Seasoning the Seasons

NHK TV has a series called "Seasoning the Seasons" (Exploring the Four Seasons of Japan) and they have one episode on winter, in which they visit Echizen, northwest of Kyoto and feature the special foods that become available in winter, like smoked persimmons, taro, sake and Echizen crab from Ishikawa (not Kyoto).  We'll have to keep an eye out for those foodstuffs.  We also watched an episode on Hosenji, a neighborhood of Osaka.  Now, have I watched the one on Udon or not?  I've watched "Udon" on Begin Japanology...  Good gravy.  Does this mean I have to make another list to keep track of them?

Most of Seasoning the Seasons feature destinations outside of Tokyo and so they don't have much that is immediately useful for our trip in January.  There is one on Ekiben, the bento boxes they sell at train stations that vary by region, but I can't find a video for it on YouTube, which apparently is one's only option.  We watched another one on Kyoto: The Enigmatic Entertainers of Gion about the geishas, or really the maiko, the young girls training to become geishas.  Wasn't "Maiko" the name of that Japanese restaurant we used to go to on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley?  That was Willy's first time eating out, although he really didn't get to eat since he was only a few weeks old.

Too few of the episodes are online.  I'm waiting for Boris Popov to upload the latest episodes to YouTube...

Moving On: PASMO and SUICA Cards

Now that we have our plane, hotel and AirB&B reservations, we can move on to more mundane topics like public transportation.  Our hotel is one that Juan and Mandy stayed at and liked in January 2011.  It's on the edge of the red light and nightclub district in Shinjuku so we'll see how two sticks in the mud survive in such a dynamic surrounding.  There's a Shinto shrine in the next block so hopefully that will balance out the environment.  Shinjuku is in west Tokyo so we'll need to take subways/trains to the other areas and we want it to be easy so we'll buy a SUICA or PASMO card so we don't have to buy tickets every time.  We'll be in Tokyo more than a week and we can use the cards at their many convenience stores as well.

The Japan Guy blog has posts on what the PASMO and SUICA cards are,  how to get them (even a personalized one that can be reissued if lost),  and how to use them.  How do you return the card and get your 500 yen deposit back?  He doesn't cover that but JREast has a page on its Suica card that tries to explain it.  Fortunately the information is available in English.  The cards can be used on the trains and the subways and the buses.  There are also unlimited one-day tickets for the metro, metro & train, or metro-train-buses but I don't know if we'll be using them that much.  I would like to walk a lot, to see things, even if it is January...  And if it is clear, maybe we can see Mt. Fuji.

NOTE:  Mandy sent me a link to a blog about the 1-2-3 day passes that has convinced me we should get two 3-day passes when we are there.