Nara

Often it's the part of trip that we least plan that delight us the most, perhaps because our experiences aren't fraught with expectations, perhaps because it's an instance of all the stars aligning, who knows, but the little town of Nara was one of those surprises. Our time in Japan was running out, so we decided to take a detour on our last travel day and spend some of it in Nara, which we had read and been told was beautiful. Sometimes it can be a mistake to add on a destination in an attempt to suck the marrow, but this time it worked out, and we were able to see another little corner of this wonderful country in the time we had left.  Nara lies about an hour East of Osaka on a commuter rail spoke, and we headed there first thing in the morning, after we checked out of our hotel in Osaka,  We were able to store our luggage at the Tourist Info building just outside the Nara station.  It was going to rain off and on all day, but we found that the TI had loaner umbrellas, which is a great idea.  We each picked one, and headed out to the nearby temple park complex.

Signs in Japan

We're fond of interesting signs, and we encountered a number of them in Japan.  The text above appears to be "watch out for (or yield to?) pedestrians," though looks like the cyclist is running next to his bike, which makes it all the more confusing.

Google Translate interprets the text below as "pets are not allowed to bring in."  It's always interesting to see what specific dog breed is pictured in signs like this.

Miyagima

We took a day trip to Miyajima  on Itsukushima island, just south of Hiroshima.  The island is covered in maple trees, has a large, historic shrine complex, and a massive torii in the bay, in front of Itsukushima Shrine. 

Hiroshima

We started off on the wrong foot on our trip from Kyoto to Hiroshima.  We’d reserved seats on the bullet train the day before, which had always been enough in advance, but apparently that Monday was a busy travel day; there was only one train that wasn’t fully booked, and we had to pick seats that weren’t together on that one.  That morning, checking ourselves out of the AirBnB took a little longer than we expected, and we missed the local subway car to the main station by seconds, which then cascaded into missing the J.R. train to Osaka that would have given us a comfortable amount of time to transfer to the bullet train we had reserved seats on.  We took the next available train, 30 minutes later, and which was scheduled to arrive 10 minutes before our bullet train would depart.  As we rode towards Osaka, we used our MiFi to download a map of Shin Osaka, and set to committing a series of escalators, stairs, and turns to memory.  We’d be arriving on the ground floor, on platform 16, and if we were fast and lucky, we’d be departing from the 4th floor on platform 20, after passing through the main concourse on the third floor, where we’d have to present our J.R. passes to get admitted to the shinkansen platforms.  We definitely appreciated our back-pack luggage, as we ran up four flights of stairs,  Fortunately, the signage was excellent as always, and our shinkansen was clearly labeled, so we had no hesitation at jumping aboard the very nearest car.  We’d boarded car 4, and our seats were in car 8, and as we started walking towards our seats, we felt the train start to move.  We’d made it, but we weren’t feeling the least bit cocky, just very lucky and out of breath.  The upside to this adventure was that although the train was nearly full, the seat next to Lana’s was empty, and we decided to sit together and see if the person who’d reserved it had missed their connection—they must have, as we got to Hiroshima without incident.

Kyoto

We stayed in Kyoto for three days in a small AirBnB apartment just around the corner from the Higashiyama station of the Tozai subway line, which was really convenient for getting to some of the further flung sights we wanted to visit.  For our first outing, we headed out on foot though, walking east to one end of the Philosopher's Walk.

Kyoto Station: Cat Posters and Lego Models

We arrived and departed from Kyoto at the Kyoto Station, which serves both trains and subways; it is topped by a massive 10-story building with shopping and restaurants.  We already liked the Station for the series of posters of cats dressed traditional Japanese garb.  Then we saw the Lego model of the station:

Kanazawa

We left Yamanouchi and the snow monkeys, and bade farewell to the Japanese alps as we drove to the northwest coast of Honshu.  We were heading to Kanazawa, about 150 miles away, which took 3 hours; all of it was high-speed expressway.  We looked forward to seeing the northwestern coast of Japan, but we spent more time in tunnels than we did out of tunnels, so we didn't get to see much of the coast, although the drive was interesting enough.

We arrived in Kanazawa around noon, dropped our rental car off next to the train station, and then walked a couple of blocks to our hotel. We were too early to check in, but they were happy to store our bags.  We'd discovered that Japanese hotels simply don't do early check in.  When they say 3 pm, they mean it (and 3 pm was generally the standard time).  Not that it was ever a problem for us, but it did surprise us in it's absoluteness and universality.  We set off on foot to explore the nearby area, and stumbled on a food court with many displays of what the restaurants served.  This kid's meal amused us.

Jigokudani Monkey Park

We had decided to stay in Yamanouchi specifically because it was close to the Jigokudani Monkey Park, in a narrow valley full of geothermal springs.  The onsens in town are all fed by similar hot springs; the one at our ryokan the night before was fed by an open air trough spilling into each of the tubs. 

Ryokan in Yamanouchi

Everything we read about Japan recommended staying at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese bed and breakfast, somewhere along our journey.  The one that we found was closer to a hotel/ryokan hybrid, which gave us a bit more privacy while still giving us an introduction to the traditional tatami mat, futon beds and low chabudai table.

Matsumoto

After a rainy night in Matsumoto, we woke up to clearing skies, that eventually revealed the snow-capped mountains around us.  We headed north of downtown to Matsumoto Castle, which we were interested in, as it is one of the oldest remaining fortresses in Japan.  Matsumoto was another area where we were lucky enough to catch the cherry blossoms in full bloom.  It smelled wonderful!

Bicycles in Japan

Lana is partially used to it by now: we're walking down the street, talking, and she turns to say something, and there's no David.  He's back at the beginning of the block staring at an unusual deraileur, frame, crank, or logo on a bicycle.  In Japan, she had to explain to a tour guide that David was taking a picture of a bike.  "Why?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.  David's gotten odd looks for taking pictures of a lot of obscure things, but taking pictures of bikes generally get the most confused glances from passersby.  It's also one of the few things that David's never caught another photographer surreptitiously sizing up for a me-too photo.  If you're in the "Why?" camp, this may not be the post for you.  However, if you know anything about Japan or bikes, David has some burning questions about some of the peculiarities he observed in Japanese bikes.

Takayama

We drove from Fujiyoshida to Matsumoto, arriving in the late morning.  We picked up picnic lunch ingredients, and drove out for a half-day trip to Takayama, which was just 2 hours by car (5 by train, for comparison) through some fantastic twisty mountain roads. It was a fun drive for David--there were sections of road that were eerily familiar, having been recreated in a racing game he enjoys.  It's weird to drive a section of road that your brain is convinced it knows when you've never been there in person before. 

Driving in Japan

We had more reservations about driving in Japan than we've had in any other country, with the possible exception of the first time we drove in London.  We're here to tell you that our fears were warrantless.  We had no idea what to expect, in terms of road signs, traffic density, or driver behaviors.  We didn't know anyone who had driven there, and in our planning stages, when we mentioned that we were renting a car, we'd often get surprised looks or comments.  Having done it, we'd wholeheartedly recommend it--we would have missed out on not just sights and areas, but an entire aspect of Japanese culture if we'd stuck to public transit.  Don't get us wrong, the public transit was awesome, and we used it extensively, but driving in Japan was also pretty incredible.

Fujiyoshida

We only spent one full day in Tokyo (we’d return for a few days at the end of our trip), and as we re-packed, we started the first of several cuts to our one, physical travel guide, removing the sizable Tokyo section to lighten our load.

Finding Our Food Footing

This is the story of how, on a rainy night in the Japanese Alps, we came to eat the worst meal of our whole trip: a train station fast food burger from the Mos Burger chain.

One of the things David was looking forward to in Japan was the cuisine.  Lana was a little apprehensive about it, as she’s not a big fan of fish, especially raw fish, or things that have been cooked but are served cold. All things heavily represented in Japanese cuisine.  We also knew that we could not expect an English description of dishes or ingredients, and that generally, things come exactly as they’re traditionally made. Substitutions are not really an option.  The very polite staff may smile and nod to your “no this/no that” request and then the dish will come out exactly as the cook always makes that dish.  We can respect that.  We also knew, from previous experience using translation dictionaries, that menus often contain specialized vocabulary that’s not in a common dictionary.  We knew there would be challenges, and we didn’t even know all of them yet.