日本を発見する
24th October 2023 to 6th November 2023
Travelling from London to Tokyo! - 24th October 2023
Tokyo - 25th October 2023
We’ve landed!
First ever walkabout in Tokyo!
We met our guide for the next three days today: Mayumi! She came to pick us up at the sushi bar we were having a quick lunch in, and off we went. It felt like we didn't do much, but we walked a long way. We saw the outer gardens of the Imperial Palace and worked through a little history on the Shoguns and Samurais. Bertie pulled a blonde lady that was interested in finding out its model and where she might get a hold of something similar. The real adventure of the day was to find a Metro stop with a lift. And we rode the Metro. Just like in London but amazigly clean and graffiti free. We made our way to our very first shrine set in a forest in the middle of Tokyo: the Meiji Shrine. To get to the main attraction we walked through three Torii gates, our very first experience of those too. In exiting the park we were offered the opportunity to visit the Harajuku district. The Takeshita-dori is the centre of kawaii fashion (young people stuff) and Omotesando is lined with beuatiful modern buildings designed by world famous architects. We chose not to: we are old and shopping was not on out list of to do things. We did see, just across the road, a Cat Cafè. That was a first too. Animal Cafès are quite a popular thing here in Japan. There are dog ones, guinea pigs ones, hedgehogs ones and many more. So we went in. You book how much time you want to stay, take off your shoes, put your stuf in a locker and off you go to play with the cats. Our very last visit of the day was to the busiest pedestrian crossing in Tokyo: the Shibuya crossing. If you've ever been to Shanghai it's not that amazing, but if you haven't, it's worth a look. And that was it for the day. We took a taxi back and settled into our new room, our home for the next 3 nights, and caught up with work again (18.00 here is 10.00 in Europe and unfortunately it works well if you make yourself availble for work!). Dinner was at an upmarket sushi place: Kiubey. We did have a lovely dinner and tried quite a few new things but getting to our seats was more like a treasure hunt that it needed to be. We turned up at the address, we were taken to a different building just down the road to a floor with 4 chairs lined up in front of the lift and a little museum of the sushi chefs in the room next to us. We waited there a while and then someone else came to get us and took us to another floor where we finally sat down at the counter. Our chef was pretty cool and spoke ok english and a few words of Italian. Eventually Roberta did the 'attacca bottoni' with the couple next to us. But it was only a matter of time... By the time we got back I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. And so, finally, I got to sleep!
Tokyo - 26th October 2023
Asakusa and the Tsukiji market
Nikko - 27th October 2023
Life keeps you on your toes...
Awesome!
Mount Fuji - 28th October 2023
Well…non tutte le ciambelle escono col buco!
Today we had our first reasonably important hiccup. I got up early to pick up the rental car at Tokyo station. And yes, I had decided we would actually drive for the next three days. I got to the station and I run into a Japanese lady who took the time to help me look for the Toyota rental company and actually walked me around for about 20 minutes until we found the place. Once it opened, I presented my documents, but I had made a mistake...and there is no flexibility or knack for problem solving in Japan. I had had an International licence issued by Monaco (that was the requirement for driving in Japan) BUT had not checked the date of the reference to the law on it, and Japan only accepts International permits that mention the 1949 Geneva Convention. My more up to date 1968 reference law was absolutely useless. They spent 20 minutes repeating that I needed to have my licence translated in Japanese by JAL, ove and over, but they had no idea if there was a fast way of doing it. Of course, I walked away without a car. Which opened up a series of issues as I had booked things for the next three days on the presumption of having a car. I made my way back to the hotel and booked a car and driver for the first leg today as there was no real other way of getting to the lake area for the Mount Fuji experience. I also had presumed that it would be a 1 and a half hour drive, but on a Saturday it becomes nearly 4 hours, as traffic jams up completely around Tokyo. We sat in a 60km queue for a very long time moving forward at walking pace most of the time. However, we were lucky enough to be sitting in a brand new BMW i7 with a cinema screen. So, yes it will be a little more complex to get around, but I didn't sit in traffic driving myself for 4 hours. Instead, we slept and watched movies in a very comfortable car! We got to Kawaguchiko at around 2pm. The hotel sits above the lake with an amazing view of Mount Fuji (a very iconic mountain for Japan). The room, this time around, is nothing to write home about, and so we didn't hang around but went for a walk down to the lake straight away. There was a festival on (very similar to a Festa dell'Unità I would say). We ate street food from the local vendors and watched some of the performances before making our way down to the water. What is abundantly clear is that, given it's more remote position, this seems to be more of a Japanese holiday spot. Our hotel doesn't seem to have any westeners and we didn't see very many when walking around. That's not at all a bad thing, as it feels a little more authentic than expected.

Takayama - 29th October 2023

The long way around…

Takayama!
Takayama and Shirakawa - 30th October 2023
Yoko and fermented food...
Shirakawa
Kanazawa - 31st October 2023
Geishas, Samurais and gold leaf
Kyoto - 1st November 2023

Relax, relax and relax

Dinner
Kyoto - 2nd November 2023

Orange is the new black

Golden moments
We took a bus to go to the Kinkakuji Temple, better known as the Golden Pavilion. What a sight. A specialised artisan checks every night the state of the gold and makes any adjustments. It is covered by the many little squares of gold leaf we saw being produced in Kanazawa (not sure they would be from there though). Definitely worth a visit if you are ever down this way. Our penultimate stop was the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. This is just a beautifully peaceful place, were it not for the thousands of people walking every path! We left the chaos behind, but I beli I must have created confusion with Shogo (our guide). I seem to have forgotten to introduce him. He’s a very softly spoken man (in fact a grandfather to four grandchildren). He’s been the most prepared guide so far (he’s our last one) as he has prepared material with even a time sheet for our schedule and another one showing how what we are seeing interacts in the various periods of Japan’s history. Still, it transpired that I managed to confuse him. The one issue with all the guides we have had is that their english is on average pretty good, but sometimes you need to repeat things two or three times to be sure they have understood. He had proposed going to a market and then back to the hotel, but I spent 20 minutes explaining that as we had decided to take a day off from sightseeing the day before, we hadn’t had a chance to see Gion (the Geisha district). And, that after that my plan was to go and have dinner in Pontocho alley (a narrow street full of restaurants and bars) and one of the most atmospheric street in all of Kyoto. When we got to Gion, he turned around and went towards Pontocho. I believe he even added: ah of course you have seen Gion! Another 10 minutes of explaining and FINALLY, off we went to one of the main streets in that area. He had explained about Maikos and Geikos (the former are Geishas in training and the latter have experience). Unfortunately Roberta had not been listening. So after he had taken us to one of the houses were some Maikos were being trained (you only know that because you see a little block of wood outside with some Japanese writing on it (I presume their names), Roberta turned round to me (I am still laughing as I wrote it) and asked: who is this Michael? Just hilarious… as Geishas live their homes at around 5.30/6pm to do their work, sometimes you are lucky enough to run across them. We let Shogo go home for the night (he looked a little perplexed still at my idea of us finding our way to Ponchoko and then take a taxi home) and waited around. Sure enough I caught a glimpse of one and turned Bertie around and run to catch up with her. It was a little bit like an american film police chase as we came across a group and going through with Bertie was not easy. We saw her go into a garden and then a house, but I was a little too slow with my camera. However, two minutes later, another Geisha went in the same door and I managed to take a photo although only from behind as we only saw her at the last minute. So, all in all, quite a successful trip to Gion! Tired but a little hungry we moved on to Ponchoko alley. And you know what? As we were searching for sushi, Roberta saw another one! As for teh alley itself, it would have been easier to search for a place that had kobe beef! To find sa simple nigiri place was quite an effort. But with google’s help (we had failed on our own), we found Sushi Tetsu. There was a queue. You needed to write your name on a piece o& paper at the entrance and then as tables opened up, the waiter would come out and get you in the strict order with which the names were written down. We waited a good half hour or so, maybe a little longer, and whilst waiting we realised why there was such demand for this place. It was very very cheap! In fact it was a place for young people, possibly students. We had no strength to look for somewhere else so ended up having the worst meal of the trip so far. The quality of the fish was poor to say the least. The salmon was actually chewy! We ate a little and left. A taxi and voilà: back at the hotel. Till tomorrow folks…goodnight!
Nara and Osaka - 3rd November 2023
Osaka
Nara and the Bambis...
Nara deserved more time and a less crowded day for us to have a real opinion on the place, but it is what it is. We had an afternoon. And Bertie was about to give up on us battery wise. This meant that we did see the giant Buddah (the biggest in Japan standing at about 15 metres) at the Todaiji temple, and that we were forced in taking a picture with two of the ugliest fake Geishas we've see so far. I believe Shogo may have believed that we wanted a photo with local constumes. As we walked around the park on our way to the Kasuga shrine, we were surrounded by deer. When I had read about Nara, I had been left under the impression that we would see deer roaming around happily jumping around in the park. The reality was a bit sad: because of the tourists feeding the deer, they seem to have become like pets hanging around waiting to be fed. Halfway to Kasuga Bertie's batteries gave up on us. So it all became very hard work, especially because we had to go uphill and it was a pretty warm day. At the torii gate we left Roberta to have a drink and I went ahead to visit the shrine with the guide. As it turned out, it would have been unthinkable for Bertie and Roberta to even attempt to visit the place. Zero wheelchair access. It was all about stairs. The shrine was built for family use so it wasn't particularly big. It did have a lot (and I mean a lot) of lamps. Both in stone walking up to it, than in metal (gold and bronze) inside the complex. Very pretty. And that was really it for Nara. We caught a bus back to the JR station and caught a train (although I should really say two trains) back to Kyoto. Shogo seemed a little bit lost in the afternoon in the stations, and it was not different for the return journey. He seemed to have long conversations with the station staff as to what train to take. Back in Kyoto's station we said our goodbyes to the old chap (he's actually 71 and before retiring he spent 40 years as a teacher), and had a quick look around the shopping centre and eventually made our way to a sushi restaurant on the top floor to grab some dinner before going back to the hotel. We had to wait in an orderly queue but this time it wasn't too bad. And the sushi was toooooooop! So this is it for Kyoto. Off to bed. We leave in the morning for Hiroshima with one of the many bullet trains: the Nozomi.
Hiroshima - 4th November 2023

Nozomi fun

Ring the bell for peace

Dinner time
Miyajima island - 5th November 2023

The floating Torii
