In Japan, November 15 is Shichi-go-san, a traditional rite of passage celebration honouring boys who are three and five years old and girls who are three and seven. Shichi-go-san literally translates seven-five-three. I’m uncertain why these particular ages are so significant but odd numbers are considered lucky by the Japanese.

Because November 15 is not a national holiday, families often hold their Shichi-go-san celebrations on the weekend preceding that date. In fact, even though today is a Saturday this year, the celebrations have been going on for the past couple of weekends and we even saw a few families at the temple in Narita on Thursday who were clearly there for that purpose.

Little girls are usually dressed in kimono, often for the first time. At three years of age, they usually wear a padded vest called a hifu with their kimono. At seven, an obi takes the place of the simple cord used to tie the kimono. Boys look like little samurai in their traditional outfits.

Shichi-go-san begins with a visit to a temple or shrine to pray for the child’s health and good fortune. It’s also a time when formal photographs are often taken and the family usually goes out for a special meal after the celebration.  The children are given chitose-ame, long thin red and white candies.  Chitose-ame means thousand-year candy and it’s meant to signify many years of life.

This little one was very shy but her family was delighted when I asked if I could take her picture.

We spent a little while in Tokyo today exploring Shibuya, a bustling, youth oriented shopping district.

A popular meeting place in Shibuya is the statue of Hachiko, the faithful dog.  According to one of Japan’s best loved stories, a professor who lived near Shibuya station in the 1920s had an Akita dog that would accompany his master to the station every morning and await his return each night.  After his master died in 1925, Hachiko continued to come and wait at the station every day until his own death 11 years later.  The statue was later erected in memory of his faithfulness.

After visiting the statue, we crossed what is touted as the world’s busiest intersection, or at very least Japan’s busiest pedestrian crossing, and sat at the window of the second floor Starbucks that overlooks the intersection watching in amazement.  The walk light comes on every 2 minutes and 40 seconds and for about 40 seconds, a mass of humanity crosses in every direction.  By the time the light comes on the next time, that crowd has gone on it’s way and another has gathered.   Keep in mind that these pictures were taken at 2:15 on a Thursday afternoon!  What must it be like at rush hour?

Since Thursday is our regular day off and our school was closed on Friday, we decided to make an overnight trip to Hakone. Located west of Tokyo, Hakone is a very popular tourist area well known for its onsen (hot springs) and its views of Mount Fuji. While on this trip, we learned that Hakone has been a sister city to Jasper, Alberta for the past 36 years. Following the advice of our handy Lonely Planet guidebook, we decided on an interesting loop through the area.

Leaving home at about 8:30 Thursday morning, just late enough to miss the worst of the commuter crush, we headed into Tokyo where we boarded the Romance Car, a quick and comfortable express train that took us to Hakone-Yumoto, the beginning of our loop. There we crossed the platform to the 120 year old Hakone-Tozan line and climbed aboard the tiny narrow gauge train that would zigzag up the mountainside through numerous narrow tunnels and over river gorges to Gora, a very interesting 35 minute ride.

By the time we reached Gora we began to feel as if we were on a tourist treadmill, moving from place to place amongst hordes of other sightseers. Fall, is an especially popular time for Japanese tourists to visit Hakone to see the coloured leaves. The season is a bit late this year so the colours may be more splendid a week or two from now but the hillsides were a beautiful mix of green and coloured foliage. There were many foreign tourists but the vast majority of the travelers seemed to be retired Japanese (we dubbed them the geriatric gang) and school groups.

Over our years of teaching, Richard and I have shepherded countless children on field trips to various interesting sites and we like to think that they were much better behaved than most of the Japanese school groups that we’ve been encountering on recent outings. The biggest difference, I think, is the fact that when we planned field trips, we recruited parent volunteers and usually traveled with one supervisor for every four or five children. Many of the venues that we visited required this. Here, we often see one or two harried looking teachers trying to keep track of a very large group of excited children. I don’t envy them at all! Unfortunately, a lot of the children are loud and unruly which makes the experience less than pleasant for the tourists who share the area with them.

After lunch in Gora, we lined up for the 10 minute funicular, or cable railway, ride up the side of the 1153 metre high mountain, Soun-zan. Soun-zan is the starting point for what the Japanese refer to as a ropeway, a 30 minute, 4 km cable car ride to Tokendai on the shore of Lake Ashi. On the way, the gondola stops at Owakudani. On the advice of our trusty guidebook as well as some of my students, we got out there for a look around. Formed some 3000 years ago, Owakudani is a volcanic cauldron of boiling pools, bubbling mud and steam-spewing vents. What an interesting sight! Of course, we also had to sample the black boiled eggs that are sold here. According to legend, eating one of these eggs, which are cooked in the boiling mud, extends a person’s lifetime by several years. We’ve heard anywhere from four to ten! Since the eggs are sold in groups of five, I ate two and Richard had three. Since women are known to live longer than men, I decided that the extra egg might help him catch up!

After sharing most of the day with so many other travelers, imagine our surprise and delight when we headed back to the cable car and discovered no one waiting in line. We rode the rest of the way down to the lakeside in our own private gondola! From there we took a ten minute bus ride to the nearby village of Sengoku where we had reserved a room at the Fuji-Hakone Guest House, one of the few affordable places to stay in the area. A short walk in the chilly evening air, supper at a small restaurant and a soak in the guest house’s private onsen bath finished off the day.

After breakfast at the guest house, we caught the bus back to the lake shore where we lined up for the next cruise to the other end of Lake Ashi. To quote the Lonely Planet, “The ‘Pirate Ship’ has to be seen to be believed – it’s tourist kitsch at it’s worst, but fun all the same.”

We disembarked at Moto-Hakone and there began what was for me the highlight of our trip, a four hour hike along the old Tokaido highway back to Hakone-Yumoto. Built during the Edo period, this road once linked the ancient capital city of Kyoto, with Edo, present day Tokyo. It was a strenuous hike, largely because for most of the way we were walking on the large uneven rocks that were used to pave the ancient roadway.

About an hour into our trek, we arrived at the Amazake-chaya Tea House where we stopped for a cup of herbal tea and a glass of amazake, a thick warm non-alcoholic drink made from fermented rice. The present roadway between Moto-Hakone and Hakone-Yumoto is separated from the old highway by only a few metres at this point so the tea house serves vehicle traffic as well as hikers but it hasn’t always done so. We met the proprietor, a young man who is the 13th generation of his family to own and operate the tea house! Long before the invention of the car and long before my country was settled, his ancestors were serving weary travelers in whose footsteps we were walking! The young woman who served us spoke fairly good English and, in spite of the fact that there were several other customers to be taken care of, she took the time to visit with us at some length. She took quite a liking to Richard telling us that he reminded her of Robin Williams! She was such a delight.

Continuing on, we encountered the occasional hiker along the way and passed through a couple of small villages. We could often hear traffic on the nearby roadway but for the most part, it was a very peaceful journey. The weather was cloudy and comfortably cool. Our backpacks contained only a change of clothes, the bare necessities for an overnight trip and the food and water we’d need along the trail so our loads weren’t heavy.

When we finally reached our destination, we sought out another onsen where we could soak our weary muscles. Following advice given us at the Yumoto-Hakone tourist information booth, we took a free shuttle bus to a lovely public onsen with both indoor and outdoor pools that was only a few minutes away. We had reserved seats on the 7:00 pm Romance Car back to Tokyo but after stopping for dinner, we were back at the station a little over an hour before that and were able to exchange our seats for ones on an earlier train. That got us home and into bed a little sooner than we’d expected having once again seen and experienced a different aspect of Japan.

The latest craze to hit Japan is known as the Morning Banana Diet. This simple weight loss program involves eating only bananas for breakfast and drinking only room temperature water. With the exception of desserts, the dieter can then eat whatever they choose for lunch and dinner and may also have a snack at three o’clock in the afternoon. Dinner must be eaten before 8:00 pm and the dieter is advised to go to bed before midnight. Exercise is not emphasized as this diet is meant to be stress-free.

Obesity is rare in Japan. It seems to me, however, that Japanese people in general have a rather distorted body image. The majority of them are quite thin. In Canada, I am considered thin, maybe even skinny, but here I’m a giant of a woman! Even the young girls who are as tall as I am are much thinner. They simply have a much more delicate frame. It’s amazing how many of them consider themselves fat, however.

The society as a whole seems to be overly weight conscious. We’ve been told by several businessmen that after a certain age they are required to have an annual medical check-up which is usually performed by their company doctor. If they are found to have a waist measurement greater than 85 cm, they are diagnosed with what is known as a ‘metabolic syndrome’ and are required to go on a weight loss program.

Is it any wonder then that the banana diet has caught on to such an extent that there is actually a banana shortage in Japan? Grocery stores simply can’t keep them on their shelves. In recent weeks, Dole Japan, one of the country’s leading banana importers has increased it’s imports by more than 25% and still cannot keep up with the demand. The phenomenon leaves companies like Dole in a quandary. Fads like the banana diet tend to be short lived. Even if they could find a supplier that is able to handle the present demand, would they want to increase their orders to such an extent that they end up with a huge surplus when the demand dries up?

We have eaten a lot of bananas since coming to Japan. In general, fruit is a lot more expensive here than it is at home in Canada but bananas are one of the few exceptions. Until the diet came on the scene, we were able to buy four or five small bananas for 97 yen, less than a dollar. Interestingly, though, I had stopped eating many bananas just about the time that the diet craze began to catch on. My finicky stomach has been giving me grief again lately so I decided to cut out or down on a few of the foods that I had been eating in large quantities in case any of them were causing me problems. Fortunately, there are many other fruits available at this time of year. Oranges are ripening on the trees all around us and the deliciously sweet mandarins are back in the stores. Since they’re locally grown, they are sold at reasonable prices and with them to satisfy our need for fruit, I don’t think we’ll miss the bananas when we can’t get them.

Yesterday was another beautiful October Thursday so we took a day trip to Sawara, a small town located about half an hour north of Narita by train. Sawara is considered one of the most charming towns in the greater Tokyo area. Designated a Historic District by the National Government, the central area of town, located along the Ono River, has many well-preserved merchant houses built between the early 1700’s and the 1940’s. Others that sat in a state of disrepair for many years are now in the process of being restored.

We spent the afternoon exploring this quaint district on foot and also enjoyed a 40 minute boat tour along the river. Just outside town, the Ono River feeds into the much larger Tone River. The tour took us out into the larger river before turning back toward town. From there we were able to look out across the wide open countryside that surrounds Sawara. We also enjoyed the countryside from the train. It was a delight to look out on open fields and to enjoy a big prairie sky on a beautiful sunny day!

Different places in Japan are known for certain foods and Sawara is no exception. Unagi (eel) is it’s specialty so, of course, that’s what we had for lunch. Even had we not tried it last Sunday and discovered how much we liked it, we would have had to try it in Sawara. Fortunately, we enjoyed it just as much the second time around. That still surprises us because, for some reason, we both had the mistaken impression that it would be rubbery and unpleasant. Not true at all! Grilled eel is a rich oily fish but it’s melt in your mouth tender as well as delicious.