the mall and ate them outside.
There was a little toddler blowing bubbles at us.
And a bird that looked like he was walking around, bobbing to the beat of the music that was playing over the loudspeakers.

After that, we went back down to the station and said good bye to Koji and took the train back to Odawara.

At Odawara, we went to the castle for the evening light-up. I think we missed the bigger ceremony, but we still got to see it changing colors and everything.

Then we went into the castle (only 500 yen each to get in, which is like $5. Very cheap museum price).
We learned about the Hojo family, which was the samurai family that defended the Odawara city. The Hojo were a well-loved family, unlike some other samurai families.
Even though Odawara castle is not the tallest castle, being only 7th tallest, it is known for being the castle that never fell. It was unconquerable as it was very well planned and built to withstand sieges.
When all of Japan was in civil war and being conquered (which eventually ended up uniting Japan), Odawara castle was the last castle. They didn't fall. They surrendered after three months of being sieged by the conquering force. They could have held out much longer, but they were forced to surrender when, as legend goes, the invading party built a castle in a day.
This is not certain to be fact, as they aren't sure how this could have happened. One theory is they built it, then cut all the trees down so the Odawara castle could see it, in what appeared to be one day.
Either way, they built it sometime within 3 months, which is still quite impressive.
This made it clear to the leaders in the Odawara castle that they should surrender, since they were obviously outmatched.
But the castle never fell, even then.
It's impressive on both sides, for sure.

The Samurai period was like the lords and knights templar period in England. A very similar society set up.

Anyway, the museum was very nice and we climbed to the top.
The also had lights pointing down to the ground, so you could see a light show looking down as well.
They also had a little thing on the rooftop where one person puts their hand on this little wooden ball, then holds hands with their loved one and the loved one puts their other hand on another wooden ball about 6 feet away.
You're supposed to stand that way for 15 seconds to ensure your love for each other.
I'm not sure if that's something that's all over Japan, or just on that spot, but it was nice.

We'll probably go back to the castle during the day because there were some other buildings on the castle grounds that were closed at night, and also so we can see out with light from the top of the castle.

After that, we walked the two or three blocks back to the main station part of Odawara and ate at a "pancake" place for dinner. It's called Okonomiyaki and originated from in the Western part of Japan and became popular all over.
The true Western style is a little different, in that you cook the ingredients in a ring, making a little place for the pool of batter, then poor the batter and mix into the middle.

We ate the other, less tricky way to cook it. Which is, you get all the ingredients in a bowl, (I got sakura shrimp), it's standard to get a lot of cabbage and an egg. There's a thin batter, like pancake mix in the bottom. You thoroughly mix it all together, dump it on a hot iron, spread it out, let it cook, and flip it when it's ready.
You have to watch it to make sure it's cooked thoroughly, because it contains raw meat, but also so it doesn't burn.

Then, you cut it into quarters, stack it, and put mayonnaise on top, with fruit sauce, too, if you want.
It is so. good. I could eat it every day.

On Day 3, it was my second favorite thing.
First being ramen, of course.

After supper, about 8pm, we went into a Karaoke box place.
We sang for 2 hours.
It was very fun.
They soundproof the rooms and bring drinks, or food or anything you want.

It was Saturday night, so there were a lot of people out drinking and karaoke. You can fit like 6-8 people into those rooms.

It was just us, but it was a lot of fun. Lots of singing. Masaki found some songs from a couple of animes we all watch together and sang the theme songs.

It was so much fun. I definitely want to check out the Karaoke place that recently opened up in Pullman. If it's anything like the way it's done here, I'll be going all the time.

More later.