Japanese Alps winter basecamps, pachinko, Zen musician interview

Super snowboarding in the Japanese Alps.

This custom Japan private tours planning post introduces Honshu Island's top winter getaways. Specifically, the Japanese Alps for skiing, snow sports, hot spa bathing, and great food! After the Honshu Island winter wonderland overview section we take a look at Japan's favorite gambling and contemplation exercise: pachinko pinball. The final section of this post is a December 2002 interview with Preston Houser (a Zen Buddhist shakuhachi player and more). Enjoy the read!

Winter sports, hot baths & food in the Japanese Alps
The cult of the Japanese game of pachinko pinball
Dec. 2002 interview with shakuhachi sensei Preston Houser

Content by Japan travel specialist & designer Ian Martin Ropke, founder & owner of Your Japan Private Tours (YJPT, est. 1990). I have been planning, designing, and making custom Japan private tours on all five Japanese islands since the early 1990s. I work closely with all of YJPT's Japan private tour clients and have a great team behind me. I promote YJPT through this content and only advertise at www.japan-guide.com, which has the best all-Japan English content & maps! If you are going to Japan and you understand the advantages of private travel, consider my services for your next trip to save time & have a better time. Ian Martin Ropke (unique on Google Search) is also a serious nonfiction and fiction writer, a startup founder (NexussPlus.com), and a spiritual wood sculptor. Learn more!

All about winter sports, hot baths and cuisine in the Japanese Alps

I like to travel using the basecamp approach. And the best base camps for travel are the locations that offer the most in town and in the nearby countryside. Winter is for cultural touring, winter sports, hot spring bathing, winter cuisine. Summer is pretty much the same except that skiing or snowshoeing becomes hiking and winter food becomes summer food. Remember, the Japanese Alps are super cool and fresh in summer and very cold and snow deep in winter. Perfect, no?

Winter in the Japanese Alps of Honshu Island offers 3 or 4 great basecamps that satisfy the basecamp "formula". This means that you can ski right out the door, if staying in a ski resort. Or that you get to the slopes from the cultural centers of Tokyo, Kyoto or Takayama in less than 90 min. Ok?

The first basecamp idea is to spend a week or more in a ski resort that is also close to historical and cultural attractions or the Japan Sea. This means that you sleep in or at the ski resorts near Tokyo, Kyoto or Takayama. If not skiing you are in the town seeing temples, markets and culture. The ski resorts of Hakuba, Shiga Kogen, Nozawa Onsen are all less than 90 minutes from Tokyo by bullet train. Not really ideal for a day trip.

For day trip skiing out of Tokyo get up real early and head to the Tochigi hot spring resort towns of Shiobara Onsen or the Nasu Onsen, which are both 110 minutes north of Tokyo Station by fast Yamabiko bullet trains; get off at Nasushiobara bullet train station; and take a short bus or taxi ride west to the ski resorts and hot springs.

The second basecamp idea is to stay in Kyoto but ski in Shiga Prefecture just east of Kyoto. Biwako Valley Ropeway resort offers spectacular views of Lake Biwa, Japan's largest fresh water lake. And it's less than 90 min from Kyoto Station. And at the northeast corner of the lake a two more resort clusters around Grand Snow Okuibuki that are not far from the bullet train station of Matsubara.

The third basecamp idea is Takayama, the biggest city in the Japanese Alps. The east side of the Takayama valley is plastered with hot water bathing and 5 good ski resorts (plus other winter sports, and good food too!). So, you can sleep at a resort and visit Takayama (and the thatched roof village of Shirakawago) or sleep in Takayama and ski nearby. Ok?

Pachinko pinball: money maker & time killer

It will most likely be named Omega, King, Lucky, or Monaco, and when the automatic doors open, you'll hear a sound like metallic hail above the din of fast-tempo music and high-decibel announcements. Peer into the smokey haze and you'll see rows of people sitting patiently in front of vertical pinball machines. Welcome to a pachinko parlor.

Pachinko was first commercially developed in Nagoya, after World War II. The old style of machines which required that each ball be manually flipped now appear only at flea markets and street fairs. They were replaced long ago by the electric variety, which put about two balls per second into play. The large knob at the lower right controls the force of the impeller, and hence the trajectory of the balls. The ideal target is just between two nails at the left end of the short row of "heaven nails" at the top. Hitting that spot, balls are more likely to fall toward the center where their chances of entering the lucky payoff holes are increased.

After putting a quantity of balls in the upper of two horizontal trays, one turns the lower right knob clockwise and the game begins. In quick succession the balls are shot up the left side, arc toward the center, and descend on a random path dictated by the vagaries of a hundred or so brass nails and a few little wheels, strategically placed on the vertical board. If any balls happen to land in the right places, the machine releases more into the upper tray.

The requisites for a successful pachinko player are persistence, concentration, and a knack for choosing a good machine. Persistence is required because all too often a player may give up after losing a few thousand yen, whereupon the next person sits down at the same machine and wins steadily. Though it looks like a simple game of luck, skillful use of the control knob will focus the stream of balls upon the ideal target. Most important is to pick an auspicious machine. Minute variations in the spacing of the nails, the location of fine grooves worn into the vertical board over time, or even the proximity and number of plastic boxes that hold the balls, are some of the details influencing veterans when they make their choice.

Pachinko is not considered gambling. If a person is lucky enough to have amassed a surplus of little balls, he or she pours them into a counting machine and in a few seconds a slip of paper is ejected bearing the total number. This can be exchanged outright for goods ranging from cigarettes to watches, but most people prefer to trade the full amount of their slip for keihin, special "gift tokens" such as pens, toothbrushes, or other such items. Just around the corner from the pachinko parlor is a convenient service: a small window with normally one person behind it who does one the favor of buying back the keihin for cash, though at a reduced rate. The owners of the pachinko parlor and the keihin redemption company are different, and thus no accusation of gambling can be made.

Isn’t it time you went out there and became a pachinko pro?

A Talk with Preston Houser, Zen shakuhachi player

This interview with Preston Houser took place in December 2002. He was known to others as an anarchist, critic, editor, father, hiker, nomad, humanist, poet, scholar, musician, teacher, writer, yoga enthusiast, and Zen Buddhist. “I mostly hover in the Biblical extremes of alpha and omega: anarchy creates everything, then Zen annihilates it (Brahma and Shiva)—designations in between are pretty fictitious except parenthood which is hugely heroic but only to oneself. Only music actually transcends recognition and effacement. Unlike media, I achieve realization but exhibit no potentiality—a man without ‘angles.’ Travel throughout the world, including several apocalyptic weeks in Tibet and India back in ’85. Affiliations: an American passport, but nationality never really instructs or resolves. Have written for Kyoto Journal (books) and Kansai Time Out (music) mostly because respective editors Ken Rodgers and Dominic Al-Bahri are so forgiving. Essays in two books: Invitations to Tea Gardens and The Courtyard Garden (both by Mitsumura Suiko). Forward to Marc Keane’s Japanese Garden Design. Participated in Kyoto Gardens: A Virtual Stroll Through Zen Landscapes CD-ROM (Mercury). I live in Kyoto and teach literature at Baika Women’s College in Ibaraki City.”

YJPT: What brought you to Japan?

PH: I grew up on the west coast near San Francisco. The Asian presence is very strong in the Bay area. When I was in college I became interested in Asian art and Buddhism, especially Zen. So it just seemed like the natural next step to come to Japan. Like many foreigners, I came at first with the intention of staying a year or two. That was in 1981. One thing led to another and here I am twenty years later.

I came specifically to Kyoto to continue my Japanese language studies. I also came to get deeper into Zen and to pursue my interest in music. When I left America, I had been playing in a professional rock and roll band, as a guitarist, for about ten years. Rock and roll, however, is a young person’s vocation. It was time to move on, so I ordered a shakuhachi kit from Monty Levenson, a well-known shakuhachi maker and affectionado in California.

I found the shakuhachi fascinating. The late Yamaguchi Goro was the best player in Japan when I arrived. I saw him in concert at the Kaburenjo in Kyoto. It was some of the most angelic music you could imagine.

YJPT: So you found a teacher in Kyoto?

PH: Almost instantly. I was sitting [meditating] at Rosen-an, a subtemple in the Daitoku-ji Zen complex. There were a couple of other Westerners sitting zazen there and I expressed an interest in shakuhachi lessons. One of these guys said he was scheduled to have a lesson the very next afternoon, and asked me to join him. The teacher’s name was Kurahashi Yoshio. His father Kurahashi Yodo was a student of Jinyodo, the man who collected the body of shakuhachi music connected with Zen. I have been studying with Kurahashi Sensei ever since.

YJPT: Has Kyoto changed a lot over the past 20 years?

PH: Probably the biggest change I have noticed is that the foreigners that came around the time that I did came with an entirely different purpose. Our reason for being here was to study some form of art or craft, for cultural enrichment.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most people came to Japan with more economic interests in mind. This is unfortunate and it has, in a way, influenced the cultural landscape we now live in. Young people in the first world appear much more superficial now.

When I first came to Kyoto, it seemed like everyone knew everyone. There was a very strong sense of comraderie. When we saw a fellow foreigner on the street we said hello. Nowadays we don’t. We just seem to look through each other.

A few years ago I happened to sit down at a table with a couple of young foreigners in a bar. Naturally, one of the first questions they asked was how long I had been in Japan. When I answered 15 years, they were utterly unimpressed. In fact, that was the start and the end of our conversation. After that they simply ignored me as if I had nothing to offer them. I found that a bit disturbing. But I guess that is the flow of generations.

YJPT: How was your youth different?

PH: I grew up in a different era. Totally different. My “wonder years,” when I came of age, were bordered by Kennedy’s assassination and Nixon’s resignation. For me, the Beat and the Hippie movements of the late 1950s and the 1960s very much embodied the idea of a cultural movement that could be built upon as a potential vehicle, large or small, for social change. I feel that we really have not had a meaningful social movement in the West since the early 1970s. This may explain the plight of youth today.

YJPT: Do you think that idealism is a good thing or a bad thing in young people or people in general?

PH: Ideology is the inability to entertain more than a single agenda. In reality, as you mature you come to realize, if you keep an open mind, that life is driven by a kaleidoscope of conflicts and forces. When idealism or ideology takes over the first thing that is sacrificed is the allowance for multiple viewpoints or perspectives.

If we have learned anything in the last 50 years, then it is that totalizing world views are not as informative as tribal systems that existed in the past. Things have multiple meanings and our world view must allow for a place for all things: heroes, harlots, heathens, saints. India of the distant past and today is like that.

YJPT: What do you think about young people today?

PH: The post-war generation has been taught how to waste without guilt. Everything is disposable now. Nothing seems to have a deeper material meaning. It’s all optional. I find this a bit frightening. Gary Snyder said, “True affluence is not needing anything.” What are you lacking at this moment? This is the point.

Today’s world, and not just for the young, is one that has no meaningful place for rhetoric, or complex ideas. In my opinion, TV is the one of the worst forces we have today. It offers endless potentiality and zero chance for any kind of realization. It is passiveness dressed up in a very powerful, surface-level form of seduction.

I also feel that young people in all affluent cultures have lost the ability and the need to analyze. Kids seem to buy their way through life now. Its all superficial and there seems to be a studied aversion to thought, discourse, or experience.

I have played the shakuhachi at many Japanese schools and nearly always members of the audience say that this is the first time they had ever seen the instrument or heard the natural sound of the flute. These are young Japanese adults and yet they seem to have only superficial contact with their own culture.

YJPT: What are your favorite Kyoto places or images?

PH: For me, the Mikaeri Bosatsu statue at Eikan-do is one of the most exquisite three dimensional objects I have ever seen. It continues to inspire me. That gesture of looking behind seems to embody the Boddhisattva ideal. A divine being showing true compassion for those struggling through life. If you have ever taken a bunch of children or students anywhere, you find yourself doing the same thing, continually looking back. That’s what the future is about.

Winter sports, hot baths & food in the Japanese Alps
The cult of the Japanese game of pachinko pinball
Dec. 2002 interview with shakuhachi sensei Preston Houser