Monday, 7 April 2008
It was a case of rise and shine relatively early for the first day of the Japan Rail Pass big travel week. When ‘Er Indoors checked us out, the process proved to be entirely devoid of human interaction.
Once she was done, we set off in search of the subway station that would begin the day’s journey.
I hadn’t seen the crowding that people associate with rush hour Japanese subway travel up to this point. You know what I mean, those images of solidly built railway staff on hand to push a few extra passengers into a sardine-packed carriage.
Solidly built people pushers were conspicuous by their absence when we arrived on the platform, joining a dozen people waiting for the next train.
The arrival of the train, however, suggested they’d been needed further up the line.
The carriages were packed, and making our way towards the carriage against a flood tide of black-suited salary-men proved to be somewhat challenging.
Once the previously packed compartments had emptied, we found ourselves almost alone in a strangely empty carriage.
Of course, we were headed out of the city centre, towards ShinKōbe Station, which is, like many of the Shinkansen depots, located slightly away from the main commercial and business area of Kōbe.
We arrived with plenty of time to spare, which allowed us to enjoy a leisurely breakfast before it was time to board the 8:25 service to Kyoto.
Having grown where trains operate much less frequently, I’d been warned that the 8:25 train means the one that actually leaves at 8:25.
That one will arrive, more or less at eight-twenty-three and a half, being a completely different conveyance to the 8:22 which leaves the same platform for a completely different destination.
I’d become accustomed to guidelines on commuter platforms, but Shinkansen stations have barriers with gaps where the doors will open. Amazingly, that’s precisely where they do open. You’ve got a minute and a half (if that) to get aboard and locate your seat before you’re off.
There are three levels of service on the Tokaido/Sanyo Shinkansen lines. The fastest, Nozomi (hope or wish) are express affairs, stopping at a handful of stations.
They aren’t covered by the Rail Pass. That's a pity since they cover the 515 kilometres between Tokyo and Osaka in two and a half hours.
The intermediate Hikari (light or ray) services stop at a few more stations, usually to allow the faster Nozomi to pass.
The slowest Kodama (echo) services stop at all stations allowing faster services to pass through.
Once aboard Hikari 364 Thunderbird 7 (impressive name, or what?) the first section of the journey took us through a tunnel, emerging onto a viaduct comfortably above the surrounding conurbation. Faced with obstacles like hills, Shinkansen services go through rather than over them.
If the obstacle is a built-up area, the solution is to go over rather than through.
Despite the elevation, there wasn’t much to see because of the barriers on either side of the track. There was, predictably, even less when we met with trains heading in the opposite direction.
I did, however, manage to recognize the river we crossed on the outskirts of Osaka, which we reached a quarter of an hour after leaving Kōbe.
While we were travelling much faster than I’d become accustomed to on the commuter services, things seemed much less blurred as we went past. That was presumably because the buildings were below us rather than flashing past at eye-level.
And very peaceful travelling it was, sitting back in airline-style seats with the sort of legroom you might get in business class (if you’re lucky) with something pleasant to listen to:
five minutes out of Kyoto on Shinkansen
timeless rice paddies amidst scattered timber houses
john fahey steamboat gwine ‘round the bend
on iPod.
Fourteen minutes after Osaka, we were disembarking in Kyoto.
The next service would carry us on to Kanazawa, wasn’t Shinkansen-flash but was comfortable enough, with comparable legroom.
Once we’d boarded, I watched as a supervisor (I assume the guard was at the rear) performed some arcane bi-directional ritual to indicate our departure.
Underway I realized what I’d been missing all morning.
There was none of that click-clack Australian rail commuters experience as the wheels cross the gaps between one section of rail and the next.
Mind you, if they did exist, at Shinkansen-speed, they’d probably sound more like machine-gun fire, which probably explains why they don’t (exist, that is).
On the way out of Kyoto, we ran into the patchwork landscape I’d noticed before, a quilt of factories, houses, light and heavy industry, an occasional farmlet, and the odd timeless graveyard.
Interestingly, almost every stream we crossed seemed to have been carefully channelled. As I looked back over the previous couple of days, I couldn’t remember seeing a stream where the banks weren’t lined with bricks, stone or concrete.
I was also bemused by the fact that many seemingly old, traditional houses were sporting reverse cycle air-conditioning units and even satellite dishes.
As we moved into forested slopes above farmland, the villages became scattered pockets between flooded paddy fields. By ten-thirty, we had glimpses of mountains away to the right, more or less in the direction we were headed the following day.
As we neared Kanazawa, we’d passed through the central cordillera, and it seemed considerably cooler than on the other side of the divide.
I guessed the weather on this side was influenced by colder air emanating from the depths of continental Asia. The eastern coast was, I suspected, influenced by a warm ocean current, in much the same way as the Gulf Stream moderates temperatures along North America's east coast as far north as Newfoundland.
It may have been the haze I’d noted throughout the past few days, but the air looked colder, particularly off towards the mountains where we were headed tomorrow.
Once we’d arrived and found our way out of the station, we had a slight problem finding the hotel. We went straight past the street where it was located, thinking it was a lane-way too insignificant to feature on the street map.
But eventually we realized we’d gone way too far, backtracked, and found it. Once we'd deposited the suitcase, we headed off in search of lunch before an afternoon seeing the sights.
Between the hotel and the station complex, the Forus shopping centre featured a floor of restaurants, so it seemed the right place to direct our attention. After completing a circuit of the level in question, we opted for the G&O (Gumbo & Oyster) Bar.
Around this time, I realized that Madam wasn’t kidding when she said you could find any style of food in Japan if you knew where to look.
I wouldn’t, however, have thought of setting out in search of Louisiana cooking in Kanazawa.
‘Er Indoors selected a set menu with a variety of New Orleans-style treats, which she reported was okay while I ordered a couple of oysters natural and a bowl of seafood gumbo.
It obviously pays to be a foreigner eating early.
When the oysters arrived, there were four of them, plump, juicy and beautiful. The bowl of gumbo also went down well, washed down with a glass of good Chablis.
Suitably fortified, we set off to locate the tour bus that does a clockwise circuit around twenty sites of interest and skipped the first couple of sites before alighting at the stop closest to the geisha quarter.
As it turned out, we’d misheard the bus driver’s directions. We should have headed left along the river bank rather than turning left straight off the bus and turning right at the sushi bar.
Instead, we headed along the river. We turned left just after we spotted a couple using a camera, a tripod and a timed delay to get a photo of themselves against a background of cherry blossom.
I took a couple of photos from the same spot before the guy with the tripod asked us whether we’d like a photo of the two of us against the same backdrop they’d used.
We accepted, passed over the camera, and the reader can see the result.
By this time, we realized we’d taken a wrong turn, but knew where the geisha quarter had to be and headed off in that direction.
An accommodating old gentleman also helped to put us on the right track.
We stopped at a traditional building set up as an information centre. Based on the information received there, we retraced our steps to a place where we could tour a recreated geisha house.
The camera battery decided to pack it in as soon as we walked through the door. As a result, we didn’t walk away with a complete photographic record of an establishment set up the way things would have been.
Anyone with a mind to sample geisha entertainment might be interested to learn there are still eight houses in the quarter offering the traditional treats. But be warned - it doesn’t come cheaply.
A ninety-minute session would set you back $US 1500...
From there, we headed to the bus stop, boarded the next bus and headed off to Kanazawa Castle and more sakura.
As soon as we alighted the rain, which had been threatening, decided to do a little more than threaten.
So we walked through the drizzle, managing to complete a loop around Kenrokuen before deciding that enough was enough and heading back to the hotel to check-in, rest and recharge the camera.
We figured with a break of an hour or so we could head off on the second-last bus for the day, get a couple of photos and catch the final bus back to base.
We emerged from the warm and dry hotel to find that conditions were cold, drizzly and miserable. When we’d boarded the bus earlier in the afternoon, it had been crowded.
Now, three or four hours later, it was, practically deserted.
Since we knew where we were going, we planned to snap a couple of photos of the sakura in front of the castle, then do a quick lap of the garden.
But as soon as we embarked on the exercise, the camera decided to inform us there was no more space on the memory card. That was just as well since we only just managed to catch the last bus back.
At the station, we booked our seats for the next stage of the trip, then headed back to Forus for dinner.
We opted for a Korean eatery that wasn’t quite what the doctor ordered and eventually returned to the warmth of the hotel, hoping things would turn out better on the morrow.
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
A week into the trip and starting Day Two of the Rail Pass Week, a 7:09 departure from Kanazawa precluded thoughts of breakfast before heading to the station.
On the way out of the city, a bleak morning presented no chance to see whether recent precipitation had managed to clear the ever-present haze. Still, there were signs of recent and relatively substantial rainfall.
Given our experiences the previous day, that was hardly earth-shattering news.
Kanazawa has a well-deserved reputation for wet weather.
After we’d left the outskirts of the city, we passed through an agrarian landscape, with a misty haze covering the forested hilltops.
Suited salary-men boarded the train at some stations, and I couldn’t help noticing that there were upmarket homes scattered through the villages.
Conditions made it difficult to see the snow that I was sure capped the mountains away to our right. As we moved away from the coast, the land on the left-hand side started to rise, though again, it wasn’t possible to get a clear view of the peaks.
At Toyama, we had difficulty finding Platform 3, which wasn’t well signposted, but eventually discovered the next leg of the journey involved an upmarket version of the old-fashioned rail motor.
When we took our seats in the first carriage, it was apparent, from the picture windows that gave generous views to the front and both sides that we were travelling a particularly scenic route.
The misty conditions were far from ideal for sightseeing but gave a feeling of travelling in an enclosed world as we headed past streams boosted by recent rainfall.
Despite the rain, many trees held cherry-blossom, which suggested steady drizzle rather than the sort of downpour that would knock the flowers off the branches.
We climbed into the mountains as the mist closed in more tightly, and pylons suggested nearby hydroelectric stations as we passed through some tunnels, skirting sudden canyons and waterfalls.
A lengthy stop at Inotani, where I looked out over mist and forest-clad mountains, evoked images of hermits and Zen poets in the mist.
Moving on through Sugihara, we passed into an area where there were patches of snow on slopes not far above the line.
By this point, we were following the river valley, almost at river level with the highway on the other side of the stream protected by a roof supported by lines of pillars.
As we rolled through Sakakami, I gave up on writing in the journal because scribbling the odd observation was getting in the way of enjoying the scenery.
Approaching Takayama, the houses looked to be of much the same construction as those further down. They’d have to be very well insulated if the occupants were going to make it through harsh winters.
My suspicions about temperatures were confirmed as we alighted in Takayama just after nine o’clock in conditions colder than a mother-in-law’s kiss.
We deposited the suitcase at the hotel, then headed back to the station to catch the bus to the Hida Folk Village. There, we spent a couple of hours wandering through buildings rescued from river valleys flooded to provide water for hydroelectric schemes.
The houses weren’t all that old, not going back much beyond the middle of the eighteenth century, and came from a variety of sources, representing a range of occupations and social classes.
There were farmhouses with upper storeys devoted to the raising of silkworms, a priest’s home, a village head man’s house where the walls could be removed to make a room large enough for meetings, and a woodcutter's hut as well as a way-station from the main road.
And one building erected as a residence for a wealthy landowner.
Casual onlookers might be inclined to get sniffy and dismiss the place as a tourist trap. But it looks like a genuine attempt to preserve aspects of the area’s traditional lifestyle, with streams of melt-water flowing downhill to power water mills.
Here and there patches of snow remained in hollows protected from the springtime sun.
Each building, for example, was heated, if that’s the right word to use for a few burning coals in the living area, by fire rather than electricity.
I couldn’t help wondering how the occupants coped with temperatures that reached below minus twenty with two metres of snow on the roof.
It is not, however, the sort of place to take kids who can’t tie up their shoelaces since venturing inside almost every building involves removing the footwear.
In hindsight, I wished I’d invested in a pair of Velcro-equipped joggers.
Two hours of wandering on an empty stomach meant that we weren’t going to wait till we got back to town to eat.
Outside, we found a restaurant serving noodles with char siu pork. I washed it down with half a litre of Asahi before we headed back to the bus stop for the return trip to town.
Having just missed one bus, we thought the next one might deliver us to downtown Takayama, and it turned out that it was the next bus back to the station.
There was one minor technicality. It wouldn’t be setting out on that route for another twenty minutes since it had to complete a different loop around the town’s attractions.
The driver, thankfully, decided that although we were going to be heading back in twenty minutes, we might as well board now, rather than stand around for the intervening period.
Which is what we did.
Once we’d returned to the station precinct, it was still too early to book into the hotel.
We took a stroll to Takayama Jinya, the government official’s residence and administrative centre from the Edo Period. It turned out to be a fascinating place, although there wasn’t a great deal of information available in English. The English-speaking guide was unavailable that day.
We were, however, there at the same time as a group of Japanese with an own-language guide.
From the audience reaction, if the English-speaker is half as good as the Japanese counterpart, his guests would be in for an entertaining time.
From Takayama Jinya, we headed across the river to the Sanmachi Traditional Buildings Preservation area and old private houses.
Unfortunately, straight after we arrived, the camera decided it had had enough for the moment, prompting us to use the current visit as a reconnaissance. We'd wander back in the morning with a recharged camera for a few photographic memories.
Back at the hotel, we took it easy until dinner time, when we faced a minor dilemma.
Takayama is famous for Hida beef, and we decided that was the preferred option for the evening meal. The only problem was deciding which particular venue to choose.
We took a wander around the area west of the hotel, found a couple of possibilities, and eventually chose Yamatake-Shōten, the one closest to home.
Although it didn’t seem like it straight away, it was an inspired choice, a retail outlet for a beef-raising operation with a sideline offering a cook-it-yourself service.
Once we’d selected the beef we’d like for dinner, we picked vegetables to accompany it and moved to our table, where hot coals had been placed under the metal grill in the middle of the table.
The proprietor got us started on the cooking process, then left us to it with a bottle of 2006 Cotes du Rhone to keep us occupied while, piece by piece, we cooked our dinner. Definitely delicious.
The beef, however, would never pick up a heart-smart tick in Australia and definitely wouldn’t appeal to anyone fanatical about trimming the fat off their steak.
We were finishing off the bottle when the proprietor returned to check everything was under control.
It was.
Other customers were conspicuous by their absence, so he stayed to talk to ‘Er Indoors (his English being effectively non-existent).
He’s obviously someone with pride in his hometown and its culture and proceeded to bring out and unroll posters about the forthcoming Takayama Festival the following week.
Although I was an uninvolved bystander unable to catch the commentary the next ten minutes or so were one of the absolute highlights of the fortnight.
Each poster had been rolled and unrolled countless times and showed signs of wear and tear.
Someone doing this sort of thing for a living, or as a regular part of his business would have gone out, gathered a collection of posters, and had them laminated. Then, more than likely, he would have worked up a PowerPoint presentation he could leave running on a laptop while he attended to more pressing matters.
Our host, on the other hand, excused himself while he attended to other matters, returning after each interruption to talk about something he obviously takes great pride in.
One interruption involved getting a young Spanish couple at the next table started on the cook-it-yourself caper, attempting to communicate with them in extremely limited English. I presumed his Spanish is about as good as mine. All the while, he was commenting over his shoulder to ‘Er Indoors in Japanese. Amazing.
After that, there was nothing for it but to stroll the fifty metres back to the hotel, pick up a couple of cans of beer from a vending machine and retire for the night.
Wednesday, 9 April 2008
At breakfast, I was surprised to notice the people sitting at the next table were the Chinese couple with the tripod from Monday afternoon in Kanazawa. At the time, we thought they were from Hong Kong, but as we exchanged pleasantries, we learned they were, in fact, from Melbourne.
They'd spent most of the last fortnight based in Osaka, heading out to wherever the cherry-blossom was good each day. They were making a loop through the mountains before heading home.
It is, as has frequently been remarked, a small world.
And it seems to be shrinking.
Given our relatively loose schedule for the rest of the day we took our time packing and checking out, and still had two and a half hours to kill before catching the train for the next leg of the trip.
Having missed some serious photographic opportunities the day before, we retraced yesterday’s route in reverse. We took our time as we strolled through the morning markets and managed a little saké-sampling.
We ended up outside Takayama Jinya, where I overheard a couple of Americans discussing the lack of an English-speaking guide to the building in front of them, which they assumed to be a temple or something.
I did my best to encourage them to venture in, despite the lack of English content, but they remained unconvinced.
I wandered away wondering why you’d set out to walk around a strange town without a map to guide you.
It wasn’t as if there's a lack of English-language material in Takayama. When we arrived, I’d been surprised to discover tourist information came in Japanese, English, French and Italian.
At least it gave me something to think about as we headed back to reclaim the suitcase and set off for the 11:35 train to Nagoya.
Seated further back than the day before we didn’t have quite the same view to the front.
That’s not to say the views to the side were disappointing. We passed through forests and paddy fields, climbing back into the mountains and crossing the divide between the westward-flowing Miya River and the eastern-bound Hida. We linked up with the Hida at Kugano, surrounded by forested slopes before moving downstream through the fringing forest, past hydro schemes and mountain villages with the highway on our right-hand side.
As we headed towards the lower reaches, we passed sections of bare-branched forest amid swathes of green foliage.
At first glance, it seemed these were belts of dead vegetation. Closer glimpses suggested they were deciduous trees amidst hardier evergreens and hadn’t redeveloped their foliage so early in the spring.
We stopped at Nagisa to let a train headed in the opposite direction pass.
While we were there, lunch arrived in an eki-bento (station box) of Hida Gyumeshi (beef, rice and vegetables). The handy pamphlet on the train said these came from Nagoya.
I assumed the pause to let the other train, which came from Nagoya, pass along the single line might have something to do with loading lunch.
In any case, I enjoyed the box of lunch and the Kirin Lager I used to wash it down.
Eating kept us occupied as far as Gero, one of Japan’s Top Three Hot Spring Resorts, where boarding passengers filled most of the vacant seats.
It’s a popular destination with a history stretching back a thousand years.
We were also back among the sakura, conspicuously absent higher up in the mountains.
Passing through forested hills Neil Young’s Be The Rain, with its call to arms in the fight to defend the Alaskan wilderness, turned up on the iPod playlist. It was a neat piece of serendipity.
By the time it had ended, we were down on the river flats, travelling around sweeping curves beside what looked like a broad stream. It was, in fact, a dam with the train on one side and the highway on the other.
As we came out onto the river flats, we started to pass low green mounded rows of a crop that I guessed was tea, as the track moved away from the stream.
Twenty minutes out of Nagoya, we were up above ground level as we headed into Gifu. We headed back out of the station in reverse on the way back to ground level with our backs to the driver, who I guessed had either swapped ends or been replaced.
With a bit over a quarter of an hour, till we reached our destination, I thought that was unlikely.
Following the usual routine, once we’d alighted, it was a case of straight to the hotel. This time we were late enough to check in before heading back to the station to meet up with the first of our two appointments for the day.
Just under two years ago, ‘Er Indoors and I had headed to the Whitsunday Coast airport to pick up an assistant teacher. It was a slightly surreal experience as a city girl from Nagoya got her first taste of rural Australia.
Three months later, three members of her family had come to visit her, and we’d met her mother and two sisters on Hamilton Island.
Now, outside the store where she'd worked before coming to Australia (quite upmarket, as far as I could tell) we met her mother and one of the sisters. They whisked us up to the 14th floor for a panoramic view across the city towards Nagoya Castle.
From there, we went on to tea rooms on the 52nd floor of the Marriott Hotel. Two hours' chatting saw the flow dominated by ‘Er Indoors and The Matriarch, with occasional comments from The Daughter and Yours Truly.
My sporadic attempts at humour produced polite laughter all round though I was unsure whether the majority of the audience actually got the joke.
We finished with the ritual exchange of gifts as I reflected that the reason the suitcase never got any lighter. Everything you brought with you as a gift was invariably replaced by whatever they’ve given you in return.
We headed back to the hotel for a short rest before dinner.
With the batteries recharged, we headed to the lobby to meet up with three more of Madam’s high school and university chums and headed to the station complex again in search of dinner.
The first option, a nice-looking brasserie, was ruled out through an inability to handle a party of five. We ended up in an eating and drinking establishment where we worked our way through another exciting variety of small platters with a wide-ranging conversation before drawing stumps around ten.
Thursday, 10 April 2008
The next morning we awoke to be confronted by bleak, drizzly weather. When ‘Er Indoors checked the weather forecast of The Mother’s Mobile, it wasn’t promising.
Seemingly, indoors was the place to be for the next twenty-four hours or so. The forecast suggested rain and wind in Odawara, where’d we be alighting from the Shinkansen on a day where the planned agenda included a lot of walking.
We discussed matters over breakfast, as you do, and headed upstairs to tackle the increasingly difficult task of fitting everything into the suitcase, adding items acquired since yesterday morning.
We managed to stay dry by taking the underground route to the station, arriving in plenty of time in spite of an initial mild case of panic.
On the platform, I started to realise how many Shinkansen services run every day along the Tokaido corridor. The track next door to our platform had trains departing for Tokyo at 9:10, 9:19 and 9:27. Our train, also to Tokyo (though we were disembarking at Odawara) left at 9:22.
In other words, four trains to the same destination leaving in the space of just under twenty minutes.
When we’d booked the day’s seats we’d been told that there were no window seats available (we’d landed Car 12 Seats 13 B&C) but, as it turned out, there was no one in 13A. No one arrived to claim it, so we managed to end up with the window seat since the train was travelling express from Nagoya to Odawara.
That solved a slight luggage problem on a crowded train.
While there are the predictable overhead racks for hand luggage, on Shinkansen there isn’t a designated space for large luggage. That’s hardly surprising.
Making those provisions would create space constraints in other ways.
Once the places most people stow such items have been filled, there isn’t much choice. You'll just have to squeeze your suitcase between your legs and the seat in front of you.
Fortunately, they’ve allowed plenty of legroom.
I moved to 13A, Madam occupied 13B, and the suitcase had the whole space in front of 13C to itself.
Despite the window seat, there wasn’t much to see in a landscape misty wet with rain, so I devoted the time to writing up the previous day’s leg of the journey.
Outside, the landscape was pretty much as it had been the last time we were on the coastal plain though I noticed some structures that seemed to be greenhouses.
Surprisingly, there also seemed to be a little more forest than usual. Before we moved back into the familiar urban sprawl, we reached the bridge across the brackish Hamana Lake, a drowned river valley with its mouth blocked by sandbanks.
There were, predictably, plenty of Shinkansen headed in the other direction.
One minute you’re looking across the landscape, then there’s a jolt against the window. A silver and blue blur obscures the view, which reappears almost before you’ve had time to blink.
We were seated on the starboard side of the train, but to the left, we had views across to the South Alps as ‘Er Indoors scanned that side, hoping for a glimpse of Mount Fuji.
Though spring had well and truly sprung on the lowlands, there was plenty of snow on the peaks.
We passed tea plantings on slopes where rice cultivation would have been out of the question, as well as on flatter ground.
It was probably totally-misguided optimism, but it seemed that the weather away to our right was lifting though there was dense cloud over the mountains on our left.
Still, there was plenty to ponder. Passing through an urban area, I was surprised to see what looked like a cathedral towering above the surroundings. That might have been in Shizuoka though it’s impossible to tell for sure.
There are few stations on this section of the Shinkansen line. Even if there were, from a train travelling at express speed, you’re flat out reading the signs as you whiz past.
The other standout, apart from the odd cathedral-like structure, was an increasing number of tunnels as we headed towards Atami, a coastal hot spring resort that has been attracting travellers since the 8th century.
We’d alighted from the train in Odawara and were looking for the most appropriate exit when a southbound Shinkansen rocketed through the station. It showed just how fast 200 kilometres per hour is when you’re standing nearby.
It was literally a case of now you see it; now you don’t.
‘Er Indoors lead us off the platform thirty seconds later, single-mindedly heading off in search of the window where she could pick up a pair of two-day Hakone passes. That left Yours Truly struggling down a flight of stairs juggling the suitcase.
About halfway down, I felt a twinge in my right leg, which didn’t help the mobility on a day when we’d planned on doing plenty of walking.
Once we’d bought the passes, we caught a local train, which carried us to Hakone-Yumoto, and a bus to the Quatre Saisons Hotel at Tonosawa.
The bus dropped us off in a car park a hundred metres down the road from the hotel. That left us with a rather scary walk along the side of a narrow winding road with traffic passing in both directions.
It was about eleven when we dropped the luggage off and walked back to the bus stop in the rain as cars rolled past in alarming proximity. I don’t mind sharing the road with the odd car, but I’d prefer to have the vehicles passing by somewhere beyond an arm’s reach.
Back in Hakone-Yumoto, we caught the train to Gora, an amazing zigzag ride that had switch-backs galore as we headed up into the mountains. The views on a fine, sunny day would have been spectacular, but the journey through the misty drizzle created a mood of primaeval mystery.
From Gora, we took the cable car up the hill to Sounzan, just missing the chance to investigate a Swiss restaurant just down the road from the station.
The next stage of the quest involved the Hakone rope-way that would end up depositing us on the shores of Lake Ashi. We decided to stop for lunch at a rope-way station, Owakudani, one of the top spots for viewing Mount Fuji.
A glance at the accompanying photo shows we had as much chance of viewing the mountain as a wheelchair-bound double amputee has of taking out the triple jump gold medal at the Olympics.
Our plans, in other words, were never going to get off the ground.
On the other hand, it was lunchtime, and while Madam fancied a fried sweet potato from the lobby. I leaned in favour towards a Japanese curry from the restaurant upstairs, so I set off in solo mode to find my own lunch, a thousand-yen note in hand.
Seated in the restaurant, I learned that I could have the curry by itself for ¥850 or with egg for 950.
Opting for the egg, I ended up with a plate of curry and rice with a black-shelled soft boiled egg that I peeled and incorporated into the curry and rice mixture.
I don’t know if that’s the way it’s supposed to go, but, lacking any expert guidance regarding the correct protocol, that was what I did.
Downstairs, informing ‘Er Indoors about my action, I was bemused to learn consumption of the seven-year egg had added seven years to my life span.
She pointed to packs of five eggs, but an extra thirty-five years added onto Hughesy’s life span would be too much for the superannuation fund to handle.
An extra seven would have to do.
Back on the rope-way, we set off once again into the mist, finishing at Togendai on Lake Ashi, where we boarded what appeared to be a replica of a pirate ship for a sight-seeing cruise to Moto-Hakone.
The cruise supposedly offers one of the best Fuji-viewing options, but we were flat out seeing past the shores of the lake. From Moto-Hakone it was impossible to see the other end of the lake, let alone any majestic mountain that might be lurking above it.
In Moto-Hakone, we decided discretion and the chance to get warm was the better part of valour. So we boarded a bus back to the hotel, braved the traffic between the bus stop and the front door, and checked in.
When we entered the room I’d, not to put too fine a point on it, just about had enough for the day.
Then we opened the curtains, and the view that greeted us was spectacular.
The hotel is situated right on a bend in the stream that flows down to Hakone-Yumoto and, from the rooms on the stream side you have views up and down the steep-sided, heavily-forested river valley.
I would have been quite happy to spend the next hour or so sitting and gazing out the window at the views while the camera battery recovered from the day’s ordeal.
‘Er Indoors, on the other hand, was adamant that I take a trip downstairs to the onsen, the hot-spring spa that was the reason the hotel existed.
It was difficult to argue with the notion that it would be good for the muscle that had been troubling my right leg.
On the other hand, the cleansing procedures you needed to carry out before you take the dip into the waters were intimidating, to say the least.
Eventually, I decided that I may as well surrender to the inevitable and traipsed off downstairs.
Under different circumstances, I could have spent longer soaking in the warm water, which does wonders for tired muscles. But the siren song of the view from an upstairs window proved much stronger than the solitary enjoyment of a giant-sized bathtub.
That pleasure could have been interrupted at any time by the arrival of other guests, so I emerged after ten minutes.
All up the onsen-visit had taken twenty minutes out of premium canyon-gazing time.
I had barely settled back into a relaxed gaze across the stream when a phone call advised that dinner - five classic French style courses - awaited us in the restaurant.
A bottle of Cuvee Quatre Saisons disappointed on first taste but improved considerably:
(a) with breathing (as a red wine should), or
(b) as the level lowered.
I tend to ascribe improvement to the effects of oxygen on the contents, rather than the impact of the contents on the drinker, but your mileage might vary.
Back upstairs, ‘Er Indoors attended to various administrative matters while I looked out across the dark stream with the iPod and a can of Asahi Super Dry for company.
Friday, 11 April 2008
A nudge in the ribs summoned me back into consciousness around 5:10 the following morning. ‘Er Indoors was quite keen for the two of us to make an early morning visit to the onsen.
A check revealed the facilities were closed for maintenance from 5:30 to 6:00, so we spent a few minutes discussing Fuji-viewing options.
Our train to the Deep North was due to leave Tokyo after three in the afternoon, and our only other commitment was a lunchtime appointment with The Interpreter.
That effectively gave us the whole morning to mount an attempt to glimpse the mountain.
Eventually, we decided a repeat of the train > cable > ropeway routine was preferable to a bus trip to Moto-Hakone, which would prove fruitless if the weather was cloudy.
If the weather improved, even if we didn’t see Fuji, we’d see views we’d been unable to enjoy yesterday.
Since we could save some time if we caught the train from the station at Tonosawa that gave me an excuse, after I was back from the onsen, to go for a walk. I wanted to locate the station that had to be somewhere on the other side of the stream.
Since there were two suspension bridges across the stream, one on either side of the hotel, I guessed one or both must lead to the station. Theoretically, I should be able to complete a circuit, crossing one bridge on the way to the station, and crossing the other one on the return journey.
I planned to confirm my hunches by inquiring at Reception, but the area was deserted when I passed through, so I was left to trust my own instincts.
Which, of course, turned out to be totally wrong.
I turned left, on an anticlockwise loop around the route I’d visualised, crossed the downstream bridge and encountered a private residence without an obvious path towards the station.
If The Casual Reader is wondering why Hughesy was so confident there was a station there, yesterday’s train stopped at a station clearly labelled Tonosawa. Later, I’d glimpsed a train from my stream-gazing position in the room in the evening.
Fine, I thought. It’s the other bridge. Should have gone that way, since I saw cars crossing yesterday afternoon.
Heading to the upstream bridge took me past the hotel.
I checked Reception on the way, in the hope of gaining guidance, but the area seemed deserted, so I carried on over the bridge and followed the road from there.
The road took me to another small hotel. There seemed to be a path that looped around behind the buildings, so I followed that.
Sidetracks branched off the main path, but I figured that the route to the station would be fairly well-trodden.
I followed what looked like the best option, which gradually became less and less promising.
In fact, the further I went, the more it seemed that no one apart from the odd adventurous foreigner used the track at all.
Backtracking, I tried various paths that branched off my main track, but each of those seemed to lead to a section of pipe I assumed was associated with the spa business.
Back at the hotel, I found someone at Reception and was told I should turn left once I’d passed through the front door and left again at a group of vending machines.
At the downstream bridge, there were no vending machines, so I followed the road downhill, crossed the bridge that took the main road over the stream, and found the machines.
They were situated close to a sign bearing the words Tonosawa station and an arrow.
Fine, I thought. Shouldn’t be too far.
Unfortunately, after a couple of hundred metres, I was faced with a multitude of paths with signs in Japanese and incomprehensible to large hairy non-Japanese-speaking foreigners.
If I had received the same directions when I first set out, I might have been inclined to explore a tad further. But thoughts of breakfast prompted me to head back to the hotel.
The best option seemed to involve a bus back to Hakone-Yumoto and catching the train from there.
Breakfast involved a croissant, juice, and a plate with scrambled eggs, sausages, a hash brown salad and a serve of pasta with mayonnaise, as well as the predictable tea or coffee.
Once we’d finished eating, packing and checking out, we headed back to the bus stop and caught the bus to Hakone-Yumoto, where we missed the train by a matter of seconds.
Never mind, we thought, the next one goes at 9:03, and the weather seems to be improving all the time, and we should be up at the cable railway before ten.
The train ride was disappointing after the previous day’s misty mystery. If we were experiencing it for the first time, I’m sure the reaction would have been different.
Once we were on the rope-way, we realised that the Fuji-viewing prospects were virtually nil, though we were able to get a good view of the sulphurous hell of Owakudani on the way.
When we reached yesterday’s lunch stop, we headed off in the direction in which, as far as we could make out, Mount Fuji must lie.
Since all we could see was a massive bank of white cloud, Madam ventured into a souvenir shop to verify that we were heading in the right direction.
She was informed that we were in the right place for a good view of the mountain but not today.
In that case, there was nothing for it but to head back down the rope-way and cable car and catch the train to a spot where we could link up with a bus.
That would take us to the hotel, where we could reclaim the luggage, cut our losses and take a taxi back to the station.
A local train should deliver us to Odawara in time to take our seats on the 12:35 service to Tokyo.
As the train left Odawara, I reflected on one of Frockster, the Former-Fishmongrel's recurring themes.
If we went to the Land of the Rising Sun, we had to plant a Bowen mango tree on Mount Fuji.
As ‘Er Indoors scanned the scenery on our left, the suggestion came back to haunt me. In the wake of an unsuccessful day-and-a-half’s attempted Fuji-viewing, it was apparent these sacrilegious sentiments had come to the attention of deities guarding the mountain.
As a result, they’d masked the peak behind a veil of cloud for the duration of our visit.
As the train left Hakone, we looked back. The cloud was slowly lifting.
It seemed the deities had been mollified, though from where we sat on the Shinkansen the summit remained shrouded by cloud. So I turned my thoughts to the next stage of the trip rather than dwelling on the past.
As we headed towards Yokohama and Tokyo, we moved into a belt of urban development. However, as we pulled into ShinYokohama, I was surprised by the amount of greenery close to the station.
It was hardly surprising to find it was impossible to tell where Yokohama ended, and Tokyo started.
Just after one o’clock, the train pulled into Tokyo, and we set off in search of The Interpreter.
Once contact was established, I found myself on the wrong side of a stream of students on an excursion as ‘Er Indoors threatened to turn a corner and disappear from view.
With disaster narrowly averted, we set off to find lunch, eventually settling for pizza before spending about an hour discussing language-related matters and wordplay in general.
I’d been bemused by signs we’d sighted around Hakone urging the public yo avoid touching "doubtful things". I was not sure which of an object’s properties would render it doubtful.
A year or two earlier I'd been equally intrigued by a shop offering "homemade cakes and pies" that operated under the name of "Pumpkin Poo". (http://www.engrish.com/2001/12/pumpkin-poo/)
Discussing linguistic oddities with someone whose job involves instantaneous translation from English into Japanese was an enjoyable way to pass the time.
By 3:40, we were back on the bullet train bound for Bashō country.
A lengthy tunnel took us to Ueno station, where I sighted the new double-decker Shinkansen before we plunged into another tunnel.
We emerged looking out over the sprawl of Tokyo’s northern suburbs and had hardly gone any distance before two overalled females moved through the carriage collecting rubbish. I found that odd I found odd. We’d been kept waiting on the platform while the train was cleaned before departure.
Or do travellers bring their rubbish on board with them?
After we’d passed Omiya, we encountered farmland once again, though there was still plenty of medium-density housing.
And in the middle of one urbanised belt, sighting Hotel Valentine I couldn’t help wondering what sort of establishment it might be.
There’s every possibility the establishment in question could attract the majority of its business from the honeymoon trade. Of course, there are some other possible explanations, and the name could originate from somewhere right over on the other side of the further reaches of left field.
The blinds on the west side of the train had been drawn to keep out the afternoon sun. I was glad to have something to look at as we passed patches of forest interspersed with urban areas.
About ten minutes past Utsomiya we were finally in more or less open country stretching to the eastern horizon as we gradually moved into serious forest in between villages and farmlands.
We passed through lengthy tunnels as the land became hillier, and banks of dull grey cloud started to develop overhead.
Glancing across, someone on the port side of the carriage had raised their sunshade.
I caught sight of snow-capped mountains.
The mountains away to the east must have been considerably lower or under the influence of warmer conditions near the coast since there was no snow to be seen in that direction.
We also noticed that we were moving back into areas of cherry-blossom. On the edge of Sendai, I sighted one of the few freight trains I’d spotted since I’d first boarded a train in Japan.
The high-speed commuter lines are obviously separated from the corridors that carry the quantities of freight that an economy the size of Japan’s must generate.
We arrived in Kitakami, our base for the next thirty-six hours comfortably after dark and immediately settled into the routine of booking the next leg of the trip.
That took some time since Sunday’s travel involves two changes of train on the long haul back to base in Kōbe.
An additional complication reared its head as ‘Er Indoors requested a starboard-side window seat on the final leg, a last attempt to catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji in the wake of Triple-F’s fantasising.
The only available reserved seats were in the smoking section of the train, so we decided to cut our losses and declined.
While these negotiations were in train, someone I guessed was our host for the next day and a half arrived, mobile in hand, obviously looking for someone.
Having established that she was looking for us, we waited till negotiations had been concluded and the tickets processed. After that, greetings were exchanged, and we headed off for my first encounter with a modern Japanese house.
Apart from visits to The Mother’s apartment, which is some forty years old, I’d only seen the external aspect of the Japanese house.
We arrived outside a small two-storey house occupying a small block and guarded by a little hairy dachshund named Kotaro.
Inside, the canine was transformed from watchdog to lapdog as he attempted to protect the property by trying to lick the intruders to death.
The new nickname of Grog Dog seemed like the way to go when faced with a creature that is obviously a major league Licker.
With the preliminary pleasantries done, we sat down to supper, and talked till ten, while a small brown dog embarked a strategy of subjugation by dissolution.
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Don’t let anyone try to tell you that it’s impossible to get a good night’s sleep on a futon.
Not the futon they’ll sell you in your local downtown furniture store, one with four legs, a metal frame and a basic mattress. I’m talking the bed on the floor routine with a good layer of insulation over the top to keep out the Kitakami chill.
I slept like a log (and probably sawed a few) before rising ultra-fashionably late on a day when the first item on the agenda was attending to the laundry.
Once we’d arranged the washing on the upstairs balcony, the thoughts turned to sightseeing.
It was around eleven when two Japanese women, one large hairy foreigner and one small hairy dog found themselves en route to the gorge at Genbi. I was told we were there for flying dumplings, which I assumed would be lunch.
I wasn't overly sure what was in store since I’d heard a variety of pronunciations, flying, frying, dumplings and dungo.
And I was kept in suspense since, immediately after parking we plunged into the Sahara Glass Hall, a store selling glass objects in multitudinous forms.
This, I gathered, was a stratagem to avoid paying for parking.
Having established our status as at-least-potential-customers, the Grog Dog was retrieved from the car, and we set off for the gorge, which was a short stroll away.
A bridge took us over the stream, and a right-hand turn had us headed directly towards flying dumpling territory.
I had assumed flying dumplings were not, as the name suggested, something resembling a food fight. ‘Er Indoors suspected we were headed somewhere we would be throwing items, possibly as some sort of ritual.
Neither of us was any the wiser when our host knelt down, placed some money in a small basket and used a wooden mallet to tap a wooden object (twice).
The basket, attached to a device resembling the flying fox familiar to Boy Scouts the world over, then zoomed across the river to a small shelter high on the opposite bank. It was back a matter of moments later filled with a double serve of dumplings and green tea.
The dumplings were dungo, a dough made from rice flour and water, rolled into a ball, boiled, grilled and served, three to a stick, dunked in sweet sticky soy sauce, red bean paste with sugar and soy sauce with mirin.
I found them an acquired taste and one which I have, to date, failed to acquire, but the green tea went down well in the conditions.
Back in the car, we headed across country, past a Buddha's face etched into a stone cliff on the way to Motsuji, a temple complex near Mount Toyama.
The main feature is a garden from the Heian Period (794 - 1192). The site dates back to 850 and grew to an enormous complex with five hundred dormitories for monks spread around forty places of worship before fires destroyed the original buildings.
One building, Jogyoda Hall, was reconstructed in 1732, but most of the buildings on the site are much more recent.
The fires did not destroy the Pure Land Garden, the real centre-piece of the site and the venue for various festivals and ritual observances in January and May each year.
From Motsuji, we planned to go for lunch, then head to the nearby Golden Buddha, but drizzle set in while we were eating.
The Buddha-visit, which would have involved an uphill walk through the forest was a late scratching from the program.
Instead, we took our time driving through the same sort of countryside I’d seen as our train whizzed past the previous evening.
Back in Kitakami, we found the washing, given the prevailing weather conditions, had hardly dried at all.
After rearranging the laundry in more favourable drying conditions,
I fled to the warmth of the futon for a power nap. Meanwhile, the girls, who hadn’t seen each other for something like a dozen years, continued catching up on old times in the warmth of the living area.
I wandered back downstairs around five and spent an hour working on the Travelogue while the others flicked through photo albums, warm and comfortable in the radiated output of the electric heater. Meanwhile, the temperature outside plunged well into the single-figure range.
It was warm enough in the living room. But venturing away from the heated area reinforced my sense of wonder at how the people who occupied the wooden buildings we’d seen at Takayama managed to survive sub-zero winters.
Around six, there was movement at the station, and various costume adjustments were made while a taxi was ordered.
It might have been peak hour, or maybe we didn’t peek out often enough. There was no way we were going to stand outside for any longer than was necessary. Either way, a second call and a further wait eventually saw the cab arrived.
Hadori, a yakiniku place in the downtown entertainment quarter, is a small operation with the feel of a local/neighbourhood eatery. I was assured there were probably people sitting around the eight or nine tables who’d travelled at least as far (a ¥900 cab fare) as we had.
We sat down at a table with a gas-fired grill in the middle, and plates of meat and related products varying in price according to quality were delivered for us to cook to our liking.
The recipe from there ran something like this:
Dip cooked portions in soy sauce before wrapping them in lettuce leaves (chilli optional).
Accompany the lettuce parcels with rice and wash the lot down with copious quantities of draught beer.
In short, my kind of place...
After dinner, we could have walked home. But bearing in mind that you can’t see approaching rain after dark, wiser heads prevailed, and a cab was the drier and warmer option.
Once I decided to call it a night, I managed another good night’s sleep on the futon.
I suspect this was mainly due to the human equivalent of hibernation.
Once under the covers, it seemed the body shut down completely. Despite having consumed large quantities of high-quality amber fluid, I didn’t emerge from the warmth until absolutely necessary. That was well over nine hours later.
Sunday, 13 April 2008
After surfacing shortly after seven, we had enough time for a shower and a leisurely breakfast before packing and preparing for the long haul back to home base in Kōbe.
When I looked outside, the weather offered a pleasant contrast to the day before, being fine and sunny rather than cold and overcast.
That prompted an ill-considered and over-optimistic decision.
We consigned the warmest clothing to the suitcase, although we did consider wearing it to the station, then switching it to the backpack.
If we’d risen half an hour later, what came next might not have been a problem.
Once packed, we had about half an hour of spare time between when we finished packing and the optimum time for arriving on the platform at the station.
Our host suggested a detour to enjoy some sakura since there was a lovely spot more or less on the way to the station and the flowers were just starting to appear.
Of course, we hadn’t stuck our noses outside at this point.
Still, it seemed like a warm sunny day.
The astute reader can guess what came next.
First up, it was much colder than anticipated.
Second, once we’d reached the spot on the banks of the Kitakami River, preparations for the cherry blossom festivities were well underway.
Although optimum viewing time would be much later in the week, snow-capped peaks to the west were a spectacular sight. So we just had to leave the car's warmth and stroll to the optimum (and, predictably furthest) spot for a photographic memory of the sight.
Once we’d made it back to the car, we headed for the station, bade farewell to Our Host and Grog Dog, and climbed the stairs to the platform. It was only a matter of a few minutes before the train arrived, and we were on our way again.
Once again, we were on the starboard side of the train. Heading in the opposite direction, we ended up with a good view of the mountains to the west.
As the Shinkansen rocketed along, we reached the places we’d visited the previous day in less than half the time the road trip had taken. By the time we passed Kurikoma-Kōgen, the mountains had receded, and we were travelling over broad plains with extensive farmland and some hills.
The train we’d boarded in Kitakami was a slower, stop at all stations Shinkansen. With a long haul ahead of us, we were going to change to a limited express at Sendai.
That was a prospect that evoked visions of a frantic rush up and down escalators, of mistaken platforms and all sorts of potential disasters.
The reality?
We alighted, walked no more than twenty metres, and we were standing at the relevant embarkation point for the next train, which was due in about seven minutes.
The weather had become bleak and overcast after blue skies further north, and the platform at Sendai was colder than Kitakami, which we’d left an hour and a half earlier. That had been quite cold enough, thank you very much.
After Sendai, the mountains (or reasonably large hills) were much closer to the line. In some places, we passed virtual oceans of sakura though the trees were not yet totally in bloom.
At the same time, the weather closed in, bringing drizzly rain, weather that in the hills around Hakone had seemed mystic and mysterious, but in the lowlands was merely dreary and dismal.
I noted that in some areas where there weren’t many buildings over two storeys high, the landscape was dominated by towering net-like structures. It turned out they surrounded the golf driving ranges, protecting innocent passers-by from flying golf balls.
Once we'd alighted in Tokyo we ran into the couple we were meeting for lunch, more by good luck than good management. After greetings had been exchanged, we wandered off for a decent Italian lunch at Papa Milano, beside the station, and returned for the final Shinkansen leg to Kōbe.
The primary remaining question was the possibility of sighting Mount Fuji. We had thoughts of trying our luck and seeing if we could grab a starboard side window seat in one of the non-reserved carriages.
That would have involved queuing in conditions that were even colder than we’d experienced further north at Kitakami and Sendai. We took the soft option, standing in the heated waiting room on the platform while the cleaners prepared the train for departure.
We had seats 15B&C in car 14, with 15A vacant, but, given the number of passengers, it seemed highly unlikely our luck would last.
The spare seat remained vacant when we pulled into Shinagawa. As we left the Tokyo high-rise behind, looking away to the right, there was no sign of any mountains whatsoever away to the west.
At Yokohama, the vacant seat was occupied, and Madam’s interest was sparked as mountains came into view to the west. But the conditions limited visibility as we sped past Odawara and into Atami.
The mountain gods, it seemed, had still not relented.
As we continued southwards, the weather improved as we passed what could have been (judging by the angle of the lower slopes) the bottom of Mount Fuji. But the top was shrouded in the sort of mist that meant we couldn’t be sure.
Never mind, we told ourselves. Gives us something to look forward to next time.
Back in Kōbe, we made our way to the Crowne Plaza Hotel, conveniently situated right next door to ShinKōbe, checked in and headed into the neighbouring shopping complex for dinner before heading back to the room.
Free access to the internet from within the room gave me a leisurely opportunity to clear some of the backlog of email that had accumulated since we’d left home. In most other places, you had to stand at a terminal in the lobby.