Tourists and Food, Tourists and Food

I’m up at 6.30am. It’s a curse. I want to sleep until midday.

So, I guess it is time to check Facebook and post photos. Australia is an hour ahead, I think.

Then it is hours later and it has got light outside without me noticing and Sam is up and telling me it is time to do, do, do. Off to see Japan. Don’t waste the time, I think, because I will never be coming back here.

8.30am. I’m in the shower, as the hunt for breakfast begins. I’m for eating straight up, but Sam can put it off and eat later. It is a source of conflict, as you may well understand.

We’re going to ride our bikes to the Golden Shrine again today and try to catch it when it is open. It is hot as we step out our front door, and we both take it in turns to head back inside and change into shorts before we leave.

9.15am. We headed off up the main road towards the Golden Shrine. Passed all the usual takeaway food shops offering breakfast. Then I spotted something on the other side of the road.

"Sweetie, sweetie, is that a p, p, pannery? Sweetie. Sweetie, stop stop."

A french’ish bakery right there, not far from home. How could I have not sniffed this out before now?

We got a fish roll and a chicken sandwich, and a burger, and an egg pie and a second egg pie, not quite the same as the first, all half the price of what we have been paying for breakfast in a restaurant/café. We found a small park not far away in which to eat them. Lovely.

A man came into the park with his young daughter, about 5, or 6 years old, and they appeared to be having a very intelligent conversation between the two of them as they entered the playground. That’s the type of kid you want, I think.

After we were done, I headed over to the pissoir, a small nondescript cream coloured building in one corner to have a leak, which was, practically open to the street on one side. As I urinated, I watched grandma come out of her house, lock the door and head off up one of the streets, all the time I was sure I was visible to her.

We looked at some of the signs on the wall. Sam has an app on his phone that he points at Japanese writing, through the camera function, and it changes the language to English.

As we were looking at the signs, a sixty something, possibly older, I don’t know exactly, man rode up to the bog and he made it quite clear he was looking for some men to play with in the bog. We rode off, and I thanked the universe I wasn’t him. Then I wondered what grandma may have got to see?

10am. We’re at the Golden Temple. We followed the heard. 400 yen thanks. A short walk and then there is was glinting in all its gold beauty in the sunshine. The gardens were quite lovely, dare I say spectacular, somehow appearing in a state of peace and tranquillity all of their own.

There were a million tourist taking photos of it, as you would understand.

We headed out to get our bikes, and I stomped off across a crossing where the red man was showing, not a car in sight though. The old bloke directing the proceedings – they seem to give old retired pensioners menial things to do to keep them busy – shit his pants at my wickedness, but I was taking no notice of such nonsense. I’m sorry old man that you have retired without an interest in the world and now the state has patronisingly given you a job of no basic worth, but please don’t waste my time, I am an adult and I can manage to get myself across a street without dying thanks very much.

He stopped Sam though.

We ride from the Golden Temple to the Ryoanji Temple, apparently, not all that far away. I discover Satan’s house on the way. A house with a white Mercedes out the front with 666 number plates.

The bike riding through the streets of Kyoto, seeing the Kyoto world up close and personal and even getting lost, is quite possibly more fun than the temples/tourist attractions themselves. Is more fun. People wreck the tourist attractions, in plague proportions the people are.

11.15am. We get to the Ryoanji Temple. 500 yen thanks.

We arrive with a tour group, and while I’m Silently incanting and wishing to them all dead, okay not so silently, Sam declares that he has to send me to Zen School. “It is an emergency situation,” says Sam. “All this negativity…”

“Ha ha,” I scoff.

“It is my ears that bleed, not theirs.”

The Ryoanji Temple, it is not easy to achieve a state of zen with a bus load of Russian tourists yapping on in your ear.

The Svetlanas never shut the fuck up, oblivious to anyone else present. Loud and talking over everyone else so it was only them who could be heard as we all sat and contemplated the 500 year old zen garden. Get back on your bus and bugger off back to the transcaucasian states, is all I could think. Intolerant? Well, of boorish behaviour, maybe I'm guilty. It was a zen garden for the universe’s sake, we didn't need to hear them laughing at some mother state humour, or whatever the fuck they were blithering on about.

Then there is an earnest American talking constantly to his interpreter about varying states of the Buddhist religion.

We get it, we get it, you have read up on eastern religions.

And, of course, there are always the rude Chinese. Terrible thing to say, but they just don’t have any courtesy for anyone else. I’m guessing it is because there are so many of them back home and they have to speak up to be heard over the masses. Different lives. It is all very interesting. And I am allowed to whinge if I like.

“Complainer,” says Sam.

The day is gorgeous, a lovely day to ride our bikes.

We come to the old train depot we saw last night, we see the old purple train go into the depot. We want to check it out some more, but we are hungry and it is time for lunch.

12.20pm. We’re eating Kazaguruma ramen for lunch. Sam ordered a mountain of food. Sam ordered 2 large bowls of ramen and dried chicken with rise. We were both really full by the time we’d finished it.

The guy running it was adorable, dimples and all. Sam calls me an old perve, even if I catch him gazing at the cute guy.

Randen is what the old train is called. It seems to be a historical train with its own short train route, it takes in historical sights. We want to go on it, enjoy the antiquity of it, but we can’t find anywhere to park our bikes. There are plenty of bike parks nearby, but they are all connected to the large shopping centre next door. We can’t find any other parking, so reluctantly we leave for home, waving the old train line behind.

There are more back streets we wend our way through. There is a quaint old bridge which seems to be made out of stone and a river which seems to have many people using it for recreation.

We head to the Kyoto Gyoen, the big park that houses the Emperor's Palace. (Do parks house?) The palace is open so we park our bikes in the nearest bike park and go in for a look. It is huge, (I know we have all heard that before, but in this case, it is true) and the grounds are lovely. We walk the sign posted route through the grounds with everybody else. It hasn’t, actually, been the emperor’s palace since 1870, or thereabouts, when the capital was moved to Tokyo

After we have finished viewing the palace, we ride our bikes through the park, there are no uptight whingey mother’s, with snatches like a tight fists here, hysterical about a bike coming within 100 metres of their precious Tarquins or Maddisons, here, so sensibly one can ride through a park. My usual spot on sense of direction deserts me and we ended up riding to the exact diagonal corner to which we were headed. Rats. Google maps to the rescue.

3.12pm. We’re drinking coffee at the kiosk style coffee shop on the corner of the big intersection next to McDonalds, across the road from the Kyoto Gyoen and on the other corner to the place where we’ve eaten breakfast a few times. They have an espresso machine, which is what you have to look out for, otherwise it is going to be pour over coffee, America’s crime against humanity.

A double shot macchiato, double shot latte. Then home.

5pm. The rain started. Then we’re home and the rain is falling nonstop. What are travelling boys to do? Hop into bed with a good book and read until we fall asleep. Sounds good to me. An afternoon snooze is always a good idea.

The tourisms’ been done, what is there left to do? The trip to Gion tonight is now definitely out of the question with Sam's pathological fear of his hair frizzing in inclement weather.

7.22pm. We head to the market to eat pancakes. Straight down our street to the city. We were going to walk, then decided to ride our bikes as it would be quicker, so we got our bikes out, but then it began to rain again, so we put the bikes back, got the clear umbrellas and walked, as the rain spat lightly, into the night. Kyoto, warm night, rain sprinkling down gently, the long streets, the golden glow of house lights dotted along the way, lovely.

8pm. In town at the pancake place, just near the market. There are cabbage savoury pancakes, Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き o-konomi-yaki) ( listen (help. · info)) is a Japanese savoury pancake containing a variety of ingredients. The name is derived from the word okonomi, meaning "how you like" or "what you like", and yaki meaning "cooked" (usually fried).

We order two, one with meat and one with seafood. There are hotplates in the middle of all the tables which the pretty waitress switches on as soon as she has taken the order. The meat pancake will be ready sooner than the seafood pancake. “Did we want them both bought out together?”

“No, just as they come,” we say.

We didn’t catch any trains again today, only the 2nd time we’ve had a day of no trains since we’ve been here. Japanese cities are so train intensive, with their efficient metros systems, it is interesting to not when we don’t use them.

The Okonomiyaki are great. There is nothing quite like them, and I would suggest you must try them when in Japan.

We walk home with full tummies.

Big Orange Sticks

Big orange sticks lake

--> Shimagoryo Shrine 

Doors, sweetie, lovely doors.

Kyoto House

Kyoto House

Kyoto House

Antique Toyota, circe 1971, the oldest car I saw in japan

Take me home

Another Tourist Attraction, Tick

I woke up at 5am. I needed a piss. I wanted to go back to sleep, but I didn’t. I got up at 5.45am

My acceptance to awesome bulldogs was accepted and I read their Facebook page, but a lot of it seemed to be about their bulldogs dying and it made me cry. And then I felt sleepy and I went back to bed at 6.30am.

Sam woke me up and he was surprised that it was 11am. Neither of us have slept in that late, well, ever really.

“It’s 11am?”

“Really? 11am?”

Into the plastic shower module, which I quite like really. It doesn’t matter where you stand, all the water just drains away. There is a drain all the way around the base of the plastic room.

It’s warm in there, but it is cold getting out though but, you know, I wonder if feeling different temperatures is, actually, good for you? Rather than being cossetted in the same benign temperature all your life, have your senses feel different things. I don’t know, just something I think in the shower. I think it is.

We got dressed and headed out for food. We’re off to see the big, orange sticks today. A couple of stops from Kyoto station.

The sun is shining. The sky is blue. Sam ate beef and eel and salad, I ate pork and rice and silken tofu and miso soup. We eat on the corner of the big intersection, a block from our place.

Sitting at breakfast I saw a silver XK8, a blue Rolls Royce Phantom and a blue Peugeot 208GTI all heading across the intersection in a relatively short time frame.



We head to Kyoto Station, changing trains to go to Inari Station to go see the big temple with all the orange sticks.

We drink coffee at Kyoto Station. Got to get a decent coffee in when the chance presents itself, before we venture out.

Sam goes to the toilet at Kyoto Station before we catch the train, and he tells me to look in the shops, so I buy chiffon cake. What else is there to do?

We caught the train to an above ground station, which is almost village-like. There are, of course, many, many people there heading to the same place we are. It is only a few short steps from the station, up a wending path. The sign at the gate says not outside food, but I think that is just to make you buy food inside the temple. No Buddhist objection, just a capitalist one.

We ate the chiffon cake at the gate of the temple before we head in, even if there was no one there policing it, I don’t think, and people were eating from the stalls inside.

1.30pm. We’re watching a Buddhist christening, possibly, at the big shrine as soon as one walks in. A bit weird having a christening as all the tourists watch, but whatever. We were standing at the side and suddenly it was even stranger when we were surrounded by a bunch of Italian noonas who were all prattling away in Italian.

Shake of the head? Where are we?

We walked the entire orange stick track, up the hill to the top. Correction, we nearly got to the top of the orange stick thingy, the last stop before the top, but I wanted ice cream to go that last little bit (it was hot) and he who is a mean bean said no and so we headed down again.

The big orange sticks are amazing really. The path wound its way through them all like giant crochet hoops.

There were lots of shrines along the way. The fox was the messenger of buddha, I guess, (I read something about it, but I can’t really remember the details) so there were lots of fox images. There was a gorgeous lake, as pretty as a picture, a gorgeous lake picture.

It was hot. There were lots of people. It was all up hill and then back down. Lots of forest. The grounds were really quite nice.

Sam wanted to buy a selection of 3 foxes that would have cost $65. They were on sale for people to leave as offerings to the gods, some of the shrines had many of them.

As we walked down through the stalls at the front of the shrine looking for singular foxes that were cheaper. We didn’t find one.

We walked through the little village-like area which was bulging with shops and souvenir stalls.

There was an intersection in which I took a 360 video (do we still call them video?) of all the people.

We walked to the other train station across the town, which is really just another part of Kyoto, which had a direct train to a metro station near our place, which would be just a short walk away from home.

4pm. We got off at Jingu-Marutamachi train station and started to walk home. It was a bit of a walk, but nice.

We crossed the river, The Kamo River, Kamo-gawa, duck river, it is the first time we see it. There seemed to be groups doing sporting things. Maybe school kids practising martial arts, Taiichi, exercise on the banks of the river. I immediately think of China, or Vietnam, or even North Korea and their adherence to communist party dictates on exercise. I wonder if it is the same thing?

We stopped at the supermarket, Fresco, and bought juice and tomatoes and a cucumber. Sam is made on tomatoes and cucumber.

“We’re not getting enough greens,” he says.

I question if tomato’s, or cucumbers are classified as greens.

“What colour are cucumbers?” he asks.

“You know what I mean.”

Japan is big ginger, tiny snow peas. Their citrus never seem that fresh. Everything is individually wrapped in plastic. The anti packaging message seems to have miss them altogether.

We stopped at the Shimagoryo Shrine which is in our neighbourhood. So many shrines in so many neighbourhoods. Not far from our place.

We walked through old Kyoto, I am assuming, where the houses seemed a lot more traditional, which seems to be our part of Kyoto, so that seems convenient. Small houses made of wood fronting right onto the street.

Kyoto is so beautiful, they said. You will love Kyoto, they said. Kyoto is the historic part of Japan, they said.

When I hear historic, I think Europe kind of historic. I guess it just isn’t the same thing?

5pm. We get home, get changed, get our bikes and ride to the Golden Pavilion. (Have to cross those tourist attractions off) Since 1397, so I am guessing that is old. The streets of Kyoto are so bike friendly. But the sign said closed, and the man said, "No, no, no, no shrine for you," to the boy tourist of the Italian couple, who’d walked up the long drive way to investigate. They laughed about it.

So, we rode our bikes home again.

6.30pm. We stopped at a skewer place and eat grilled meat for diner. We ate skewers of beef and chicken and liver and offal and we drank beer and green tea, because the nice smiley waitress said they required us to buy a drink, and although she was smiling we could tell she meant it. The food was good. The offal was tough and indeterminate as to what part of the animal it was.

We rode home, it is getting dark. We stop at two street shops and buy sweeties at both. Open right onto the street, we didn’t even have to get off our bikes. Some skewered sweeties at one, and a chocolate bun and a custard bun at the other.

7.24pm. We’re in a supermarket, again. One we just happened to ride passed. We parked our bikes in the bike park out the front.

“I need rice, I need rice, I’ll die without rice,” says Sam. We bought fruit and white bait and some veggies. He wanted those rice triangle things of which he has become so fond.

It was now dark.

We stopped at the pet shop, which had a wall of kittens and puppies, in clear Perspex boxes. Bengal, Ragdoll, English Short Hair Blue, cats. Yorkshire Terrier, Shiba Inu, and a bunch of oodles, oh, and some white hairy thing you just know was going to grow up to be fluffy and yappy dogs. There was a French Bulldog, so naturally we gravitated to it. We were going ask if he could be taken out so we could play with him, as there were two young Japanese girls playing with the white fluffy thing, but it had got dark by that stage and we still had to ride the rest of the way home, so I wished the Frenchie a happy life and off we toddled home.

8pm. And we are home. Back in our small, paper house, with low ceilings and sliding doors and no windows.

At the food market, Kyoto. I think those skewered fish were alive moments before, they had a tank of them swimming around, and they could see what was going to happen.

Bikes, Kyoto. There are bike parks every where, like our city car parks. This one is on ground level and I just liked the symmetry of the tyres, but they have under ground bike parks for bikes just like we have for cars. First 3 hours free parking, after that you have to pay to get your bike out.

Girl's in traditional dress, Kyoto. We're ten stories up. There is this huge building they have built right in the middle of Kyoto, over the train station, which is pretty amazing. I took photos of it but they just didn't do it justice.

It's a tower, sweetie. A tower. Kyoto. The sun shone, the sky was blue. Lovely weather in Kyoto. The tower is right next to the big train station building, from where I took this.

Eyes, Kyoto. It was some sort of exhibition

Getting the band back together

A Little Shopping, a Lot of Pissing About

I’m up at 7.15am.

This place, our funny little house, is cold in the mornings. It opens onto its own internal court yard, behind another house, which it is separated from by a high wooden fence. It is a rabbit warren of housing, to be sure. The neighbours tower above us on the boundary on a few sides, with balconies on the perimeter, although we never see anyone else, or hear anyone else, for that matter.

I’m glad I bought my tracksuit pants with me, even if I haven’t worn them up until now. This morning I did. An essential item is the track suit pant. Sam questions why we can’t be light travellers, like he sees others are? I thought we were being fairly restrained on this trip. Who cares anyway, got a suitcase, fill it. We didn't even do that. We both bought half full suitcases.

We ride from our place into town. No helmets, nobody wears helmets in Japan. The ride is easy, the terrain is flat. Our street heads straight into town, a straight line unbroken. There are no footpaths, just a line painted on the road delineating where pedestrians should walk. The smaller side streets seem to be predominantly one way, I think. (not really sure, to tell you the truth) Bike riders seem to be able to ride in either direction, on either side of the road for that matter, without anyone getting upset about it. We have no idea what the road rules are, we just give way to everyone.

10.15am. We find the market easily, but where to park our bikes? We meet up with an English couple who are having the same problem, there is camaraderie in the same spoken language. We ask someone, who tells us where we can’t park our bikes. Another person points. Another says Daimaru. We head off in the direction of the points and Daimaru, which are in the same direction. We find the blue P sign for parking. There is a whole bike park downstairs for our bikes, just like we have for cars back home. The first 3 hours are free. The bike rack locks your bike in, it will let it go for free if you return in the allocated time. We ask a young guy for the information. The guy from New York told us that. “If you want to know something, as a young Japanese, they are most likely to speak English.”

We head to the market.

I eat a rice cracker with sugar and plum, Sam eats a rice cracker with lavender and wasabi.

No walking and eating. You have to stay in the place you bought it to eat it, no wandering through the market eating. You’d be forgiven if you thought this was for your own safety, but I don’t think it is. It is all for Japans crazy rubbish laws. It is weird, I reckon. There are no rubbish bins, practically, anywhere. The shop of purchase must take the rubbish back from you. But there seems to be no effort put into not creating the rubbish in the first place, with the excessive amount of packaging they allow.

We eat squid and scallops on sticks. A whole octopus with a skewer up its clacker, and scallops seared by a blow torch.

There is a take-away place that is doing pancakes and omelettes out the front, seemingly with a restaurant to eat them in, of which the take away is out the front. However, when we ask the lady serving she says we have to eat the takeaway stuff at the front section, she indicates the space with a swirl of her hands, otherwise we can go into the restaurant and order food. So, we sit down and eat fish and chicken in the restaurant, during which time the same woman is directing people with take into the restaurant to eat. Bitch, we think.

11.30am. We’re walking through the market. I am so bored. Another’s market, yay. The food is amazing, there is no doubt, and I’d be really interested if I could observe it in my own leisurely manner, but the market is packed with people and it is really slow going.

We eat ice creams at one of the many crossroads crossing over the market walk way. The sun is shining. We sit on small stools at the road’s edge. The market walkway ends in a relatively standard issue shopping mall, and our interest wanes.

Midday. We found our first Bookoff, but there isn’t much that I want. I missed the opportunity to get a remastered copy of Love You Live, which I, actually, had in my hand in Tokyo, but put back on the shelf. It was a single CD rather than a double CD and it just didn’t seem like the right thing. It wasn’t until a few days later that I read that the single CD was the latest remastered Japanese version, dam it. I don’t think Kyoto has the population of Tokyo so it won’t have the same variety. It is a simple economics issue. (I think about my economics days at uni)

We walk down to what seems like the main street of Kyoto and walk back towards where we parked the bikes looking at the big shops. It all suddenly seems quite standard issue.

12.30pm. We take our bikes out of the bike park. We don’t have to pay anything, 10.15am to 12.30pm.

We rode home and had a sleep. I don’t know why I was so sleepy, but I was.

We head back into town to look around, not sure what we really want to do. We haven’t really got our Kyoto feet yet. You move from one city to another just after you have got used to the city you are leaving. We could sniff out another BookOff, indeed we could, but we have to buy a train ticket out of here, for Friday before they get booked out. If we couldn’t get back to Narita airport that, of course, would be a disaster.

We catch the metro into town to have a look around. Kyoto metro seems old and dated compared to Tokyo’s, like it has never been updated.

4.45pm. We are in the JR ticket office in Kyoto buying train tickets out of here. It costs us 29,900 yen ($400 approx) to take a train from Kyoto to Narita on Friday. So, it is done.

We come up the escalators to the surface and discover the huge building in which the station is in the basement. It is a pretty amazing building really. Escalators go up and up and up and up right to the top where there is a court yard/deck/square even.

5.15pm. We’re in the fuck off big building over Kyoto Station, which I am sure is a landmark, and is probably famous, but we just stumbled across as we came into town.

5.30pm. We’re eating dipping noodles into ramen 10 stories up.

Apparently, it is okay to eat in department stores, did you know that? It doesn’t always have to be cute cafes and nice restaurants. So Sam tells me a number of times, when I complain about eating in tacky surrounds.

That’s it, nothing much to do for the rest of the day.

We head off to find the BookOff, which takes us across town and out of the CBD. We wander through an ugly neighbourhood, which gets greyer and greyer and uglier and uglier. It just no longer seems like an area where you’d find a BookOff, but Sam insists. We keep walking and the place seems more deserted and uninteresting. This is where you’d get mugged, if it wasn’t Japan. Maybe I am delusional, but I feel like everywhere in Japan is safe to go. Then we turn a corner and there is the orange and blue BookOff sign. Sam gives me that I-told-you-so look. They don’t have anything I want.

So, we head back through the ugly suburb back towards the CBD, but not, we skirt around the outside of it. We cross over one of their ugly big intersections, over one of these ugly, rusty, metal walkways that go in all directions across big intersections.

We keep walking, the light starts to fade. Our feet start to hurt, well, mine do.

We finally come to the Metro Station we are looking for. The Kyoto Metro system is ugly, grey, bleak even. We take a train back to our Metro Station.

There you go, it was a bit of a nothing day. The food in the market is well worth seeing, if you can stomach the crowds.

Sexy, aren't they

Heading to Kyoto

5 am and I am awake, well, we went to bed early, 10pm, and that is seven hours. I got out my laptop and read stuff online.

Sam didn’t stir, just continued right on snoring. It was cold and I gradually put on more and more layers.

I lay down again and slept at 5.30am, peeling off the layers again like peeling an onion.

I woke again at 6.30am. Sam woke up then, which is really early for him.

6.55am. Time to get up, pack, have breakfast at 7.30am and leave at 8.15am. Good thing we were down at the dining room just before 7.30am, as there is a line not long after the dining room opens.

Bucky makes me my coffee now without me having to give instructions. (Bucky is kind of cute, ugly cute. He has to be really, otherwise I wouldn’t have given him a nick name) Espresso with a small jug of warm milk on the side. I don’t think he has had such an order before. (Any man who makes me coffee… well… you know)

Sam and I both had mushroom rice for breakfast.

The restaurant was busy with people this morning. This is the time the Japanese are on holidays, after all.

“See the Japanese want western food,” says Sam.

I saw a woman at breakfast with two noisy kids (who were pretty cute kids, admittedly) (and a handsome husband, too) who she said shhh to the two young boys, be quiet, and the kids didn’t quieten down at all, and she went on getting her breakfast. Parents of this generation are just failures, if you tell them to be quiet, make them do it. Be quiet. Fail!

8.10am. They drove us to the Yudanaka train station with the guy from New York. Bucky was outside to say goodbye, with his cute rabbit teeth. He asked us about where we came from in Australia and when we said Melbourne, he said it was known for its coffee, so that much he knew.

“Yes, thanks to Italian immigration in the 1950s and 1960s, I said.

One of the girls drove the van.

8.37am. Our train left for Nagano. A lovely old silver train.

The sun was shining, which always makes the air fresher and the day lovelier.

The train was different, gone was the outdated modernist creation we arrived on, the rapid, in its place was the standard design train with seats running down the sides for the length of the train, everyone looking at one another. A handsome Japanese guy sat opposite, staring down at his phone.

The sun shone in through the windows. The gentle ease of a country morning was all pervading.

Through the plains of rural Japan, lovely and gentle and calm. Clackity clack, clackity clack. The blossom still in the trees. Clackity clack, clackity clack. A gentle descent into the urban throb. Clackity clack, clackity clack.

We had to swap trains half way, who knows why? Off one train and straight across the platform and onto another train already waiting, also silver glinting in the sunshine.

The guy from New York talked all the way, non stop. Sam sat in between me and him and with the sounds of the train and his hushed New York accent, I had trouble hearing everything he said. I found myself nodding without much of a clue, at times. He told us about his previous trips overseas, how his first trip to Europe when he was very young only cost him $200. He told us how a car ran over his foot in London on another trip. He told us how one trip to China he had 13 accidents, or mishaps.

He was born in Hong Kong but moved to New York when he was a young boy. He liked to travel always, seemingly, on a budget. He had travelled back to China many times.

He got off at Obuse, he was off to see some lino cut art. Out the door and then he was gone. He was quite nice really, said it was a pleasure meeting us and hoped we would meet up again, possibly in Bali. (We all said we’d like to go to Bali on our next trip away) We left him standing in the middle of the local train station looking around, as if trying to divine the way to go. He travels on a budget, he has limited funds, good for him. It is not only the cultures you see when you travel, but the people you meet too and their stories you hear.

The “local” train was packed by the time we got to Nagano. Seriously, if it is always like this put on a few more carriages Japan rail, or whatever it is you are called. Or, join the two trains it took to get us to Nagano together.

We bought a club sandwich and an espresso coffee at Beck’s coffee shop. Then Sam bought sushi to go.

10.48am. We catch the bullet train to Kanazawa to catch a connecting bullet train to Kyoto. We got on car 9, but were supposed to be on car 4, and as the train was leaving by the time we discovered our mistake, we had to walk through the train for 5 minutes to find our seats. Still, it was better than getting off and having the train leave without us.

Why is it that we all have to be subjected to people’s noisy kids? There is a screaming kid whose head I’d like to take in both my hands a smash into the window until it stops making a noise, or until it is to slippery to keep hold of, whichever comes first.

The urbanisation out the window never stops. The development never eases off, wide open spaces never appear. It does a bit from time to time, but never like Australia. There are never wide open spaces of undeveloped land.

11.34am Toyama train station. It looks very slick and modern, white and silver steel. This must be a new station, surely.

11.56am. At Kanazawa Station, to catch our connecting train. It is called the Thunderbird number 22 bound for Osaka, so that must be a good sign, Thunderbirds are go, and all, except it is not a bullet train, it isn’t even a fast train, the Thunderbird is stopping all stations.

Komatsu, Kagaonsen, Awaraonsen, Fukui, Sabae, Takefu, Tsuruga, Kyoto.

Kyoto here we come.

The voiceover just never stops. The fact it is done in several languages doesn’t help its brevity, or lack thereof. Japan is generally like that, there is always some back ground noise going on.

There are no big trees in Japan, that my eyes can see out the window. Well, for the most part, in the urbanised areas. No large trees in gardens of houses.

I put my headphones in and listened to The Two of Us, Alfredo Malabello. Lay my head back and felt the movement of the train lull me to sleep.

And then I listened to Michael Buble Live. I wonder now if I imagined the movement of the train lulling me to sleep? I’m not sure there is much movement with a bullet train. Maybe it was the warmth of the confined spaces.

Sam played his games with his headphones on.

The sun shone. The train was warm.

I listened to Kate Ceberano’s 19 Days In New York. My eyes close and sleep nearly envelops me, but not quite.

2.37pm. We arrive in Kyoto.

We had to catch the underground to Marutamachi underground station. There is a manual, of sorts, of how to get to the house. Screen shots and written instructions, as there was in Tokyo. Around the corner and along a bit, turn right and you are there.

There are rules, a page of rules. We can leave our bags after midday, but no staying in the house before 4pm. There is something about a fine from the cleaners that will be oncharged to us if we check in too early and disturb them.

The entrance is a bit grim, a sliding door with a central lock, there is one of those key safes like real estate agents use. We have the code, click open there is the key. First door open, along a dark walkway to another door, open. There are the bikes we can ride. There are doors in all directions from there. The front garden. The toilet the front door to the house.

“What do we think?” Sam says. “It is 3.15pm, surely the cleaners have come by now.”

“Find the wifi password, message the owner to ask if 3.15pm is too early?” I suggest. “Or will the universe implode if we stay now?”

“Surely not?” says Sam.

We have to check out by 10am on checkout day, otherwise there is a 10000 yen for every fifteen minutes we overstay. Yeah, right, I think. Of course, Sam and I are pretty quiet tenants who abide by the rules. Don’t worry luv, we’ll be gone before 10am. Don’t you worry.

“I’d like to see them enforce collect on 10,000 yen fine, quite frankly,” I say.

“Seriously?” says Sam.

“We could go anyway,” I say. “Go get coffee?”

“Coffee? Is that all you think about?”

“I’ve only had one today.” He must be tired, I think. We are tired, I reckon. It is tiring packing up and moving everything to another place, changing trains 3 times to do it. And we were up early, 5 am and 6 am, that is early.

“You’ll turn into coffee one day.”

“I could be so lucky.”

“Has she answered?”

“No?”

“Oh well, let’s go,” I say. “We don’t want her to shit her pants over it.”

So, we went and got coffee. It was rubbish. The menu said espresso, but seriously, I think it was pour over just put in a small cup.

We came back at four, just because that is how long it took us.

Sam says she has answered, he reads it out. “The cleaners have been now, it is no problem if you stay now.”

“Only an hour too late,” I say. “But it makes no never mind.”

The house is really nice once you are inside. They just need to tart up the front a bit and they’d probably get more rentals.

Then we went and got food. Around the corner and along a bit. Too tired to really go looking for anything nice, we fall into the Japanese take away kind of place. I eat beef with kimchi and a salad and something and miso soup. Sam eats beef with eel and ochre and silken tofu and a crab miso soup. There is always miso soup in Japan.

I came home and I was a bit sleepy. I lay down on the couch with my laptop, time to research Kyoto. What to do in this place tomorrow?

Next thing I knew it was 10.30pm.

I sat up for a while, Sam played his game, Final Fantasy.

We went to bed at midnight.

I lay in bed wondering what kind of fire trap this place is. Really, it on has one door, the front door and to get to it you have to walk through a long, enclosed walkway. I think about Buddy and Brun and fall asleep.

I really just want to go home, play with my bulldogs and play my new CDs that I have bought. Japan is just not really doing it for me, I am afraid.

That’s not the attitude I think, as I lay in the dark under the soft and luscious doona. There is only a week to go, it will go fast, enjoy it.

Snow Monkey

Monkey's and Hot Baths

I am up at 6.30am. Sam is wake not long after.

7.30am. we ate breakfast, not served until 7.30 sharp. The Japanese pride themselves on their punctuality. I eat a bacon and cheese baguette, or some such thing. Sam eats mushroom rise, with miso soup and yogurt. Sam picks up my roll and takes two large bites. I’m like a bulldog when it comes to my food, can be food aggressive.

The guy running the café bar makes me coffee. He has adorable prominent rabbit teeth, so I call him Bucky. He is nice, they are all nice.

9am. Then we are off to the monkey park to see the snow monkeys. Get up there early, is always a good strategy with popular tourist attractions, as far as I am concerned. One of the nice girls from out hotel drives us. She shows us what bus stops at which to catch the bus on the way back. She gives us a map to show us where to get off the bus.

“The bus goes to the train station, don’t go there or you will have a long walk back to the hotel,” she says.

There is a wide, if soggy path up the hill to the Monkey Park. It is nice to get out into the quiet and solitude of nature. The air is crisp and clean, if not as cold as our drive suggested it may be.

Sam says he is a bit short of breath. I tell him that I am too. He says he was glad it wasn’t just him.

Then, suddenly, there is a monkey in the trees. Then another monkey. Then there is a monkey walking passed us on the path. We stop and watch them.

We head up to the park. There are plenty of monkeys to observe and photograph. There are plenty of tourists doing just that. It wasn’t cold enough for the snow monkeys to get into the hot springs, but they sat all around them. You could see the grain that had been put out to ensure there were snow monkeys for the tourists to see. They just walked amongst the people. Don’t pat them, don’t scare them and above all don’t feed them or let them see you have food. If the snow monkeys associate humans with food it will become impossible for us to observe them up close and personal without them pestering us for food.

We take photos. We stand and watch them.

11.11am. We walk back down from the monkey park, we just missed the bus by ten minutes. The next bus was at 12.06pm.

We pissed around taking blossom shots, waiting for the sun to come out from behind the clouds. But, I was hungry, my bacon roll had worn off and Sam ate half of it anyway, and that was at 7am and all. My stomach was telling me to eat. So, we walked back up the hill to Enza Café and ate Ramen. I put my jacket on the back of the chair.

“Don’t let me forget my jacket,” I said.

11.50am. We head back down to the bus stop. People had gathered by then waiting for the next bus. We took more sun on the blossom shots, as we waited.

12.04pm. “Where is your jacket?” Sam says.

“Oh shit,” I say. “I told you not to let me forget it.”

“The bus will probably be late,” says Sam.

“Not in Japan,” I say.

There is always time to get it done, I thought. No use standing and wondering if I have time to go and get it, just go. So, I ran back up the hill, literally ran. I couldn’t run all the way, it was a steep hill. I walked a bit and then ran again. I got my jacket and ran back down the hill. The bus was there by then and people were getting. We got on.

I heaved and gasped for breath. Oh universe, how fit am I. It was a steep hill, I want to add at this point. And it was up hill for half a kilometre, okay a quarter, but it wasn’t just a couple of steps.

When we were back in the hotel’s café, I couldn’t stop coughing from the run. It felt like a hay fever cough, bought on by the running, well, I guess it is spring here after all.

We sat in the café with our computers. I drank coffee.

We decided on a midday onsen, so we change into the traditional dress and clack up the street in our wooden shoes. It wasn’t nearly as glam as last nights, just a rusty old bath set into the ground, essentially. The public onsen. We went to three of them, they are all the same.

It was bloody hot too. Scolding hot, even after we put loads of water into it, it was still hot. We sat on the edge and bucketed water over ourselves. Eventually, we managed to slide our bodies under the water.

3pm. We are back in the hotel having a snooze. It’s always nice to have an afternoon snooze. But, the sun is shining. We’re inside on our beds and the sun is finally shining.

4pm. We head outside for a walk around. We climb up behind the houses to all the temples. There are some really ornate temples but none of them seem to have been well maintained, and are in varying states of decay, can’t really see why. May be the old inhabitants that built them have long since died. And like country towns the world over, the young ‘uns had moved away. Don’t know. Just guessing.

6.15pm. We go to the big, luxo onsen. It was hot, we were ready to leave much sooner than last night. It just seemed so hot. Maybe it was because we’d already had one. There were some cute boys there to purve on, well, appreciate, maybe a better term. Glance at, really. Hot dads seemed to be the specialty of the night. Strapping men with their boys having onsen together

We ate in. Croquettes, roast chicken and a fried chicken entrée for dinner back in the hotel.

We packed. We got ready to leave for tomorrow. Ready to get back on the tourist conveyor belt.

We went to sleep at 10pm, Nan (Sam’s one for early to bed, so I refer to him as Nan) was very happy about that.



Don’t pat the snow monkeys.

Oh, Jesus the water is hot in this tub!

People come and people go.

Let’s see all the naked men,

In their natural surroundings.

Let’s go to bed early,

So, we can get up early.

There is the sound of wooden shoes

Clacking in the street.