Snow Country

A journey through Japan reveals a country where modern and ancient create a haunting harmony.

The train station in Japan’s ancient capital is so striking in its bold embrace of modernity that it makes the needle-like Kyoto Tower, which dominates the skyline, seem perfunctory. 

I’m impressed enough upon approach, but once I’ve entered the 15-story glass cavern, I am astonished. The largest train station in a country that takes pride in its rail system, Kyoto Station has what appears to be a series of curved glass roofs that somehow overlap, allowing sunlight to flood the immense atrium. The station, which opened in 1997, was designed to offer a contrast to the architecture of a city that was Japan’s seat of government for more than 1,000 years and so retains a medieval look and feel. A series of elevators—is it nine?—takes me to the open-air observation deck where, of course, there’s a tiny, spindly, windswept bamboo garden. It seems an afterthought. Who would really climb all these stairs to get to it? And to do what? Rest? Read? Meditate? 

It’s as if urban Japan, despite its determined pursuit of the technologically possible, just cannot help itself. Its group-hug of Walt Disney’s world of tomorrow cannot go forward unless its participants can reassure themselves that they’ve kept something old in view. There’s the Japan of pachinko and karaoke and the interminable neon din of Tokyo’s Shibuya, which makes our own Times Square seem almost quaint. But there’s another Japan as well, which its people cherish, and rightfully so. Fortunately for Westerners, this older Japan is now beginning to open up to tourists. Only in the past two or three years have the Japanese themselves been able to see parts of it, thanks to new and surprisingly restful 275 mph Shinkansen, or bullet trains. Sleek, quiet and comfortable, they connect the major cities not only of Honshu, the main island, but Kyushu and Hokkaido. (No one can name all the islands: There are more than 6,800 in all, encompassing 145,000 square miles.) Trains and buses, we’re told, can get us almost anywhere we want to go around Honshu, and we do our best to find out if this is actual fact.

I’ve come to Japan to see my son, who is just wrapping up three years of teaching English in Kimitsu, about 17 miles south of Toyko, across from Yokahama on the Bay of Japan. It is winter, so we won’t see the country’s iconic cherry blossoms, but so what if we miss them? What if, by visiting when it is still cold and gray, we get to see a Japan less traveled and, for that reason, more intriguing? 

We travel about 200 miles northeast of Kyoto into the Japanese Alps—in what the Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, in a novel by this name, called “snow country.” We’re in a bus, burrowing through tunnels in the mountains, emerging as we climb to see on all sides range upon range of snowy peaks, each higher than the one that came before. The serried ranks of firs are almost comical in their ridiculous beauty, as if God had learned something about painting by watching Bob Ross or Thomas Kinkade. Is it snow or confectioner’s sugar? I’m tempted to reach out and grab some, just to find out.

Our destination is Shirakawa-go, a mountain village that was named a UNESCO world heritage site about the time Kyoto Station opened. Some of the rustic houses here are 250 years old. They’ve withstood a great deal of snow through the centuries but are designed to do so, with regular events that look to Americans like neighborhood “barn raisings” keeping them in reasonable repair. These 100 or so wooden structures—erected without the use of nails—have steep, thatched roofs covering attics where, for centuries, silkworms could be cultivated to supplement the farmers’ meager incomes. The Japanese call these buildings gassho zukuri, which translates roughly as “like hands in prayer,” a reference to Buddhist monks pressing their palms together, with fingers pointed upward. Under the right conditions, when the roofs reflect the moonlight, they glow. 

Hot springs run under and through the village. As we pass we see villagers sitting outside the few shops, boiling eggs in the springs that run underfoot. The springs also feed into the few guesthouses outside Shirakawa-go, which is a relief for me. We could go to a public bathhouse in one of the big cities to enjoy the mineral bath experience, but I like my privacy. (Some public baths are still frequented by people of both sexes where everyone is nude.) In our ryokan, or guesthouse, private mineral baths come with the room, but there’s another option as well. It is just outside and available to guests 24/7. That means I can strip off, shower, and slip into the steaming soul-cleansing waters in the middle of the night and gaze dreamily at the snowy mountains all around—and at the stars. If time slips away and one senses disembodied ancestors whispering across the centuries, well, that’s kind of the point. But being exceedingly modest, and also leery of ghosts, I stay inside, where I am safe and dry.

Shrines and temples are everywhere in Japan. Buddhists came to this island nation in the sixth century, making inroads into the traditional Shinto religion, but the two coexist peacefully. Japan can hurtle headlong into the future, but its past is present and inescapable—except, maybe, in Tokyo’s bustling Shibuya district. These holy places might instill a sense of calm and serenity, but getting to them is not for sissies. To reach the main Shinto shrine in south Kyoto, for example, we pass through seemingly thousands of red gates, or torii, ascending slowly and purposefully, marking the transition from the profane to the sacred. I get a little winded, but the unfolding wonderment of the trek keeps us all going. 

It’s a different world altogether in Kyoto’s geisha district, across the Kamo River. This is the old demimonde where kabuki got its start, and geisha still cater to tourists in the restaurants and tea houses. They sing and dance in tiny wooden structures dating back at least a century. Some of the tea houses along Hanami-koji Street are no more than 16 feet wide but extend 65 feet above the sidewalk.

Kyoto can be noisy and hectic, so a hike up Nokogiriyama, or “Saw-tooth Mountain,” overlooking the fishing village of Kanaya, can be kind of cleansing. This isn’t a typical tourist destination, and we find it well worth going off the beaten path to see. A “ropeway” cable car leads part way up the mountain, stone from which was quarried until the 1940s for palaces in Edo, as Tokyo was called in earlier centuries. The largest stone Buddha in Japan is carved into the mountainside, but more impressive in their fragility and haunting timelessness are the hundreds of tiny stone Buddhas that the devout have placed in nooks along the path. Mount Fuji looms majestically in the distance, but then it does so much of the time when we’re in Japan. 

Westerners always come back talking about Japan’s tidiness, with good reason. We can buy snacks and even beer from vending machines at almost any of these holy places, but there is no littering. It would be a mistake to assume shrines and temples are used solely for quiet reflection. They are scenes of conviviality as well as contemplation. Well-groomed young people take selfies at shrines and temples, and on holidays they can be ringed with food carts. I wait in a long line to put about $2 in a vending machine that spits out a printed message which tells my fortune. (My health is excellent. I will make a lot of money. Summer will bring new romantic adventures, so don’t tell my wife.) 

Westerners marvel at how the Japanese remain so slim and fit, given their diet. Yes, there is sushi and all manner of other seafood, plus rice, with very little that is deep-fried. But in the general category of sweets, they might exceed even that of Americans, despite our white sugar addictions. Natives seem to rely on convenience stores even more than we do, and no wonder. Their shelves are stocked with hundreds of pastries, many of them reasonably fresh. There are donuts near the cash register, as well as Japanese variations on donuts. Red bean pancakes, called dorayaki, are filled with sweet red-bean filler, as are manju and mochi. But mochi can also be filled with ice cream, which is widely popular here and sold from sidewalk stands even on cold days. And they pickle everything: Entire stores are devoted to nothing but items that are pickled.

Kyoto’s many jewels include its cavernous, strikingly modern train station.

I don’t care for pickles or for beans on my ice cream, but this does not make me look unkindly upon the Japanese. I am one of the countless tourists who come back impressed with how mannerly the Japanese are, not just toward newcomers, but also toward one another. Parents are remarkably patient with their children, even in Narita International Airport in Tokyo. Except for karaoke bars and music venues, the only places the Japanese get loud—and here they have to—are at the fish markets. At Kanazawa, on the west coast of Honshu, the Omi-cho market has been operating for almost 300 years. Here, more than 150 shopkeepers demonstrate their lung power hawking bright red octopus and shellfish, some of which are fresh enough to still be moving. 

The Japanese always seem eager to please without being obsequious. The beguiling nature of these remarkable people puzzles even those who knew it intimately. The eccentric Greek-born Ohioan Lafcadio Hearn, who moved to Japan in 1890 and took the name Koizumi Yakumo, marveled over the “soft urbanity, impeccable honesty [and] ingenuous kindliness” that characterizes their interactions, where there is “no visible quarreling, no loud harshness, no tears and reproaches.” When you realize these norms have existed for centuries, he wrote, “You are tempted to believe that you have entered into the domain of a morally superior humanity.” 

This sense holds true in the countryside, even when we meet people who speak no English but communicate their hospitality nonetheless. And it remains true in the most bustling metropolis where desk clerks and wait staff are presumably trained to be gracious and accommodating. Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and the other big cities all have their five-star hotels and restaurants that routinely offer breakfast buffets of ramen, soup, shellfish and tamagoyaki, a Japanese omelet made with layers of egg and pressed rice. (For the painfully obvious American tourist, they also provide knives, forks and spoons—and sliced white bread, perfectly square, with right angles for the toaster oven.) For me though, it is difficult to imagine a more pleasant stay than at a traditional guesthouse, with tatami floors and sliding screens, and—of course—the customary and abundant breakfasts.

For cuisine, we head inland for Takayama, in the central part of Honshu—and go back, it seems, in time. You can still hitch a ride on a rickshaw in Takayama without feeling ridiculously self-conscious because they operate in the city’s beautifully preserved old town, with its human-scale buildings that date to the 1700s. In the narrow streets and alleys, there are sake breweries with tasting rooms, and world-class restaurants. Takayama is famous for marbled Hida beef from black-haired Japanese cattle, and a great place for it is La Midi, especially if you need a break from sushi. This is Japanese cuisine with a French accent in as pleasantly tasteful a setting as you will find anywhere in the city. 

Japan’s love affair with modernization might in fact reflect how aware it is of its own ties to its past and its need for them. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the town of Sosa, 45 miles northeast of Tokyo, on the Pacific, where we gather to welcome the New Year. This, supposedly, is the first place on the planet where the sun shows itself. We huddle like monks (or ghosts?) on the beach, watching for the sun to rise over the Pacific. It is cold, and everyone shivers, and waits. 

 As the sky begins to lighten, the monks and ghosts are revealed to be families with children, girls in high heels with their dates, pet lovers with dogs in pouches, high spirited boys who race to the water’s edge and squeal when the waves crash against the shore. Finally, the sun appears over the clouds, the world is bright again, and a New Year takes the place of the old. Then, quietly, without the hoopla of a Times Square ball drop, we all walk away. 

It might have been the author G.K. Chesterton who said something about how if you’d seen a sunrise only once, you’d know you’d seen a miracle, but if you see a sunrise every day, you take it for granted. Chesterton, of course, was an Englishman. The Japanese know a miracle when they’ve seen one, and for those of us lucky enough to see one for ourselves, a Japanese sunrise will always be miraculous.


This article originally appeared in our June 2017 issue.

Alan Pell Crawford
Alan Pell Crawford is a past contributor to Virginia Living.