Burgers and Broomsticks

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. When you're living in one of the most densely populated countries on the planet*, and one with an obsession with western culture to boot, then maybe you shouldn't be too surprised to find that Halloween weekend at Universal Studios in Osaka is absolutely chocka...

The idea was sound. Book a hotel just 500m beyond the perimeter gates and purchase a two-day pass. Make a reconnaissance mission on the Saturday, ready for a full-blown dawn attack on the Sunday. The gates opened at 9am, and we were at the ET - The Extraterrestrial ride at 9.07am. The queue time was already 60 minutes. Welcome to Japan.

I'd been to Universal Studios in LA before. It's got a - undeserved, I think - reputation for being a bit naff, possibly because Disney has got Mickey Mouse and Universal has got, well, Woody Woodpecker, a character who is indeed very naff. For a start, he doesn't even have an identifiable female counterpart. Who is Mrs Woody Woodpecker? We have to ask this question, as we saw Woody Woodpecker in a dress, and we have to explain this to our children. Is it Woody Woodpecker's transvestite friend?

But the films/attractions stand up well - ET, Terminator, Shrek, Jurassic Park, Spiderman, Waterworld... Ahem. Did I say Waterworld? Well, at least they've salvaged a decent attraction out of it.

Universal Studios Japan opened in Osaka in March 2001 and survived successive scandals over being built on top of a toxic waste pit, serving past their sell-by date burgers and not declaring the amount of explosives used in their shows, to attract over 8 million visitors in 2005. It is now the ninth most-visited theme park in the world. And it's far better than its US counterpart, not least because it has the advantage of being more modern, even if it lacks the Studio Tour element.

Jessica wigged out completely at 'Backdraft' (Sarah's favourite), freaked out on the 'Jaws' boat ride, but recovered sufficiently to enjoy Waterworld and Shrek before wreaking terrible revenge with a truly painful 'Toto and Friends'. Ouch! That one hurt... (see montage below). Something for all the family indeed...

* Actually, I was quite surprised to find out that Japan occupies a lowly 30th spot in the Most-densely-populated-countries-of-the-world League Table. Monaco is top, but I always thought that was a principality. Then there are quite a few other equally daft places, like Vatican City, Gibraltar and the Maldives, but it turns out proper countries like Bangladesh, Taiwan, Netherlands and Belgium all have greater population densities than Japan. So that's a rubbish theory then...

In The 'Hood

A busy day in the 'hood today. In the Kitano neighbourhood, that is. First off, there was the Kobe Global Charity Festival with the kids' fancy dress parade up Tor Road. Given it's late October, we made the (in hindsight, wrong) assumption that it would be a Halloween fancy dress parade and went the whole nine yards to kit Jessica out as a scary witch.

She maybe did not thank us, then, as she joined the merry throng of Disney Princesses, Buzz Lightyears and Pirates of the Caribbean making their way up the hill to the Kobe Club...

There was a potential silver lining, however, as my make-up handiwork brought me to the attention of the organising staff who asked me if I would like to do the kids' face-painting. I politely declined (as I can only do scary witches), but I must say it did cross my mind that it could be an attractive proposition in a year's time when I've had chance to think of something a bit more subversive. Perhaps political despots through the ages, in disguise. Hitler would be a bit difficult, but maybe Stalin as a cat? Or Chairman Mao as a panda?

The event itself was worthy, but just a bit too Peace and Love, punctuated by some crazy Australian dancer/mime artist who mystified everyone - kids included - with her bizarre and erratic dance performance (part of which involved a hat featuring a half-full bottle of mineral water - go figure...). All of which was nicely juxtaposed by a Japanese lady wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words 'Ace Military Death'.

We eventually had to do a runner from a German guy who was pestering us about earthworms. His sales pitch was a sharp one though. Starting off with "You have a baby, you must be interested in preserving the planet?" (errr... yes?), he thrust a questionnaire into our hands: Do you recycle? Do you want to save the planet? Do you want to... (substitute some other worthy cause here)? Do you want to keep earthworms? Of course, laudable as it might be to have 'the Lexus of composting units on your balcony', we had to swerve this one. Besides, we've got Jack, and he's proving to be an exceptionally efficient composting unit right now.

In the afternoon we explored the 'Ijinkan Residences' of Kitano. Kobe was one of the very first Japanese cities to be populated by foreign settlers, and in the late nineteenth century westerners began to build their palatial homes on Kitano's hillside.

Of wooden construction and looking decidedly colonial, the 'gaijin manshuns' are interesting only in so far as they are incongruous, but they don't really stand the test of time. We took a look around the English House. A very brief look, actually, for our 1400 yen, as about 4 minutes after we purchased our tickets, we were overrun by a Japanese wedding party, who proceeded to occupy all available rooms, including the one with the flea-bitten moose-head (of which you don't get so many in England, actually).

Sadly, it's just 'quite a big house'. Paint peeling, overall a bit tatty and crammed with a pot-pourri of 'English' paraphanalia of dubious provenance, including a Beefeater and a suit of armour. And we thought we were the only ones peddling this sort of nonsense? Not so, it seems...

Fortresses and Festivals (part 2)

During autumn and spring, there are literally hundreds of festivals - called 'matsuri' - taking place all over Japan. Some are huge - attracting many hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the country - but most are local. We were lucky enough to find a matsuri in the suburbs of Himeji, just a few stops on the train from the castle (special thanks to my friend Vincent for his Photoshop genius - see right).

Almost every neighbourhood has at least one matsuri in late summer/early autumn, traditionally related to the rice harvest. Each Shinto parish has their own 'yatai' - also called 'mishoki' - an ornate mobile shrine made of cypress wood that can weigh a couple of tons! The yatai are carried to the (non-mobile) shrine literally on the shoulders of the locals. And they do this sporting a brightly coloured headband - denoting their particular Shinto parish - a matching shirt and wearing no underwear, just 'mawashi', a loincloth made of canvas that shows off buttocks particularly well (in fact, it was noted that this was the biggest collection of bare bottoms that either Sarah, or Alex's wife Chicaco, had ever seen). The elders are allowed to wear a watch and smoke fags, and take crafty snifters of sake from hip flasks.

The shrines are hugely impressive and extraordinarily beautiful (click on the images below to see just how finely detailed they really are). One of the locals told us that to build one from scratch would cost around $100,000. It is lovingly maintained for the matsuri, and housed in its own special 'shrine garage' when not in use. For the procession, it also houses four drummers and a quite substantial taiko drum.

The raising of the yatai is accompanied by a quite violent rocking motion and chanting (presumably ancient Banshu dialect for 'strewth, that's bloody heavy mate') before it is hoisted aloft by up to 30 men with a victorious roar. It is then manoeuvred in a haphazard, rather dangerous-looking manner towards the shrine - it is said that this weaving to and fro is a deliberate act, to 'amuse' the gods. There are even 'fighting festivals' where the same shrines are used as weapons, to ram other shrines!

Preceding the grunting assemblage of semi-naked men and expensive shrinery is a phalanx of 'nobori' carriers - a bamboo pole carrying a 7m banner of embroidered thick silk. Those with no shrine-carrying or banner-hoisting to do, carry 'shide' - a 7-foot pole with brightly-coloured paper at its head, resembling a giant chrysanthemum.

We got chatting with some of the pink-clad 'neriko' (the guys who carry the yatai), who explained that they represented the Kamo shrine. They were an incredibly friendly bunch, hoisting Jessica up on to the yatai, and offering me the chance to be an honorary Kamo for the day, although I didn't take them up on their offer of hauling the yatai around.

The matsuri was a fabulous find, a glimpse of everyday Japan that displayed a community spirit and pride in tradition that was something to be admired. In stark contrast, it must be said, to my dim memories of carnivals as a kid, when hairy old fat blokes dressing up as comedy nurses and shaking buckets of loose change on the back of lorry would pass for a procession. Well, I suppose we do hairy better than the Japanese...

Fortresses and Festivals (part 1)

About 50km west of Kobe is the city of Himeji, famous for one of the best preserved of all of Japan's medieval castles. It only takes about an hour to get there on the Sanyo line, with a further 10 minutes walk from the station. It is reportedly the most visited castle in Japan, probably the most photogenic, and certainly much better constructed than Takeshi's.

A fortress has stood at the site since the 14th century, but it was the great shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu who created the amazing construction that still stands today, in the early part of the 17th century. The grounds are now landscaped with cherry trees and cypress pines, but originally they would have housed the shogun's personal army of samurai warriors (see map, below). The castle has never seen a battle, which accounts for its amazing condition, so they must have been pretty scary warriors.

Himeji castle had everything that Jessica's Disney-warped imagination pre-supposed it should - moat, six-storey keep, a maze of baileys, turrets and curved ceramic roofs, all creating a bastion of unbelievable picture-book majesty and beauty. There are websites that do the castle far better justice than this blog, but here a few pictures to give you a feel of the place (click to enlarge).. .