TravelStream™ news feed for member apat on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/apat en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:56:54 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1222139340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1222139340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1222139340/tpod.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:56:54 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Kyoto, Kinki, Japan

Goin' home. Woke up at 7am on the 22nd. I'll start this entry with a little disclaimer. I found something out about myself at the conclusion of this trip. I cannot sleep on planes. I'm writing this blog at 4pm on the 23rd, and I've had 15 minutes sleep since 7am yesterday. After we check out of the Gimmond Hotel, we are officially homeless, until we arrive back in Australia. We packed all of the bags in the configuration which they are going to be checked in at the airport. We finalised the bill at the Gimmond, and we left our bags with them so we could kill the day in Kyoto without having to lug them around and kill ourselves. My pack weighed 27kg, Veronica's weighed 18, another bag which we bought a few days ago to carry all of the extra junk we bought now weighs nearly 20kg. It was going to be hard enough making it to the train, let alone walking around all day with that weight. Again we headed to the shopping district of Kyoto as it is large and interesting enough to keep us amused for another few hours. With nothing in particular to do we slowly browsed all of the shops. Supermarkets seem to be the only shops in Japan where it isn't customary to smile or be polite. Usually, in every other shop we entered we were greeted with a loud and happy Irasshai Massen! which is Japanese for welcome. But at supermarkets, the women on the checkouts are sour faced, and dont even offer a greeting. And it wasn't just to us as foreigners either. We watched for a while, and every customer on every queue was getting the same treatment. At the supermarket we stocked up on nibbles for the plane, as well as a 1.5 litre bottle of Pocari Sweat to take home as a souvenier. We also bought a few novelty 135ml beers to take home for a few laughs, as well as a couple of 500ml beers as samplers (mostly because they are so much cheaper than if they were purchased in Australia). After we were done with shopping, we returned back to the hotel, to have one last meal at the vending machine restaurant. It will be missed. We returned to the hotel to collect our insanely heavy bags, and headed for the subway. Struggled onto the moderately crowded subway, and got off at Kyoto station, and made what would be our last train change for the trip. We boarded the comfortable Limited Express train to travel directly from Kyoto station to Kansai airport in Osaka. We got through the airport, thankfully with trolleys to carry our bags, and waited for the check-in counter to open up. While we waited, we made use of the Starbucks at the airport terminal, which was the same excellent starbucks quality, albeit with a slightly inflated airport price. Starbucks in Australia is terrible. Their coffee tastes like finely grained gravel floating in hot water and battery acid. Surprisingly though, coffee from the Japanese Starbucks cafes is excellent. It is also very, very cheap. The largest size, a Venti, which is about the size of a medium sized bucket, costs about $4. After Starbucks we still had a small amount of Yen left to use, so we bought some Japanese porcelain dolls that Veronica wanted. Undoubtedly we could have bought them cheaper outside the airport, but they were quite cheap anyway, and if we didn't use the yen it would probably have just travelled home to Australia and been put in a drawer. After the dolls we were left with exactly 215 yen, which was enough to buy a 120 yen coke out of a vending machine, and leave us with 95 yen which was absolutelly worthless at the airport, as even the keyrings started at 100 yen. We were hearded onto the plane, and found our seats. As it was now 10pm it was pitch black, and it didn't take long after take-off for the lights to go dim, and for everyone to get comfortable and to go to sleep. Except me. Charlotte fell asleep with no problems, but Angela on the other hand struggled to sleep. She wouldnt sleep unless she was held, and for some reason she wanted me, not Veronica, so I spent the next 6 hours with her sleeping on my lap. Every time I moved a muscle, she would wake up and scream, waking the whole plane, so I had to simply lock my arms into position, and sit there. Time passes very slowly when you have to sit in one position unable to move. Very slowly. Somehow I survived without going insane, and the pilot announced that we would soon be making our descent into Brisbane for our stopover, just as the sun was coming up. We touched down, and made our pointless 1 hour Brisbane stopover. When we got off the plane, we had to go through the entire bag check procedure again, before being allowed to go through to the airport departure lounge cafeteria. Shops such as red rooster, subway, a coffee shop and a doughnut shop were absolutely useless to us, because there was not enough time to order anything before we were called back to the plane. Veronica ordered and paid for some coffees as soon as we got to the cafeteria, and the boarding call was made for us to re-board the plane before the coffee shop had even started to make our coffee. Got the money back from the unimpressed coffee woman, and headed for the plane again. Again we took off for the short 1hr 15min flight to Sydney. Through the thorough customs check at Sydney airport, and headed to the carousel to collect our bags. We got most of the bags, but our umbrellas didn't appear. We waited until all of the bags were collected, and assuming that they had been lost, we headed for the queue to exit the bagage claim area. A sniffer beagle circled me, and sniffed me a little, but he must have decided that I wasn't a terrorist and moved on. Instead he took a fascination with the bag of an old Japanese woman beside me, and the customs official tore her bag apart looking for food or drugs or something. Nothing was found, but the poor woman was left to pack her bag by herself, with no offer to help repack it by the customs person that made the mess to begin with. Because of the umbrella delay, we were now at the end of a very very long queue. It seems that 3 plane loads of people were all coming through the gates at once. So we queued, and waited. All the while wondering who had stolen our 2 valuable umbrellas. We were eventually interviewed by a short rude woman who wanted to know what food we were carrying. Once she had ascertained that we were carrying no fruit or vegetables, we were allowed to go to the express queue. We found out from the official manning the express queue that the umbrellas would be in the "bulky items" collection point. Umbrellas bulky? There was about 6 queues to choose from, but our friendly official told us to go down the left aisle. The only "left" aisle I could see was the one that bypassed the baggage checks completely, and led straight to the exit gates. When I queried him, he confirmed that he was giving us a free pass out of there, so we didn't argue. We got some interesting looks from the other people who had obviously been waiting in the queues for quite some time waiting for their bags to be pulled apart. They were no doubt wondering who we paid off to be able to simply walk around the inspection point. So in the end we could have bought through as much duty free items, alcohol, or infact any other items we cared to bring in, because our main bags were never checked. The crew from the TV show "Border Security" were filming the queues, but by bypassing the queues we didn't get to be on the show. No loss. And so ends the trip. 33 days in a culture very different from the one we are used to in Australia. We have seen some beautiful sights that we will remember for the rest of our lives, and have seen more of Japan than I ever thought would be possible in one single trip, especially with 2 young children in tow. It was an incredible trip, and I am sad that it is complete, but I am also relieved. Japan is such an exciting place to visit, because it is such a different experience to what we are used to in Australia. The culture is different, the scenery is different, the food is different and life in general is different, which makes it such a fantastic experience. After 33 days however, those things which seemed to new and alien to us at the beginning of the trip began to feel "normal". The aspects of Japan which really opened our eyes when we first got there were now just a normal part of daily life, and this was a good signal that it was time to return home. We will definitely be back though, and Japan delivered everything I had hoped on this holiday. I would love to see Okinawa, or perhaps spend a week or two in Hokaido in the winter, to catch the winter festival in Soporo. Sayonara Japan. It's been fun.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1222053540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1222053540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1222053540/tpod.html Sun, 21 Sep 2008 10:06:47 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Kyoto, Kinki, Japan

Our last "full"day in Japan. We fly out tomorrow night at 9:50pm. This will probably also be the last blog entry I write for this trip while on Japanese soil. I'm guessing that my next entry will be written on the plane tomorrow night. We started out the day early by heading to the Toji Temple markets (http://www.japanvisitor.com/index.php?cID=374&pID=792). All of the reviews of the market say to get there early, so we decided to get there a little after 7am when it opened. We caught the subway to the Kyoto station, and found our way to the South exit. The Toji temple grounds were then about a 15 minute walk to the South West. We got there at about 7:30am, and the markets were already in full swing. The weather was already hot and very humid. The weather seemed to return to the hot humid temperatures we had a month ago. There was some cloud cover when we got there, but it didn't look too threatening. We took an initial leisurely stroll through the markets. To be honest, the markets were not as impressive as I expected from all of the reviews. I would say that at least 50% of the stalls that I saw were some kind of produce, be it vegetables and fruit, or some kind of very smelly seafood. There were also many stalls selling wood carvings and a lot of buddah statues (unsurprisingly). The stalls that I expected to see everywhere, such as kimono sales, geisha dolls and other tourist targeted items, were actually quite rare. We did find a few such stalls though, and ended up with 3 kimonos for around $50, including a brand new one for Charlotte. We walked around the rest of the markets, mainly looking for ornamental geisha dolls which Veronica would have loved to have bought, but to no avail. The skies started to look a little bit more threatening, almost like we may get some light rain. Due to the lack of crowds we had just about covered all stalls in the market, when we walked through the gateway to the final sector of the temple grounds, and to the last few stalls. As we walked through the gate, a light sprinkling of rain started to fall. As Veronica didn't want to see the last few stalls and this section of the temple grounds, she stayed with Charlotte and Angela under the shelter of the temple gates, and I walked around to take a few photos. Absorbed in taking photos, I didn't notice everyone scrambling for cover. In the space of less than a minute the weather went from no rain, to a light sprinkling, to rain, to heavy rain, to a downpour, to a monsoonal dumping of water the likes of which I haven't seen too many times in my life. My umbrella was useless, as the water was not only falling down, but also coming up a foot off the ground as it was coming down that hard, so I made my way to the nearest tent I could find. The tent I had picked, unfortunately, was the worshiping tent. Behind me stood a young monk with a very, very loud bell which he insisted on ringing every 5 minutes or so by hitting it with a very solid stick. Also in this tent, much to my delight was an incence urn, and in typical Japanese fashion there was no wind. None. So my noisy monk filled tent was also billowing with incence smoke. Due to the incence smoke there would have been no evil spirits in the tent, but unfortunately there was also no fresh air. My monk filled and smoke filled tent was also periodically filled with worshippers. Hardcore worshippers brandishing very dangerous pointy tipped umbrellas would occasionally make a mad dash through the downpour toward the tent. There were a few instances were I was sure I was going to be impaled on the shiny spike of an umbrella tip. Once the mad dashing worshippers got to my tent, they would light more damn incense, and tip water on the buddah statue at the back of the tent, which caused my monk to chant and ring his noisy bell again. After 45 minutes of this cycle I felt like I was going a little crazy. Then again it may have just been the smoke. Another monk with a straw broom was trying in vain to sweep the water away from the gateway that Veronica and the girls were standing in. Also, a security guard in gumboots waded into the now flooded area surrounding my tent in an attempt to locate and clear the drain. After 10 minutes of simply pushing water and gravel around, he gave up. Eventually, Veronica signaled that she was prepared to brave the rain, which had now eased to a moderate to heavy downpour. I was so sick of the smoke, the noisy monk and the umbrella jousting worshipers that I wholeheartedly agreed. With a smile and a wave I bid farewell to my noisy monk friend and the other fellow dwellers of my smokey tent and set out into the rain. We decided that there was little left to look at, and even if we wanted to, all of the stalls were now covered in plastic in a futile attempt to keep the rain out. We picked our way through the market pathways, attempting to find ground which was not six inches under water, with mixed success. As we got outside, we decided that a 15 to 20 minute walk back to the train station in the rain was a stupid idea, and we got into one of the waiting taxis. $6.50 well spent. As it was only 9am, we decided that we would return to the Kyoto shopping district to spend the rest of our money, to save us from carting it home, and having to change it over (only to take another battering at the hands of the pitiful Australian $ exchange rate. At Kyoto station, we had to decide whether we would catch a subway or a bus to the shopping distict. For a little bit of fun and something different we opted for the bus. The bus driver assured us that his bus would be going to the Teramachi shopping distict. We sat on the bus as it first headed West, then North, completely avoiding the area we needed to go. As we got to the outskirts of Kyoto we began to get concerned. When the bus driver announced that the next stop was Ginkakujui Temple, we were more than concerned, as that temple is at least 10 to 15 minutes drive from the shopping district. As the bus arrived back at the bus depot, we were the only ones still aboard. It was comforting to have the bus driver laugh at us when we told him again where we wanted to go. He was nice enough to not charge us though. We eventually got onto the correct bus, and found our way to the shops. Veronica found another 100 yen shop. I'm reasonably certain nobody in the history if 100 yen shops had ever bought as many items as we have in one visit. We bought a few more childrens kimonos, and then after lunch I went back to my favourite shoe store, ABC Mart, for another pair of Nike Air runners. I thought I might as well take advantage of it, as they are $90 here, or $200+ in Australia. The last thing we had to buy for the day was an extra bag to take all of our additional purchases home in. Reaching into the money belt, I pulled out my last $50 to pay for the bag. Aside from the coins in our coin pouch we were now officially broke, and there was still 3 meals and a shopping trip for supplies for a 10 hour flight still to come. I was willing to give it a go, but Veronica convinced me to get another $100 out of the ATM at the post office, as she thought an entire day without eating before a 10 hour flight wasn't a great idea. Dinner again, for the final time, at the 24hr vending machine restaurant next door to the hotel, and then home to pack. Not a lot of fun, but fortunately Veronica did most of it. So we have a late check-out in the morning, 11am, then we have an entire day to kill tomorrow, before boarding the shinkansen to Kansai airport, ready for departure at 9:50pm tomorrow. Not looking forward to a 10 hour flight.
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Kyoto, Kinki, Japan

Lazy day in Kyoto today. Nothing on the agenda today. We took our time getting ready to leave the hotel in the morning, and headed out at about 10am. I think Kyoto is my favorite Japanese city. The pace of the city is slower, the people are friendlier and the city seems alltogether easier to get around. If any city feels like "home" in Japan, it would be Kyoto. We set out towards the main shopping area in Kyoto today, and started our walk through one of the 2 parallel covered shopping streets, Shinkyogoku-dori. Along with all of the usual shops, this shopping centre was quite unusual because down one side, every 100m or so was an ancient temple, or shrine, or ancient cometary. At one of the shrines, I walked down a pathway between two shops, and the pathway opened up to a large open area containing old houses, a very old looking temple, and a stone tori gate, through which was a shrine among the weeping willows. On the other side of the square was a very old looking belltower, with a large cast iron bell, which looked like a smaller version of the one I witnessed being rung at 6am yesterday morning in Takayama. It felt like we had stepped back in time to ancient Japan. Aside from us, a solitary elderly couple were present in the square. The woman stood back, while her husband silently bowed and worshiped at the steps to the temple. We continued down to the end of the shopping centre, with Veronica stopping at every 100 yen shop that we came across. Some fantastic bargains can be found in these shops for 100 yen, or $1. We walked around to the other market, Teramachi-dori. We walked up there, and stopped at a very busy crepe shop, which served crepes in every variety imaginable. I had a chilli cheese hot dog crepe, and Veronica had a banana, chocolate and custard crepe. The crepes were $2.90 each. After we had eaten, we were stopped by some familiar faces. John and Robyn, with who we had traveled in the train from Takayama the day before, and had coffee with at Kyoto station yesterday afternoon after the train trip, had decided that they would spend the afternoon walking through the shopping district too. They were staying in the Kyoto station area, which is a 10 minute subway or bus ride from our hotel, so it was a one in a million chance that we bumped into them again in all of Kyoto. At the end of Teramachi-dori was a shop that interested me. A butcher. Nothing special, just a butcher specialising in beef. He seemed to deal exclusively in the fatty marbled Wagyu style beef. Whether or not it was genuine Wagyu I'm not sure, as all of the signage was in Japanese, but I suspect that the cuts of meat on the inside of the shop were genuine. Coming from Australia, where a steak isn't a steak unless it is at least 500g, these cuts of meat were very small. Also, the prices were a little confusing, as I'm used to buying steak by the kilogram. I knew steak was expensive in Japan, but the prices displayed were reasonable. 1800 yen, 2200 yen and 2600 yen were the typical prices of the steak in the window. $18 - $26 per kg seemed like very reasonable prices for steak. The hamburger mince and stew style offcuts were even cheaper. These ranged from about 315 yen. Only then did I realise that the prices were quoted per 100 grams, not per kg. $260 per kg was a little less reasonable. And $35/kg for hamburger mince? As I ventured inside the shop, there were fillets of what I assume was Wagyu at 6300yen/100g, or (at the current exchange rate) about $750 per kilogram. An elderly woman sat at the back of the butcher shop behind a counter, with various sauces and a very sharp looking knife. She was the person to see if you wanted beef sashimi. Basically, you could walk in, buy your eye-wateringly expensive steak, and give it to her straight out of the display case, and she would delicately prepare it as sashimi, and serve it back to you. Raw $750/kg steak? Um, no. I would have dearly loved to try some of the steak from this butcher, but not for $750/kg, and I'm pretty certain I would have preferred it to be cooked. Attached to the butcher shop next door was a restaurant dealing exclusively in beef. Prices on their menu were in the 6000 - 9000 yen range for 100g of beef to be prepared for you as a meal. Naturally you could order your meal with as much steak as you wanted. So for a 500g steak meal you could realistically be looking at a $500 lunch. Plus $1.50 for a coke. After the shopping, we returned to the hotel for an afternoon nap. For dinner, we decided to set out and look for the Coco curry house, which was apparently somewhere to the north-west of our hotel, between the Imperial Palace and Nijo castle. We wandered through the backstreets, and emerged at the Imperial Palace wall, and walked west toward the street that Nijo castle is on. Unsuccessfully we searched for the curry shop. The Coco curry website was no help, as the store locator simply didn't work. It said that there were no stores in Osaka or Yokohama, which was a little strange as we had eaten at Coco curry restaurants in both cities. Defeated, we walked back towards the hotel, and settled for our faithful 24hr vending machine restaurant next door to the hotel. So basically we walked for 45 minutes to arrive next door to the hotel. But, we had to try, and if we couldn't find Coco, this restaurant was equally as good. We are almost regulars at the 24hr shop now. When we walked in, it was as crowded as I have ever seen it. The fact that it was 7:30pm probably didn't help. But we got a bench table, and were moved to a table of 4 once it was freed up. The speed that the meals are prepared and served means that customers are turned over very quickly at this restaurant. This gives 3 distinct advantages: 1. The food is always fast and super fresh, and 2. There is never a long wait for a table, and 3. The prices are very cheap because the turnover is so high that they can justify a lower margin. Basically it isn't the type of restaurant where you sit for hours and enjoy the ambiance over a glass of wine. You enter, pay, sit, eat and leave. And with 2 kids this suits us perfectly. And 4 meals for under $20 doesn't hurt either. Across the road to the 7-11 with our coffee supplies for tomorrow morning, and returned to the hotel room. We are heading out very early in the morning to go to the Toji temple markets. Apparently one of the biggest (and most crowded) markets in Japan, and apparently a fantastic place to get a super bargain such as kimonos and other touristy bric-a-brac. The markets are held on the 21st day of every month, and brings in vendors and shoppers from all over Japan. Conveniently, it is on the day before we go home, so anything we buy we don't have to cart around for too long. If the markets are anything like the write-ups I've read, I think we may buy a lot of stuff.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221880920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221880920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221880920/tpod.html Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:08:21 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Kyoto, Kinki, Japan

The alarm went off at 5:30am, about 4.5 hours after I went to bed. Sleep is overrated anyway. Since this was my last morning in Takayama, I had to check out the morning markets on the riverbank, just to say that I had done it. I attempted to wake Charlotte, as she said she would come up to the markets with me, but no amount of prodding would wake her up. As I began to walk towards the river, it felt like I was the only one awake in the entire city. Even the traffic lights weren't awake yet, as every set was flashing orange, and all crosswalk stop/go signs were blacked out. It wasn't a problem, because I didn't see any cars anyway. As I got to the markets, it was a few minutes before 6, so I decided to continue up the hill to get some more photos of the housing preservation area with no people walking through the streets. At it came to 6am, a bell began to chime. It was the huge bell at the monestary a little further up the road, so I sped up my walking speed to see the bell being rung. The bell is absolutely massive, and as it was struck, it hurt my ears, and I was 30m or more away from the bell tower. After the initial ringing of the bell, the entire area would continue to vibrate in an ultra low resonance hum which you could feel more than you could hear, until the next striking of the bell. This happened 4 or 5 more times while I was standing there. Strangely, I was the only one standing there to watch this taking place. Aside from the man ringing the bell, the entire park was deserted. After this I wandered back down the hill towards the markets, and it seems that the bell is a wake-up call for the entire town. As I was walking back down, people were emerging from their houses in their kimonos, shopkeepers were putting their signs out the front of their shops, and the traffic lights had started working. It seems nothing happens in Takayama before the bell is rung at 6am. The markets themselves were a waste of time. I started walking through the produce market, and along the entire length of the produce market there was only 6 or 7 vendors, who had each set up a small white tent containing a table or two. If you wanted to buy something other than eggplant, zuccini, chilli or small fish which had been lightly killed and put in a bag, you were going to be out of luck at these markets. I had 5 of the 7 vendors try desperately to explain the virtues of their eggplant to me in Japanese. They seemed pretty passionate about their eggplants, but neither could I understand them, nor did I want or need any eggplant at that point in time, so I politely thanked each one and kept walking. After another short walk through the preservation area to get some tourist and vehicle free photos, I returned to the ryokan. After checking the train timetable, and packing the bags, we headed to the front desk to check out. As I mentioned in yesterdays post, we had decided to give breakfast a miss this morning. I'm very glad we did, because the manager ended up reducing the bill by nearly $90 for skipping the breakfast. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and had we known what we know now we would have skipped yesterdays breakfast also, as it effectively amounted to $90 worth of rice and apple juice for the 4 of us, as that is all we ate from the array of dishes that were served. At the Takayama train station, it seemed like every foreigner in Takayama was leaving the place. I chatted to at least 3 Australian groups at the train station, as well as a couple from California who also had a little girl that Angela was fascinated with. We all seemed to board the same train carriage, which resembed a day care centre one everyone was seated with their children. In the row behind us we got chatting to John and Robyn from Echuca in Victoria. They were an older couple who's kids have grown up and moved out, and they are now busily spending the kids inheritance by travelling. They seemed to have been to many places across the globe, and loved telling their stories. As far as 2.5 hour train rides go, it was relatively painless because of all of the people around us which we had to talk to. We changed trains at Nagoya (interestingly, Japan's largest train station) to board the Shinkansen bound for Kyoto. Due to the lack of seats, I was seated in the front of the cabin, and Veronica was seated further back, again near John and Robyn. We organised to have a coffee together once we got off the train at Kyoto station. We found a coffee shop in the main atrium of the massive main hall of Kyoto station. For a train station, Kyoto is absolutely massive, and complete overkill for the purpose. Still impressive to look at, but you can't help but think that it is an engineering monstrosity simply as a showpiece of what can be achieved if enough money is thrown at a project. Once we were done with the coffees and travel stories, they left to find their hotel, and we went down to catch the subway to the central area of Kyoto where our hotel is located. Having stayed at this hotel at the start of the trip,we had no problems finding the hotel and checking in. Our room is slightly bigger than last time, even though it is not a corner room. After a brief rest we headed next door to our little 24hr vending machine restaurant, and the food was fantastic as we remembered it. Charlotte is a lot more brave than she was just 5 weeks ago, and this time ordered the kids curry meal, instead of just the chips which she ate last time she was in the same restaurant. After afternoon rests, we decided to head out and have a walk through the surprisingly lively back streets behind our hotel, to both kill some time and find dinner. The back streets of Kyoto are as busy, if not more busy, with foot traffic, than the main streets. Bars, coffee shops and restaurants are buried away in the smallest of back alleys, and you get the feeling that some local knowledge around these parts could really unearth some fantastic places to have a meal or a coffee. After dinner, ice creams were on the menu for desert, so we visited a convenience store, which had ice creams in $1.50 single serve containers, which were put into a very clever machine, which in one twisting action opened the ice cream tub, crushed the tub flat causing the ice cream to be compressed into soft-serve which was pushed out into another cup (or a cone if you chose it). So simple, yet it kept me amused. Fantastic machine. Really good ice cream too. Choc mint chip. And with that, we decided to return to the hotel for the remainder of the night. Not sure what we are going to be doing tomorrow, but I'm fairly sure that shopping will be on the agenda.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221793200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221793200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221793200/tpod.html Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:34:00 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Takayama, Chubu, Japan

Started the day by heading to the Banquet Hall for the traditional Japanese breakfast. The food looked exquisit, and was obviously very carefully prepared, but I learn't something about myself this morning. I don't like traditional Japanese breakfasts. The breakfast table was a square, with the centre section of the table containing a sand filled pit, on which a cauldron of miso soup sat atop a gas burner. When we were seated the gas burner was lit, and the miso soup began to bubble away. I couldn't really think of anything I wanted less than bean paste soup first thing in the morning, but that was until I looked through the rest of the bowls in front of me. Rice was recognisable, but again I couldn't eat a great deal of plain rice first thing in the morning, and in the other bowls I had some strange pickled roots, tofu in some kind of cold soup, a cold soft boiled egg again floating in some kind of strange ice cold soup with some leaves, a salad containing some strange leaves and a single cherry tomato, and a burner similar to last nights meal, which had a silver tray perched on top containing a large brown leaf, topped with onion, a pile of bean paste and a single himeji mushroom. I considered removing my floating egg and frying it on my leaf, but that would have been bad form, and a little messy, so I just left it as it was. As a result, Charlotte, Angela and myself ate little to none of the breakfast. We all ate a few spoonfuls of plain rice, and moved the bowls around in a vein attempt to fool the cleanup crew into thinking that we had eaten some of the food. Veronica ate a little of the breakfast, but even she said that it was a little too "traditional" to be appetising at that time in the morning. I'm sure that as far as traditional Japanese breakfasts go, it was pretty special, but we have been Westernised for too long to enjoy a breakfast like that. Needless to say, later in the day when we caught up with our hostess and the management when they asked us about dinner time, we informed them that we would not require breakfast tomorrow morning. Even if they don't give us any kind of refund for forgoing the breakfasts, it doesn't seem right to waste all of the beautifully prepared food when we know we aren't going to eat it. After breakfast we headed out to explore Takayama, as this is our only real full day here, so any exploring we wanted to do, it had to be done today. Luckily Takayama isn't a huge town, and we got to see all of the areas which we wanted to see all in one day. If we had more time we may have spent a little more time exploring the old streets to the North of the river, which have been declared a historical preservation site, but as it was by the end of our 5 hour walk through the town we felt that we had seen a good enough cross section of the town. Basically the majority of the township once you get away from the main streets which are lined with shops, are predominantly old style Japanese streets, which are indeed very beautiful, and initially it was fantastic to wander through the backstreets of houses which appeared to be centuries old, however it did get fairly repetitive rather quickly. All of the streets were equally as pretty as the last street, and so much so that many of the back streets we found began to look the same, and we got a little lost. God bless the compass watch. Thank you Casio. For hours we wandered through the backstreets, and along the river. The girls had a great time feeding the mass of coy fish at one section of the river. They were joined by ducks in the fight for the food. There are some very big, and obviously very well fed fish in the shallow river. Across the bridge again into the building preservation area, in which the houses in the area have been declared of enough historical significance that they are to be preserved in their original condition. Whether they are preserving the houses for historical or tourism purposes I'm not sure, but this area of town had the greatest number of tourists swarming around. The entry to the historical area from the river is through a giant cream Tori gate, which looked quite impressive. The fact that it wasn't red like 90% of the other tori gates we have seen also added to it's appeal. The preservation area was indeed beautiful. Every house in the area was aesthetically perfect. Small shrines were dotted throughout the neighbourhood, and even the stormwater drain was in its original cobblestone condition, and lined with trees looked like a picturesque stream. Exhausted from our walk, which we had realised had taken over 5 ½ hours, we returned to the ryokan for afternoon naps in preparation for dinner. After the naps there was about an hour before dinner was scheduled, so Veronica took Charlotte and Angela for another onsen, which they loved equally as much as the first one last night. I didn't go again, mostly because it was too hot, and I'm not sure whether it was this which caused my headache last night. Shortly after the girls returned, it was dinner time. Similar to last night, but instead of Shabu-shabu, on top of the lantern was a grill plate. Ah BBQ. Now what could be more Australian? And the selection of foods to be cooked was again massive. The star of the show were the fillets of Hida beef, which again looked just like Wagyu, and was heavily marbled with fat. The steak came both in small blocks roughly an inch thick, and also in thinly sliced strips. The thinly sliced strips were actually on a sashimi plate, and were partially cooked. They were from a hida beef steak which had been lightly seared, and then thinly sliced, so I'm fairly certain it was mean't to be eaten as steak sashimi as-is, but it was too rare (practically raw) for us, so onto the grill these went as well. As was the case last night, Angela wanted to eat all of the beef, but she didn't get much of it tonight, as it was just too good. It was some of the nicest steak I've ever eaten. Even with the amount we got, I would have liked even more. Again the kids meals contained virtually the same content as ours. Missing this time was the beef sashimi, so they got a slightly smaller serve originally than we did. But again our hostess returned 10 minutes into the meal with another 5 dishes each or so, as well as the main meal for the girls. The girls meals were once again superb, with a chicken katsudon style schnitzel, another full chicken breast fillet seasoned and fried, plus a full crab shell which contained a crab and prawn mornay. I'm happy to say none of the 3 girls wanted them, so I had 2 of the best crab mornay dishes I've ever had in my life. I love Japanese kids meals. The hostess gave us a strange look, as we had our sashimi fish grilling away on the hotplates, which is a cardinal sin in Japan. Only the best fish goes into sashimi, and is prepared with great care, so that it is just perfect, and the quality of the fish we had been given was superb. But after all, we are Australian, and even Veronica agreed that the fish was better cooked than raw. After all this time in Japan, I still believe that raw fish is either bait, or in need of cooking. I realise millions disagree with me, but that's just the way I feel. Desert was kiwifruit and grapes. We only got a few grapes each, but not because the servings were small. They were actually quite large. We only got a few grapes each because again Angela went from plate to plate eating everyones grapes. Hida beef and Japanese grapes. The girl has expensive taste. Again after dinner we dialed 9, and our hostess came and cleared away the dinner table, and made our futon beds for the night. Tomorrow we leave Takayama to head for Kyoto, our final destination on this trip. It will be a little sad to enter the final city, but also it will be a relief, because after 5 weeks of sleeping in hotels and eating take-away, we are ready to come home. Even Charlotte, who said she wanted to live in Japan at the start of the trip, now wants to go home and to sleep in her own bed.But before we leave in the morning Charlotte and I are heading down to the Takayama morning market, which is held on the river bank daily from 6am. This means I'm going to have to get up in about 5 hours time, so I had better get some sleep.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221708000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221708000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221708000/tpod.html Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:53:16 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Takayama, Chubu, Japan

I'm ashamed to say it, but this blog entry is the first one of the entire trip which was not written at night before I went to bed. I'm actually writing this on the afternoon of the 18th, because last night I had the makings of a killer headache, and couldn't face an hour or so in front of a computer. We bid farewell to Yokohama, our home now for the past 8 days or so, and boarded the 8:50am Shinkansen bound for Nagoya. We had a feeling it was going to be a crowded train when we attempted to reserve tickets with the JR passes, and were told there was only Smoking seats left (on a 16 carriage Shinkansen!). We've never had problems reserving seats before, and when we have actually sat in them instead of finding a non-reserved seat, the carriages have never been more than ¾ full. So we tried our luck with the unreserved carriages, in order to get some non smoking seats. In order to maximise our chances, Veronica took Angela, and I took Charlotte, and we lined up at the doorway to different cars. Lucky we did, because Charlotte and I got the last 2 seats in our carriage (even though they werent together, and she was in the row in front of me), and Veronica got 2 of the last seats in her carriage too. After about an hour and a half, at the stop before Nagoya, many of the passengers got off, and we were able to get a group of 4 seats for the remainder of the journey. After a 20 minute stopover at Nagoya, we boarded the train to Takayama, which was a Limited Express service, meaning it only stopped 3 or so times on the 2.5hr journey. And as far as scenic train rides is concerned, this one has to be up there with the best that I have had. The train snaked its way up through the mountain valleys, following the Hida river, which is apparently one of the 3 fastest flowing rivers in Japan. The valley is famous for its vertical tree lined valley walls, and due to the recent rain the river was flowing quite strong. One thing I noticed as we got further away from Nagoya, was the ratio of vehicle types. In the cities for obvious reasons, small square cars are the status quo, aside from taxis. The futher into the mountains you get, the less of these cars you see, and the more 4 wheel drives (such at Toyota Landcruisers and Mitsubishi Pajeros) you begin to see. These stuck out like pink elephants in the cities, but out here they seemed to be normal. Also popular all the way along the Hida river was fly fishing. We were never in one spot long enough to see a fish being caught, but by the look of the river I can imagine it would produce some excellent trout. Upon arrival at Takayama, we disembarked, and initially I was underwhelmed with what I saw. Around the train station area is the most plain and unattractive area of the city. Convenience stores and several larger hotels dominate the view, along with several tourist trap souveneir shops and coffee shops charging $7 for a cafe latte. I consoled myself with the fact that the city could only get better from there as we wandered off in search of the ryokan. Without any problems we found our accomodation, and they have made every effort to make the place as authentic as possible. We were greeted warmly, and we were a little early for check-in, so we left our baggage and went for a walk to have a look around the town. The closer we got to the river, and away from the main shopping street, the prettier the town got. The little back streets containing the traditional Japanese style residences, with the open stormwater channels with small wooden bridges running down each side of the street were really surreal, and a big change from all of the cities we had just been through in the past weeks. In these streets, if not for the odd group of tourists walking around, or the cars occasionally passing, it was easy to feel like you had stepped back in time. We continued on to the river, which seemed like the scenery hub of the city. About 30m across, and spanned by 10 or so quaint bridges the river flowed fairly quickly. Even though it was flowing fairly quickly, there were masses of huge coy fish in the river. Whether they are naturally occuring or are nurtured and replenished for the benefit of the tourists i'm not sure, but they were pretty nonetheless. When we were done with the river, we decided to head back to the ryokan. We stopped at a raman shop which we had noticed was crowded on our journey up to the river, but which was now almost empty after the afternoon rush. After a very nice raman meal (I had hida beef raman, Veronica had pork) we headed back. When we got there we were greeted by the management and our official hostess, an elderly lady dressed in a kimono. After introductions it became obvious that she didn't speak a word of english, and she led us to our room, and seated us while she welcomed us and made us all some green tea, for a ceremonious style welcome. Again I tried green tea and again I was reminded that I dont much like it. As an ice-cream it is great, but as a drink it is pretty ordinary. Milk and sugar wouldn't have hurt, but as this was traditional, I was forced to do without. Also on offer were some waffle style biscuit things, and for the 2nd time this trip bean paste fooled me into thinking it was chocolate. I'm not going to be fooled again. From now on, Charlotte and Angela are going to try anything that appears to be chocolate before I attempt it. After a short rest, we decided to all have an onsen, or a bath in the volcanic spring water, which this ryokan has. There are separate bath areas for men and women, so Veronica took the girls and I set off by myself. Before getting into the bath I washed and rinsed off as per the instructions on the wall. I was the only one in there at that time, but it was still a little weird strutting around what appeared to be a big swimming pool area with showers around it while I was completely naked. I'm not sure why, but I was expecting the onsen to feel different to a hot bath. But pretty much, the onsen was just a huge deep bath which has very hot water constantly pumped into it. It was so hot in fact that I didn't enjoy it. In winter it would be fantastic, but I just found it too hot to really relax, so I got out, and quickly got dry and put my clothes back on, just to avoid any uncomfortableness if another guy came in. Back to my room, followed by Veronica and the girls about 10 minutes later. I was worried it would be too hot for Charlotte and Angela, but they apparently didn't want to get out. Relaxed until dinner time, which at 7pm on the dot our hostess came back with the dinner. Rarely in my life have I seen so much food. The meals came out on large trays, and consisted of plates of raw prawns, raw hida beef, raw fish, vegetables, vegetables, noodles as well as a few other plates of stuff I'm still unsure about. In the corner of each one of the trays was a mini lantern, containing a silver bowl on top filled with water. Veronicas and my meal was bought out first, and I assumed that Charlotte and Angela would receive kids sized meals, but when theirs came out they were a similar size to ours, and contained all of the same dishes as ours did. Our hostess lit the lanterns, and we were left alone to have my first try of a dining experience called shabu-shabu, which basically translates to taking a piece of raw something-or-other, and dipping it into the hot liquid until it is cooked to your liking, and then optionally dipping it into one of a variety of sauces on offer. Angela, as was expected, took a fanatical liking to the most expensive item on the trays, the Hida beef. This famous beef is a wagyu style beef from the Hida region (i.e. around here) which, like wagyu, is prized for its tenderness and high fat content. And judging from the restaurants around town, where $30 per steak seems to be the starting price, it is costly. Out of the 4 trays of Hida beef on the table, I would estimate that Angela ate more than half of it. We were very satisfied with the size of our meals, but about 10 minutes into the meal the hostess knocked on the door and returned with the 2nd course. More foods, soups and deserts for us, and an entirely separate kids plate for the girls, consisting of prawn cutlets, rissoles, chicken, fish, prawn mornay pasta bake and salad. The amount of food was rediculous, and required another table to keep it all off the floor. I also learn't another thing. Sake tastes like cough syrup. We were given a small conical shaped glass of it, so I thought I might as well try it. It didn't burn as I expected. Rather, apart from it having the viscosity of water, if you put this sake and a small cup of nyal decongestant syrup side-by-side, blindfolded you would not be able to tell the difference. All in all, the meal was amazing, and also a lot of fun. The girls had fun watching daddy drop stuff, spill stuff and nearly set the place on fire. It was a very fun meal, if not a little messy. One thing I learnt though, is that the little jiffy fire brick which was keeping my shabu thingo hot burns quickly. Initially I took my time, and when I realised that my fire was burning down rapidly, I found myself having to shub like a madman so that I wasn't left with plates of expensive but raw foods at the end. I took advantage of the cauldron on each of the 4 trays, and had my food shubbing in all 4 bowls to make sure it was all cooked by the time the fires went out. I wont be making the same mistake tonight if the meal is the same. After our massive dinner was complete, we dialed 9 to get the front desk, and our hostess came in to clear away our huge mess, and once she was done she dragged our tables out into the corridor and pulled our futons out the cupboard and made our beds. We were all exhausted, and full to the eyeballs with food, so we turned in for an early bed.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221622320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221622320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221622320/tpod.html Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:14:11 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Hakone, Kanto, Japan

As we set off in the morning, we had already accepted the fact that today was going to be a very similar day to today, if not worse, weather wise. It was already raining as we boarded the Shinkansen bound for Odawara. We changed trains at Hakone Yamoto, and we met a woman from Vancouver, Helen, and a young Japanese woman (I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten her name). Helen hosted the girl on an exchange in Vancouver, and was over in Japan for a few weeks for a visit. Helen is a pre-school teacher, so instantly she was a hit with Charlotte and Angela, and both ladies had the patience of Saints. We took the train together up the side of the cliff from Hakone Yamoto to the cable car. Immediately we noticed (mainly due to the fact that we were actually sitting down on the train) that there were far less crowds around than there were yesterday. We initially assumed it was because of the rain, but we later found out that it was a 3 day Japanese national holiday on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Changed onto the cable car, and half way up the hill we parted ways with Helen and the exchange student, as they had to go to find their Ryokan. As we got off the cablecar and onto the ropeway, the conditions were identical to yesterday. Fog too thick to even be able to tell we were off the ground. As we went up and over the lip of the volcano we had a small patch of visibility where the fog had broken, and we could see the yellow rivers of sulphur on the ground. I snapped the camera away madly thinking that the visibility wouldn't last. We got to the first stop on the ropeway, and instead of staying on as we did yesterday we got off. As we were standing at the lookout staring at the cloud, we sensed the prescence of the only natural enemy of fog: wind. The breeze started to blow, and slowly but surely the fog cleared. For the first time in Hakone, we actually had scenery to look at. As the fog cleared, in front of us the ridge of the volcano extended three or four hundred meters vertically above us. Pillars of gas rose from all points up the side of the ridge. We walked up the trail to the sulphur pools where the black eggs are cooked and sold. As we got closer to the pools the sulpherous smell was pretty overpowering. But I was happy to be at least able to see where we were going today, as yesterday we didn't even know this area existed because it was completely shrouded in fog. When we got up there, I took many more photos and returned to Veronica and Angela, who were waiting upwind of the sulphur pools to avoid the majority of the smell. And it was insanely strong. To get around to one of the observation points, we had to walk along a path which was completely cloaked in sulphurous gas. I was smelling it for the next hour or so. I'm not sure whether the smell was in my clothes or embedded in my nose, but it is pretty pungent. 500 yen for 5 black eggs. What the hell was I going to do with 5 eggs??? I only wanted to try one. Just then, who should we run into but Helen and her student. They had bought a packet of the eggs, and they had one left. Perfect. With some trepidation, I cracked the smelly thing open and gingerly tried it. Basically, although it had a slightly strange smell to it, it tasted no different to a boiled egg. I tried to convince Charlotte to try it, but she wasn't brave enough. I tried to convince Angela to try it, and once she did I didn't get any more of the egg. She wanted me to buy more black eggs so she could keep eating! I'm just afraid that she wont eat eggs now unless they come in black shells. So we got back onto the ropeway, and went down the hill to Lake Ashi, which is far more beatiful when you can actually see it. By this time the fog had completely cleared, with the exception of a mass of cloud surrounding Mt Fuji. This was a fairly big dissapointment, as this would have made the day perfect, but alas for the whole day Fuji-San remained shrouded in cloud. I guess I can't complain too much though, as we got to see the rest of the scenery with no obstructions, which is much more than I can say for yesterday. After a few more photos around the now comparitively deserted township of Hakone Machi. The difference between yesterday and today, crowd wise, was amazing. Today was a far more pleasant day. We had ice cream at the ice cream shop with the weird flavours. I paid closer attention to the flavours on offer today (and actually photographed them). They consisted of: Soy Bean, Black Sesame, Soy Milk, Hokkaido Melon, Chinese Annnin (whatever that is???), Strawberry, Ogura, Caramel, Wasabe, Chestnut, Sweet Melon, Brown Rice, Blueberry and Yogurt, Cappuccino, Grape, Peanut, Greentea, Sweet Potato, Vanilla, pineapple, Purple Potato, Orange, Banana, Vanilla and Chocolate swirl, Vanilla and Strawberry swirl. Again, after the icecream we said goodbye to Helen and her student for the final time, and boarded a bus around to the next Hakone port. After spending a short time there, as daylight was quickly getting away from us, we decided to get on another boat and head back to our original departure point. There was still a slim glimmer of hope that Fuji would be visible, but as we came around the peninsula all that was visible in Fuji's direction was a mass of cloud. Ah well, can't win them all. We followed our original travel plan in reverse to return to Shin-Yokohama: Galleon, Ropeway, Cablecar, Train, Train and finally Shinkansen, all of which we got seats on. We got takeaway from the tempura restaurant, and returned to the hotel. I really like tempura prawns. A lot. Tomorrow morning we get up early to head to Takayama for 2 nights. This will be the 2nd last change of hotels on this trip. After Takayama, we are heading to Kyoto for 3 nights, before getting on a plane and heading home.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221534540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221534540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221534540/tpod.html Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:06:14 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Hakone, Kanto, Japan

Today we had a huge day in the picturesque town of Hakone. I have read that it is very beautiful. The ropeway that we went on, which is the 2nd longest ropeway in the world, apparently gives breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains, and spectacular views of Mount Fuji. Then the Lake Ashi cruise which we went on apparently gives fabulous views of the surrounding mountains from inside the volcano crater in which the lake is situated. I say "apparently" because we couldn't see any of it. Never before have I seen fog as thick as I did today. Exactly what we *didn't* want on the day we travel to one of the most picturesque areas on our trip. Basically, we spent our entire day looking at (and taking photos of) the inside of a giant cloud. But, lets start from the beginning. Woke up. On the floor. Last night, because of our last minute change of plans a few days ago, we were forced to stay in a double room for the night, which means one Queen sized bed. Being a gentleman, and not wanting to be kicked all night, I offered to sacrifice myself and sleep on the floor. Best sleep I've had in ages. Sure beats Charlotte kicking me and forcing me to the edge of the bed all night. I'm really looking forward to Takayama where everyone has their own bed again. Onto the Shinkansen to Odawara, and then we changed trains to get the local service to Hakone Yamoto station, which appears to be like a gateway to Hakone. The local train was a hot, crowded and unpleasant way to spend 20 minutes, standing up the whole way because the train was packed. We had purchased a couple of 2 day "Hakone Free Pass" tickets at Odawara, which were anything but "free" at $39 per ticket. These small pink pieces of paper give unlimited access to all trains, cable-cars, ropeways, ships and busses within the Hakone region. We figured we would be riding a couple of those modes of transport over the next 2 days, so we bought the passes. Turns out we used all of the above modes of transport today. After getting off the train at Hakone Yamoto station, we casually got off the train and walked, whereas everyone else on the train pushed their way off, and ran like idiots to the next train, like a bomb was on the carriage they just got out of. We found out why everyone, including the grandmothers who didn't look like they could walk, let alone pick up their skirts and sprint, were doing so when we reached the next train platform. We elbowed our way onto the least crowded carriage of the train. Fantastic, 2nd train I had to stand up on today, and the 2nd train where the interior temperature was as hot as hell, give or take a few degrees. So we started what was to become the train trip from hell. Imagine winding your way up the side of a cliff standing up in a small oven set to moderate-high heat, shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of Japanese people, and you should have some idea what our trip was like. Add to this the fact that every 10 minutes or so the train would stop, and wait for the other train which was coming down the hill to pass, as there were only small sections of side-by-side track, and the rest was a single length of track which was used by trains going up and down the mountain. So we got to the last train station on the line, and disembarked, and everybody pushed, shoved and ran like idiots up the hill again. This time I had some idea what to expect, but it still wasn't pleasant when I got there. The cable car. Basically the cable car was just a multiple carriage train which instead of having an engine, was simply towed up a steep hill by a cable. And, as was standard practice for the day, we had to ride the steep incline standing up and sandwiched in with 40 other people who also looked to be as happy as I was to be there. Every time the cable car would stop at a station on its way up the hill, it was a little bit concerning, because it would stop suddenly, and the cable dragging us up the hill must have had some elasticity, because the car would "bounce". Basically we would come to a sudden stop, and then begin to roll down the hill again for half a metre or so, before bouncing back up again, bungee style, and then bouncing to a standstill. It is a weird thing to have happen in a train. When we reached the top of the cable car track, we let everyone push, shove and run like idiots to the ropeway station, while we stepped out of their way and took our time. This actually worked out better for us, as we got a relatively empty cable car, whereas they were packed in fairly tightly. While the girls had toilet breaks, I went outside to shoot some of the magical scenery that one would expect to see from 1km above sea level. Looking out from the observatory was like staring at an A4 sheet of white paper from 5 cm away. We had reached the inside of the damn cloud that would follow us for the day. Never before have I taken so many photos of the same cloud in my life. We boarded the ropeway car with a bunch of people who wouldnt leave Angela alone. There was one guy on there who was expecially annoying, clapping and making stupid noises. I could have happily opened the door for and pushed him out into the clouds, never to be seen again, but Veronica told me I wasn't allowed. Charlotte agreed with me that it was a good idea though. We began our ascent up the ropeway, and as we climbed, we lost all visibility. Basically we knew the scenery was pretty outside, and we knew we were high up, but we could not see any of it. We might as well had taken the trip at night. With buckets on our heads. My only consolation was that Veronica reminded me that we almost payed $420 per night to stay here, had we not changed our plans a few days ago. That made me feel a little better, so I just sat back and enjoyed my float through the fog. It did make for some interesting photos though. It was a little disconcerting to see the ropes that are keeping you alive disappear into absolutely nothing in front of you. After I was done complaining about the Japanese people who wouldn't leave Angela alone, a British voice spoke up from directly behind me. Great. Someone else was on the car who could understand me the whole time. I had spent the last 10 minutes bagging the group of annoying passengers behind me, and discussing how much trouble I would get in for throwing someone from the cable car, and there was someone on there who could understand me. Super. He could have spoke up sooner!  Next time I am going to sit in a cable car and insult the other occupants I will do a quick scan to make sure nobody within an earshot looks like they can understand what I'm saying. So we rode the ropeway up over the lip of the volcano, and into the crater, which now contains a large lake, Lake Ashi. Even through the fog, we could see enough to see that it was spectacularly beautiful. On a clear day, with Mt Fuji as a backdrop it would be spectacular. We got off the cable car, and worked our way downstairs, to where the Lake Ashi cruise ships were boarding. We snaked our way through the line, and politely fended off a few other people who wanted to stare at Angela. Had I known what I know now, I would have had 500 Angela business card size photos made up, and simply handed them out to people who would come up to bug us, which would have saved time for all concerned. We are well and truly sick of it. It is a lovely and innocent gesture, and it is flattering to hear "kawaii des ne" everywhere we go, but when we have to acknowledge them, talk to them and quite often pose for photos, several times a day for 5 weeks it is starting to get a bit on the annoying side. Ok. Got that out of my system. So we boarded the boat. A large green galleon style boat, complete with big fake plastic pirates taking up valuable real estate on the upper deck. We got on last, so space was at a premium when we got there. I managed to find myself a reasonably good spot though near the front of the boat. I was standing under a netting rope which was attached to a mast, and which Charlotte was using to balance. I was therefore a little bit surprised when a Japanese woman pushed her way in front of me with her 3 children, and stood between me and the railing, completing obstructing any view I had, and her children had successfully crowded Charlotte so much that she had to move away from the spot she had staked out. The half a metre gap between me and the railing was there to I didn't strangle myself on the rope netting, not so that a family could come and stand between me and the view. So I did exactly what the woman didn't want me to do. I stayed exactly where I was. Actually I moved a little closer. If she wanted to spend the entire 30 minute boat ride with me pressed up against her it was her decision. Needless to say, less than 2 minutes later and she turned to me, said something angrily in Japanese, huffed and left, taking her 3 noisy kids with her, leaving Charlotte and myself with our nice little viewing position to ourselves once more. Veronica and Angela chose to stay inside in the warmth, but Charlotte and I wanted to be where the action was. And the cruise really was pretty. The cloud obscured the tops of the mountains, but there was enough visibility to be able to see each side of the lake, even though we couldn't see what was ahead, and thus had no idea where we were going. Also, we were cold. For the first time on this trip, standing on the upper deck in the wind, we were genuinely cold. After the boat ride, we had a short walk around the port of Hakone Machi, which, in an attempt to look traditional, had obviously become far to tourism focused. It did not feel like we were walking through a traditional ye-olde Japanese village as the tourism brochures would like you to believe, but rather it felt like we were walking through a holiday resort which the whole setting had been artificially sculpted to look traditional. It was pretty, but it was also a little disappointing. Go back in time a hundred years or so and it would have been spectacular. Also the main street of Hakonemachi also appears to be the place where anyone with an expensive car brings it to show off. Basically in less than an hour, I saw one Ferrari 430, one Maserati, four or five Evo Lancers, including one Evo X, a few Brabus tuned Mercs, an R34 Nissan GTR, and the highlight for me, which was a blood red R35 Nissan GTR, which I was actually quick enough to get a photo of. I waited in vain for him to do another lap of the street so I could get a better shot, but he never returned. There were many food vendors, but all of them overpriced, and nothing that we found on our short walk which would keep Charlotte and Angela happy. We would have had ice cream if it was warm enough, but the weather was actually cold enough to justify avoiding the ice cream. We found an ice cream shop with some very interesting flavours of soft serve on the menu. Along with the slightly exotic flavours of custard, cherry and blueberry, were the downright weird flavours of curry, wasabe and black sesame. We actually witnessed a guy purchasing a black sesame ice cream so people do actually buy them, much to my surprise. After a short walk, we decided to get a bus back to Odawara station, which is the train station at which we could board the Shinkansen. We thought that since it was about 2pm, we would head home. Our logic was that since we had a 2 day pass, we would have to leave something left to do for tomorrow. This bus trip was also relatively unpleasant. According to the info, the bus trip should have taken 20 minutes to half an hour. We got into our seats, which were designed with Japanese legs in mind. We had to sit side-saddle behind the seats in front of us because there was not enough to get our legs in straight behind the seat in front of us. Then we hit traffic. Our 20 minute bus ride snaked its way through the clouds for an hour and a half in the stop-start traffic. We then realised that we were not yet halfway down the mountain. At the next stop which was near a train station, we decided to get off the bus, and we got onto the same multi-carriage train shaped oven which we were on to climb up the side of the mountain this morning. And again we were standing up, and again the cabin temperature was at about 40 degrees. At least it was a faster trip on the way down, even if each kink in the track was nearly causing everyone unfortunate enough to be standing up to topple over like dominoes. On the next train between Hakone Yamoto and Odawara, we got onto a crowded train, and were forced to stand up. No surprise. Then switched to the Shinkansen. Good old faithful Shinkansen. We didn't worry about booking seats as a train was due through the station in a few minutes, but surely we wouldn't have to stand up on the bullet train right? Wrong. We were stuck, forced to stand up, like cattle, in the room which joins the carriages, with about 20 other people. We caught the only full bullet train in Japan. We have only seen one other Shinkansen where some people were forced to stand up, and that was only for a short time between 2 stations. On this train a concerned young conductor came through our crowded little car-thing and did a head count. Twice. Completely tired, we had curry from our faithful Coco Curry house near the Shin-Yokohama station. We're pretty much regulars there now. They don't even bother bringing the english menu's out now. Following the once again superb, filling and inexpensive meal, we returned to the room. Tomorrow will be a similar entry to today. We have a 2 day pass to Hakone, so we will probably do today all over again. Probably looking at the inside of the same cloud.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221447900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221447900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221447900/tpod.html Sun, 14 Sep 2008 07:25:09 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Yokohama, Kanto, Japan

The decision we had to make this morning was whether we were going to make the trek to Hakone, or whether we were just going to have another exploration day. We had a look at the different activities in Hakone, and we decided that 2 days would probably be enough to cover what we want to do there, so we chose to have another quiet day. There is apparently museums and nature walks all around Hakone which could easily take up a few days by themselves, but I'm pretty much at the point where I dont want to see the inside of another museum for quite a while. We left our hotel in Kawasaki, and just before getting on the train I tried to check the time, and realised my watch was still somewhere in the room. After that 5 minute backtrack, we got on a train, and were quickly reminded that weekends are not sleepy days off like they are in Australia. If anything, today was the most crowded we have seen the trains and the train stations. And this seemed to be a constant at every one of the stations we went to. We had time before we could check back into our Shin-Yokohama hotel, so we headed down to the Yokohama harbour area to have a look around the theme park area we had photographed from the Landmark Tower a week ago. There was a variety of sickness inducing style carnival rides at 3 separate park sections. There was a very tame looking kids section, a section devoted to larger rides similar to the portable rides seen at annual fairs, such as the Royal Easter show, and another section which contained some more exciting and permanent looking rides such as a large rollercoaster and a splashdown ride. I unsuccessfully attempted to convince Charlotte to go on the rollercoaster with me. It was a fairly large and quite fast rollercoaster, where the final party trick saw the track plunge into a tunnel leading underground. Charlotte just could not muster the courage to go on it. After we spent some time there, we headed back over to the massive interjoined shopping centres of the Queens Square and the Landmark tower. Today for some reason we saw more foreigners than on every other day of the trip put together. All Americans. We saw no less than 40 or 50 non-Japanese people, whereas on most days we have been lucky to see more than 2 or 3 (besides ourselves). I'm not sure whether there is something happening in Yokohama today, or in the coming days, to cause the influx, or whether it was purely coincidence. After lunch and a decent look around the area again we made our way to the hotel to check in. After a short rest, we headed out for dinner. I was yet to try tempura (on this trip), and I couldn't leave Japan without going to an authentic tempura restaurant. We walked down to the tempura restaurant next door to our favourite curry house, and realised that the entire menu was in Japanese, with no supplemental English. Veronica walked outside with the waitress and pointed out our desired meals to the waitress. Apparently she ordered the tempura prawn meal for me. Good choice. I've got to say that the simplicity of a tempura battered and freshly flash fried tempura prawns is hard to beat. Fantastically good combination of 3 giant tempura prawns, some other tempura fried vegetables and a large bowl of rice filled me up nicely. Imagine my surprise then when I read the bill and it was $5.20 for my meal. Veronica ordered a tempura and udon noodle set, which was far more expensive at nearly $8. All up our 4 meals came to about $17, as the girls only had rice and some of Veronica's huge bowl of noodles. As we were leaving the food complex, I noticed something I hadn't noticed before, a seafood restaurant. Veronica pointed out a lobster display out the front of the shop, and as I looked inside I noticed the tank of large live lobsters. Veronica asked me why I hadn't noticed that before. WHY DIDN'T WE EAT THERE??? Back to the room for an early night, as we are all in need of a rest, and Hakone tomorrow is likely to be a fairly big day if we decide to do look around Hakone, ride the Hakone ropeway and do the Lake Ashi cruise all in one day, which is very likely, depending on the weather.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221363300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221363300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/apat/1/1221363300/tpod.html Sat, 13 Sep 2008 11:02:06 -0400 Japan Tour - August 2008

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Kawasaki, Kanto, Japan

No offense to the great city of Kawasaki, but we didn't want to have to come here. Had Yokohama had a room for us at short notice, we would have stayed there. But, as it turns out, the room we are staying in was the last Twin room available in any Tokoyo Inn in the Kanagawa prefecture (which covers quite a large area). We packed our bags this morning, and since we will be returning there tomorrow night, the hotel at Yokohama kindly allowed us to leave our main bags there, which allowed us to travel only with our day pack and a toiletries bag. So we caught the train to Kawasaki. Higashi-Kanagawa station was our first train change on our way to Kawasaki. This station is what I always imagined Japanese train stations were going to be like. Wall to wall people. We have been pretty lucky so far. Even at Tokyo there has been enough room to walk without stepping on other peoples feet, and to breathe fresh air. Higashi-Kanagawa station was different. A huge, pushing and shoving sea of people worked its way through the station. If you drop a bag, bad luck, it would be gone. If a shoe came off, unlucky. Buy another pair. We eventually elbowed our way through this solid mass of humans, and found our next train. We got onto the train that was equally crowded. Veronica and myself had one poor Japanese guy in a brown bowler hat sandwiched in the corner of the train. I have never before seen a more uncomfortable looking Japanese guy in my life. Not sure if he missed his stop, but for our entire journey he didn't look up and didn't move. I'm pretty sure he was breathing. I think. We got off at Kawasaki station, and again we were able to breathe. We still had a long time before we were able to check into our room, so we decided to have a walk through the Lazona Kawasaki Plaza (http://www.mitsuifudosan.co.jp/english/project/lazona_kawasaki/plaza/index.html), which was outside of the doors to the train station. This was a very expensive looking shopping centre, and contained an entire floor dedicated solely to expensive fashion shops. We also looked through the 4th floor, which was dedicated entirely to restaurants, but they either didn't appeal, or were completely full, with lines at the doors waiting for tables. There was a fantastic looking Western style grill restaurant (which looked similar to the Australian Lone Star steakhouse restaurants), but there was a queue 20 people long waiting for a table in there. Disheartened, we wandered through the rest of the restaurant. A massive Toys-R-Us style store kept the girls amused for quite a while, but we really needed to find somewhere to sit down. I came very close to buying a very cool model Shinkansen, which was an exact replica of the train we have done most of our Shinkansen trips on (the Hikari 700), but the logistics of having to carry this around for the rest of the trip, plus the fact that the novelty would have worn off pretty quick, stopped me from buying it. We ventured down to the ground floor, which as it turns out is the supermarket level, but it contained a massive food court. Kawasaki, I've decided, is a city where the inhabitants like things big. The shopping centre was big, the toy store was big, the food court was big, and as a result, the food that was served there was big. It was very encouraging to walk in and to see a guy carrying a hot dog on a lunch tray, where the hot dog was in no exageration as long as the tray. A 18" hot dog is a fantastic sight to see when you are hungry. The problem was though, that this food court was ridiculously popular. There were people wandering around aimlessly looking for tables, groups of people in circles facing outwards so that they could scan the full 360 degrees for a table which looked to be freeing up. And when a table did become free, it was an insane take-no-prisoners scramble where the person who gets any part of their body, a bag or a child in contact with the table first wins the right to sit there. It was fun to watch. We had no hope, because I wasn't in the mood to go barreling through a crowded food court to claim ownership of a table. Luckily though, Veronica found a Chinese girl sitting by herself at a table for 4. Veronica (assuming she was a local) asked her in Japanese whether she would mind if we sat with her, and she replied that it was fine, in perfect English. It wasn't until later that Veronica found out she was Chinese, not Japanese. So we had a table. Veronica got herself some curry noodles, and on my 47th lap of the food court looking for a table I had noticed a nice looking hamburger place "Zats Burger Cafe", which was very popular (Zats Burger Cafe Lazona). They were cooking the hamburgers fresh to order, and they looked very nice. And believe me when I say that it was the best hamburger I have ever had, or will be likely to have in my entire life. I got the Jumbo Sasebo burger, which was huge, and very expensive $13, but god was it good. I found it ironic that they named it the Sasebo burger, and yet through all of my time in Sasebo a few weeks ago I did not even come close to finding a burger to match the Zats burger. If you are in Japan, and have the opportunity to try a Zats burger, do not pass it up. Trust me on this. So, completely full we decided to go for a walk to work off our lunch. Out into the main outdoor centre court of the plaza, where a stage had been set up ready for some famous Japanese singer to give a special live performance at 2pm. The crowds were massing, and it was easier to simply find a seat at a nearby starbucks and have a coffee to let things settle down outside. Everyone was clambering for the best view, we were trying our best to get out of their damn way. After the circus subsided, we walked back down through the courtyard to the hotel. Some centre-court designer was either having an off day, or was completely bananas when this centre court was put together. It was all very nice, with strangely artistic sculptured steps, and a triangle themed pond with fog machines running constantly creating mist, but there were also trenches running across the ground, covered over by glass, and these are what puzzled me. One of them was completely filled with silver cutlery. Yep, knives, forks and spoons had been piled into this trench before it was covered with glass. Another trench contained red roses, with the occasional white rose. The next trench? Bricks. Yep, plain old rectangular bricks had been carefully placed into the trench in random fashion, before being glassed in and preserved forever. Very peculiar. Thorougly confused we went on to the train station, and found our way to the hotel. The hotel info said that our hotel was 1 minute walk from the station. I think that was a very pesimistic estimate. I would say it is 1 minute walk from the actual train, and that includes getting out through the turnstiles. The train platform is quite literally straight below our window. We went back across to the underground mall at the station for dinner, and it is a gourmet food lovers paradise, which from what I saw was like Osaka but on a smaller scale. Every food imaginable was on display in this multi level complex. We ended up setting for the safety of pork snitzel meals, known as Katsudon, from a very popular restaurant on the 1st floor. Very very nice meals. The crumbed king prawns I ordered were the best I've had while in Japan, and Veronica's meal was served in a cast iron pot, which was sitting on a cast iron stand to raise it up off the tray, and it was still sizzling when it arrived. It was also excellent. With that done, Veronica and Angela returned to the room and I took Charlotte for a 2 minute walk down the road to find a convenience store. At the first cross street I came to, I found 4, one on each corner. There was a "99", a 7-11, a Family Mart and a Lawsons each on a corner, all competing for business. Reminded me of Yokohama. So with the compulsory coffee milks purchased (for my morning wake-up) we headed back to the hotel. Tomorrow we are going to Hakone for a preliminary look around, before heading back to Yokohama tomorrow night to sleep. At this stage I'm not exactly sure whether we will be doing anything in Hakone tomorrow, or just having a look around. It depends on what we find there, what the weather is like and how tired we all are. We have another couple of days to see Hakone before we go onto Takayama, so if we use tomorrow as a day to get our bearings and have a look around the city it might be worthwhile.
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