Osaka - I Still Don't Understand Why I Must Be Naked

After settling into our new hotel room on Sunday afternoon we headed out to explore our new surroundings and try some of the local cuisine. At first it didn't look too promising, this seems to be one of the lower socio-economic areas that we have stayed in and most of the places were either closed or looked pretty dodgy. However, we got incredibly lucky and managed to stumble into the local markets, which were packed with bars, food stalls and restaurants.

I had already bought my lunch, from one of the bakeries back in Kyoto. As a side note, the bakeries here are awesome! There is at least one at every major train station and shopping centre. Most of the pastries are only a couple of dollars (which is a big improvement on the rip-off prices from Croissant Express) and they have the most mouth-watering creations, like half a block of Camembert cheese baked into a bun, or apple slices and mascarpone cheese sandwiched between 2 slices of raisin toast, or orange croissants glazed with marmalade mmmmmm... you get the picture. Anyway, so I already had my delicious lunch (mixed sandwiches and a cherry blossom danish), and Michael just wanted to pick up a Bento box. He couldn't really see anything that he wanted (that was available for take-away), so we just picked up a Bento from the nearest convenience store and took it back to the room (apparently it was really good), deciding to go back to the market area for dinner.

When we headed back we chose one of the busier restaurants, figuring that it was bound to be good since it was so packed. Not always the best method but it has worked for us so far. In this case it definitely worked out. It was one of those bbq restaurants where you have your own hot plate and get to cook your own food. One of the most popular things was the pancake. I have no idea what they are called (EDIT from Michael: It is called okonomiyaki) or exactly what's in them, but it's this delicious concoction of egg, meat and vegetables which you fry like a pancake and then top with mayo, these flaky things and another sauce which I think was BBQ. Anyway, it was very good!

The next day we wandered past the markets, towards the main attractions of the area. We first arrived at the zoo, and decided to go in, mainly because it took so long to walk to the main entrance gate that we figured that we shouldn't waste the effort. Plus the admission fee was only about $6.

I was pretty impressed, especially with the safari enclosure, which had giraffes, zebras, gazelles and ostriches all in the same enclosure. There were also heaps of big cats, like jaguars, leopards, lions, tigers and lots of other types which I didn't even know existed. The wolves were really lively, howling, playing and then having a bit of a scuffle. This might have had something to do with the size of the enclosure, which I have noticed are a fair bit smaller than in the Perth Zoo. This makes for some great photos, and means that you get to see more of the animals rather than just glimpsing them hiding behind the bushes, but I can't help feeling sorry for them when they don't have anywhere to hide from the constant stream of people. We also felt sorry for some of the turtles which had been put in the same enclosure as the alligators, poor turtles!

After seeing everything (even the kangaroos and koalas!), we left for a particular spot on the map which was dotted with shrines, temples and other historical buildings. As you can see from the pictures, it was very pretty, however it seemed like more a place of worship than a tourist attraction so we didn't stay for very long.

We went back to the market area for dinner, trying the place next door to the one that we went to the previous night. It was not as good, and afterwards we were still hungry. We decided to try one of the local delicacies, obviously very popular since there are 3 stalls in the market area and all had queues! We had to wait a little while, but it was well worth it, absolutely delicious! We are not sure what we had, possibly some kind of cheesy, tofu, seafood balls which were topped with the same BBQ sauce, mayo and flaky things as the pancake. Delicious!

The other night we decided that we really wanted to stay another few days in Japan, so today we went into the centre of Osaka to arrange for flights to China on the 5th April. We are only arriving in China one day later than scheduled, however we gain 3 extra days in Japan, since we have now eliminated the 2 day ferry trip (which Michael is especially happy about). I am ecstatic since it means that we get to go to Hiroshima (which I really want to see), plus we also get to start our China trip in Beijing, rather than arriving further down the coast in Tianjing and then having to backtrack to go up to Beijing. We managed to get a direct flight for a good price, so we are very happy with that.

After that we wandered around Osaka for a little while. Actually I should say that we wandered underneath Osaka, since we mainly stuck to the amazing underground shopping complex that seems to stretch on forever!

Then we returned to the hotel, and decided to pay a visit to Spa World. Spa World was extremely interesting, since it was my first foray into public bath houses (i.e. you are not allowed to wear your bathers - eek!). The way they work it is that there is one floor for women and one for men. Then there is a shared top floor where they have waterslides and jacuzzis (and you can wear your bathers for once). The floors are themed, one is Europe and the other one is Asia, and every month they swap it around so that both genders get a taste for the different themes. For March the women got the Europe-themed floor and the men got the Asian-themed floor.

It was really cool inside, each of the baths were given a theme within the Europe theme (like Ancient Rome, Atlantis, Grotta Azzurra etc). It was very relaxing and I tried all of the baths (even the freezing Finland one!), I would definitely go to a public onsen again and would recommend it to anyone else coming to Japan. Although I still don't get why I can't keep my bathers on. I mean, isn't it really just a jacuzzi without the bubbles? Do they expect you to be naked for a jacuzzi? Of course not! Anyway, when in Rome...

Unfortunately, when Michael and I went to the top floor, the waterslides were closed :-( However the jacuzzis were still open so we went in those for a while.

Tonight has been laundry night (note: apparently it is bad manners in Japan to take someone's laundry out of the washing machine... even though their laundry has been sitting in there for an hour and there are only 2 washing machines in the whole hotel to serve about 100 guests...). Tomorrow we are going to try and get up early (a struggle!), so that we can do a day-trip to Nara. 

Kyoto - Would the Weather Please Make Up Its Mind!

With the previous day resulting in Jenni and I being rather cold, wet and miserable, the first thing we decided to do in the morning was to each acquire a warm scarf and beanie, better umbrellas (the ones we purchased the previous day were too flimsy and didn't do a particularly good job of keeping us dry) and a pair of gloves for Jenni. After about 2 hours worth of looking through just about every damn clothes store and market stall in our neighbourhood, we finally came across a supermarket that sold the items we were looking for and set off for Arashiyama.


The weather was a bit hit and miss all day. One minute it is raining; the next minute it stops raining, but then you are blasted with freezing cold winds; then the wind calms down and the sun comes out so you need to open your jacket so you don’t get too warm.

Arashiyama is well known in Kyoto for its bamboo forest walk and 'romantic train'. After two weeks in Japan, we have deduced that a 'romantic' train or 'romantic' bus etc is actually a sight-seeing or scenic route. We took the 'romantic train' from Arashiyama station, which took us along the cherry blossom lined river (it is a shame they are not quite in bloom yet, in another week or two when they are, it will look absolutely spectacular), past the bamboo forest and past a whole stack of bridges to a town just outside Kyoto. There we had to walk in the freezing cold, rain and wind to the return train line to get back to Arashiyama.

Once back we decided to brave the cold, drizzle and wind once more to do the bamboo forest walk. We were glad that we decided to do this as the tall bamboo trees shielded us quite well from the wind and the rain, so our jackets, scarfs, beanies and gloves managed to keep us relatively warm.

We finished off the night by grabbing some dinner, checking out one of the video game / pachinko arcades and catching a movie at the local cinema complex. We saw 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians - The Lightning Thief' in English with Japanese subtitles. The price for the movie was about 1800 yen (about $21 AUS - a little bit more expensive than Australia), but the drinks and food at the candy bar is much cheaper - about 600 yen for a popcorn and coke combo (about $7 AUD). The combo was given to us on a little moulded plastic tray. Being in Japan, Jenni and I were expecting the cinema to be equipped with clever little things like... I don’t know, reclining chairs with fold out foot rests, or clever drink and popcorn holders. So when we got in there, we started looking for the 'funky Japanesey' things were we expecting. To our disappointment we couldn't find anything except an umbrella holder. That is when we started trying to jam the little tray for the popcorn and drink into various sections of the seats around us. To our disappointment, the tray didn't seem to click in anywhere, so it is obviously for us to hold... we must have looked like a real pair of idiots. Luckily the cinema was pretty much empty except for us and a couple of other people.

The following day would be our last in Kyoto. Fortunately, the weather had finally made up its mind and we had a dry, but cold day. Jenni had checked the internet to find out what where some of the must sees in Kyoto and circled a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple on our map which seemed fairly accessible for a day trip. We started the day at the Fushimi Inari-Tasisha Shrine. We did not really know what to expect, so when we got there, saw the first few buildings and took a couple of snap shots, we thought we would put the camera away because we assumed that was all there was to see. We soon discovered that there was much more to this shrine than the front few building as when we decided to walk down one of the paths, we discovered that the shrine actually expands about 2 kilometres worth of steps covered in wooden archways and hundreds (I would even go as far to say that there are probably thousands!) of small shrines along the way. The theme of this shrine seemed to be the colour orange, teamed with statues of dogs, although I couldn't tell you their significance as there were no plaques or English guides.

Up and up we kept on walking. At each stairway we got to we looked at each other and claimed 'surely the top must be at the top of this staircase', but the place just kept on going! Along the way we passed a couple of local kitty cats that were obviously local residents of the shrine and were very friendly.

After about an hour’s worth of climbing stairs, we finally reached the summit where we were able to take a few more snap shots, grab a drink and sit down and enjoy the view of Kyoto. If you ever go to Kyoto, you MUST come to see this place. 

After we made our way back down, we set off to see the Sanjusangen-do Buddhist Temple. This template boasts being the longest wooden structure in Japan and was built 850 years ago. The gardens in the temple are very pretty (but probably not as extravagant as the gardens in Nijo Castle), but the main attraction lies in the main building. This houses the 1001 Armed Kannon statues and the 28 guardian deity statues. Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside the building, so the ones I have provided below have been pinched off the internet. 

The statues are simply amazing. Each of the 1001 statues behind the 28 guardian statues are all slightly different (different facial expressions, clothes, things in their hands, etc). The poor people who made them didn't have the luxury of copy and paste! The 28 guardian statues all represented various Buddhist deities, each with a plaque (conveniently written in English) that explained the origin of each deity and its purpose. The statues are all made of wood and were originally painted with gold foil on them, but unfortunately nowadays, the paint and gold has mostly faded. You can still see the slightly faded colours in the crystal eyes of each statue.


In the middle of the hall is a statue of the main deity - the 1000 Armed Kannon. This statue is enormous and covered in gold foil. It is surrounded by another 4 statues representing other Buddhist deities. The plaque only named a single man as the artist who created the statue so it must have taken him near a lifetime to construct so many years ago.


After the temple we returned back to our room for a bento dinner and an early night so we could catch the train to Osaka.


That is where I am now, writing up this article. We managed to catch a local train to Osaka from Kyoto which only took about 30 minutes. After a short detour on the wrong train line, we managed to get to the correct station and thanks to the GOOD directions given to us by the hotel's website and additional hints on finding it from the reviews of our hotel on Google maps, we were able to find our hotel very easily and are now ready to chill out for the rest of the afternoon.

Kyoto - Bad directions, rain and castles

We arrived in Kyoto via the shinkansen on Wednesday arvo. We were amazed at how quickly the shinkansen travels. You cannot get a sense of its true speed until you stand at one of the stations while one speeds by you.


When we arrived in Kyoto we were a bit worried about the directions given to us on the internet that would lead us to our accommodation. The reason why we were worried is because we managed to find three completely different sets of instructions on how to get there. We were even more worried about trying to find this place because the Google maps location that is shown on the accommodation’s website doesn't match up with the Google maps location when you manually enter the address listed on the accommodation’s website on Google maps.


I chose the set of directions that claimed to have the least amount of walking involved to get to the accommodation and Jenni and I set of from Kyoto station (in the rain) to find this place.

After about 2 hours of wandering around Kyoto's "streets" (more like alleyways) and asking every person we saw for directions, we finally managed to come across our accommodation. The reason why we had such a tough time finding the place was because:
a) The address on the accommodation’s website is WRONG because the place is on a DIFFERENT bloody street!!!
b) The location shown on Google maps on the accommodation’s website is ALSO WRONG because it is on the completely wrong end of a street that is about 2km long
c) The directions on the accommodation’s website is WRONG because it tells you to get off at a bus stop that is about 2 bus stops too late, so you end up starting your search for the place about 1km in the WRONG location
d) NOBODY IN KYOTO KNOWS WHERE THE HELL ANY STREETS ARE!!! When you ask them for directions to a street, they smile and nod and say (in Japanese) 'Yes of course I know where it is; go down this street and take a left and then.....' etc. Then you follow their instructions to get to the street in question, ask the nearest person 'This is XXXX Street isn't it?' and they always say.... 'Err, not it isn't. To get to that street go down here and.....' AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Com'on people! If you don't know where the street is, just say so!


So as you may have guessed, Jenni and I are not that impressed with the accommodation situation here in Kyoto. The place is a nightmare to find, we have walk outside and into another building (in the rain) to get to the bathrooms, there is nobody else staying here (not a very good sign), the common room is not particularly comfortable and to top it all off the oil heater for our room has run out of oil and it is freezing in here.


Anyway, that’s enough complaining about our accommodation. At least found it eventually and we have a dry bed to sleep in, which is warm enough when we sleep in our sleeping bags underneath the already provided quilts.

Today, just like yesterday, it rained all day so we decided to purchase a couple of umbrellas in an attempt to keep us dry while going to see Nijo Castle in central Kyoto. It is amazing to see this castle right in the middle of the modern city. Jenni and I used an audio guide to guide us around the castle and are very glad that we used it as we got so much more out of the excursion. The castle is surrounded by a moat and has two concentric rings of fortifications. The castle was originally only the inner ring which housed the Honmaru Palace which consists of a couple of separate buildings and was built in the early 1600s. One of the buildings (the central keep) was hit by lightning and burnt to the ground in the mid 1750s and about 30 years after the actual palace itself burnt down in a city wide fire. This inner palace has now been restored, but you cannot actually go inside it. 

Because of the destruction of the inner palace, the Ninomaru Palace was built outside of the original palace walls and another fortified wall built around that (thus resulting in the two concentric rings of fortifications). This palace was used to house the shoguns (military dictators of Japan). This building is still very well intact and you can walk through it and see all of the rooms. We were very grateful of the audio guide as it was able to point out things that we would have typically missed: the purposefully built squeaky floor boards (I couldn't help stepping up and down on them to make them squeak); the purposed of each room; the reasons why some of the spots in the roofs and floors were higher / lower than others; what the paintings in each room symbolized; the man that painted a majority of the painting did so in his early 20s, etc.

The palace buildings were very impressive, but the most impressive thing in the castle was the gardens. The gardens look like something plucked straight out of a painting. They are beautiful. I am sure Jamie Durie and Don Burke would have been well impressed with the shogun's choice of landscape architect.


After the castle we went to a shopping complex in search of some beanies and scarfs as it is really cold here at the moment and we have been told that Beijing (our first stop in China in about 2 weeks) is even colder. We didn't find any scarfs or beanies to purchase but did enjoy shopping in the Japanese bento supermarket. We have come across a couple of these in Japan and they are REALLY good. It is kind of like an indoor market, but instead of meat, cheese, vegies, fruit, etc they have hundreds of different types of pre-cooked bentos (lunch boxes) to choose from. For about $10 AUD you can buy a pre-cooked bento box that you can either eat cold or bring home and stick it in the microwave for dinner. Brilliant!

So after purchasing a couple of yummy looking bento boxes for dinner we headed back to the hotel, got lost (again), got told the wrong directions by people (again - goddamn I really hate this neighbourhood), saw the blind leading the blind (no really, we actually saw a old blind lady using a white cane, leading what appeared to be an even blinder old lady also using a white cane - it was hilarious) and finally made it back to our room. 

Mt Fuji - Go here for awesome food, hot springs and marriage proposals

Michael and I are currently sitting in the deserted common room of what appears to be a completely empty hostel in Kyoto, warming our footsies after a very eventful couple of days at Mt Fuji.

So, back on Monday we left the backpacker's hostel in Tokyo, still trying to recover from the previous night out. We had already arranged train tickets, and nearly 2 hours later found ourselves speeding towards a fancy onsen ryokan (Japanese traditional inn with hot springs). Our first sighting of Mt Fuji was absolutely breathtaking. It is not surrounded by any other mountains, it just rises up from nothing and completely dominates the entire skyline. It is ridiculously enormous, so big that the top third is covered in snow, and even though the weather was fine on the day we arrived, the top was slightly obscured by swirling mist. It looks slightly ethereal and other-worldly, like maybe it is some kind of illusion and isn't supposed to be there. especially since it didn't show up in any of our photos. The day we arrived it didn't show because the sun reflected off the snow, and the 2 days after that were overcast so the top was obscured by clouds.


Anyway, enough about Mt Fuji and onto the Ryokan. It was also pretty awesome, we had a private hot spring bath out the back, and one in the bathroom, we had personalised service and over-the-top 12-course dinners served to us one-by-one in our room, even more over-the-top breakfasts also served to us in our room, a driver to drive us to and from town and the train station in a big black mercedes with tinted windows to make us feel important etc etc. 

We didn't have time to do much on the first day. We arrived, had tea served to us, went for a walk (where we found some of those yummy waffle things filled with cream that we had in Asakusa), went in the onsen (so good!) and had ridiculously big dinner that we didn't finish. Started the second day with humungous breakfast that we didn't finish, then walked into town and caught the bus to the bottom of a 'mountain' (they only call it that, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a real mountain) and caught the cable car part of the way up. We had hoped for an awesome view of Mt Fuji like the day before, but it was slightly overcast so we couldn't quite see the top. We hiked right to the top of our 'mountain', where we found a secluded little shrine. 


That's where Michael popped the big question, after first waiting for me to finish nearly an entire box of Pocky (yummy wafer sticks coated in chocolate). As we turned to leave he dropped to one knee and pulled out the box. In true style I burst into tears and just about fell over. I said yes of course. 


The ring is very pretty and shiny and I keep moving my hand around to watch it sparkle. I'm a bit worried about someone trying to chop off my finger in south-east asia so we might keep it in the pack for that part of the trip.


We haven't set a date yet, probably about a year after we get back to Perth.


We celebrated by having a very romantic lunch of MOS burgers (these delicious little burgers that remind me of Whitecastle from Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle), chips and ginger ale, after Michael bought me a little Freeza Dragonball Z figurine from a games arcade on the way (I will treasure it always). 

We also had a very nice bottle of Sake with our gigantuous million-course dinner.


So this morning, after a very event-filled couple of days (and one last dip in the onsen), we packed our bags and headed back to the train station. Luckily Michael asked the driver (in his awesome Japanese) how to get to Kyoto, because he told us a way that involved less transfers than our original plan. He then proceeded to take us to the ticket office, organise our tickets for the bus, got the bus to wait for us (which is unbelievable over here since the public transport is never ever late), and gave instructions for us to write down regarding which stop to get off at and which shinkansen (really fast train) to take.


Unfortunately, the directions from the hostel were not so good. We got to Kyoto no problem however we found ourselves well and truly lost about an hour later. Luckily, people over here are soooo friendly and after asking about half the population of Japan for help, we finally managed to find it.


We are hoping that Kyoto lives up to its name as one of the best preserved cities in Japan, because after the amazing experiences that we have had in Tokyo and Mt Fuji, it has pretty big boots to fill.

Tokyo - That is going to be really hard to top!

Jen and I are sitting on the Shinkansen (bullet train) that is going to Mount Fuji so we can stay at a ryokan (traditional Japanese style inn). The train ride is good because we need to wind down after another great night out in Tokyo with people we met at the hostel.

Before I get to that, I will do a quick re-cap on what we did during the past two days.

On Saturday (the day after our first big night out) we went to Harajuku to see Meiji-jinju at Yoyogi park. There we saw kids dressed up in cos-play (i.e. dressed up in crazy outfits), a very large Shinto shrine in the middle of the park, a Japanese wedding and took some amazing photos of the parkland with the metropolis in the background. To the left is a photo of one of the arches in the park. Jenni is standing on the right hand side of the arch. We even got to get a sneak peak at some people training in Kendo at a martial arts dojo in Yoyogi park.

After Yoyogi, we went to Shibuya (the same place we had been out that previous night). Shibuya is a girl's shopping wonderland. Jenni was delighted to go shopping in Shibuya 109, an 8 storey high very fancy fashion store. All of the girls in there were all really made up and were all wearing amazing clothes. It was like walking through a fashion show. After shopping we grabbed something to eat for dinner, bought a box of doughnuts from Krispy Kreme and returned to the hostel to go and socialize with everyone in the common area.

The following day, we got up at a reasonable time so we could make our way over to Tokyo station so we could go and see the imperial palace. This was rather disappointing as you cannot see that much because you cannot go into the palace grounds and the palace is obscured by trees. We did however; meet a very nice Japanese man of whom we had a conversation with (in both Japanese and English) about some nice places to go in Japan as well as some things for us to do in Shanghai.

After the imperial palace, we made our way back to Akihabara so we could have a walk through electric town. We walked through a couple of multi storied shops selling all sorts of comics, novels, DVDs, computer gear and video games. We were really surprised to see the unbelievable amounts of pornographic material in these shops. It is EVERYWHERE in Akihabara.

We also tried to get into a 4 storey high maid cafe but the line was enormous, so we decided to give it a miss and headed back to the hostel.

We quickly changed and headed back out to Shinjuku to meet some people for dinner. A group of us which included the same two English guys (Nick and Nick) and the American girl from the previous night (Elizabeth), as well as another American girl (Ellie), a Swedish guy (Joel) and two local Japanese guys (Yoshi and Yuya) all went to an Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant. It had tea cups hanging from the ceiling, playing cards covering the walls in the toilets, tapestries with the original text and illustrations from the book hanging from the wall and all of the waitresses dressed as Alice or the Mad Hatter. We all had a set menu and 'nomihodai' - all you can drink for a couple of hours. The food was delicious and the company was even better. Just like the other night, drinks after dinner evolved into more drinking games. Some of the highlights were a group of us singing happy birthday to Elizabeth, various members of the group having to remove items of clothing, lots of haiku poems and someone having to ask all of the waitresses to come in to take a photo with everyone in it (I don’t think they were too impressed, but we thought it was great).

The highlight of the night had to be when we left the Alice in Wonderland restaurant everyone except for one of the Nicks went down the elevator. The rest of us decided to play a joke on him so we all hid around the corner on a set of stairs, ready to jump in front of him and surprise him when he got out of the elevator. Unfortunately for some random Japanese bloke, Nick took a little longer to come down than expected, so the poor Japanese bloke got the scare of his life when he exited the elevator and Elizabeth jumped out in front of him while seven other people yelled out. But he was a really good sport about it and we all had a laugh.

After our nomihodai time was up, we moved onto another place to drink. The Japanese guys took us to a gothic prison themed bar where the waiter and waitress was dressed in prison outfits and we were all 'locked' in a cell where we continued the drinking games. All of the drinks that we ordered were served in chemistry set glasses like test tubes and beakers and had things like novelty eyeballs floating in the drinks. At one stage a completely random drunk Japanese guy burst into our cell and stole one of our drinks (it was obviously a dare from one of his friends). Elizabeth chased him out of our cell and managed to get the drink replaced with a full one. Everyone was quick to laugh it off as a bit of fun.

At this stage (about 3am in the morning) Jen, the two English guys and I started to make our way back to the hostel as we all needed to get to bed because we were checking out in the morning.

It was truly an awesome night out!