We arrived at our hotel in Tokyo at 00:20 am on a rainy night. At 00:21 am Frances expressed distinct satisfaction with the heated toilet seat.
Let's continue with some other things we liked about Japan: The speed and punctuality of the trains. The restaurants where you can use pictures of the meals to buy a ticket from a vending machine outside, then walk inside to eat. The fact that despite the limited number of public dustbins, the streets were very clean.
Now here is an amusing thing that happened in Nara. I'm putting it here because not everybody will read that far. Maybe I'm already too late for some. If so, too bad for those people. In Nara there are herds of mangy tame deer roaming every precinct, and you can buy snacks to feed them. When you stand in front of a deer, it will nod its head a couple of times, as if begging for a snack. I quickly realize that you can impose your status even more impressively if you renege on the food. So I would amuse myself by planting myself in front of a deer and bowing my head very slightly, whereupon the deer would invariably nod its head two or three times as though in response.
A group of Chinese women observed this and tried it. Perhaps they were too short, or maybe their timing was a bit off, but the deer just stared at them. One of them muttered in Cantonese, "The deer only bows to gweilo." Thus colonialism lives on.
For this three-week visit beginning in mid-March, we had a one-week railpass (good for seven calendar days), which must be purchased before entering the country. When you exchange your voucher for the actual pass, at a Japan Rail travel centre (at the airport or main rail stations), you specify the start date.
We were a little early for the peak sakura (cherry blossoms) but there were some early ones.
In Tokyo we stayed in the Asakusa district in the north, near Ueno station and park. Some of the more memorable parts of our five days were Sensoji Temple, Yanaka Ginza, Chinzanso garden, Shitamachi Museum, the metro, Kappabashi kitchenware street, the Arakawa Toden tram line, the major department stores.
Nikko was a worthwhile day-trip by train, with many shrines, up and down a hillside walk.
I like the small neglected ones. The Kanmangafuchi Abyss with Jizo statues was also pretty interesting.
Next was Kanazawa on the opposite coast, where the interesting attractions were Kanazawa Castle, Kenroku-en garden, and the Naga-machi samurai district with traditional houses.
We liked Kanazawa. We shared the lift with a Japanese man who very generously offered us a wrapped box of Hokkaido cookies. Frances felt she didn't deserve a whole wrapped box of Hokkaido cookies, and she was probably right, because they turned out to be wafer-thin and very yummy. So the man opened the box and gave us half of them.
Mark Twain remarked that if a traveler observes that Pittsburgh is a fine town, it means that someone gave him a cigar in Pittsburgh. If he says that Cincinnati is without merit, it means that in Cincinnati no one gave him a cigar.
Anyway, Kanazawa is an excellent place.
On to the "snow village" Shirakawa-go, where we stayed in a traditional thatched-roof house with traditional meal, traditional hot tub, and traditional mattress.
It was comfortable enough except that the heater went off every three hours and made music when it stopped. There is a great viewpoint over the village after an easy walk. There were tour buses at the viewpoint, but the adjacent paddy fields, ice-covered, were free of tourists, except us.
On to Takayama. This large river-side town was very interesting to walk around. The historic Takayama Jinya, an administrative centre for the Edo government, was fascinating. It is worth waiting for the English-speaking guide.
Then a day-trip by train to Hida Furukawa, without any tourists at all. This smaller town has a canal, a crafts museum with traditional joinery (where they seemed happy to see us and gave us a private tour) and the Mishima candle shop, where Junji Mishima was hard at work. He is a 7th-generation traditional candle-maker. His son, whose name we didn't catch, is, by elementary mathematics, an 8th-generation traditional candle-maker. We had lunch in a very cozy cafe.
The "wide-view" train to Nagoya (en route to Kobe/Hiroshima/Miyajimaguchi) was scenically pleasant, if you weren't expecting much.
Unfortunately we had been over-hyped on this one.
Short ferry ride to Miyajima Island where we spent a night. There are tame deer (probably different ones), a popular food street, and too many tourists here (not necessarily different ones), thronging the iconic O-Torii gate. Also a steep climb to Mount Misen, with shrines and views, and still too many tourists.
Next day we reached Himeji with its famous crowded castle, where we paid a brief visit. And on to Kyoto, where we spent five nights. As we all know, Kyoto is the historic cultural capital of Japan, and again, it would be a fine city to explore if you weren't over-primed in advance. Some of the more famous temples, like Kiyomizu-dera, were so crowded that not much could be gained from a visit.
Some other temples, Ryoan-ji (with zen rock garden), Ninna-ji (with sakura, not in bloom yet) were less crowded and worth visiting, but for me not remotely close to being as memorable as Bagan, Borobudur, or Angkor Wat. I know it's a different culture, and maybe you shouldn't compare these things.
Day trip to historic Nara, with gardens and temples, the world's largest wooden structure, and hundreds of deer begging for handouts, but being polite about it (Japanese deer).
On the slow return train, we stopped at Fushimi Inari where we hiked up the hill, lined with o-torii gates to the summit. This was also very crowded.
Our final stop was Osaka. We ate at a yakitori, a two-table restaurant with a few seats at the bar, where the barman slid us a complimentary skewer of Kobe wagyu. Other than that, Osaka was not our favourite.
On this trip Frances developed a liking for Lawson's 100 convenience stores, where everything is 100 yen. You can buy a little packet of noodles, and a little packet of vegetables. (But not every Lawson's is Lawson's 100).
We did this trip without a smart phone, which our friends had voted impossible by a margin of 17 to 0. All 17 of our friends predicted doom, and once again we proved them wrong. But it did take considerable effort by Frances, who drew a lot of maps before we arrived in the country. Addresses in Japan generally do not specify a street name and number, just a neighbourhood. On the plus side, there are a lot of local maps on the sides of streets, with destinations labeled in English. Nor is the Tokyo metro as difficult to navigate as people made out -- although it is spaghetti-like, the lines are colour-coded and the station names are in English.
Lill
2021-02-07
FANASTIC! What is personhole cover?
Karin
2021-02-07
Sounds like an incredible trip and amazing with no smart phone! Very impressive abd probably a lot more enjoyable overall. This trip looks abs sounds wonderful
Faye
2021-03-06
Thanks for the stories. Nice to read on a cold windy Saturday afternoon. What is the value of the strawberry and the cantaloupe in Cdn$??