TnL Wanderings

Japan – Day 3 – Whisked away to Hiroshima

Waking up in the hostel was great for about a second until better recollection of the previous night occurred. The early start that was planned for the day transformed into a late start. None the less, better late than never and such it was. K’s House hostel was accommodating and took care of our backpacks for the day and we headed off down towards the peace memorial. We asked for a suggestion of places for breakfast and the lady at the front desk suggested either Matsui or Yoshinoya the latter of which we had seen the previous day. That should make things easy, except that it didn’t and we spent ages walking along the main road looking for Matsui or Yoshinoya, as it turned out we’d walked past both places but eventually after giving up and just entering a restaurant randomly we found ourselves in a Matsui. As usual, robot with meal buttons and meals delivered on a tray, wonderful.

The walk from K’s hostel to the peace memorial park was about 25 minutes or 20 minutes if you’re in a hurry. You would be able to catch a tram but we figured since we’re unfit it wasn’t a bad plan to just walk it. The A-Bomb dome is on the eastern side of the Ota river where it splits into two sections. This made finding it fairly easy. The building itself was in a state of semi-repair when we arrived as some additional re-enforcing is required to keep the structure stable. It is an impressive site, the destruction caused here by the bomb was clearly immense. While there is not much signage out in the park lands apart from some sobering quotes and statements don’t feel disappointed as the museum is excellent and if you pick-up an audio-guide you’ll learn far more than you really want to. We had felt like we wanted to know more when we wandered through the park, so maybe the best way to put this at rest is to hold your visual / sensory appetite and go through the museum first and then walk through the park. The peace bell is a meaningful stop to be part of and the Sadako memorial (as we had read about this in primary school) is also another sobering item. Also another brief hint is, if you feel the urge to make a pit stop when in the park lands just holdout till the museum.

 

 

 

We had budgeted about 2 hours to go through the park and the museum, however if you do use the audio guide and you don’t race the information you’ll find that the museum takes roughly two hours and the park 30 minutes to an hour. This left us short on time (as we’d already had a late start) and we had to get across to Miyajima. If we didn’t make it however we weren’t bothered as this was actually a ski trip which we’d decided to do a bit of site seeing on (just a pitty that the Nozawa-Onsen snow reports indicated that currently skiing might be mighty optimistic).

A change in the weather at this point while walking back toward the station makes us quite happy that we hadn’t underestimated winter as Tokyo had been so pleasant.

Our decision at this point was to pickup backpacks and take them to Miyajima and place them in a locker at the station. This was a good plan but when we were on JR Sanyo line to Iwakuni or Miyajima-guchi (whichever is fastest at the time) we realised that perhaps there weren’t going to be lockers at the Miyajima station. However much to our good fortune there were, so if in doubt, yes there are lockers at Miyajima-guchi station (immediately to your left as you leave the platform) as well as at the Miyajima-guchi ferry (remember that the JR rail pass works on the ferry). Cross over then from the ferry to Miyajima island was quick and we were entertained by two upcoming Japanese rockstars who put on their song and danced to a camera (presumably for their video) while dressed in frocks (for both the girl and the guy).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you time things right while you’re on the ferry you will get a good shot of the Tori gates with the mountains in the background which is possibly better than the shots you’ll get on the island (although from a bit further away). The Island is quite touristy (we were not sure whether there was alot of Japanese site see-ers or whether they were of some other decent but there were plenty of Caucasians), but as with all of what we’ve seen in Japan, clean tidy and spruiking well stocked with vending machines. The Tori gates up close are extremely impressive but sadly they don’t quite point into the sunset so you can’t quite get the sunset with the gates image that seems to float around. As we were short on time we wandered through the island and visited the shrines only from the outside which was enough for us.

We attempted to locate somewhere for dinner off the island as we thought that the restaurants on the island were possibly a little too touristy and not great value for money. However as it turns out if you don’t eat on the island you’ll have trouble finding somewhere to eat until you get back to Hiroshima (don’t get us wrong, I’m sure there are plenty of places in Miyajima-Guchi but for an inexperienced traveller in Japan there certainly didn’t appear to be much that looked good). Thus after our failed dinner attempt we trained our way back and headed for Kyoto. During our stop in Shin-Osaka we did not get any sushi.

 

Arriving in Kyoto at about 8:30 we followed our hotel’s instructions and checked in at the Capsule Ryokan, which we had been a little unsure about. However the room while small literally has everything you need, including a toilet which opens up happily when you open the toilet door, it’s just like a happy robot ready to receive. Without even taking our shoes off to sit down we headed straight out to have dinner, specifically Okanomiayaki which we had sought after in Miyajima and failed at. Luckily the Ryokan host directed us to a fantastic little place called Chaban which served us Okanomiyaki from a large tepanyaki style plate in front of the small seating bench. The chef was a cool old ‘dude’ who appreciated the occasional thumbs up and made a good show of flipping things around. As the night drifted on waiters became their own chefs and prepared their dinners for the long night. We however were ready for bed.

Done and full

Japan – Day 2, Surprisingly nice in Winter

Waking up several times through the night due to a lack of familiarity with sleeping on a futon was a little bit of a nuisance but the room in Sekitei was lovely although, I could not see outside or let any fresh air in.. Sleeping on a futon was however novel, it’s like when you’re sleeping over at a friend’s house as a kid and you sleep on the floor. All those memories of fun times come straight to mind, and shifting the room around to allow you to have a sleeping area is something quite different akin to camping. Well, we liked it, maybe you won’t, but either way the rooms are fitting with paper windows and a paper sliding door to hide your shoes. Our only troubles that we experienced were that the hot water controller can get a little too talkative for my liking and you end up in a vicious circle when you press a button and it communicates with you loudly, pressing another button in response just generate more chatter. Had it not have been for my wife I may have ended up in a vicious circle where I could never stop pressing the buttons on the controller……

A word of caution however. In my travels I (Tim) normally find that places which aren’t Brisbane in Australia seem to not cause me allergies. Through my years I seem to have developed a hay fever allergy to Brisbane and when I step out of the home town everything seems to calm down. This was not the case with Japan or at least the hotel we stayed in. I suspect that the cause of my hay fever in the morning was due to the thatched flooring. I find straw and hay bales can give me trouble and sleeping on a nicely thatched hay bail for a floor is no exception. So if you do have a susceptibility to allergies from hay or straws and you do intend to sleep in a Ryokan or a more traditional hotel make sure you come armed with some antihistamines.

Departing from the hotel in the morning was a breeze and the new lady at the reception was helpful and had very good English. We couldn’t really pick much to fault with this hotel, obviously set your expectations correctly (small room, making your own bed etc.) and you’ll have a good evening. I can’t hold my allergies against them, that’s my problem and it’s just something I thought I’d put forward for others to consider. Our backpacks aren’t terribly light and lugging them around while we walked through Shinjuku would not have been a good plan. Instead we chose to put them in lockers at the train station. The large size lockers cost 600 Yen and hold two backpacks at a pinch. If you’re using the lockers behind the gates like we did, don’t forget to get your passports for Jr pass exchange before you lock up. We were concerned that there wouldn’t be any spare large lockers available outside the gates but that wasn’t the case. There’s no real trick to using them, put the correct amount of money in follow the extremely loud prompts from the machine (if it’s automated), keep your sheet of paper with your pin on it and retrieve your stuff when you need too. The coin operated lockers give you a key to keep and when you unlock it the key is then locked so you can’t accidentally take it.

Our next stop was to exchange the JR rail passes. We had chosen not to exchange at Narita airport for two reasons, firstly it is extremely busy, there was a cue about 100m long and much stamping happening, and we were in Japan for 15 days so we needed to either miss one day at the end or the beginning of our journey. Given that it was late and we’d have to wait several hours (it was already 7pm and the JR exchange closes at 8pm) we chose the buy tickets on the JR n’ex and skip the lines, this was a modest ~3000Yen / ~40AUD and we figured we’d exchange in the morning. However our experience in Shinjuku was slow even though while popular it’s not the main international airport. Therefore if doing an exchange outside of Narita still budget an hour or else you’ll be disappointed. The lots of stamping and talking still happens where ever you go (even though the attendants are amazingly fast at pressing buttons and checking each letter in your passport) so it takes quite some time for each person to get through.

We then set out to find ourselves some breakfast and then head for the holy five story camera store. Again, locating a breakfast was not as straight forward as hoped. It seems that the Japanese style breakfast isn’t immediately easy to come by, actually we have no idea what a Japanese style breakfast is, sometimes it doesn’t help not actually doing your homework. So what we did notice is that some places are open and have people in them, and others don’t. This lead us to another machine operated restaurant called Ringerhut, this may sound like Pizzahut, Wikipedia indicates that the naming origins are from the Ringer family of Nagasaki and hut possibly from Pizzahut, so you might be close but the place is anything but Pizzahut. Think of a button operated machine to select your meal, take a seat anywhere at any free stool along any bench, give the waiter/ waitress your ticket from the robot, receive a glass of green tea/ water/ cold not tasty stuff that might be tea and wait a few minutes for your meal to be handed to you on a tray. For us looking for anything that looked breakfast like, we ended up settling on dumplings, miso and rice from the robot in the front of the place, service was quick and the food was tasty. Yes you’re probably right in thinking that’s not terribly Japanese but we had settled on hungry and the simplest path to satisfaction. The net result was tasty and satisfied, can’t complain with that!

We then went off in search of a USB dock for the SIGMA 18-35mm lens which I had bought during the year, which is excellent except that it refuses to focus on anything. The USB dock is for re-calibrating the lens and correcting for front or back focusing, which until this year we had no knowledge of.  Anyhow it took a little wandering to track Yodabashi’s camera section down as Yodabashi is a massive multi-level store full of electronics and some cameras, but the camera Mecca is actually next door here (google street view link). As everyone says, if you like cameras you’ll like this place, we had to leave as if we spent more time there impulse buys would begin to happen. The only sad thing however was now that we’d bought some handy tools we wouldn’t be able to play with them until later.

 

 

 

 

As we then had a few hours to spend around Shinjuku before heading for Hiroshima we went wandering through the business district in search of the Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum. This wasn’t entirely well signed but the museum was on the 42 floor of the Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance building. Entry was 500 Yen and to our surprised the museum has an absolutely fantastic view of Shinjuku. As we entered the building we noticed a Sunflowers by Van Gogh, we had no idea that this version of the painting resided in Tokyo. The Seiji Togo exhibition was excellent and the surprise bonus of the Van Gogh and the view of Shinjuku mad that couple hours extremely worthwhile.

We then attempted to make our way to the Pentax square which according to our 2007 lonely planet guide was a good place to see some old Pentax camera gear turned out to not be there, or at least we couldn’t find it and after traipsing around for an hour in an attempt to locate it we decided to give the opportunity away. One thing we did notice in that time hunting around was that Tokyo’s business area is very clean and while a little stark beautiful in it’s own way, possibly the strangest thing is how quite the area is, aside from a little traffic noise. The attention to detail that the Japanese council goes to ensuring that their area is beautiful is quite extreme, we took a few photos of the tree beautification team in action tidying up the Autumn foliage on the Ginko trees.

That left us fairly time poor at that point and we headed for Shinjuku station then Tokyo station, then the lovely Shinkansen. The Shinkansen are fantastic trains, if only all countries of the world had a service like this, and not only a service like it but a rail pass specially for visitors. As we’d reserved our tickets all we had to do was head for the correct carriage and sit down and start playing with camera lenses, well at least one of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fast forward an hour into your journey and so long as you reserve seats on the right hand side of the Shinkansen you’ll get to see mount Fuji. Fast forward 157 minutes you’ll be at Shin-Osaka eating some sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves, fast forward 2 minutes you’ll have people looking at your strangely as you’re eating the sushi (Kakinoha) with the persimmon leaves instead of unwrapping them (no one told us….) 90 minutes later you’ll be in Hiroshima.

We then donned the backpacks and went for the short ~maybe 1 km at best walk to K’s House hostel. Yes we like hostels, they’re cheap, fun and normally tidy if you book the private doubles like we do.

Dinner was at a small yakatori place nearby, when we refer to small in Australia you’d be talking maybe a 20 or 30 person restaurant. In Japan you might be talking 7 people (in an L-shaped table around a few grills) plus your chef who stands in front of you preparing ingredients and dishing out the cooked yakatori as soon as it’s off the grill. We thought that this was just great. Luckily/ strangely (maybe it’s normal) we seem for the last few places to end up in restaurants which have no foreigners, this is re-assuring as often when you travel it’s fairly clear that only foreigners go to where you’re currently eating. This might be something unique to Japan that the locals actually go to the same places that hostels/ hotels/ accommodation suggest to the foreigners. After a handful of beers, highballs and yakatori we headed back to the hostel for a cup of tea and then bed, this turned into a handful more beers, discussion about refugees and a long night….

 

What a day

 

 

Japan – Day 1 – Let the fun begin

For the first day of the trip it was an early start. We got up at 5:30, took a shower, put the last unpacked things in our bags, prepared the unit for departure and headed off to the airport. Surprisingly, everything went as per plan, even though last night we had had a pretty big day/ night out with friends.

Brisbane International Airport has not changed since the last time we were there. Still a bit confused about the use of check-in machines. Why would you use them to just get boarding passes if you have to go to the baggage drop off counter anyway? After a lovely Red Rooster breakfast with our parents who were very kind to take us to the airport we went off to boarding.

The flight was ok, apart from the fact that our seats were at the back of the plane (at least not near the lavatories). There were also a couple of little children who tried to entertain people around them but, thanks to noise cancelling headphones, it didn’t bother us too much. Once again, we came to a conclusion that long day flights within the same time zone are the worst. What a waste of time. We came up with a solution – watch all the movies that you wouldn’t pay money to watch outside of the airplane or wouldn’t watch together. In between the movies we looked out of the window, it was a clear day so we saw some pretty looking places. Papua New Guinea (presuming that’s what it was) looks amazing from the air!

Arrival in Tokyo was painless. We were almost the last ones to leave the plane which meant that by the time we got to passport control there was no queue. This time Lena wasn’t drilled at passport control and customs areas, which was quite nice for a change. The Japanese are probably better sign posters than Australians and as a result airport is pretty easy to navigate around, just look up.

 

As we briefly mentioned in our planning post we booked our JR Passes in advance which meant we needed to exchange them to real ones. When we found the right exchange office we were unpleasantly surprised with a massive queue of people. We would’ve spent about an hour there for sure, if not more. There is one thing that is worth mentioning with regards to the JR passes. A pass is valid for exactly the number of whole days that you booked it for and validity period starts when you do the exchange. Our passes were booked for 14 days and when we were actually in Japan for 15 days (even though arriving at night on the first day and leaving in the morning on the last). So had we chosen to stay in the queue and get our passes exchanged on the 14th, we would not have been able to use them on the 28th (the day we leave). After a quick check on the next available train which was suitable, the decision was made to pay cash and catch Narita Express to Shinjuku (the closest station to our hotel) and another local train to the hotel and exchange the JR passes the next day.

 

 

Luckily for us there was a helper near the tickets vending machine who helped us to acquire correct tickets and pointed to where we had to go. He gave us two options, the ‘challenge’ or ‘normal’. The ‘challenge’ option was to catch a train departing in two minutes, or the ‘normal’ option was to wait an hour. This doesn’t seem like much of a challenge unless you don’t know how big the train station is or which platform the train was on which was our case. Such as it was, we had been sitting for some time and this was meant to be a fun holiday the ‘challenge’ was accepted. So that was fun! Don’t remember when we had to run with two heavy backpacks on last. At least we made it and spent the next 80 minutes enjoying the ride and “views” out of the window. Actually, it felt a bit surreal. Lost in Translation was now to begin, whether you think of the Chinese book, or the movie which is completely different.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Change over to Shin Okubo from Shinjuku station was painless as well. We had decided, or at least the more forgetful of the two of us, that we should dump all extra weight off as quickly as possible this included: leaving the e-reader on the plane, leaving the camera bag on the train much to the disgust of an Argentinian soccer fan that Japan seemed to be teeming with. Luckily this was a failed plan and we managed to fail so well that nothing was lost. In Kazakhstan it’s good practise to sit down for a minute before you leave so to avoid forgetting anything. The Western half might eventually become as wise.

Shin Okubo Sekitei Hotel where we are staying for the night was not too difficult to find. It is situated in a dark alley which was a little unnerving for those who are not Japanofiles, but the sigh for it was spotted and Google (10^10^100) maps with a bit of roaming data triumphed.

Our eConnect card turned up at the hotel as expected but we’d recommend if flying out of Brisbane to pickup the cards from the airport as there is plenty of time from the flight arriving at six, and, you’ll feel more comfortable with a GPS in your hands when navigating to a tucked away hotel (instead of paying for roaming fees). In our case we used a bit of roaming data which, at a dollar a MB will probably hurt later when we see the bill. Vodafone it seems does not have a data plan for Japan… I wonder why considering they did have one for Zambia??

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a tour of the room and a refreshing cup of tea we decided to set off for a walk and look for some food in Shinjuku area. Went back to the local Shin Okubo Station and caught a train in. It’s only one stop away, technically, but we were not keen on walking, since we were a bit tired after a long flight.

We did, however ended up with quite a good walk around Shinjuku, first to find an ATM and then to find some food to eat. This was largely thanks to Maps.me which was an extremely handy online and offline maps application, Google (10^10^100) certainly does 99% of the job but if it wasn’t for Maps.me we wouldn’t have located the 7-11 and therefore we would’ve starved. Restaurants were tricky to work out on the first night when late, we ended up using a coin operated restaurant (Kamukura Soup with noodles) which had fantastic food as it turned out and we happened to be in the red light district so watching a bit of the local behaviour was fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the way back we happened across a wedding photographer with groom and bride posing amongst the masses.

Evening settling into the hotel was a bit daunting but in reality it was simple as, futons were in the cupboard and shifting the table out to the other room was no trouble. Our only issue was that Tim is allergy prone and the straw floors made him a bit sensitive. This might be a consideration for other travellers in similar circumstances. They also have one of those cool toilets with a heated seat and buttons with some additional functions, having it in your own private room on the first night is quite handy, you can learn all the tricks and not make a fool of yourself when you are forced to use one somewhere in public toilets.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, that’s pretty much it for Day 1 in Japan. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Stay tuned, or if not tuned, please adjust 🙂

 

The Plan for Japan

Well, speaking of planning holidays. We just made it back from Zambia and had decided it’d be great to have a couple of beers with some of our friends from Brisbane who we hadn’t seen for a while. It was an exciting time, going out and purchasing something other than Mosi or Simba, the ability to buy wine which wasn’t topped up with a bit of grape juice by the lovely Shoprite staff, choice of a couple or restaurants, goodness, madness. Well anyhow’s 20 minutes after our friends met at our place and after we had absorbed the alcohol out of one or two of my beers, one of the friends announced that he was going to Japan skiing. We’ve been waiting for years for someone to mention skiing in Japan so we can seize the opportunity and invite ourselves. Unfortunately for him and his partner that left them doing only the nicest thing but calling our bluff by suggesting it would be great if we joined them. Typically drunk conversations like this are forgotten the next day, however this time we were serious and flights were booked, much to the surprise of even Lena.

Booking the flights was no drama so we checked prices and availability and then the real drama began, the accommodation. Maybe because we’ve travelled in many cheap places which have plenty of available hotels/ hostels/ somethings we don’t expect to find ourselves anything but spoilt for choice. This however was not the case for Nozawa Onsen, this place was booked out months ahead. It must be because it’s a special little place that only the snazzy people in the skiing niche know about. Refreshing Expedia didn’t yield much benefit and the only places left were some average looking Ryokans which both Lena and I had no idea about except that they looked small. A Ryokan (inn) for those who don’t know (which includes us) is a traditional Japanese style accommodation for travellers. This sounds quite nice really except when you get to the part about communal showers. This is just something that I haven’t quite grown up enough to accept, maybe it’s being Australian, maybe it’s being a simpleton, maybe I don’t care what it is because it just seems a bit strange. So that left us with a few hard choices, cheap, questionable accommodation or remaining in Australia for yet again another missed chance to go skiing in Japan. Thankfully however my friend came to the party, while a little surprised that the drunken conversation wasn’t just that, he stepped up and called the hotel he was staying at in Nozawa Onsen, as he, being a Japanite understood that the hotel would respond far better that calling would yield better results than responding to emails/ online requests. Amazingly enough, after a call they rummaged up a spare room in two halves (so we’d have to change during our stay) and we were saved from the more cultural experience (I’m sure it’s healthy and good for you on a psychological level).

Flights to my surprise were cheapest through QANTAS, this was probably because we were going to break our trip into several segments Brisbane to Tokyo (Narita), Tokyo (Haneda) to Hong Kong (while not with QANTAS or covered in this section then Hong Kong to Almaty in Kazakhstan) then Hong Kong to Brisbane. Apparently this is three segment leg operated at some relatively high discount by QANTAS. So if you’re keen to see those three spots then it might be worthwhile having a look. However there is a catch which we found out – you can’t change a flight yourself in the QANTAS club/ frequent flier site unlike other return flights, this caused a little concern when we decided to extend our holiday a bit to make the most of being in Japan.

Our conclusion for our travel was that we would take roughly 5 days before skiing to spend some time in Tokyo (which we would return to after skiing), Hiroshima and Kyoto (possibly also Osaka, but as I’m writing this on the Shinkensen which is awesome  we have not quite decided yet). This is definitely quick, it would be nice to spend more time here but the reality is it’s not cheap as we paid through the nose for the Nozawa Onsen hotel, rail passes from JTB travel and a prepaid data sim from eConnect 3GB which we thought was enough data for two weeks. This meant that without even moving far we’d already set the holiday costs at about $3500AUD.

We decided against leaving bookings open on this trip and finding our way when we arrived. I always get the feeling that big places have a bigger opportunity of stepping into the wrong place when you don’t have a booking. Maybe next time….

We booked in Shinjuku at Shin Okubo Sekitei for the first night in Tokyo as we decided that trying to zip straight to Hiroshima on our first evening after a long flight might’ve been a bit ambitious. While the connections exist there is also not much margin for error. The QANTAS flights arrive at 18:00 at Narita, you would need to go straight to the JR exchange and get your real JR passes, then, with passes in hand you would need to organise and catch the next possible bullet train and prepare for a 5+ hour journey. When we did arrive at Tokyo Narita airport there was huge line at the JR exchange office and this would’ve taken at least an hour to clear (if not many hours), to get from the airport straight to you destination on the first night would need to be well organised. Unless you’re after an overnight slower train or something then going straight from Tokyo Narita airport to Hiroshima would be optimistic at best.

Our next destination was Hiroshima, K’s House for one night. This is a hostel, and we’re fans of booking private rooms in hostels. People are friendly there and you are pretty much guaranteed to bump into other travellers who might give you some ideas and inspiration. We only have a day in the city, but we both really wanted to do a little war tourism and we figured the Shinkensens could get us around quickly enough to make it alright.

Kyoto was next, and after much deliberation we decided to stay at the Capsule Ryokan for four nights. Ryokan you say, didn’t we just say we were cagey about them, you’re right but apparently this one has private toilets and bathrooms and it’s nice. We shall soon see….

Address at Nozawa Onsen for six nights. This was skiing and pre-ordained by friends who know much more than we do about Japan.

Mystays at Asakusa-bashi also pre-ordained by better people, but I’m sure we’d probably pick it if we were in the mood for some electricery at Akihabara.

That said, planning done.

We’ll cover the other tricky details for getting a VISA to Kazakhstan and hotel / ski accommodation booking in the Kazakhstan category.