Japan #2

Saturday 29th March saw us having another Japanese breakfast at the hotel. This time we managed to have it without the fish stew and omelette, although the miso was still distinctly fishy. We checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the station to catch the bullet train to Kyoto.

Public transport in Japan was a bit of a revelation. I'm used to trains in Britain, where delays/cancellations are as common as rain, the prices are extortionate and the service questionable. We arrived at the station, collected our pre-booked tickets from the machine and headed for the designated platform. Our tickets informed us which car we were in as well as our seat numbers. The platform was marked with the numbers of the cars and people waited in orderly queues behind the number, with the platform separated from the tracks by barriers. The train rolled in 10 minutes before departure. The passengers got off and the cleaners got on, sprucing up the carriages before the patiently waiting passengers were allowed to take their seats. Everyone was very calm and orderly and the train departed to the minute. Our luggage stowed easily in the overhead shelves leaving us with plenty of legroom and a very comfortable reclining seat. Throughout the journey, several guards patrolled the train, bowing to the carriage occupants on entering and leaving. It was all terribly civilised. 

Because it was still quite early in the morning, the weather was misty and, sadly, the hoped for view of Mount Fuji out of the windows failed to materialise.

Just over 2 hours later, we arrived in Kyoto and, using Google maps, walked the short journey to the Sakura Terrace Hotel. Sakura means cherry blossom in Japanese and this hotel was to be the best one of our trip. Conveniently situated not far from the station, we had easy access to trains, buses and the metro. It was on the walk to the hotel that we first experienced the pedestrian crossings. Not only did the Japanese wait patiently for the green man, even when the road was perfectly clear, but the signal to walk was a high pitched 'pew-pew' sound, which for some reason pleased R no end. For the rest of the holiday, he made the same sound whenever we crossed a road. I'm sure that people thought he had Tourette's!

Before we went to Japan, I had read Nigel Slater's new book 'A Thousand Feasts'. A big fan of Japan, many of the sections refer to his travels there. In it he mentions the Onsen baths - public baths, sometimes using naturally hot springs. R mentioned them and for some reason I assumed that they would be mixed and, imagining them to be full of creepy men, I wasn't keen.

Arriving at the hotel, we checked in and were given our room keys. I was then surreptitiously handed a slip of paper containing a 4 digit number. This, I was informed, was the code to the ladies baths. Once I knew that the sexes were separated and security was high, I had no qualms. The onsens turned out to be one of the highlights of the holiday. They were present in all our hotels, except the ones in Tokyo, and when we did have access to one, we barely used our hotel room bathroom - except for teeth cleaning and using the magnificent loos!

Having dumped our cases and checked Happy Cow, we set off in search of lunch. The Mercy Vegan Factory was a small restaurant about a 10 minute walk away. Their vegan lunch plate consisting of sushi, tempura and sweet and sour cauliflower with accompanying miso soup (no dashi this time!) was excellent; as too were their GF chocolate cake and matcha pudding.

Suitably fortified, we walked to the Higashiyama district, one of the best preserved historic districts at the base of Kyoto's Eastern mountains.
Many of the temples closed quite early, but we explored the museum shop (I was extremely tempted by a wood block print of old Kyoto but it was quite expensive) and nosied around the pottery places admiring the beautiful pots and sake bottles. Kawai Kanjiro's house (a Japanese potter) is now a museum, but that too was closed. We made a mental note to return another day.

We walked for quite some time, exploring public parks, a mausoleum and more pottery shops, before coming upon another vegan cafe. Silverback's was quite small and run my one man - the self-named 'Silverback' as he claimed that he resembled the pictures of gorillas that adorned the walls. After a large lunch, I wasn't very hungry and settled for corn nachos with salsa and guacamole. R opted for a Thai green curry. The portions were huge and, to be honest, I've had better. R enjoyed it though, especially as it came with a beer to wash it down. I settled for a soya chai latte.

Tired, we hopped on a bus back to Kyoto station and from there walked to our hotel. Changing into our PJs (it was the done thing to wander round the hotel in the nightwear provided - a sort of grey/blue denim worker outfit, washed until it was beautifully faded and soft), we sat by the fire pit, drinking one of the free drinks provided (tea and coffee were free all the time and one free alcoholic drink was provided per guest per day upon showing your room key. On this occasion, we chose sake.), listening to the soft singing of the musician laid on for the night. This became our nightly ritual - onsen, firepit, free drink and music under the stars; it was heaven.

Sunday 30th found us enjoying a buffet breakfast at the hotel. The buffet format certainly made it a lot easier than the set menu that we had experienced in Tokyo. The only problem was that a lot of the salads were temptingly vegan, apart from the fish/pieces of meat that they seemed to have thrown in as an afterthought. Still, there was more than enough to keep us happy.

After breakfast, we walked to the bus station and bought a day's ticket for the 'Hop on - Hop off' bus. In hindsight, this was a big mistake. Whilst a choice of 2 routes did cover the major Kyoto attractions, the timetable meant that you spent a long time waiting for the next bus. Also, the attractions were such that you couldn't cover more than a 2 or 3 per day, so it would have been much cheaper to just get normal buses to our desired destinations.

We headed for Ginkaku-ji, consisting of the Silver Pavilion, several other temple buildings and beautiful moss and dry sand gardens. Before entering, we spotted the sign for the Philosopher's Path. This is a 2km walk along the canal between Ginkaku-ji and Nanzen-ji temples, under the cherry blossoms. It is named after the Kyoto University philosopher, Kitaro Nishida, who used the path for his daily meditations. It was peaceful and very pretty indeed.

Jizo statues - a Buddhist deity. The rocks are often adorned with aprons which are considered offerings:

Having walked the Philosopher's Path and back, we visited the Silver Temple. The grounds were stunning. Everywhere you turn in Japan, you spot beautiful trees. 'Ooh, that's a nice tree' was our constant refrain. They are also very good at small details - a wrapped rock in the middle of a bridge. a mound of sand in the shape of Mount Fuji to reflect the moon and act as a light, and a statue of a phoenix on the roof.

Having explored Ginkaku-ji, we used Happy Cow to locate our nearest vegan restaurant. It turned out to be 'Kisaki', a traditional tofu restaurant halfway along the Philosopher's Path. Initially, we had difficulty spotting the entrance. I peeped through the door and declared 'It can't be here, it looks like a shoe shop'! It turned out that that was, in fact, the entrance. Customers remove their shoes on entering the premises and leave them in little cubby holes near the door! Sitting at small tables on the floor, the tofu is cooked fresh at the table and accompanied by rice, tempura and pickles. They also did the best sake - full of flavour and with great depth.

Back on the bus, we hopped off at Kawai Kanjiro's house, the museum that we had noted the previous night. It was very tranquil and full of lovely pots, carvings, statues, real cats and the most amazing kiln. We bought a small print of one of his paintings as a memento.

Back on the bus, we headed for the Hokan-ji temple and the 5 story pagoda. This was, by far, my least favourite part of the day - the streets were narrow, full of tourist shops and very crowded. It was also quite chilly at this point and we were glad of the climb up to the temple at the top, where we sat to watch the sunset until it became obscured by clouds.

Back at the hotel, we hit the onsen. In case you've never experienced a Japanese bath, you enter through the sliding door using the code/key card provided, undress and store your belongings in one of the available lockers before entering the wet section. No clothes are allowed beyond this point. I consoled myself with the fact that I didn't know these people and that I would never see them again after the holiday. No one batted an eye and apart from a few beautiful, slim, pert Japanese girls, womankind was there in all her lumpy bumpy glory! In the wet area, you sit on a small plastic stool and use the shower head and shampoo, conditioner and shower gel, then head for the hot pool (there was also a sauna, but I'm never very keen on those; I can't stop thinking about Legionnaire's Disease!) and ease yourself in. Some people take in a small strip of towel to towel themselves lightly before entering the dry area again. This the onsen aficionados fold and balance on their heads whilst in the pool. I just used to pop mine by the side. A shelf runs round the pool perimeter, allowing you to sit in the hot water up to your waist, then, once acclimatised, you can lower yourself gently to the bottom of the pool so that the water comes up to shoulder height. The pool at the Sakura Terrace Hotel seemed the hottest of all the onsens that we tried whilst in Japan. I don't know if this was actually the case, or if we just got used to them. When you have had enough, you exit the pool and shower again, before wiping off most of the water and returning to the dry area. Here, full sized bath towels are provided and, once dry, you can put your PJs back on and make use of the hairdryers, moisturising lotions etc. It was a surprisingly blissful experience.

After the large lunch at Kisaki, I wasn't hungry, so R nipped into a local 7-11 (of which there were many in Japan) and, with the aid of Google translate (an absolute Godsend, we couldn't have managed without it), translated the ingredients and bought some vegan ramen. He ate this back at the hotel before we headed for the fire pit and our free drink of the evening. I had a Sake Violet cocktail, which reminded me of the Flower Girl cocktail when L and I went to see 'My Fair Lady'. It was delicious. R settled for a G&T and we listened to the music, snuggled under a blanket whilst I did a bit of sock knitting. It was blissful.

Toodle pip for now. x

Japan

Well, pre-flight nerves or not, 3 weeks ago we got on a plane and set off on my birthday holiday to the beautiful country of Japan. Exciting though the prospect was, I had spent the last 3 months worrying about it. I'm not one of nature's natural travellers and, if you had asked me the day before departure if I wanted to stay at home, I would have jumped at the chance. 3 weeks on, I am SO glad that we went. Japan turned out to be brilliant: stunning scenery; beautiful, calm, polite, helpful people; yummy food (although vegan and gluten free was something of an issue); and public baths and toilet seats to die for! 

The following series of posts are here as part of my diary. Feel free to read and comment if you would like to, but they are here mainly for my own benefit, so there is absolutely no pressure to do so. :O)

With the neighbours all set up for house, greenhouse and houseplant sitting, we set off for Heathrow airport on Wednesday 26th March. We parked the car in the long stay carpark at Terminal 2 and headed for departures. Problem number 1 arose when we scanned the departure board and realised that our flight wasn't on it. I asked R if he was sure that it was Terminal 2 that we needed, and a quick check revealed that our plane departed from Terminal 4! No problem, we had left in plenty of time (another of my anxieties is missing the plane - it actually happened once in Barcelona, when R decided that we didn't need the necessary 2 hours for check in, security checks etc. It turns out that you do!), and a quick hop on the Elizabeth line later, we were where we needed to be.

Our China Eastern flight was split into 2 parts: Heathrow to Shanghai, then, after a 3 hour wait, Shanghai to Tokyo. Flight number one passed without incident. The inflight entertainment was undeniably a tad dull, with a poor selection of films, but I was prepared with library books, sock knitting and an Audible book on my phone. The food provided was actually rather nice. I had been given the choice of vegan or gluten free meal (the combination of the 2 wasn't an option), and I went with vegan on the basis that GF may well have been meat/fish based. The curry and rice for dinner was fine, as was the breakfast/lunch, although I did have to pick around the pasta for that one!

As we were coming into land at Shanghai, we were struck by an announcement informing us to reveal to the airport staff if we were suffering from any symptoms, ranging from a runny nose to diarrhoea. We even had our temperature scanned when we disembarked. After the events of the last few years, it seemed a tad hypocritical! 

R spent the 3 hour stopover napping at our departure gate, whilst I worked on my sock knitting. After waiting for over 2 hours, our gate suddenly changed and we all dutifully headed to an alternative at the other end of the airport. It was while we were sitting here that we checked our boarding cards and realised that they hadn't seated us together. We had paid extra to be sure of adjacent seats, and the thought of flying whilst sitting next to a stranger was spiking my levels of adrenaline. Luckily, once on board our little airbus, we explained the situation and a very kind man swapped with me so that R and I were together.

Panic over, it seemed almost an irrelevance when it turned out that they didn't have our requested meal on board. I wasn't particularly hungry anyway, and the staff managed to cobble together some rice and vegetables for us, and that, together with a couple of packets of peanuts for protein, tided us over nicely. With the number of people suffering from nut allergies, however, it still surprises me when they hand out peanuts on a plane. As it turned out, the lack of ordered food was the least of my problems, as the flight suddenly hit a patch of turbulence. It was quite bad; the flight attendants stopped serving the food and sat down on the floor. As I was burying my head in R's shoulder, I forgot to hold onto my tray and it went flying across the aisle, scattering what little food we had. At least scrabbling to pick it all up distracted me from the plane bouncing around! I was very glad when we finally landed at Tokyo Narita airport. Security cleared and baggage collected, our man with a van drove us into central Tokyo and to our destination - the Ginza Creston Hotel.

Here, problem number 2 soon reared its head. We checked in and headed wearily for our booked room. R opened the door ......... and the smell of cigarette smoke hit us like a sledgehammer. He entered the room to turn on the aircon, whilst I sat on the landing, refusing to enter. We headed back down to reception. Here R turned decidedly sheepish when it became apparent that he had accidentally booked a smoking room. According to the chap at reception, a non-smoking room would be available from noon the following day, but there was nothing to be had before that. R suggested that perhaps the aircon had managed to clear the worst of it and we took the lift back to our floor. The door opened and the smell still hit us like a wall. It was the first night of our holiday, anything that entered that room - us, our suitcase, coats, clothing etc. would smell like an ashtray for the remaining 2 weeks. I was exhausted from the travel and weeks of anxiety, and hungry from the lack of food, so I did what any sensible woman in that situation would do - I sat in the corridor outside the room and burst into tears! R consoled me as best he could, but it was late and our options were limited. I ate one of my emergency GF sandwiches and headed back down to Reception. Here, I informed the man that, whilst I knew that the blame lay squarely on us, there was no way that I was going to spend the night in that room, and I intended to sleep on one of the comfy looking armchairs in the foyer. R had joined me at this point, but I don't think that either he or the hotel staff believed me until I had unzipped my case and headed to the foyer toilets, clutching my little toiletry bag. Miraculously, when I emerged 10 minutes later, an alternative room had been found and we were soon heading up in the lift to our 38th floor non-smoking room. It was clean, it had a nice view and, more importantly, it was smoke-free. I was soon in the Japanese nightwear provided (I actually packed 2 pairs of PJs for the trip and didn't have to wear either of them) and went out like a light.

We awoke the following morning, confused as to what day it was. I expected it to be Thursday but we had actually spent that travelling, and it was in fact Friday 28th. A quick shower freshened us up nicely and it was then that we had our first experience with a Japanese toilet! R went first, so he was prepared when it was my turn. He is now the proud possessor of a recording on his phone of me squealing and then laughing hysterically as the toilet squirted water where no toilet had squirted water before. He has even threatened to make the recording his ring tone! After the initial shock, both the water jet and the heated seat were surprisingly pleasant, and throughout the holiday, when given a choice between a Japanese style toilet and a Western one, we invariably opted for the Japanese one. R has now expressed a desire to have one fitted at home!

Breakfast at the hotel was a set menu of American or Japanese. American was eggs, sausages and a bread roll (I suppose I could have eaten the plate!) and the Japanese was a selection of seaweed salads, pickled fruit and vegetables, congee (a type of rice porridge), miso soup and fish stew. We opted for the Japanese and asked for the fish stew to be excluded. When the waiter brought the food, he explained that he had replaced the fish stew with some omelette cubes instead. Not wanting to appear rude, we ate them. We also ate the fishy tasting miso. I feel that we inadvertently consumed rather a lot of this during the holiday; the ubiquitous dashi sauce often containing fish. I also consumed more gluten in the form of soy sauce than was good for my poor old gut.

After breakfast, we had to effectively check out of our room, whilst they transferred us to the original alternative room that was going to become available at noon. We left all our cases in situ and the staff transferred them across whilst we were out for the day.

We headed for the nearest Metro station, stopping en route to get some cash (there was a slight problem with finding a card which worked and we're still not sure what the issue was) and a local SIM for R's phone, so that we wouldn't get hit with roaming charges whilst away. Problems solved and cash in hand, we bought metro tickets to take us to Senso-Ji, Tokyo's ancient Buddhist temple. We had a slight issue on the metro, where we got thoroughly distracted booking tickets for the bullet train to Kyoto and watching videos of a local micro-pig cafe - yes, you read that right. We have visited a cat cafe in Cambodia, but this one had actual mini pigs mingling with the customers! We missed our stop several times, micro-pigging backwards and forwards along the same length of track. Finally concentrating, we emerged triumphant into the Tokyo sunshine.

The Senso-Ji temple complex boast magnificent gates, a hall and a 5 story pagoda. It is the most widely visited religious site in the world, with over 30m visitors annually. I had been prepared for crowds in Tokyo, especially as it was the beginning of the cherry blossom season. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised; I've been in far busier places in India and even sometimes in London!

Having wasted most of the morning arranging SIMs, ready cash, and getting distracted on the metro, we were more than a little peckish. The Happy Cow App led us to a cafe near the waterfront and here we struck gold food-wise. Miracle of miracles, we had stumbled upon a completely vegan and gluten free restaurant! 2 lunch plates of fava bean/pea nuggets with curry, tempura, rice and salad, followed by a chocolate waffle and doughnut to share and we were ready to explore

As we were near the waterfront, we walked along, admiring the cherry trees and marvelling at the girls dressed in kimonos posing for selfies by the cherry blossom. Renting kimonos and having your hair and makeup done to match seemed to be a very big thing. Girls of all nationalities clicked along in ninja socks and flip flop type shoes, dressed to the nines and having their photos taken. I couldn't see the attraction myself, but each to their own.

We also saw the Tokyo Skytree - the World's tallest tower at 634m - and the Asahi Beer Hall and Asahi Flame,  colloquially referred to as 'Poo Building' and 'The Golden Turd'!

Heading to the temple, we had our fortune told. For 100 Yen (about 50p), you shake a wooden box until a stick appears bearing a number. You then match the number to a drawer containing paper fortunes. If your fortune is good, you keep it, if bad, you can dispel the bad luck by folding the fortune and tying it to the adjacent rails. Ours wasn't bad and we kept it.

As well as admiring the gates, the pagoda, a man dressed as a Samurai warrior with natty shoes, more kimono clad girls and mass incense burning, we also stopped to watch a man throwing bread into the air for some starlings to catch mid flight, and admired a statue of an old 'social worker' - reading the plaque, it actually sounded like she had worked as a midwife. I took her photo as she had such a lovely face. 

Wanting to hang around until the evening to see the pagoda lit up, we decided to take a quick, touristy rickshaw ride around the Old Quarter, pulled by our intrepid guide, Anton. It was great fun; he was very knowledgeable and allowed us to take photos of his ninja footwear!

Once dark, we bought a matcha latte and walked the streets of the Old Quarter, admiring the Temple lit up. After a large lunch, we made do with a drink and a few snacks for dinner - edamame beans, pea shoots and smashed pickled cucumber hit the spot nicely. R had a beer and I enjoyed a yuzu sour.

Then it was back to the hotel where we bumped into an obvious prostitute and her sheepish-looking client in the hotel lift - we got chatting on the way up to our floor and she was very nice - and then spent the rest of the evening watching the zombie film 'Resident Evil' on our hotel room TV, merely because it was the only programme that we could find that was in English!

That's all for today. More posts will follow on soon, as I put our holiday highs (and lows!) down whilst they are fresh in my memory.

Toodle pip for now. x