Random thoughts on the 15 days we spent in Japan

Marino's thoughts - 

We ate a lot of ramen.   All of it was good. 
I do not believe a bad ramen shop would survive anywhere in Japan, and they therefore do not exist.

Tiz is the best travel companion.
I would be happy to rent out her services, some but not all, to others that may need her many talents whilst travelling. 
I have not discussed this with her yet, so please don't buy her that first class plane ticket just yet.

Every city, every prefecture, every block has "better" ramen than the other cities, prefectures or blocks depending on which one you prefer.
We tried many and they were all different and they were all good.

We did a lot of research on how to travel and where to stay. 
We knew that we had not covered it all after the "first cut" and so we went over every step again, a few times.
Nonetheless, even though we were more prepared than most first time visitors, we still had at least one surprise to keep us on our toes every day.

We tried to cover too much ground in too little time. I think one week in at least the major cities is barely enough. 

Next time we will try to schedule our visit to take in more festivals or shows.

As guests in their country, which is the most polite country I have ever been in, the very least we can do is learn some very basic phrases which must include please, thank you and excuse me. 

Be polite and softly spoken. Being loud, especially when frustrated, and there will be frustrating incidents, will result in "shutdown". 
The only Japanese that react in a situation where one or both parties are loud and or angry are the gangsters, and you do not want be part of that reaction.  

Remember to carry tissues when you're out and about as they do not have hand drying facilities in 99% of public facilities and don't forget that the traditional and most common, toilet is the "squat" variety

Because you think you have  fair understanding of their cuisine, unless you are married to a Japanese or have lived there, you do not. 
As we discovered with okonomiyaki, amongst other dishes, there are regional differences.
The best example I can think of, as the son of Italians, is that it's like going to Italy and ordering pasta thinking you are going to get the same dish as you get at your favourite local Italian restaurant back home.

It is very unlikely you are going to get any foodstuffs that are the same as what you can get at "home" so embrace the local way of eating.
A bowl of shio ramen, or a plate of big fat oysters, and a beer for breakfast is pretty damn good once you get used to it, and it only takes once to do that!

For the Aussies reading this the Japanese drive on the same side of the road as we do.
This can be a big help if you are considering a self drive holiday but please consider that not all places are well signed in English, and some not at all.  

We drank a lot of nihonshu, of the cheap and expensive variety, and it was all good.

The Russians must be so pleased the "Xīn zījīn" Chinese have started to travel. 
The later make the former look like quite refined, culturally aware, softly spoken, timid visitors.

I wonder how much beer do the Japanese drink per capita per annum?

Tiziana's thoughts -

Japan has left a lasting impression on me, one that I will never forget.

Firstly, the wonderful people, so polite, so willing to help strangers. 
From the waiting staff taking our order to the chefs preparing our food, everyone was polite, & pleasant. 
They would make you feel welcome and their faces would light up when you tried miserably to order in Japanese. 
So it 's worth the effort to learn few phrases before you arrive.

Secondly, the culture and traditions I found fascinating. 
I had very limited knowledge of Japanese history & was thrilled when we were lucky enough to meet an english speaking volunteer at the Edo museum, who was so very informative. 
It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me.
The Gion prefecture was another insight into the Geisha way of life and really fascinating.

Thirdly & lastly, the entire experience could not have been as special if not shared with Marino. 
The time and effort he put into the research both before and after our arrival made our visit so much more enjoyable.
Thankfully we both share similar desires to experience the Japanese food, culture & people which ensured an unforgettable holiday.

Thank you to all of you for allowing us to share our experience with you.

ありがとうございます。

(Arigato gozaimas = Thank you)

for reading our blog

Sayonara Nihon - Wednesday April 22nd

As usual, anticipation woke us way before we needed to.
We had booked our seats on the Narita Express last night so all had to today was have a quick shower, pack  a few things and get to Platform 5 at Shinjuku Station by ~07:45 for the 08:02 departure.
We did it easily but we looked like two salmon swimming upstream.
There were a lot of people going to work, in the opposite direction to us.
The train left 15 minutes late, which we had not seen or heard of since our arrival.
The PA system seemed to be constantly bellowing something in Japanese, which I assumed was a detailed explanation of why this train was late and what the consequences were for those responsible.

An hour and a bit later we arrived at Narita Airport Terminal 2, because Terminal 3, where we were departing from does not have a station, yet.

We had a couple of souvenir swords that needed to be wrapped. 
As they didn't fit in our luggage we asked about a wrapping service before walking the 680 metres to Terminal 3.
We got some incomplete directions and gave up looking. 
I figured that the new Terminal 3, now handling so many departures, would have it's own.
WRONG! And we found this out after getting there of course.
The only option was to run back to Terminal 2, get the boxes wrapped and sprint back to Terminal 3.
I got it done with 10 minutes to spare before the boarding gate closed.

Then, as we checked our baggage in  the check in staff called a Customs Officer over to make sure I was not smuggling out a rare artefact.
So, we unwrapped everything, checked the swords and rewrapped them up as best we could.
Lesson learnt - do not bother carrying/checking in ornamental swords onto planes without lots of preparation first.

Good bye Shinjuku, take care of all those wonderful crazies that inhabit you 

It's not quite the Green Car on the Shinkansen but this NEX isn't bad either

Tiz, back in the spot she stood on about the same time on Wednesday April 8th.

Finally, this time we turned left, instead of the normal right, when we boarded the plane. Nice.   

Tonight we'll be home. 

Hiroshima -> Himeji -> Shinjuku, Tokyo - Tuesday April 21st

We woke up late in our 11th floor corner suite feeling like it had been the first decent nights sleep we had had in way too long.
We wandered about the very spacious suite laughing about the amount of space and the amenities.
Everything was oversized, by Japanese standards. 
The bath was big enough for someone my size to lay in, submerged. 
The vanity was bigger than some of the entire bathrooms we had used in the past two weeks.    
Alas, we had to leave as our Shinkansen was leaving for Himeji at 11:00.
The station was only a very short walk from the hotel and the sun shone like it hadn't since we had arrived in Japan.
A very speedy and comfortable one hour later we were in Himeji.
As you step out of the station you find yourself looking up a wide  straight promenade and at its end, about 2km away, is the entrance to the Himeji Castle complex.

I call it a "complex" because castles are built with gardens and moats and guard houses and all manner of structures around them. They're more like a small village in themselves.

The Himeji Castle was on particularly large grounds and as we approached the entrance proper to the castle we realised that we hadn't given ourselves enough time to see it all properly. 
We barely had enough time to see the gardens in the 3 hours we had before getting back on the Shinkansen to Tokyo.

Here are a few pics of the areas around the outside of the castle.

I've decided to start growing foliage from my head.

Do you like it?

We spent a few hours looking at flowers that Tiz could not recognise. 

That's one department that I could not help in!

As we had caught the ¥100 (Yes, 100 Yen, which was so cheap it made us laugh) bus up to the castle we decided to walk back to the station.
It was a perfect spring day and the walk was one of leisurely strolls one has when in Himeji.
You know what I mean.

We took a little detour through an arcade and ended up in supermarket with the intention of buying my nieces, Angus & Emma some "weird Japanese lollies", as requested.
The only criteria we set ourselves was - no English writing explaining or hinting what their contents or flavour is, must be hard (which means they are made mainly of sugar) and preferably no pictures.

We bought quite a few.

It was time to head back to the station & get our luggage from the lockers.
This leads me to tell you about lockers at train stations.
From what we've seen and learnt in Japan, it's a "crap shoot" (aka - a gamble).
They can be in any and many parts of a station & even when you ask the Information Desk they may only know of some, and generally the major banks of them.
When you have found one they may be either IC card, which will be either Suica or Pasmo, or coin operated.
You can tell if a lockers is being used by either the red light on the card operated ones or lack of key in the lock on the coin operated ones.
BUT, sometimes attendant removes the keys from empty ones, in busy walkways, to avoid them bring accidentally snapped off.
You need to stand around looking lost and helpless, whilst staring at the lockers, which may/should attract the attention of an attendant. Once they have spotted you they are quick to help, even if it means taking you to spot with available lockers.

Take notes, preferably pictures, of where the locker is because some of these stations are HUUUUGE , and a lot of places in these stations look very similar.

Back to picking up our bags at Himeji. After we had retrieved the bags from the lockers we spotted a little shop making what you would describe as a 10cm round, 5cm thick  light pancake batter filled with one of  two filings. One was red bean, which had overtones of borlotti beans (sorry to sound like a foodie tosser, but one needs to be accurate about important things such as these) and the other filing looked like stewed apple but tasted like a blend of yam and chestnut.

We bought two of each for the the exorbitant sum of ¥378. I'm not quite sure how you get 4 into 378 evenly, even when you factor in odd taxes, but this isn't about maths it's about oiishi (delicious) local sweets and how cheap they are.

It was time to board the last, and long, leg of our journey back to Tokyo.

Above is one of the sections in a platform kiosk on what could any train station in Japan.

The section on the left contains snacks and foodstuffs, 

as do many of the other sections in these kiosks, along with sushi and the like.

The section on the left contains a broad range of alcohol.

From nihonshu to beer to whisky, and everything in between.

Perhaps it's their seemingly liberal attitude to alcohol purchase,

 and consumption, I believe, that protect them from being the most alcoholic nation on earth.

Or maybe I just don't quite get it. 

Below are a few pics of the country side between Himeji and Tokyo.

We arrived at Tokyo Station at 18:45 in the dark and we still had at least another 30-40 minutes train ride and walk, if we chose this way, before arriving at the Sunroute Hotel in Shinjuku.
We took a cab.

We checked in at 19:30 to an economy room that, by comparison to "Hiroshima Presidential Suite" we had stayed in last night, felt like a capsule hotel.
We were only there for less than 12 hours so it was OK.
We are in the habit of going for a quick look at where we would need to embark the following morning, thus avoiding getting lost and missing a train, and decided we would have a final look around at all the wonderful Shinjuku sleaze at the same time.
We stopped off at a franchised pub called the Kirin City for dinner.
This place does weird stuff with beer. I mean, frozen beer! Really?
Just look at the menu.

It does some pretty nice, and cheap, cocktails though as well as what might best be described as Japanese inspired tapas.

For dinner we had a bowl of garlic shrimp, cooked in a LOT of butter and garlic, 

a bowl of garlic octopus also cooked in a LOT of butter and garlic, 

a plate of delicious bite size beef slices with a mirin/soy dipping sauce 

& a dollop of real "nose rush" wasabi 

AND a Caesar Salad. Sorry, no picture of anything as boring as lettuce, even if it does have bacon bits on it. 

Yes, fresh uncooked green stuff, which was a welcome change from having everything cooked.

For liquid refreshments I had a "Half and Half" better known as a Black and Tan where I come from and Tiz had a beer and cassis. Another weird Japanese combo but she liked it, and she normally doesn't like beer at all.

The place below was a surprise!

To give you some context, Ladurée is the place, in Paris

that Tiz and Georgia had afternoon tea at a couple of years ago.

It was more like French high afternoon tea at THE French luxury bakery and sweets maker house created in 1862. 
It is one of the top premier sellers of the double-decker macaron, fifteen thousand of which are sold every day.

We took the long way back so we could observe and savour as much of the punk, sleaze, street, underbelly circus Shinjuku offers before laying down for our last rest in Japan.

Tiz, in one of the "darker" corners of Shinjuku

They have a different way of using the English language! 

Or maybe it isn't their strange way of using English and actually one of those bizarre Japanese bars we so often hear about. Maybe ........ 

Hiroshima and Miyajima - Monday April 20th

Another early rise rise today. 
We chose to walk a little further, on flat ground, to another station so that we could avoid as many stairs as possible.
Japanese train stations, mainly because of their size and the way they were expanded, often require going up and down several flights of stairs to get from one entrance to the platform you need.
Whilst this would be terrific exercise under normal circumstances it becomes a backbreaking chore when you are carrying 20kgs of luggage.
We had also chosen Dobutsuenmae Station over Shinimamiya Station as it was a direct train, therefore no changing trains and no possibility of stairs,  to Shin-Osaka, where the Shinkansen for Hiroshima was leaving. 

It was only 07:30 so the train was not overcrowded, by Japanese standards.
The rest of the trip was uneventful as we were becoming "seasoned" travellers and made sure that we always got to were we needed early, just in case.

When we arrived in Hiroshima it took us a while to figure out which side of the station we were on, but once we had sorted that out it was only a short walk to the Sheraton, where we had booked a room.
We were about 4 hours earlier than the allowable check in time of 15:00 but we knew we could drop off our bags and go and see the Peace Park and catch the ferry to Miyajima as we had planned with the rest of the afternoon.
The staff were very helpful and cheery so checking in was a breeze.
We had intended to take a 40 minute walk across Hiroshima to the Peace Park when were planning this leg, at home, but it was drizzly and the skies were dark with rain clouds.
Thankfully Tiz noticed that one of the tramcars, very similar to our trams in Melbourne, went right past the Peace Park.
We jumped on it like a pair of rabbits on a briar patch.
Catching this sort of transport is a great way top see a city and its people.
We got there in 20 minutes, and dry.
The threat of rain seemed to abate, so off we went to look around the park.
Here are some pictures 

The A-Dome 

 (at this point you should go here to learn a bit about what happened directly above it 

at 8:15 a.m. on 6 August 1945)

 It was a beautifully maintained park 

but its reason for being gave us both an eerie feeling 

It was time to catch the ferry 

.... after crossing the bridge, and taking a picture 

to Itsukushima, which is an island located in the northwest of Hiroshima Bay. It is popularly known as Miyajima, which in Japanese means the Shrine. 

We were going there to see the famous Torii gate

Every picture I had ever seen made it look like it was a long way out to sea, even though you could walk to it at low tide.

See what I mean by looking at these images

These are some of the pictures we took on our 50 minute ferry ride there.

It looks a glummer than it actually was.

Once we got there this is what greeted us.

I've no idea what the writing says but it was likely some sort off welcome 

Lots of school kids on excursions loved playing with them but don't quite grasp the meaning of "Please Do Not Feed Deer", as sign posted every where.

I found the need for sign posts like that quite odd as I saw the animals as something I use use as feed rather than something I might want to feed.  

 Cute little deer to some, e.g. Tiz.

Venison to others, e.g. me.

It was about a one kilometre walk to the Torii gate itself, and it was through a beautifully kept "old town" well geared for tourists.

A little alleyway just off the main tourist walk shows both the modern concession to living but never too far away is a reminder of centuries old history. 

Look high in the background. 

Above are only a couple of monuments you see on the way to the Torii gate

Goju-no-to Shrine

The old fishing village, just in front of the gate, kept as a museum. 

This rice paddle is 7.7 metres long, 2.7 metres wide and weighs 2.5 tonnes.

It is made from 270 year old Zelkova tree. 

The scoop took almost three years to construct and went on display in 1996 to commemorate the designation of Itsukushima Shrine as a World Heritage Site.

It is located in the Omotesando shopping street in Miyajima.

It represents a kind of collective pride by the people of Miyajima in an object that has helped put their island on the map.

As the legend goes, between the 1790s and 1800s a Buddhist monk named Seishin lived and worked in the Tokidera Temple. 

One night he dreamed of a deity known as Benzaiten, the Japanese name for the Indian goddess Saraswati, whose myth arrived in Japan via the Chinese and began being worshiped in the 6th century. 

She held a traditional Japanese lute which the monk saw as a kind of spoon. 

Upon awakening he showed the people of Miyajima how to make this magical rice scoop or "shamoji" he had dreamed of.

We finally got to the Torii gate!

It's not really that far off the shore, maybe 100 metres and it can be walked to on low tide. But we didn't go to it as we were wearing runners and the thought of spending the rest of the day in wet feet was "Yeah .... but nah!"

Plus, it had started raining heavily by this stage and as you can see we bought ourselves a very modern see-through umbrella for the princely sum of  ¥550.

Sites had been seen, so now it was time to fetch us a feed,

Here's me scouting for an appropriate place to eat something Miyajimaian.

.... and we found this place ....

... which served stuff like this 

(Huge tasty oysters)...

... which tasted like this ... 

- The clip above is a tribute to Mark Weins YouTube clip about Tokyo

It annoys the heck out of many who watch it but it makes me laugh.

Go watch it for yourself. -

We also had these ....

The top one was Tiz's, which is obvious as it has a bottle of nihonshun by its side, and was a shrimp okonomiyaki.

 Mine was a scallop one.

Miyajiman okonomiyaki are made with shredded cabbage and noodles.

A bit different from the others we have had in other parts of Japan.

They are made on a sort of production line hotplate.

They start at the right hand end (as seen by those who work on it) and move their way to the left as ingredients are added. The hotplate areas are at different heats depending on what the areas do i.e cook the cabbage, heat the noodles, cook the bottom layer of the okonomiyaki etc. etc.

   

The end results is a little larger than the ones in other areas and even more filling.

Our day at Miyajima was done and we decided to take a different way home.

We caught the ferry back to Miyajimaguchi, on the mainland, and then the train back to Hiroshima.

It was a wise choice as it gave us yet another insight into the Japanese culture.

This time it was with primary school kids and how they travel and interact.

What you see above may look like just another "train with kids on it" scene but how they got on that train was an interesting lesson on how to look after each other.

As we pulled up to their station we saw all these kids chatting and laughing, as kids do in groups.

The elder boys, whom you see in the top picture to the right, were at the front of the queue. They made sure that the group understood the order of things as much to make sure the little ones were safely aware from the edge of the platform, and would get on first.

The little boys and girls came next and played and spoke in a mixed group, guarded at both front and rear.

The elder girls, whom you see in the bottom picture, although not so well, followed to the rear, quietly.

It was so instinctive, orderly and caring.

On the train the boys played "rock, paper, scissors", quietly.

The little kids spoke with each other and giggled, even more quietly.

The older girls chatted, ever so softly, whilst constantly keeping an eye on the whole group.  

From that one scene entire nations could learn how to take care of each other and prosper.

It took us 30 minutes to get to Hiroshima Station

We checked in and settled down in one of the largest and more plush places we had stayed in whilst in Japan

The view from our corner suite on the 11th floor.

It got a lot better as the city lights came on

This picture does not adequately show how big the room was.

Let's just say that it was three times the size of some of the places we had stayed in. 

To make things even better, the bed was as close to our bed, comfort wise, as you could get but it was a King + size.

Thank you Hotel Sheraton Hiroshima!

Dinner, mushroom ramen for Tiz and conga eel on rice for me, was had at a local eatery in the nearby station.

Good delicious local fare.

We were off to bed for a long, comfortable nights sleep.