Ippoippo

As usual, a bit late updating this blog. Anyway, this time this posting is about our recent(ish) trip back to Japan.

Up North

The plan this year was to head up to the north first (somewhere I haven’t been to) and work our way back down. We’d start in the north because we figured the autumn colours would be there first and move down during the next two weeks. What we hadn’t counted on was that it’s been a very hot year in Japan, and it was still pretty warm during the last week of October. In fact, it was most bizarre when we arrived in Tokyo because we found ourselves needing to walk around in just a t-shirt, whereas the locals were starting to wear their jumpers and coats. That said, an element of that was your typically “It is now autumn (according to the calendar), so I will wear autumn clothing despite the fact it’s 25 degrees C outside!”.
So, early on a Tuesday morning (having arrived on Sunday and spent some time on Monday in Tokyo) we left the in-laws and headed down to Yokohama to catch the Shinkansen up to Akita. It was a wet morning, but not that cold.
About 3 hours later, we were in Akita (well, Tazawako). Whoops, should have brought some jumpers with us. We were equipped with light jumpers and jackets, but decided we probably didn’t need our hats and thick jumpers. Big mistake, as it was rather cold.
As we boarded the various buses and headed up into the hills towards our destination of Tsuru-no-yu Onsen (鶴の湯, Part of the Nyuto Onsen set of onsens), the first snow of the year arrived. In fact, it seemed like early autumn had jumped straight into winter, as not many of the trees up there had changed colours yet.

The onsen itself is quite well known, and there are rooms in a modern ryokan building, plus the opportunity to stay in an old lodge which would have been rather cold. Glad we stayed in the new building. The other interesting feature was that as well as the separate male/female baths, there was a mixed bath outdoor bath. So that was an interesting experience, sitting outside in the water, with the snow falling on my head. Yuko then came across from the female changing rooms and joined me. I think she was the only woman there in the mixed bath (at that time anyway). This would have been OK normally, except for the very loud group of Taiwanese tourists who decided it was perfectly acceptable to get their (fully-dressed) buddies to come into the bath area (which is fenced off from the public areas) with their video camera and film cameras. OK, they weren’t filming us or any of the other guests, but it was a disturbance nonetheless.

Generally, we had a mixed time there. The food was pretty good, and it was great to taste local, Akita food as well. Very hearty, homely food which was great to go with the snow. The staff and people in Akita were a little difficult to work out. Whilst never being rude, they were slightly stand-off-ish, and never really made us feel welcome.

The next morning, it was time to venture about and head back down the hills so we could catch the Shinkansen and work our way down south a bit.

Fukushima

Next stop was Kōriyama (郡山). We didn’t plan on staying here. Instead, the plan was to pick up a car and then drive it down to the next place we’d be staying the night.
This was the first time I’d driven a) an automatic car and b) in Japan! (Yep, never ever needed to drive a car when we used to live there). Generally, it was fine. The only two annoyances I had were 1) the stupidly slow speed limits (which everyone else ignores but I really didn’t fancy getting unlucky and pulled over) and 2) the position of the traffic lights (when compared to their position in the UK).
We pretty much kept to the quiet roads and we got to see a fair bit of Fukushima prefecture countryside.

Our destination was to be Kashi Onsen in Nishigo ‘village’, which was just west of Shirakawa.
Ohhh my God, this is much better. Again, this onsen had a mixed bathing bath (though indoors this time), as well as a number of men and womens baths. The leaves had just started changing colours (up the hills, the colours were starting to come out, it was still pretty green for most trees further down into the valleys). In fact, Yuko and I wished we’d been here a week later as we reckon the colours would have been perfect.

So, we checked in and were helped to settle in with some very, very friendly and kind staff. Now, this place isn’t exactly a small, family run place. It’s pretty big and busy, but the staff still took the time to look after us. Fantastic!

So, after some serious soaking and relaxation, we went back to our room to have food (this being ryokan style, it was food in our room). Again, local food, so this time it was Fukushima food. Fukushima itself is relatively well known for it’s beef production. When you drive around, there are some very British style rolling grasslands that separate the low-flat lands where most of the cities/towns are, and the wooded mountain areas. Perfect for vegetables and cattle.
The nearby woods and forests at this time of year are full of various kinds of wild mushrooms, so they featured heavily in our meal too.

Exploring

As well as just wanting to do the tourist thing and exploring somewhere where we hadn’t been before, another reason for coming up to Fukushima was to explore the place as a possible place to move to to live. Is this a place for us to settle, and have a change of career!?!
The next day was a bit unfortunate because it rained all day. So, we decided to venture south across the prefecture border into the Nasu region.
Its quite a well known area because the summers here are relatively cool and less humid. It’s very much a place to escape to in the summer. Hence, there is a massive amount of second homes up in the hills. However, as we drove around, Yuko and myself didn’t find the place that great. It all seemed a bit ‘fake’ and ‘Disney’. The attractions and buildings were all rather tacky looking and it just didn’t feel homely.
Mind you, it was good that we did explore there.

Shirakawa

The next day, it was time to explore Shirakawa. The weather had improved, which meant the sky was a fantastic clear blue colour. The plan was to do a bit of sight seeing in the morning. Shirakawa town centre itself is rather unremarkable. In fact, it’s not very appealing at all. There are no well know stores there, and what other stores that are there are not very nice looking. Most of the decent stores where you could buy day to day things seemed to be located on the outskirts near the Toll-road motorway (IC). However, the two main tourist attractions are very nice. First up was Nanko Park, which included a very calm and relaxing tea house. Second up was the castle.

After a raman lunch (I ate far too much raman on this trip!), we met up with some people who work for a Non-Govermental-Organisation (NGO) promoting living in the area, providing advice on the housing and business side of things. They had a chat with us, got to know our ideas and showed us around a bit. Although we have a fair bit of work to do to calculate various options, it was a very productive meeting. Again, the people in Shirakawa and Nishigo area were very friendly and helpful (even with me the foreigner!).

That night was our last night before catching another early morning Shinkansen. This was the view though before we went in search of food in Shirakawa. This is looking out towards the hills by Nishigo.

Back down south

In fact, it was very far south. We caught the Shinkansen, and headed to Tokyo. But then, we kept going on all the way towards Yamaguchi in the south. It was rather tiring, but this was a chance to visit family down there, and to pay our respects for a Great-Aunt we never got to meet that one last time before she died (she died a couple of weeks after our last visit to Japan, when we didn’t have time to go to Yamaguchi).

Having done that, the next day it was back up to Tokyo to “Hotel In-Laws”! For the rest of the time in Japan, it was time to catch up with friends and relatives. One nice little day trip though was going to and climbing (hiking) up Mount Takao. From there, you could get a good view of Tokyo, and from the summit you could see across to Mount Fuji.

Next thing we knew, it was time to come home. Next visit to Japan??!!?? Who knows. However, we’d love to visit and explore more of Fukushima again.

Japan Trip 2010 Image Collection is here on Flickr.

Hell, it’s only been 4 months ago, but I thought it was time to put down my thoughts and memories of our little holiday to Japan back in April.

Back to Japan

The last time we were out in Japan was a for short visit in December 2007 to attend a wedding. This time, the plan was to spend two weeks there. The first week would be for myself and Yuko to explore around a bit by ourselves and go to places we’d never been too. The second week would be time to catch up with family and friends.

Journey to Miyajima

Having got to Japan on the Saturday, the first job was to collect our Japan Rail Passes. Normally, Japanese people wouldn’t have access to these, but because Yuko has a permanent residency visa for the UK, it means she gets classed as a ‘tourist’ when in Japan. Since we were going to be travelling a hell of a lot by train in the first week, the Japan Rail pass was going to save us a fair bit of money.

Once done, it was onto the train to Machida, and then the local stops near-by where we pretty much crashed out at Yuko’s parents place for the night (with a trip of course to our favourite old Korean Yakiniku restaurant, Ichiraku). As usual, the father in-law was keen to get drinking, so we did despite the fact that we knew we had an early start the next day.

So, early Sunday morning and it was off onto the train to head down to Yokohama and then onto Shinkansen (bullet train). The plan then was to take the Shinkansen to Himeji. Spend a late lunch there and look around the rather famous castle, then get back onto the Shinkansen onto Hiroshima, where we would then change onto the local train lines to get to a destination of Miyajima.
Except that didn’t happen… as a stop at Hamamatsu seemed to be taken some time. What we hadn’t immediately noticed until some passengers got on at that stop, was that just before our arrival there an old man had collapsed in the mens urinal toilet (between out carriage and the one in front). He was part of a group of pensioners who were on there way to Nagoya (the stop of Hamamatsu). Naturally, there was a big crowd of train staff around him, plus staff from the station as well. The chap didn’t want to get off the train and said he’d be OK until the next stop. He started to get his colour back when he was on the floor and then he was helped up to his feet. Of course, just a minute or so on his feet and he fainted again, so he and and friend were taken off the train.
All this of course meant, that for the first time, we were on a late running shinkansen!
The plan was to stop at Himeji was abandoned, and it was straight onto Hiroshima for a late lunch.
Initial thoughts of Hiroshima… hmmmm, didn’t like it. Neither did Yuko. There was a general feeling of unease felt by both of us. None of the locals said or did anything rude per say… but something felt wrong. It freaked Yuko out a bit who then started thinking the rest of the holiday would go wrong.

Luckly, that wasn’t to be be the case. We arrived at Miyajima on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, enjoying the view from the ferry from the mainland to the island we’d be staying on.

For the next two nights, we’d be staying at Ryokan Kawaguchi. The owners were very friendly and kind, and it was pretty inexpensive as well. One of the main reasons for coming down to Miyajima was to see the famous gate in the sea. We’d managed to time the trip so that we’d be there when sunset was at high tide (the tide wasn’t the highest it could be at other times of the year, but sufficiently high), and we got very lucky with the weather. PERFECT!!

The next day, the weather wasn’t so great, but the rain held off. First thing was to get have breakfast, so we treated ourselves to some BBQ’d local oyster. Also, rather naughtily, we washed it down with a glass of sake (hey, there were some other people there washing down their oyster breakfast with beer, so we thought we should follow suit ). That set us up then for a trek around the island, and up the mountain before coming back to explore the souvenir shops.
Very relaxing, but also pretty tiring on the feet.

Hiroshima

The next day, we left Miyajima in the morning and headed back into Hiroshima. Again, Yuko wasn’t liking the feeling she was getting from the locals. We headed down to the Atom Bomb dome and nearby Memorial and Museum. Yuko has been here before, as a school kid, but this was my first time. The clouds in the sky were quite broody at the time, and provided quite a backdrop to the dome when I took a picture there.

Must admit, when I was in the memorial park area, I felt quite sombre and emotional. More so than Yuko.
Once that was done, it was straight to the Ferry port to catch our boat to Shikoku.

Shikoku

After reading Hokkaido Highway Blues, I’ve always wanted to visit Shikoku. Yuko has never been on the island herself. There were pretty much two main reasons for originally visiting, the Sex Shrine in Uwajima (Taga Shrine, and attached ‘museum’ and the http://wikitravel.org/en/Dogo_Onsen“>Dogo Onsen in Matsuyama.
In the end, neither of those places turned out to be the most memorable parts of Shikoku.
Uwajima itself is a pretty normal town, with not that much to see. It’s probably worth a visit though if you hiking in the surrounding areas, and you time the visit for when the ‘Bull Sumo’ is on. That said, the small castle is pretty good and worth a 30 minute visit. And the sex shrine… overated! Some interesting exhibits in it, some very strange ones as well.

Matsuyama (where we stayed the whole time in Shikoku) is a much bigger town and not that bad. Dogo Onsen is pretty impressive from the outside, but the baths themselves are rubbish. Been in much nicer onsens and sentos elsewhere.

However, the nearby Dogo Brewery soon cheered us up. They even sell ‘Alt‘ and ‘Kölsch‘ beer… well sort of, it’s a Japanese version of it. Very nice though.

Matsuyama castle was really good too. Unlike the large one in Osaka, this is a proper wooden construction (it has been rebuilt a few times due to fire etc, but built in the ‘old ways’) and the inside has a few exhibits of old armour, swords etc etc. So far (seeing that I’ve not been to Himeji yet), this is the best Japanese castle I’ve been too.

The other fantastic, but small, place was a garden hidden away in some of the backstreets. It’s free to get into, but because it was such a beautiful and calm place we donated some money to the volunteers who maintain it.

The other thing I’ll remember about Matsuyama and Shikoku is the food, specifically the Udon noodles. They were really tasty here, and it’s something the island is meant to be famous for. Even the ones in cheap noodle bars in train stations were very tasty.

Osaka

As the first week drew to a close, it was time to head back to Tokyo. However, we stopped off at Osaka on the way back, as it allowed us to catch up with a old friend. Even Yuko’s parents took the opportunity to come down from Tokyo for a little reunion, since we all hadn’t seen Meg since our wedding at the end of 2005.
In Osaka, as always the food was cheap(er) and very tasty… though some of it was seriously unhealthy.

Back to Tokyo, and Week 2

The second week was spent pretty much with friends a family. So, there was a BBQ with nephews and nieces… visiting Yuko’s old school friends, even a visit to the cosmetics factory which was where Yuko’s first job was.
We did see some new stuff in Tokyo though. First was Rikugien Garden in the northern part of the Tokyo.

We also had some food in the restaurant which inspired the set for the scene in Kill Bill 1 (you know the one, the scene with the huge sword fight). Whilst it was quite cool to see it, the food was pretty average and service was so-so. I suspect the place as turned into a tourist trap now, living off it’s reputation rather than actual service and food levels.

Back to the UK

After the two weeks, it was back to the UK and back to work. Ahh well. What we have decided though is that we’d like to get back to Miyajima again, but this time go in the autumn when the maple trees turn red. I guess we’ll have to wait until November 2010 then.
Suppose we could try to visit Kyushu as well. The problem Yuko and I have now, is that the bits of Japan we want to visit, are starting to spread out and move away from the core areas of Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka. Hmmm, may need a three week holiday next time.

As I type this, the roast is on the go in the oven, and myself and Yuko are about to chill out with a nice bit of sparkling white wine!

It’s been a bit of a busy week, despite me being on holiday since last Friday (and I go back to work on Tuesday). Yuko has been off since Saturday, and she also goes back to work on Tuesday as well.

Rugby

So, Saturday was rugby day with us watching Wales vs New Zealand at the Millennium Stadium.
The second half was a bit of a disappointment, though the first was quite entertaining. Behind us, we had two Welsh chaps who were exceedingly good singers and got everyone going.
One of the big talking points though was the showdown before the game even started!! As New Zealand started their Haka, the Welsh crowd got quite vocal and started singing Cwm Rhondda. Great stuff. Then there was the stare-off!! There had been rumours that something was going to happen. This time, the Welsh players refused to move away on completion of the Haka, and that seems to have annoyed a few New Zealanders. Indeed, it’s a bit of a talking point leading up to the England vs New Zealand game tomorrow.

Was it disrespectful? Hmmm, don’t know. I suppose I should do some proper research into it. However, at the time, the crowd loved it.

Chilling, and then down to business

After all the fun and games on Saturday, we had a bit of a pampering and chill out session. Well, it was both Yuko’s and my birthday so a bit of pampering at a Spa. Tense back and shoulders well and truly sorted out.
It was a shame then that work got all undone when Yuko and I headed up to Liverpool.
Grrrrrr, what a bloody horrible, badly sign posted one-way system.

We were up in Liverpool for the evening, since Tuesday morning was Yuko’s appointment with the immigration department. Hurrah, after two years of entry clearance, she now has permission to stay here indefinitely.

With all that done, we took the scenic route back through North Wales and stayed over at Dolffanog Bach.
Great location, great food and great hosts.

Finally got around to uploading some more of my photo archive. [EDITED 2010-Jan-16, since this post, I've migrated to Flickr. Links have been updated to handle this]
This time, it’s some of the photos I took during the last three months we were in Japan before we moved back to the UK.
During that time, we made quite a few trips to visit friends and family to say goodbye.

Quite an emotional time.