Nara > Kobe
When we headed downstairs in the morning we were surprised to find the breakfast room contained a much higher foreigner quotient than we’d become used to sighting, which gave us something to discuss once the final run-through of the plans for the day had been completed.
I suspect the phenomenon had something to do with the fact that the hotel was part of a Western-style chain (Comfort Inn) rather than one of the privately owned Japanese business hotels we'd previously found ourselves in.
It was difficult, given the overall level of ambient background noise to detect where all these westerners had come from.
The couple at the next table were definitely speaking French, and there was a young American woman on the other side of the room expressing very definite opinions about the relative virtues of the different sight-seeing options on offer around Nara in a voice that carried right round the room.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a possibility that Miss America had formal qualifications that entitled her to express the fairly forthright opinions she was putting forward, but as I listened I couldn’t help contrasting her with the group of older Americans we’d passed during our wanderings around the picture garden at Ryoanji.
Their expressions of joy, pleasure and wonder had made me half-inclined to approach them to inquire whether they’d been to Toriimoto (our destination the day before) and suggest if they hadn’t a trip there would probably be something they’d find enjoyable.
But, for some reason I didn’t, and as I listened (not that I had much choice in the matter) to the advice being dispensed from the other side of the room I was glad, in a way, I hadn’t foisted my ultra-novice opinions on an unsuspecting audience.
The reader might, of course, suggest that I’m doing exactly that right here and now, but anyone who’s actually read this far can hardly be described as an unsuspecting audience.
With the now-familiar we're leaving the hotel ritual (pack, check out, obtain cloak room ticket) negotiated, we headed off to Todaiji Temple, home of the eighth-century Virocana Buddha.
Once we’d boarded the bus, the presence of significant numbers of vaguely familiar-looking high school students suggested that a repeat of the Kyoto crowd scenes was on the cards, which is more or less how things panned out once we’d alighted and joined the throng moving through the drizzle down the tree-lined avenue towards the temple.
Along the way we met the first of the famous Nara deer and I found myself, for some reason, humming a bastardised version of Tiny Tim’s minor hit (Tiptoe through the deer poop with me) as I watched an attendant sweeping up the aforesaid detritus while a group of teenage students tried to figure out the correct strategy for dealing with demands for more food from a particularly insistent deer.
Once inside the temple complex, we headed past the Octagonal Lantern towards the eighteenth-century Great Buddha Hall which, at 57 metres across, 50 metres back and almost 49 metres high, is the largest wooden structure in the world.
Impressive figures, and all the more impressive when you learn the structure you see today is 33% smaller than the original eighth-century structure, rebuilt after it was destroyed by fires in 1180 and 1567. Inside the building the fifteen-metre Buddha, which had almost bankrupted Japan’s economy by the time it was completed in 751 takes your breath away as it towers over you, surrounded by smaller statues of other Buddhist figures.
Once outside we took an extended ramble around the complex with structures dating back as far as the seventh century before moving on through Nara Park to the nearby Kasuga Grand Shrine.
By this time we’d had close to three hours of temple and shrine-viewing so from there we headed back to the city centre, where we found a small teppan-style eatery for lunch. Madam had her heart set on a pancake, and I settled for beef noodles, both dishes cooked on the iron hot-plate in the middle of the table. We were seated on the western-style right hand side of the establishment while opposite us people sat at low traditional Japanese style no shoes and tatami tables.
From there we passed through narrow alleys lined with small shops, pausing to buy a second-hand kimono (1000-yen) before becoming more than a little disoriented as we attempted to find our way back to the hotel to reclaim the baggage.
It took us about an hour to make our way back to Kobe, with the last leg a very fast limited express after a change of train in Osaka.
Arriving at the Okura Hotel, we opted for another brief rest before the night’s appointment with Diamond Chef and Drinking Dude. We caught a shuttle bus back to Sannomiya, Madam headed off to replenish the finances at the Post Office while I went for a browse in Tower Records in the hope I’d be able to locate the new album by the reformed, but sadly Stanshall-less Bonzo Dog Band.
As she headed off towards the Post Office, Madam expressed the opinion that I was highly unlikely to find what was looking for because it was, she thought, far too obscure an item for a Japanese music emporium to have in stock.
As it turned out, the Bonzos album was nowhere to be found, but a brief browse through what was on offer revealed (and, no I’m not making this up) the equally-obscure Doctor Strangely Strange, the first album by the J. Geils Band and an album by Ed Sanders called Beer Cans On The Moon which I seem to recall meeting an almost universal thumbs down when it was released in 1973.
I reckon, given enough time for a careful survey of the record racks I would have managed to uncover even more weird and wonderful obscurities.
As it was, however, the browsing was interrupted by the arrival of ‘Er Indoors who advised that the night’s dinner and drinking companions were waiting for us under the railway.
We set off at a fair clip for the area in question, and, once the rendezvous had been made, plunged into the make of back alleys and side streets that make up the downtown eating and drinking quarter.
Arriving at a small, almost inconspicuous Chinese restaurant, Diamond Chef looked after the ordering while the rest of us directed our attention to beer, which, fortunately, was available in Dynamo-sized glasses.
What followed was a range of dishes from appetisers to spare ribs, all of which were excellent and included the without-a-doubt-best lemon chicken I’ve had in a long time (actually the only lemon chicken I’ve had this century but much better than any version I’d encountered previously).
Interestingly, when the first platter of appetisers arrived and I’d had the presence of jellyfish pointed out to me, once I’d sampled one of the surprisingly-crunchy little morsels no one else seemed inclined to partake in any of the remaining supply.
I’ll be happy to avoid the jellyfish in future but another item on the same platter, an excellent pickled cucumber was easily the best preparation of that particular vegetable I’ve ever encountered.
Once dinner was out of the way, it was back into the side streets and back alleys on the way to Piccolo, an interesting little bar that had been described as somewhere I would love.
The only identification in an obscure back lane-way is a single illuminated sign.
A narrow staircase with a U-turn midway leads to an ultra-small cramped area with seats for no more than a dozen drinkers and a total capacity of about twenty.
There’s almost as much room behind the bar as there is on the drinkers’ side, but I guess that amount of space is needed to provide access to the shelves of genuine vinyl LPs which the bartender, an obvious survivor of a late-60s or early 70s time warp, will play on request.
My request for something from Little Feat produced copies of Dixie Chicken and The Last Record Album and we even managed to get a couple of tracks before the Feat was superseded by other requests.
After we were well and truly settled in, having miraculously scored four seats at the bar, Diamond Chef and Drinker Dude were keen to learn my rating of the place.
My response?
I came all the way from Australia to drink at this bar.
Which was, more or less, true.
We managed to drink and talk till well after eleven, by which time the last shuttle bus back to the hotel had well and truly left, so we were forced to catch a cab back so we could crash for the last time on this venture onto Japanese soil.