Travel Blog: Bursa, Turkey (June 12, 2008)

The drive north this morning showed us shifting landscapes once again. Sunburned hills covered with olive and oak turned to rice paddies and poplars, and the verges of the highway were fringed with green grass once again.



We arrived in Bursa, known as 'green Bursa' during the Ottoman days for its many peach orchards. It's a hilly city in its older neighborhoods, with hair-raising traffic on the narrow, twisting cobbled streets that are lined with sycamore trees and old wooden Ottoman houses overhanging the street with long bay windows on the second story. Tiny shops stand crowded cheek-by-jowl along the streets, selling pastries, electronics, fast food, wedding and prom dresses, and appliances, and in between tiny gardens and vacant lots are overgrown with rosebushes and the luxuriant green of grapevines.

As we headed further into the old city, we saw an old man leading a mule down the sidewalk, large basket panniers slung over its back, piled high with bright red cherries.

Lunch was at a restaurant built inside a medieval soup kitchen associated with a nearby mosque (for the feeding of the poor), with giant pottery storage vessels still embedded in the floor of the downstairs dining room, which was once the cellar. The floors were tiled with the turquoise-colored tiles characteristic of this city,and the doorways and windows were richly frescoed with floral Ottoman motives in reds and blues.


The food was excellent--a creamy tomato soup sprinkled with grated white cheese that resembled Jarlsberg; a mixed salad dressed with lemon juice and olive oil; flatbread piled high with thin slices of spiced kebab meat and served with tangy yogurt and tomato sauce; and for dessert, sweet ripe watermelon slices.


After lunch, we walked across the street, to the grounds of a 14th-century mosque set in a lush garden planted with palms, magnolia trees, roses, pansies, and pink hydrangea. The air was humid but cool under cloudy skies, and threatened rain.

At the entrance to the mosque, we removed our shoes and the women donned headscarves or hats. A clean-shaven man in his thirties welcomed us into the mosque. He was dressed in an Oxford button-down shirt and blue jeans, and had a warm smile. He turned out to be the imam--the Muslim minister in charge of this historic mosque.


With Erkal translating, he gave us a brief explanation of the tenets of the Muslim faith and of the exquisite 14th-century blue and green tiles and Arabic calligraphy decorating the domes and arches inside the mosque. Then he demonstrated how he calls the faithful to prayer five times daily, singing the haunting summons in a beautiful tenor that echoed off the high central dome of the main hall.


After our tour of the mosque, we wandered through the manicured gardens, and visited the beautiful domed tombs of the early Ottoman sultans and their family members, each small shrine adorned with gorgeous tilework and colorful frescoes.


Then it was off to two more medieval Ottoman mosques, each dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, including the Green Mosque, the most famous mosque in Bursa. It was an enormous building with an elaborately carved marble façade.

As we entered the mosque (and I was fumbling with tying my headscarf into place), a group of elderly Turkish ladies were just exiting. They surrounded me, patting my arms and shoulders, smiling and saying something in Turkish and laughing.


At first, I wondered whether I'd tied my headscarf wrong and was receiving gentle correction, but then I heard what they were saying--Hoshgeldiniz, hoshgeldiniz: "Welcome, welcome."


Inside, the 15th-century mosque had the same impact as one of the great European cathedrals (and like the cathedrals, the interior was filled with scaffolding and repairs and renovations were in full swing). The polished pine floors were laid with carpets, and there were crowds of people swirling through the vast space, some praying, others taking photographs and chasing after toddlers, who seemed to take entrance into the mosque as a signal to dash off as fast as their little legs could take them.


At one point during Erkal's explanation of the history of the mosque, we were surrounded by a crowd of very young children, who were staring at us, fascinated.


After visiting the mosque, it was off to the medieval bazaar. Bursa is the center of Turkey's silk industry, and part of the bazaar is devoted to selling products made from silk. At this point, there were several mighty (and startling) claps of thunder, and a torrential downpour began.


We fled for the shelter of a multi-storied medieval bazaar building, which was an arcaded set of small shops built around a central courtyard garden. This was the silk bazaar, and safe and dry from the rain outside, we spent about a half-hour wandering around the four sides of the arcade, looking at the displays of scarves, ties, tablecloths, blouses, pillowcases, skirts, napkins, and shawls, many of them embroidered and all very reasonably priced.


It was a dangerous place to be in possession of a credit card!


Finally, it was time to return to the hotel. After a hair-raising drive with the bus through the extremely tight medieval streets, the rain still coming down in sheets and turning the cobbles into rushing streams, we arrived at a huge and gracious hotel built in the 1920s.


One of the promised luxuries was a Turkish bath, fed by a thermal hot spring located on the hotel grounds, and tonight, dinner wasn't being served until 8pm, so we had about 2.5 hours to take advantage of the bath.


It was heavenly. The bath itself was free to hotel guests, though the extra services (massage, scrubbing, and shampooing) were charged at appropriately extortionate rates.


First, I changed into a bathing suit and hotel-supplied bathrobe, and walked to spa and bath complex, located at one end of the hotel.


Erkal was already there, soaking blissfully in the hot water, and he explained a few things as I hesitantly pushed open the massive wooden doors leading into the bathing chamber, and dipped my feet in the mandatory disinfectant foot bath.


The bath was located in a huge domed chamber, pierced by dozens of tiny skylights, and floored and walled completely in marble. In the middle of the chamber, right under the dome, was a huge round marble pool filled chest-deep with hot greenish mineral waters. Along the sides of the bath were ornate ceramic basins and spigots, with hammered silver dishes, for scrubbing down and dousing one's self with cold water when overheated.


At the back of the chamber was what looked like an ornamental fountain, with a shallow marble basin and steaming hot water pouring down from a broad, sculpted spout. That turned out to be the caldarium, and the large pool was the tepidarium. The frigidarium, or cold-water bath, was adapted into marble shower stalls on either side of the caldarium fountain.


The Turkish hamam, or baths, are modeled on the ancient Roman baths, and even the basins and benches looked like the ones we had seen at the various archaeological sites we visited.


In any case, it was blissfully decadent. I soaked until I was pleasantly boneless, crawling out of the hot water at intervals to pour basins-full of cool water over my back and shoulders, and then I oozed back to my room to dry off and relax before dinner.


Not too many of the other folks on the tour took advantage of the bath--one couple arrived just as I was leaving, and then I saw our driver and our assistant driver come in.


Tomorrow, we're off (once again, way too early in the morning) to Istanbul for the last leg of our trip...

Travel Blog: Kamakura (December, 2004)

(This entry was originally posted to my Yahoo!Groups travel journal group.)

Temple Trudge II: Return to Kamakura

Imagine this: a grove of giant bamboo, wrapped in late-afternoon shadows and deep stillness. A small tea-house set in the midst of the grove, looking out over a tiny spring trickling down over a nearby cliff face. Bowls of deep green, frothy, bitter hot tea served on a lacquer tray, accompanied by two exquisite spun-sugar sweets in the shape of lotus flowers and a calligraphed poem with a brush painting of bamboo.

This was the Zen garden of the medieval Hokuku-ji Buddhist temple,set like a jewel in the hills at the outskirts of Kamakura, and it was a far cry from the hectic bustle around the Kamakura train station and the hordes of schoolkids on field trips to the main shrine.

There were only a few other visitors to the temple, and a couple of elderly women diligently raking up fallen leaves and sweeping the walkways. All was wrapped in contemplative serenity and quiet reverence for the beauty of the place...until a couple of high-school boys arrived.

They gravitated immediately to the giant bamboo, but being kids, instead of appreciative murmurs, they yelped with amazement and started whacking and pushing at the thickest stems, testing their strength. The bamboo was mostly unmoved by their efforts, which I suppose was a Zen lesson in and of itself.

Kevin had to work today, so Elke and I ran a couple of errands in downtown Yokosuka in the morning, before picking up sushi bento lunches at the local fish market (which turned out to be of unparalleled freshness and tastiness--I'm really going to be spoiled for sushi when I return to California), and heading over to the train station. We were hoping that Kamakura on a weekday would be less of a zoo than it had been during our weekend trip. The gardens at the Hase-dera Kannon-ji Buddhist temple had impressed us, and so we planned to visit a couple of temples, located further away from the train station, which were renowned for either their antiquity or their gardens.

Things went very smoothly--after arriving at the Kamakura train station, we boarded one of the local buses (following the instructions in the Lonely Planet guide), and perked up our ears for the stop announcements. Though the bus stop signs and the destination signs on the buses are all written in Japanese-only (unlike the train stations, which have signs in both English and Japanese), they do have pre-recorded announcements for each stop, probably for the benefit of the blind. So we listened hard, and managed to get off at the correct stop on a very busy, very narrow road on the hilly outskirts of town.

As with most Japanese streets, we saw bicyclists of all ages, from first-graders to senior citizens, fearlessly riding on the shoulder of the road, seemingly unconcerned by the cars and trucks roaring past. Bicycles are a very popular form of transportation in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, and one lady was telling us that the decline in the popularity of kimono as women's garments was due in large part to the fact you can't ride a bike while wearing one. Many of the train stations have multi-level parking garages for bicycles only, and all the bicycle parking lots we saw on our various expeditions were always crammed full.

In any case, the streets in Kamakura have excellent sign-posts with directions and distances to nearby temples and shrines, so we were able to find Hokoku-ji with no difficulty. It was tucked away in a charming neighborhood off the main drag, and after touring the gardens (and snapping lots of photos, of course), we retraced our steps to Sugimoto-dera, an ancient (1,400 years old) temple next to the bus stop. Along the way, we encountered quite a few local senior citizens coming home with their shopping, and we cheerfully exchanged bows and greetings with them as we passed by.

Sugimono-dera is located at the top of a wooded hill. We climbed narrow stone stairs straight up the hill, the treads hollowed with the countless footsteps of the faithful, the way lined with dozens of banners snapping in the brisk, cold wind from the sea. The shrine buildings and gates were wooden, elaborately carved, and they had thatched roofs. Everything was worn, and mossy, and very peaceful, and the view over the houses and hills was wonderful.

We returned to Yokosuka as the sun was setting, and ventured into a local grocery store to buy food for dinner. That was an adventure in and of itself--while my sister moved briskly through the store, selecting the fixings for a pork chop dinner, I wandered the aisles in a daze, vainly trying to identify fascinating packages of...well, stuff. It's tough being illiterate in this country, and having to guess at 90% of all written materials--or having to ask passers-by the most basic questions. In this case, we couldn't figure out if the package of meat we were holding was chicken or pork, so we were forced to throw ourselves on the mercy of another shopper, and ask her.

Though the restaurant and take-out food has been very reasonably priced, I've been having heart attacks at the prices listed at the greengrocers: $5.00 for four apples; $7.00 for a pint of strawberries. They're perfect, of course, but even so, my frugal heart is appalled. Even local produce, in season (such as Fuyu persimmons, which we see hanging on backyard trees everywhere) is outrageously expensive when compared to the cost of produce in California.

Tomorrow morning, I'm taking the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto.

I'm planning on staying at a traditional Japanese inn (a ryokan) until Friday. I'll bring my little laptop with me to keep writing my daily journal, but I'm not sure I'll have Internet access again until Friday evening or Saturday morning.

Travel Blog: Tokyo (December 1, 2004)

(This account of sightseeing in Tokyo was originally posted to my Yahoo!Groups travel journal group.)

We've been unbelievably blessed with good weather during our stay so far--it's been a bit chilly in the mornings, but the days have been sunny and mild, making our strolls around the neighborhoods of Tokyo very pleasant. Flowers are still blooming bravely in flowerboxes and in the tiny patches of garden next to curbs and stoops, and many of the trees are still fully-leafed.

Today was our last full day of sightseeing in Tokyo. We started off by taking the subway to the other side of the city, to the Asakusa district, which is on the banks of the Sumida River, and which was once the theater and "red light" district of old Tokyo. We emerged into bright mid-morning sunlight, onto a street lined with shops, and bustling with foot traffic. Dodging cadres of hopeful young men pitching guided rickshaw tours of the area, we followed the smell of incense down the street to the Senso-ji Buddhist temple, which is dedicated to Kannon (Kuan Yin), the Goddess of Mercy.

The entrance to the temple grounds was marked by a huge, ornately-carved gate hung with giant paper lanterns and guarded by two fierce-looking god statues. Just inside the gate, the path to the main temple complex was densely lined by a long row of shops selling a variety of overpriced kitsch ranging from gilded Buddha statues to t-shirts to elaborately-styled wigs meant to be worn with full formal kimono. The temple buildings themselves were partially-concealed by the dense clouds of incense smoke billowing from giant bronze containers.

As we drew closer, we saw that people were purchasing bundles of incense sticks from the monks, lighting them, and waving them around themselves before sticking the smoldering bundles into the sand filling the bronze containers.

People of all ages thronged the temple grounds, ranging from tiny old women in full kimono and obi to a whole class of schoolgirls in their sailor uniforms. We met one old gentleman who turned out to be a Japanese immigrant to Hawaii. He had returned to Japan for the first time in a half-century because his son was about to be deployed to Iraq, and the family wanted to tour Japan together and meet with long-lost relatives before the son went away.

We spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering around the grounds of the temple. It was interesting visiting a complex that's still a living center of worship and not just a museum exhibit. It's quite large, consisting of the main hall and a tall pagoda, plus a number of tiny gardens and shrines scattered around the main hall. The shrine has been in existence for several hundred years, but it was destroyed during the fire-bombing of Tokyo during WWII, and the present set of buildings date from the 1950's.

Then, we made our way out a side gate and headed for the river. We walked along the riverside park and quay for a while--the park was neatly manicured, but lined with a homeless encampment consisting of dozens of tiny huts made from cardboard boxes and covered with blue plastic tarp huts. It was eerily quiet--some of the men were fishing, but most appeared to be asleep.At the next bridge, we boarded a water bus, and chugged downriver for about twenty minutes, past dense stands of high-rise offices and condominiums lining the river on both sides, broken up by frequent canals and what appeared to be smaller rivers flowing into the Sumida.

Finally, we pulled into a protected inlet, and disembarked at the Hamarikyu Gardens, once the private duck-hunting grounds of the Tokugawa Shoguns, and later donated to the City of Tokyo by the Imperial family.

There, we wandered around the many gorgeously-landscaped ponds and artificial streams, and marveled at the contrast between the classic Japanese serenity of the garden, and the Tokyo skyscrapers rising above the trees.

As the sun began to sink into the haze of the west, gilding the garden with long, slanting bars of sunlight, we came upon a teahouse built on the shores of the central pond. Removing our shoes at the entrance to the teahouse, we walked across the threshold of polished boards and into a room furnished only with tatami mats on the floors. The sliding paper doors around the perimeter of the room had been pulled back, opening the chamber to the afternoon breeze coming off the nearby river.

We knelt on the mats alongside the other guests, and were served bowls of frothy hot green tea, strong and bitter, on polished lacquer trays, accompanied by a steamed dumpling filled with sweet lotus seed paste. It was really a sublime experience--the perfect climax to a perfect afternoon.After leaving the teahouse, we walked through the rest of the garden as the light began to fade and the evening chill started to fall.

Once the sun had set, we headed for the nearest subway station, and headed for our next destination, just ahead of rush hour--the Sapporo Beer Museum. My sister had expressed an interest in seeing it--actually, her interest was in the Lonely Planet's description of beer samples offered for only 200 yen.

Getting there turned out to be a bit of an adventure. We got turned around somehow leaving the subway station, and started walking in a direction that, unbeknownst to us, was actually opposite to the way we wanted. I was finally delegated to go into a convenience store and beg the clerk for directions. Luckily, we had walked in a big circle, and were less than ten minutes from our destination.

The beer was good, and we sampled quite a bit of it before heading back onto the subway in search of dinner.

For our last dinner in Tokyo, we dined at a tiny neighborhood sushi restaurant just down the street from our hotel. The food was delicious and inexpensive, and the staff were friendly and helpful. Raised on stories of Tokyo as the city where even simple things like ice cream or coffee could cost a fortune, the wide availability of wonderful and cheap dining has come as a real surprise.

Tomorrow, we head back to Yokosuka by train. Once back at Kevin's apartment, we're going to do laundry, then attend a Christmas party on base. I'm also going to take the opportunity to upload all of the daily reports I wrote in Tokyo, since the Internet access at the hotel was restricted and I wasn't able to upload any files from external media.At this point, we have a little over a week left in Japan. Kevin has to return to duty on Monday, so the three of us will probably do a couple of short day trips on the weekend, then Elke and I are planning to go to Kyoto on Monday and Tuesday, and then we'll figure out a couple of day trips for Wednesday and Thursday.

Anime and Manga Review: Full Metal Panic!

(This review originally appeared on one of the Alameda County Library's blogs.)

This week, I’m reviewing Full Metal Panic!, an action-adventure series available at the Fremont Main and San Lorenzo library branches.

Full Metal Panic! is one of the best of the anime genre that features young men and women piloting giant robots. It’s a well-balanced combination of fish-out-of-water humor set at a Japanese high school, and military action sequences, distinguished by excellent plotting and well-rounded and interesting characters.

Sousuke Sagara is a teen-aged mercenary soldier who’s part of Mithril, a privately-funded anti-terrorism organization in an alternate-universe near-future setting. (In this world, the Soviet Union still exists, but the People’s Republic of China does not, having split into two warring countries, North China and South China.) Originally from an imaginary Central Asian country similar to Afghanistan, Sousuke was a child soldier fighting a Soviet-led invasion, trained as an assassin and sent out into the field at the age of seven. Later on, he was recruited by Mithril, and at 17, he’s both one of Mithril’s youngest members and also one of the most experienced in terms of actual combat.

He and two of his companions are sent to Japan to serve as covert bodyguards for a schoolgirl named Kaname Chidori, who may be one of the Whispered, who are a small group of humans with a mysterious psychic link to advanced (and possibly extraterrestrial) technology.

Because of Sousuke’s age, he’s sent undercover to Kaname’s high school as an exchange student, where he’s definitely a fish out of water. (His commanding officer also seems to think it would do Sousuke some good to experience normal teen-aged life for a while.) At the school, Sousuke endures several weeks of mishaps and misunderstandings, while forging a tentative friendship with the girl he’s been assigned to protect. Meanwhile, leads on Kaname’s possible abduction prove to be mere, untracable rumors.

Finally, Sousuke and his teammates are told their assignment has ended. As a parting gift for a job well-done, Sousuke is granted leave and permitted to join his high-school class’s field trip to tropical Okinawa before resuming his regular duties at Mithril.

When the class plane is hijacked and diverted to another country, Sousuke may be the only one who can save Kaname from becoming the object of experimental testing on Whispered subjects…
Half a high-school comedy, and half a fairly gritty adventure series, Full Metal Panic! is compelling and very well-done.

Given his background, Sousuke is the most interesting of the characters–while at the high school, he appears to be a harmless, somewhat bumbling military nut mostly because he’s forced to pull short and pretend he’s just a regular student time and again. He’s fully aware that the other kids think he’s weird and stupid, and he is becoming more and more miserable with every false alarm.

But once the hijacking begins, he’s free to revert to his real self–a competent, highly-experienced soldier.

Unlike many other action series featuring teenaged heroes, Sousuke actually *does* kill or seriously-injure people in the course of his job, and the series doesn’t shy away from depicting this.

Kaname Chidori is a strong female character, athletic and no-nonsense and surprisingly cool under pressure. After being kidnapped, she nearly succeeds in freeing herself before Sousuke shows up, and later on, when his rescue mission has gone horribly wrong, her Whispered abilities help save the day. Once she discovers that Sousuke really is more than just a military-obsessed high school kid, she befriends him, and provides him the first taste of a “normal” life he’s ever known. She also finds herself slowly falling in love with him…

Is this series appropriate for your child? FMP is a hard action series that includes bloody violence (one early episode features a man being shot in the head) and sexual innuendo (though nudity is shown only in silhouette and there are no sex scenes). This show is probably most appropriate for older teens.

Anime and Manga Review: Fruits Basket

(This review originally appeared on one of the Alameda County Library's blogs.)

I’m continuing my review of the Dublin Library’s anime and manga collection this week with another personal favorite, Fruits Basket.

This manga series is a surprisingly poignant and often moving character study, if you can get past the weird name (it refers to a Japanese kid’s game similar to duck-duck-goose) and the girly-girly packaging.

The premise: Tohru Honda, an orphaned and homeless high-school girl, is taken in as a housekeeper by one of her classmates, a very shy but very popular boy named Yuki Sohma. He’s living with his novelist-cousin Shigure Sohma in a rather isolated house in the woods, having run away from the main Sohma compound. But the guys have a big secret–they’re shapeshifters, two members of a cursed family.

Our heroine soon makes a place in their hearts with her relentless optimism and unconditional love and gratitude, and soon other disaffected members of the cursed family start to gather at Shigure’s house. Chief among the new arrivals is a violent-tempered but good-hearted young man named Kyo, who bears the most difficult curse of all, and who’s an outcast even within the Sohma family.

Akito, the head of the family, is cursed himself. He is also intensely and malevolently possessive of “his” family, and when he hears that Tohru is privy to the Sohma family’s deepest secrets, he starts to plot his revenge…but at the same time, he hopes Tohru can save the family from the worst effects of the curse.

This manga series is a very interesting mixture of genuine pathos and wild slapstick, and author does a great job portraying the gradual change in characters of not only the two boys, Yuki and Kyo, over a period of several years, but also the maturation of the heroine, as Tohru develops courage and strength to match her innate compassion. She goes from being essentially a sweetly-smiling doormat to someone brave enough to stand up for herself and the people she loves–without getting mean about it.

I have to admit I started reading this series with some skepticism, thinking it’d be hopelessly silly, but ended up loving it. I had some quibbles with the ending of the series and resolution of the curse storylines, but on the whole, I can highly recommend Fruits Basket.

(The anime series, adapted from the first four manga volumes, is also charming and very well-done, but is not currently part of the Dublin Library’s collection.)

So, is Fruits Basket appropriate for your child? It’s a cute series that promotes the notion that love and acceptance can conquer all, and there’s not really any sex, violence, or nudity. But because of its emotional complexity, it’s probably more suitable for teenagers and adults than young children, who may not understand everything that’s happening.