We took the train to Harajuku, Charee wanted to do some shopping on Takeshita Street. Today was our last day anyway, and shopping was planned. I couldn't stomach girl shopping, so headed back to Shibuya for my own shopping (Tower Records = 4 jp cd's!). After that we went to Akihabara, famous for denki denki (electronics) shops. I was sure that Mrs M said that that was the place to get yukata and kokeshi dolls. However after walking around a bit we realised that that was not the case; having asked directions to the kokeshi dolls, it was actually Asakusa we needed to be at! So we headed over there, back to Senso-ji, where there are alot of tourist shops. We got the yukata, kokeshi dolls etc, plus a new bag (for Y1050!) to carry all the new omiyage (gifts). That took most of the day. We had to meet Tsudoi after work, around 9pm, so we headed back to Ikebukuro and hung around there until he finished. Then we all went to a small smoky izakaya in Ikebukuro. Charee got a bit sick from too much ika (squid) -- I knew that stuff was bad!
Saturday, March 29:
We got up to have our last breakfast with Tsudoi before he left for work. Then we had a couple of hours to pack up everything and clear off to the airport. I thought our flight was at 6pm but it turned out to be 8:20pm (!!). We didn"t have anything to do (with all our luggage), so we decided to go to the airport early (about 4 hrs early!). We took the Narita Express, using our JR Passes for the last time (sob sob). I was taking the Star Wars travel guitar Tsudoi had gotten me, so it was a bit much lugging all our bags. However, the guitar was a magic gift, as when we were waiting to board the plane, we got VIP entry into the plane before everyone else as we had to talk to the crew about where to stow the guitar (apparently there was some contention as whether to put it in the overhead locker or special cupboard onboard). Turned out the overhead locker was fine. It was a bit odd sitting in there with no-one else onboard, with the rest of the crew scurring around making final preparations before the other passengers boarded! Anyhoo, we finally got underway, and the flight was uneventful besides a bit bumpy. We arrived about 20mins early on Sunday morning, but had to sit on the runway waiting for another plane to leave our dock, our 20mins lead time was gone. To make matters worse, Channel 7 was filming "Border Security" (tv show) in Customs, which caused huge delays there. It took us about 90mins to get through (and finally meet my waiting parents who were wondering where the heck we were!).
So that ends our trip to Japan. Overall, not a bad little adventure, we did a diverse range of things and were content to come home and see our kitties (tho changed our minds now, we want to go back!!). It was good to see my bro Tsudoi and a few other old faces while we were there (tho there were some other faces I would have liked to see). Nowe we have to wade through the 700+ pics we took! I'll let you know when they're available for viewing...
A few travel tips for the future:
bring a small towel - we only had to use our own towels once, most of the places we stayed provided them, and a big towel takes up alot of space in ye olde backepacke
less shirts, more socks in cold climate
bring small shower gel/shampoo - most places provide, so can refill when they become available
double-bag all bathroom liquids
don't bring umbrellas - we bought cheap ($10) umbrellas in Aus, only to find they were being sold for Y150-Y500, about half the price in Japan (Charee came home with 3!)
good comfy walking shoes are imperative - give yourself time to break them in before leaving!
We left early to leave Beppu for Mt Koya, which I figured would take about 6 hrs to get to. Boy, was I wrong! We had to take 2 shinkansen (Beppu to Kokura, Kokura to Shin-Osaka), then an express train to Wakayama. We then had to take a small 2-car local country train from Wakayama to Hashimoto, then a very local train from Hashimoto up Mt Koya and finally a cable car the rest of the way (which was very steep). Arriving at the top, we had to take a bus to our ryokan, Sekishoin. We arrived around 7:30pm, having caught our first train at 9:44am! It was pitch dark when we arrived, and very cold (Mt Koya town is 1000m above sea-level apparently). The town consists mainly of Buddhist temples, and our ryokan was actually part of a temple itself. Our room was very nice tho, large, with a private bathroom and view onto a japanese garden (which we couldn't see when we arrived). We were checked in by a resident monk, but we had missed dinner, and everything was closed already. We were starving upon arrival (having eaten mostly snackfood on the long journey). We told the monk we had missed dinner and he then proceeded to find a place in town still open for us to eat at! Buddhist monks are very nice. He found us a place and he drove us, and another couple from London who were also hungry, to the restaurant. He even went so far as to order us a set meal, consisting of vegetarian food (vegetable and tofu dishes). After dinner we had to walk in the dark and freezing cold back to the ryokan. We went via the cemetary, which was a bit creepy. Since we had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day for monk prayers (7:00am) and breakfast (7:30am), we called it a night.
Wednesday, March 26:
We woke up at 6:30am to prepare for the monk chanting. Around 7am we, the guests, amassed in the temple where the head monk began the "service", which consisted mainly of chanting and prayers with sound effects (bells and cymbals). It was pretty interesting. Afterwards he explained the various parts of the temple, with the help of a bilingual guest. There were only about a dozen of us; if we'd come a couple of days earlier there would have been about a hundred people, mostly japanese, come to pray for their ancestors (as the time was the equinox - the Buddhists believe this is the time that the living world is closest to the dead world). We then all went to another hall for a monk breakfast. I was a bit disappointed that no other monks were eating with us tho. Apparently the temple only had 5 resident monks anyway. After breakfast we had to check out but we dropped our bags at the office and headed out into the near-freezing weather to have a look around. As I said, the town consisted mainly of temples, shrines and a huge cemetary, but had hundreds of years of history. We walked through the cemetary which wound slowly up the mountain to a big temple in honour of Kukai (as I recall), who was the founder of the Buddhist sect resident on Mt Koya (as far as I remember). We spent most of the day until about 2pm looking at temples etc, before leaving Koya-san. I'd been searching for a copy of "The Teaching of Buddha", a book in our room, but had had no luck finding an english version of it. When we collected our bags, I asked a monk at our ryokan about it and he gave me a copy of it from one of the rooms (I had started reading it the night before, quite interesting). At first we were going to go to Nara to stay next, but we decided instead to head back to Tokyo, where we could do a day trip up to Nikko. The trip to Tokyo was also very long, taking about 8 hrs, and various trains as before. We arrived back in Saitama about 10:45pm. We met a funny drunk nihonjin salaryman on the train in Tokyo, who accompanied us all the way to Saitama (he lived one stop from Tsudoi's). We met Tsudoi at the supermarket then headed back to his house for a very late dinner, chuu-hi and some much-needed (and deserved!) rest.
Thursday, March 27:
Our plans to go to Nikko were changed the night before, we really couldn't face any more long train trips! It would take about 3 hrs to get to Nikko from Saitama. Tsudoi had offered to take us to Kawagoe, about 5 stops from his house, to see the sakura (cherry blossoms) which had started blooming. We left late morning and Tsudoi gave us a tour of the area of Kawagoe. We bought some food along the way and went to the kouen (park) and drank some traditional Kawagoe beer made from sweet potato. The cherry blossoms, while not in full bloom, were still very nice to see. We were glad to be able to see them before leaving Japan, it would have been a shame to have missed them! We then did a spot of shopping, where Charee managed to lose herself, but I managed to find her after awhile, luckily. There were many people there! Late in the afternoon we went back to Saitama and had yaki niku for dinner, then headed back home to relax.
[I'm writing this on a slow computer with js turned off, must remember to update later]
Well, after that last entry, I had to run quick-smart to make the shinkansen. My knees almost gave way as I sprinted to the station, up two flights of escalators and finally made it into the train (with Charee already waiting inside), a couple ofseconds before the train whistle and the train pulled out of the station! Five seconds later and I would have missed it for sure! Poor Charee was almost having a nervous breakdown, as she was already on the train and I was the one with the details about the inn we were staying at in Beppu. We had to take a Hikari superexpress to Kokura then change to Sonic express to Beppu. All up the trip was only 2 hours (an hour each train). We found our minshuku easily, only a couple of minutes from Beppu JR station. Admittedly, we were quite nervous about staying at another minshuku after the last one, but discovered that this one was very nice indeed. Beppu is quite famous for its onsen (hot springs), and the minshuku had their own inside, and free! The name of it is Minshuku Kokage. Beppu is quite a nice town though, right near the coast. It has a nice feel to it. We arrived around midday and our room wasn't ready, plus it was raining, so we dropped our bags at the inn, got something to eat, then went to the tourist info desk at the station to see what to do. Charee wanted to go to the animal safari, but it was quite far away, and the few buses weren't running in a timely fashion for us to make it, so we decided on the 8 Hells of Beppu instead. These are 8 hot springs for viewing only, such as piping hot water (100C+), bubbling mud baths, geyser etc. It was a bit painful in the rain, and we had to catch local buses, but we managed it. It wasn't too bad tho (Y2000 for all 8, or Y400 each). There was a cute kitty at the bus shelter (that I thought was a bit sickly) which took a liking to me and curled up on my lap while we waited for the bus. It liked my stale beef jerky too. We returned around 5pm, checked in (very nice room with private bath/toilet, TV, couch, fridge for Y7650/night) then went for a bath in the inn's onsen. It was pretty hot (53C apparently)! Afterwards we went and had dinner at a local korean bbq (yakiniku) then retired (watching an Arnie Schwartzenegger movie in japanese). After we went to bed the TV mysteriously turned itself on by itself (giving us flashbacks of the previous minshuku), but I think it was because I was messing around with the remote and accidentally set the timer (that's what I tell myself anyway!). We decided to unplug it just in case, but if it went on again we were going to check out immediately! :o
Monday, March 24:
We decided to go to Usuki, a small neighbouring town, to see the Stone Buddhas (Y550). The weather was fine which was good. We took a local train to Usuki town and had a look around there, seeing castle ruins and a few other things, such as old samurai residence (which we couldn't find definitively). We then had to take a local bus to the Stone Buddhas (bear in mind that the local bus drivers don't speak or understand any english). We weren't sure if it was the right bus so we asked an old japanese dude also waiting at the bus stop, apparently he was also going there. We made it there okay and had a look around. The Stone Buddhas are pretty cool, carved out of rock, there are 4 clusters of them. We got a little lost on the trails (go figure) and at one point we came across a big something carved out of rock when suddenly a huge spider came literally bouncing out of the jungle and tried to go up Charee's leg. I shouted (she thought it ws a snake, there were lots of warning signs about snakes!) and jumped up and down in a frightened manner (which I found quite amusing) and the spider ran away. Boy, it was a big baster tho! And the way it came jumping along the ground was quite unusual! Afterwards, we were going to go see some limestone caves but found out they were quite far away (about an hour) and with the last bus back to Usuki at 5:30 meant that we'd only be able to get there to turn around and come back again. We also discovered that the next bus back to Usuki was also that last bus at 5:30 which meant a 3-hour wait!! We saw the old japanese dude talking to a taxi driver so went and talked to him about all this (Charee does the talking generally, her nihongo is better than mine). He was a nice old dude and he offered us to share his taxi back to Usuki (at his expense) so we agreed and went back to Usuki with him. The taxi dropped us at a pagoda there, and we all went to take a look. The old dude knew quite alot about it (he'd obviously done his reading) and while we were pondering some mysterious-looking swirly kanji (chinese characters) on the temple at the pagoda, another old japanese couple came in. Now this old guy started telling our old guy about these kanji, and of course me being a gaijin tending to attract attention, the new old people asked our old guy about us and before you know it we were all having a big conversation. We found out that our old guy was from Hiroshima an his name was Nii-san, and the other old couple was Mr and Mrs Mashino, from neighbouring town Kitsuki. Now, we all joined up and went sightseeing in Usuki together! This was a very unexpected turn of events, as we were going to go from Usuki to a hot spring in Beppu. After we'd all visited a couple of places together, Nii-san took his leave and Mr and Mrs Mashino offered to drive us back to Beppu, as Kitsuki where they lived was on the other side of Beppu from Usuki. Of course we accepted, however in further conversation somehow we got invited to their house in Kitsuki! So off we went in their car. It was quite a long way to Kitsuki tho, and we made a stop at a local mountain water spring where they filled large water containers from their car. The water was very fresh and tasted very nice. Apparently there are several of these "water outlets", where the water is continuously running and anyone can get it (if we had one of these in Aus we'd be rich!). Mr and Mrs Mashino told us alot about themselves, that Mr M worked for Mobil but had retired 10 years prior (at age 57) and got a big payout from the company upon retirement (which is the japanese way), that they met at Mobil, that Mrs M stopped working at age 26 to become a housewife, that they owned 2 houses (one in Kitsuki, the other in Chiba) and that they had 2 daughters (who live in Chiba) and 2 grandkids. Mrs M had remarkably good english, so communication was quite easy. We soon found out they were also quite fit (they both play tennis multiple times a week) when we arrived at Kitsuki and they showed us an old part of town where samurai used to live (lots of hills). Here, another coincidence happened, as we were walking along Mrs M saw someone sh knew who happened to be the caretaker of the samurai residence, which was now closed. However he let us in and gave us a personal private tour of it, with english commentary (a rare treat!). After that we went to Mr and Mrs M's house, which is very nice. It's a big house on a hill in the country, with views of the sea on one side and mountain vistas on the other. They gave us tea (and Charee a box of green tea to take home) and we talked some more before they drove us back to Kitsuki station so we could catch the train back to Beppu. After arriving back we had dinner (izakaya), then a hot bath and retired. What an extraordinary day it was!
We're waiting for our shinkansen to go to Beppu (change at Kokura). It's raining in Hiroshima today, a good day to leave. Hopefully the weather will be fine in Beppu and the sakura (cherry blossoms) will be in bloom. We saw a few opening up in Miyajima yesterday. We are happy to be free from the creepy hotel, that place really creeped us out! Besides being next door to the place where thousands perished from the bomb, the place itself had an eerie feeling about it. Sometimes we heard footsteps but didn't see anyone. One time I did see a girl, Charee thought she must be obake (ghost) but if so she was wearing the current fashion (short shorts over stockings).
The main costs for us have been transportation. Food in general has been comparable to Aus, or cheaper (with the current exchange rate). We get most of our drinks from vending machines or combeni (convenience stores, like 7-11). The cost of a bottle is only about Y150 (AU$1.60). Even with the JR Pass, the cost of local transportation like subway adds up alot. The subway in Osaka just going a few stops was Y230 each. The tram here in Hiroshima is a reasonable Y150 flat rate tho.
Speaking of which, we got on the wrong tram last night and headed towards the port. Luckily a kindly salaryman helped us get to where we needed to go. It was the last tram, so it would have sucked bigtime to be stuck at the port and have to walk back! It would have taken 2 hrs I reckon.
Anyway better go catch that shinkansen! More from Beppu...
We left Kyoto to go by rapid express train to Osaka (about 40 mins). It was cold and raining, unfortunately. We did have a good run of good weather while in Kyoto though. In retrospect, we should have just stayed in Kyoto and done day trips to Osaka and Himeji, as there's really not alot to do in Osaka proper. Our ryokan, Kameya Ryokan, was situated right near the Osaka Aquarium which was pretty handy, as that's one of the few highlights in Osaka city, but we had to catch a JR train (the Osaka loop train, which was free for us with JR passes) and then a subway to the Osakako stop. We got to the ryokan pretty early, around 11am, and the room wasn't ready but we were able to drop off our bags and head off in the rain to the Aquarium (which is situated in an entertainment area, with big ferris wheel (which we didn't go on) an Imax theatre and a restaurant and shop complex). The ryokan itself was pretty nice, we had a big room with a TV you didn't have to pay for, and the shared bathroom was just across the hall from us. We decided to go to see an Imax first and then the Aquarium. We saw Dinosaurs Alive 3D, which wasn't bad, then went to the Aquarium itself (which I thought was a bit over-prices at Y2000 each, tho Charee got a discount as it was Ladies' Day, which I think is every Wednesday -- those crazy japanese!). The weather was miserable, rainy and cold, and after our afternoon entertainment we checked in then decided on 2 hrs karaoke before swimming around town looking for a place to eat. We finally settled on a local izakaya, which was actually very nice indeed! We relaxed in the evening by taking a japanese-style bath (where you have to wash before getting into the piping-hot water), and some late-night TV ("The Cable Guy" in japanese) before retiring.
Thursday, March 20:
We headed off to Himeji to see Himeji castle, a good day trip to do from Osaka (or Kyoto). It was about an hour on local express train. It was rainy in the morning but stopped by the time we got to Himeji, tho continued to threaten us with dark clouds overhead for the rest of the day. The castle is a bit of a hike from the train station (and of course we managed to get a little lost) but we managed to get there, with only an udon stop along the way. The Himeji Castle is quite a nice castle to visit, and if you're going to visit one in your travels, let this one be it. The grounds and interior of the castle walls, and castle itself, are all worth checking out, and there are very nice views of Himeji city from the top of the castle. We took a ton of pictures here. There were also several neko (cats) around the grounds, at one point a clan of eight greeted us. They didn't take too well to my stale beef jerky tho for some reason (one of them threw up). :-/ We spent most of the day at the castle and stopped for some omerice near the station (restaurant called pomu no ki) on the way out. We took the shinkansen back to Osaka (why not? it's free for us with JR Passes), which only took 30mins. Another hot japanese bath smoothed out any aches we'd accumulated in the day.
Friday, March 21:
We left Osaka and headed for Hiroshima by shinkansen (oh, how we love the shinkansen!). It took about 90mins. Hiroshima has a nice feel to it for a biggish city, and it was a bright clear day and quite warm when we arrived (late morning). However we soon discovered that our accomodation (Minshuku Ikedaya) was on the other side of the city from the JR station. We started walking. And walking and walking, getting more hot and bothered as time went on (we had our backpacks on). Soon we noticed that Hiroshima has trams, so we quickly jumped on one which made the trip towards our minshuku (like a japanese-style hotel, by the looks of it) much more expedient. The minshuku was located very near the Memorial Peace Park, which commemorates the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in WW2. So that was quite convenient, as besides the oishiiokonomiyaki, a famous delicacy of Hiroshima, the Memorial Peace Park is the other main highlight of Hiroshima (tho as I now recall, I believe there is a very nice japanase garden somewhere in the city). We finally found our minshuku, and after some confusion with the reception (we'd made a plan adjustment a few days earlier, at first we were only to spend 1 night in Hiroshima but we decided to spend 2 nights, and called ahead to extend our reservation), we got the key to the room. Well, even for Y11,600 for 2 people for 2 nights (which is very reasonable), the place is pretty scary. It's quite rundown, our room is very small compared with other places. Our room was on the 4th floor (with no elevator!) with the shower room on the 1st floor. Luckily every floor has a toilet tho! We certainly got our exercise. There was hardly anyone else in the whole place (unsurprisingly). Still, I suppose you get what you pay for, next time we'll make sure we go to only ryokans! But, we're backpackers so we take the good with the bad, and as long as there's a roof (or table) over your head at the end of the day, that's all that matters ultimately. Besides, these sorts of things make for good stories. ;) I decided to wash all my unders in the sink with shower gel, but then struggled to find a place to hang them in the room. I found a long piece of wood in the cupboard (which may have been a piece of it at one stage) and managed to prop it up over the cupbaord doors to hang my washing on. It worked pretty well. Suspiciously, there was also a long piece of rope in the cupboard -- maybe this was the emergency escape route. Anyway, after checking in (and grimacing) we headed over to the Peace Park and also went to the museum there, which was just as horrific the second time for me. There are some pretty gruesome pictures of the A-bomb victims and survivors, so be warned if you're going. The park is a definite must-see in Hiroshima though. Afterwards, we went looking for some okonomiyaki. We finally found a family-run okonomiyaki restaurant secreted on the 4th floor in an arcade. It was very oishii! Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki includes noodles, lettuce egg. I got extra mochi (sticky rice cake) on mine and Charee got ika (squid) and ebi (prawn). Afterwards we headed back in the dark to our creepy hotel. We opted not to have a japanese-style bath, being unsure just how often the thing is cleaned!
Saturday, March 22:
Today we took a local train to Miyajima, an island south west of Hiroshima (25 mins express train, 10 mins ferry -- all JR so free if you have JR Pass). Miyajima is famous for a huge red tori gate in the sea (you've probably seen pics of it). There is also a big red temple to accompany it, as well as lot of other smaller temples and shrines. We were greeted by a host of wandering deer upon arrival, Miyajima has lots of them. They like to try to eat anything you have (including your clothes!). We saw a couple of mischievous ones ransacking someone's stroller while they were in a shop. We took the ropeway up the mountain (one of them) which gave us a good view of the islands. We wanted to go to the Mt Misen Observatory and then hike back down the mountain. Well, even after getting off the ropeway we had to hike up about another 45mins to the top. There were nice views (and pink-faced monkeys), but we discovered that the easy course down the mountain was closed and we had to take a longer route. We'd been told this would take an hour, however 3 hours later we finally reached the bottom. Our feet were ready for replacement by this time. It was quite arduous as the course comprised hundreds and hundreds of stone steps that wound up and down the mountains to the bottom. We met a couple of old japanese ladies who accompanied us on most of the trip. They were very genki tho, they had already hiked *up* the mountain!! It was a nice adventure tho (we love hiking), even tho our feet didn't agree by the end of it. The views from the trail were very nice, and there were cute little shrines along the way. By the time we got to the bottom we were starving, we hadn't had lunch and it was about 5pm. We stopped at the first place we saw, I got japanese curry and rice and Charee got katsu-don (pork cutlet and rice). The water had gone out and the big tori gate was reachable by foot so we went to take a look. We hung around until the sun set over the mountains then finally took the ferry and train back to Hiroshima. Now we are in an internet cafe and then we'll go have the famous okonomiyaki in the train station mall before heading back to our creepy hotel. We're very much looking forward to heading to Beppu in Kyushu tomorrow tho, and relaxing in the onsen (hot springs)! Our trip is in its final week, but we still have some travelling to do. After Beppu, there is still our temple stay in Koya-san to look forward to. Stay tuned for that!
Got up late as we were leaving Tokyo for Kyoto. After packing up most of our loot (and leaving a few odd things to pick up on the way back) we headed out. We had to meet Tsudoi at Ikebukuro station to give him Hitomi's wallet, as she'd left it at home. I also had to sign their marriage form. We then proceeded to the JR info desk to get our JR Passes (lots of paperwork here, expect 15 mins wait). Then we got shinkansen tickets to Kyoto and caught a local Yamanote line train (using our Passes, yay) to Tokyo station, where we had to board the shinkansen.
The trip was uneventful. We took a Hikari superexpress train to Kyoto, 2:45 hrs travel. Charee was excited to finally see Fuji-san on the way. Upon arriving at Kyoto JR station we proceeded to find our ryokan (japanese inn). Well of course that turned into a debacle, as we got lost. With the help of a local girl we finally got their (by a very round-about route). The place we're staying is called Yuhara Ryokan. Our room is very nice, about 3 times bigger than where we stayed at Tsudoi's, with a smaller room with a table and sink attached. The bathroom is shared, but that's okay. We've been having a japanese style bath every night which has been nice. After offloading our gear we headed back to the mall at the station for some omerice (rice wrapped in omelette), the best place in Japan imho for omerice! Finally found it and it was oishii as I remembered! (Mikan is wicked expensive tho, must be out of season now, alas!).
Monday, March 17:
We decided to go and explore a host of temples in north east Kyoto. We took a local train to Keage station, and began walking in the direction of Nanzen-ji temple, visiting a few other temples, shrines and gardens on the way. I'd forgotten how expensive entry to these temples is! Usually between Y200-600, with the average around Y400-500 a pop, which doesn't seem like much, but really adds up when you're visiting 10 or more at a time! We took the path from Nanzen-ji to Eikan-do temple, Kumano Nyakuoji shrine, Reikanji, Yojiya, Honen-in and finally the Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji), which unfortunately was under renovation and covered in scaffolding (but the swines still made us pay the full Y600 entrance fee!). There were other places visited along the way, can't remember the names (who can keep track!) and I'm sure we won't be able to recognize one temple from another in the dozens of pics we took! It is however a very nice walk and the weather was warm (hot even!).
We wanted to go visit Nijo castle and the International Manga Museum (near Nijo) so we started walking another trail in that direction (south south westerly). Man we walked for hours again, up and down hills, through foreign streets, we had no idea where we were going. One place we stopped at was a pretty nice temples with 4 rather scruffy-looking temple cats (Scruffypants, Marilyn, Howly the Roofcat, and Blackie el Stupido), which seemed to enjoy my stale beef jerky (except Blackie). We finally figured out where the heck we were and decided to try taking a bus instead of hiking. Naturally we got off the wrong stop and still had to walk a million miles more to Nijo. By the time we got there (late in the day), the blasted thing was closed! The Manga Museum closed at 7:30pm so we headed there, only to find that it had closed too! Doh! All that walking for nothing. We must have walked about 20 km's. We decided to sod it and take the bus to Gion for dinner (by now it was dark), which we actually managed to do without incident. Gion, however, was swarming with people, and while the temple there was nice all lit up with lanterns etc, we couldn't find a decent (read as "cheap") place to eat. Charee settled on some tako yaki (octopus balls, no not those balls ;)) and me with a classic japanese cuisine of "sausage on a stick". At this point we gave up and decided to just go back to the ryokan and the small restaurant next door. So we got on the bus and off we went... in the wrong direction! Apparently subconsciously we wanted to see more of the night life. Alot of the city buses run in a loop tho, so we just stayed on until we'd gone all the way around (instead of paying another Y220 each on another bus) to where we wanted to get off (which was, btw, only 2 stops away from where we were before!). We got off the bus at the wrong stop again (go figure), and had to walk another 30mins to the ryokan in th dark and cold. We did eventually find it this time. We went to the restaurant next door: Charee got yaki soba, I got okonomiyaki. The portions were huge and we couldn't finish them. We retired, had a bath and silently cried ourselves to sleep for our aching feet.
Tuesday, March 18:
Today we decided to go to Kiyomizudera temple (the famous one on the hill). This time we got a daily bus pass each (Y500) which we should have gotten yesterday. Took the 206 bus from Kyoto station to Gojozaka, then hiked up the hill. It was very hot today! The temple is nice and worth visiting, only Y300. After spending an hour or two there we decided to take the bus to Nijo to see the castle and Manga Museum. Nijo-ji is not a very impressive castle tho, even tho the grounds are huge. There are better castles in Osaka and Himeji as I recall (which we'll be seeing in a couple of days). And at Y600 each, it's quite unimpressive. The Manga Museum was better tho. We stopped for some udon along the way. The udon place was cool, you could make your own udon dish with a variety of add-ons, and the base udon bowl is only Y290 for a regular serving (which is quite big). Anyway, we spent awhile at the Manga Museum, which has thousands of manga books (mostly in japanese, but some in other languages too). We saw an old-fashioned manga story teller dude. He was pretty funny even tho he spoke rapid nihongo I barely understood. The manga itself comprised of a series of pictures on boards he'd show one at a time while telling the story. We were pretty tired after that and spent the rest of the afternoon, what was left of it, reading manga books. Charee was quite happy to find some old faves in Thai. We had been planning to go to Arashiyama (north east Kyoto) but decided not to as we were too tired. We headed back to Kyoto station for something to eat and an early night instead. Probably still recovering from yesterday's adventures.
Monday, March 31, 2008