Tag Archives: Japan

Travel

Takayama ho

A day trip out to Takayama saw the first use of our normally excellent value JR passes. Typically you can travel the entire rail network with some small exceptions, and you have to be a foreigner & purchase the pass overseas, but otherwise excellent value. Except that our plans went skewif due to the Great eastern earthquake/tsunami.

Takayama was about 2 hours out from Kyoto and at the foot of very snowy mountains. A popular skiing holiday destination I believe, and I was disappointed to have not thought at all about packing the K2s. The beautifully preserved old town fascinated, but carried a tinge of disappointment of being more tourist oriented than historic (not that it was a problem). I was delighted to be back online as Takayama is better known for having free wifi almost everywhere (and b*gg*r paying Telstra $29 for 10MB!).

After lunching on Japanese style toasted sandwiches in another delightfully jazz music filled cafe, we wandered the historic streets admiring the copious amounts of Japan Black adorned fascias. We happened upon a pagoda with a particularly old (1000+ years!) gingko tree and pondered the gingko sapling we’d planted at home not too long ago.

A bus tour then took us to the Hida Folk Village where we could have spent much longer, but for the time restrictions. A historic village of carpentry and timber makers – several of the buildings had slid from their original locations due to various earthquakes. The plaques and displays of tradition timber making was revelatory, as was the below zero temperatures.

For dinner, we thought we’d try some bento boxes from the JR station. On purchase, the seller lady made some tugging motions at our food boxes. Thinking it to be a local greeting, we motioned the same back to her. Only later did we discover that each bento has its own heating device which warms up your food when the string is pulled. Delicious instant hot food!

 

Travel

More around Kyoto and Ohara

The day started a bit unusually as I thought I’d head into Kyoto CBD to pick up some Bonito soup mix for mum (it’s much cheaper in Japan, she says) and thought the food court in JR Kyoto Isetan might be a goer. My lack of Japanese languaue and my lack of an idea of what I wanted to purchase bogged me down a little except for the iphone picture I had. I found a kilo’s worth and, yes it was much cheaper (rough the same price for 1kg as for 60g in Australia!).

I caught up with Anna & Sarah again at a patisserie Sarah’d been eyeing off. Unusually, this particular patisserie did not serve coffee.

Time to visit brother Jon’s place and have a bit more of a wander around. Judging by the landscape, there is a giant ‘big’ character carved into the side of the hill. I’d seen some postcards around showing that with some celebration where they light up the symbol at night.

The climate continued to be bitterly cold, so it only seemed appropriate to eat ice cream from a street vendor. They had a dozen odd varieties generally unknown in Australia. I had the black sesame whilst Anna had the cherry blossom. Cold but yum.

Visiting Ohara, we discovered another temple whose name completely escapes me now. Picturesque but freezing, so we kept moving.

 

Travel

Nara and Inari

Our intention was to visit Inari first and then Nara, but a slight miscalculation in the express-ness of our train landed us at Nara in the early hours.

Righto.

Must.

See.

Temples.

The park full of bambi was a little bit of a pleasant diversion, as were the multitude of cartoon deer-boy characters. The surprising thing about the temple was the giant buddha inside. How many giant buddhas are there? I know there’re a few in China but this is getting ludicrous! Even more ludicrous (or perhaps portentous for those that way inclined) is the number of times Buddha’s head has fallen clean off after various (not 2011) earthquakes.

We had a small stop along the way to admire a random house with a grand old cherry blossom in the front yard, held up with various bamboo crutches and the flashbulbs of many admirers.

Inari turned out to be surprising also what with the thousands of torii gates at Fushimiinari Taisha Shrine (conveniently located at the exit of the Inari JR Station). I can just imagine the conversation with the subbies: “You wanted 100 gates? I thought you said 10,000!”

We ran out of daylight a third of the way up the mountain of torii gates (which worked out better than had we run out of daylight at Nara) and headed back to the Cube for an interesting Japanese take on spaghetti for dinner.

Travel

Kyoto streets & temples

If it’s Kyoto, then it must be temples. Our first stop of the day was not too far up the road – a small temple called Shoren-in which was a lovely hour’s investigate around this quaint, almost boutique artefact. It was only in retrospect that we realised we enjoyed it so much  as the rest of the day’s temples. The Chion-in further south we found to be crowded and harried. There also  seemed to be a Buddhist ceremony of some sort on (it’s so hard to tell when you neither speak nor read the language).

The hill gardens of Maruyamacho were strangely deserted. Many blue tarpaulins had been laid out signifying a bagsed position (presumably for upcoming cherry blossom parties). The feeling in the middle of the day was of a carnival that was about to happen. Or had happened. A minor discovery was Shijo Dori, the main street of shopping action in Gion.

Travel

Touring Kyoto’s Imperial Palace & Botanic Garden

After an interminably long walk, we arrived at the Imperial Palace and took a bit of a stroll around two of the giant perimeter walls before realising that there was no way of entry (excepting through the paid entrance). We had a nice little lunch at the souvenir shop – the Japanese idea of tea and sandwiches doesn’t completely match the idea you have in your mind, but is tasty and inexpensive.

Some cherry blossoms in an outer garden were blooming, so we joined the not-quite-yet thronging masses to photographed them.

We joined a tour of the Palace and happened to luck upon an English tour which unfortunately contained a small horde of Americans. Kind of jars you completely out of the Japanese serenity.

Racing through the day, we managed to arrive at the Botanic Gardens 10 minutes after the conservatory (which by all accounts is worth a look in) shut its doors.

Right next to the subway entrance was an modern art installation which contained some interesting interpretations of both Asian and Western masters.

A dinner of Hong Kong style noodles at the brain-numbingly large Cube capped off a tiring day.

Travel

Yakitori night

We finally got to try Yakitori near the corner of Saikaishicho and Higashimonzencho at a franchise run by fabulous proprietors who made our night really wonderful (so much so that we abandoned our ‘try something different every meal’ mantra and went back a week later).

Unfiltered sake was a bit of a revelation. Sort of a milky slightly fizzy yoghurty taste without the fumes except that a small bottle still had around 15% alcohol. Hic! Brother Jon did the honours of ordering for despite my outward Asian appearance, I’m not Japanese.

Apparently I further compounded the situation by learning how to say “I cannot speak Japanese” in Japanese, because people did not believe me (ie: Yes you do, you did just then!)

And the cost was cheap! Generally speaking you’d want to eat locally where ever you travel, but for what we ate and drank, we paid for all 4 of us what you’d pay per person back in Oz.

Travel

On Asian toilets

I’ve been to Asia before, so squat toilets are not a novelty. Perhaps stinky, unusal, requiring a lifetime’s coordination, and daunting, but not novel. I’m reminded of a recent trip down the Hume Highway, we made a pit stop at the Benalla BP & McDonalds to fuel, freshen up, & use their conveniences. We had the misfortune to use the toilets 10 minutes after a busload of Chinese tourists had gone through, and other than especially poor aim, I am still trying to picture how people were doing what they were doing as there were footprints on the loo seat.

Puts you right off.

We’d gotten used to the Japanese squat in our Osaka residence with only the mild fear that the door handle of support might snap sending us toppling into mixed company areas. The superb bullet trains also give you a choice of Japanese or Western-style so at least the art of balance at 300km/h is not always required.

The Japanese Bidet was also a revelation, not only for the gentle squirting of cleasing warmed water, nor for the post clean air dry blower, but for the controls. Should you be presented with a toilet seat and electronic controls, on no account should you look down and assume the squirty button is ‘flush’ unless you’d like your face washed. The flush mechanism is usually attached to the cistern.

Convenience stores also tended to have publically usable (usually Western) toilets, and we came across a particularly beautiful one at the Nara museum. We discovered a few weeks later though that the hygiene standards and availability of public Western toilets were not nearly so good in Hong Kong…

Travel

Exploring Kyoto

Heading down towards the Kamo River (鴨川), one wonders why in Australia we turn our pretty waterways into big concrete drains. One only need look at what was the Moonee Ponds Creek following the Tulla Freeway to see the attitude. Pretty? Pah! I did hear a farmer on ABC local radio complaining that the recent Australian floods were all due to plants growing in the waterways. Yeesh.

An oddity did occur as we crossed the bridge – a Japanese TV crew wanted to interview us (presumably as to what foreigners were doing in Japan when most expats had been told by their respective governments to flee – one almost expected to be accosted by former PM Rudd with his sleeves rolled up rescuing his Aussie maaates). They only wanted to interview residents, not tourists, so we missed out on our 15 seconds of fame.

The Ponto-cho alleys were historical geisha and entertainment areas. Whilst the alleyways and the restaurants looked nice, the modern iteration seemed to yell tourist trap to me. Apparently they look nice all lit up at night but we didn’t get the chance to return after dark.

 

Travel

Kyoto Banquet

After a lap around Niomon Dori to discover that our preferred Yakatori meal was shut on Mondays and that the only other option was pizza or Maccas, we landed on the doorstep of this fine establishment (whose English name I do not know) and decided on the banquet for four. Warm sake was a revelation for me (I don’t normally like Chinese rice wine either as it reminds me of window cleaning solvent), but this was nice.

The many many small courses which in Cantonese might have been called dim sum, not only warmed the heart but filled the stomach. Or perhaps it was the warm sake…