7. Down to the end of Japan – or it is the start ?

The floating Torii at Miyajima

Japan seems to be full of Torii, different sized ceremonial gates to shrines, sometimes in stone, sometimes in wood.   The wooden ones are always painted vermilion and when not faded they do make a very impressive sight.  The one side trip out from Hiroshima that we made was to Miyajima Island with a ‘floating’ Torii just offshore.  It doesn’t float at all really but sits on the seabed approximately fifty yards offshore.  Always listed as one of the sights to see in Japan, it does look very good as the sun sets.  We decided to go to the top of the island at 530 metres up and on this, the day after our second Typhoon had blown through it was very clear and sunny.  Walking a longer than expected route meant that it took us nearly an hour to get to the cablecar, called ropeways by the Japanese which doesn’t sound anywhere near as safe to me.  After two rides and arrival at the top station we were left with a further forty minute uphill route to the top but the views were stunning across a blue sea dotted with islands and a blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds.

from the top of  Miyajima Island

I think we all associate Japan with bowing and it is ubiquitous.  There are course different types of bow which to my British eye seem to fall into about three or four categories although I’m sure it’s nuanced much more to the Japanese.   The casual catching of people’s eye is just a slightly exaggerated nod just as you might use to a neighbour you recognised but didn’t particularly care to speak to.   Then there’s the ‘having provided a service I must bow to this customer’.  Arms by the side, bend at the waist far enough to see if your shoes need polishing.   Deeper still is getting very deferential which I think is used for an apology.  The full deep bow from the waist is to excuse the worst behaviour, like voting for trump or Brexit.  Here are some examples :

-        -  In a train, the ticket inspector gets to the end of a carriage, turns, takes off his cap and bows to the carriage – sometimes quite formally, replaces the cap.

-         - The women with the refreshment trolley on the train will also turn and bow but not so formally.

-        -  Hotel receptions may have four or five staff who, if not busy with another customer, will all bow as you approach.

-         - If you buy anything anywhere, you get a bow.

-         - One big department store we went into had three women in smart uniforms who pointed you to a lift as it arrived.  As we got in and turned, the doors closed and we were treated to the full deep bow.

I quite like the exaggerated nod but more than that seems 
too subservient to me.  However, I’m

at the top of Miyajima Island

not Japanese.

Going to see the floating Torii was an excursion using our Japan Railcard, also valid for some ferries and subway lines and only available to foreign visitors or to Japanese citizens who can prove they’ve lived out of Japan for ten years.  We had to buy ours before we left home and then go through a ridiculously long process just to get it authorised once we got here.  Doing a quick back of the vape pack calculation, I reckon we covered the cost in the first week of use and we had a 21 day pass.  They’re good to tourists here, as well as being amazingly friendly and helpful.   A variety of tourist sites let us in at half price on production of our passports.    There would be a riot in the UK if it was suggested that foreign visitors got into things at half price when us Brits had to pay full price.

So it was the train again from Hiroshima to almost the southern point of the Japanese mainland, Kagoshima on Kyushu.  I haven’t mentioned the Japanese inordinate fondness for Ferris Wheels and the station at Kagoshima has one on the roof of its eight or ten storey building.   Here in Japan they appear to make the station a huge focal point for a city with multiple floors of shops and restaurants.  Not quite on the scale of Kyoto’s shopping district but it makes the city centres vibrant, lively and hence not run down places to avoid.  They also have the bus station right in front of the train station, not tucked away somewhere else so the different services mesh together well.  All the public transport appears to be very well used here and a trip through a big station at a busy time develops a side-step ability worthy of Phil Bennett.   If you don’t know, search Welsh Rugby Union, the man was a genius on the field.

Mt Kaimon in Satsuma 

The southern end of Kyushu is Satsuma Province and sometime in the 19^th century Britain was at war with Satsuma after some Brits refused to bow to the local Shogun.  I imagine the Brits had been hurt when the Shogun criticised the cut of their suits or something.

Some areas of Kyushu are actively volcanic and just across the bay from Kagoshima is one volcano that regularly belches out ash and smoke across the city, so naturally we took a ferry (courtesy of our JR Pass again) across to get a better look.  Every now and again, black or white clouds would appear making it look as if a conclave was having a particularly difficult time choosing a new Pope.   This peak was the classic volcanic pointy shape and we were to see quite a few more like this in

the ferry from Kagoshima to Sakurajima Island and volcano

Kyushu.  We rented a car for the second time this trip planning to go further south to have a look

Taking the sands

around and to fit in a beach bath in hot volcanic sand.  Yes, really.   Walking past a post- industrial landscape of volcanic steam and multi coloured mess, we got to the changing area, were issued with a robe each and leaving our clothes in a locker, wrapped ourselves up and went down to the beach.  Under a corrugated iron roof was a line of what appeared to be shallow graves with a head sticking out of each.   Your grave is indicated by your personal grave digger and you get covered with hot sand which is hotter still underneath.   They suggest that about fifteen minutes is long enough “in case you suffer from low level burns” as they encouragingly phrase it.  Then it was off to a hot onsen infinity pool looking over the sea with a wooded cliff just on the left to the north and another volcano to the left and south.  Wonderful.   We were both very relaxed and took our time on a scenic ridge drive home to our hotel.

The main rail route through to Kagoshima is inland but nearer to the west than the east coast and we decided we would wander up the east coast by rail and see some more of the less touristy bits.  This was definitely not Shinkansen country, there are single coach trains here which judder along meandering narrow gauge single tracks with rolling stock that looked like old London Transport rejects.   It was to be fair, through some fabulously scenic mountainous country.  On one of these rattlers heading to a connection with a real bullet train, we broke down.  We knew it was a

hearing that the train had broken down !

stopping train but we expected the stops to be at stations.  The driver was on his walkie talkie, announcements were made which we couldn’t understand, some men working on the track came back for a chat.  Heather handed out the Satsumas she’d bought in Satsuma to the other passengers.   It was all so un-Japanese and more like an Ealing comedy from the 1950’s.  It was enormous fun.  A bit Agatha Christie-esque.  Disparate nationalities (us, two German women, 14 Japanese).  Passengers stranded at Little Piddling in-the Paddy Field.  “What you about to hear is a true story.  Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent”  etc…. 

We were already due to transfer to a bus at one station to take us round a section of line that had been damaged in one of the typhoons and now after an hour or so we were to get mini-bus taxis to take us to the station where we were originally due to transfer from the train to the bus.    Got that OK ?    So we finally arrived at the station for our connection five minutes or so late to find that the Shinkansen had been held up for connecting passengers.  Much more Japanese.

So we finally sort-of circumnavigated Kyushu and got to Nagasaki.  Today it’s an attractive town set

Queueing positions, Nagasaki station 

in wooded hills and we liked it more than many towns we’d been to.   So many of the cities here have wonderful, imaginative modern architecture in the centre, then ugly modern stuff from a few years back and mile upon mile of suburb/strip development.   Leaving Kyoto coming west, it was an hour before we cleared the full urban sprawl and got into anything like countryside.  In what we thought to be relatively small Kagoshima, we were staying in the centre and when we drove south it was fifteen kilometres before we left the main built up area.  Many of these places are a bit like those depressing towns you see in the ‘fly-over’ United States states (if you happen to be driving) only a hundred times bigger.

Now, if I write up all the little behaviours that seem so different than home I’d have enough material to write one of these blogs every day so to spare all of us, here are a number of bullet points rather than whole paragraphs.

-         - Staff in some restaurants who all chant something in unison for no apparent reason.

-        -  Public maps are common but north is at the top in a minority of cases, sometimes the top is NE or SW.  In one place we saw two maps of the area within ten yards of each other and each had a different direction at the top.

-         We really did see Purple Sweet Potato Flavour Kit Kats.

-        -  Most hotels have washing machines although in one ‘their’ machines were out of the building and in a laundrette across the road.  At the other extreme in another hotel it was possible to see how far through a wash cycle had got by checking on the room TV screen.

-        -  Nobody wears a waterproof, there are just millions of umbrellas.

-         -  and the best of all is that this is a country that has no tipping.   Early on in the trip we’d had a coffee and cake each and Heather had left something like 8000 Yen for a bill of 7988 Yen and the person on the till came out of the shop and insisted on handing over the 12 Yen change.

school party waiting at a level crossing

6. If there are two things kids everywhere do, it’s waving at trains and chasing pigeons

Himeji Castle

Unlike Kyoto which is stuffed full of things to see, many cities have only one thing that we’re interested in and Himeji and Okayama were two of those places.  It has been a surprise at just how big many of the towns we visit actually are when on the map they just appear as a dot.  The two cities I just mentioned have half a million and three quarters of a million people respectively and many others we’ve visited have been even bigger.  One of the many great things about the rail system is that they still have bag lockers of varying sizes at the stations and for Himeji, where we rode in, locked our bags away, looked at the castle and went off to Okayama it was perfect.  Rather like the castle which really is one of the wonders of Japan and a magnificent spectacle, especially bathed in sunshine as we were lucky enough to see it.  As you turn around from the bag lockers

from near the top of Himeji Castle

there it is at the end of a long avenue leading from the station.  I nearly said it sits about a ten minute walk from the station but in fact it soars, rising up five stories from the foundation mound of rock.  It was built in 1580, is made of wood with a white plaster exterior which is blinding in the sun and it has all the extra bits such as a roof with decorative tiles and scrollwork that you would expect.   There was quite a crowd as we climbed steep staircases floor by floor in our socks to the top fifth floor.  It was full of huge pieces of timber and had the usual places to shoot arrows from and pour unpleasantly hot things onto any attackers.   I did think though that a few cannon shot or even European medieval siege engines would have reduced it to an untidy pile in a short space of time.  It survived WW2 having been painted black (to confuse the Americans someone suggested to me) although the city was extensively damaged.   

One of the highlights of Japan.

Himeji Castle

The Atomic Bomb Dome

We hear that another typhoon is on its way as we head towards a city we weren’t planning to visit but which you will all have heard of, Hiroshima.   Fortunately Heather had got us another hotel near the station and it wasn’t raining too much as we walked the 300 yards or so.  The typhoon blew through overnight and early the next day but we got out on the first evening to see the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Peace Park.  The dome was directly under the detonation point of the bomb which was 600 metres above the ground.  Amazingly much of the walls and the skeletal dome survived and it remains to this day as it was on 6 August 1945 after the explosion, as a memorial.  Stark in a couple of ways.  The museum would wait until tomorrow.   We’d met an Australian travelling by himself when we were in Kyoto and as Heather sat down in the bus I noticed him in the seat behind.  So I greeted him in a manner which I understood to be polite Australian “bloody hell, Heather, there’s that Aussie we can’t get away from”.  I was right, we had a good long chat.  Our two meetings were closer than the distance between the two times we met Lizzie but even so Japan is a big country.

140,000 people died in the explosion at Hiroshima and an estimated 400,000 by the end of the year.   Many children were in the city clearing previous damage when the bomb went off and families streamed in to search so they got the heavy radiation doses of the first 48 to 72 hours.   The museum has artifacts, facts and photographs and it is a sombre place as you would imagine.   One image I do remember well,  probably because of my interest in photography was of a wall and some steps where the outline of a person is exposed on the wall like a photographic image as this unknown person vaporised in the intense heat and left a mere shadow behind.

We visited another building which survived the bomb but which doesn’t attract many visitors.  This was the Hiroshima Branch of the Toyko bank which stands about 400 yards from the Atomic Bomb Dome.  It and the vaults survived the blast although 45 people died inside.  The reason I mention it, is that the bank reopened for business on 8 August, only two days after the bomb dropped.  When it rained the staff worked while holding umbrellas because of course there was no roof.

model of Fat Man

Most of these blogs are in a rough chronological order but I’m going to write out of sequence about the place that I’m sitting in now, Nagasaki.   As the second city for an atomic bomb it tends to be overshadowed by Hiroshima and far fewer people were killed in the initial explosion with estimates putting it at about 75,000.  The bomb was aimed at the Mitsubishi dockyards and missed, exploding a couple of miles to the north where the hills of the city protected a lot of the city from the blast.  Not though the school a little further to the north where 1400 children were killed.  Hiroshima’s bomb was atomic with a Uranium core, Nagasaki’s had a Plutonium core and had a greater explosive force.  There is a peace park here and a museum which is if anything more horrifying than the one at Hiroshima.  The artifacts are set dramatically and it was very graphic with more photographs of dead and mutilated bodies.   Originally there was a list of eight or ten possible targets for atomic bombs which was gradually reduced.  When it was down to three or four, Kyoto was still on it.

While we’re here, trump, The President of the USA is visiting Japan having recently threatened to use nuclear weapons against North Korea .  The visit provides him with a great opportunity to visit somewhere like Hiroshima himself and learn something but no, he’s decided to play golf instead.  

On our way here to Nagasaki, we came through a place called Kokura, which is what you might call a lucky place.  This was the intended target for Fat Man, the second A-bomb, but cloud cover meant that the bombardier was unable to see the target.  Kokura was left and the plane flew on to Nagasaki.  Even at Nagasaki there was cloud cover and the mission was about to be abandoned when a break in the clouds doomed the city.

As a comparison, it’s believed that about 25,000 people were killed in the firestorm caused by the intense bombing of Dresden and 40,000 to 45,000 were killed in the London Blitz.  Of course there was no radiation to contend with.  Probably worth mentioning that the Hiroshima bomb was equivalent to about 15,000 tons of TNT and the Nagasaki one equivalent to about 20,000 tons of TNT.  The largest US test was called the Castle Bravo device and was equivalent to 15,000,000 tons of TNT.   

Nagasaki from the Glover Garden

the mushroom shaped conifer at Nagasaki Peace Park

I know it may just be my sideways look at things but I noticed two things.   As we were on the bus trundling around the centre of Hiroshima, we passed a fast food place called Little Boy with a picture of a chubby kid as a logo.  Now that may not seem bizarre to you unless you know that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was called Little Boy.  Then in the Peace Park at Nagasaki, off to one side, was a conifer pruned into a globe which with the trunk looked just like an atomic mushroom cloud.

What doesn’t ever seem to be mentioned is that the Japanese had issued orders that if Japan was invaded all prisoners of war and civilian detainees were to be killed, somewhere over 120,000 men, women and children.  In addition to this and having seen the mountainous terrain of much of the country I’ve no doubt that a guerrilla campaign could have lasted years and many Japanese soldiers would have been extremely dedicated to fighting.  Some of you may remember the story of Hiroo Onoda.  He was the WW2 Japanese soldier who would not surrender unless ordered to by a Senior Officer and was in the Philippine jungle believing he was still at war until his Commanding Officer was flown out from Japan, managed to meet him and issued the order.  It was 1974.

5. If there’s only one place you get to in Japan, make it Kyoto !

Nijo-jo Castle, Kyoto 

Kiyo Misa-Dera Temple

Leaving the west coast of Honshu from Niigata meant that ahead of us was the longest journey in a day by distance that we’ll have on the train.  Shinkansen from Niigata to Kyoto via Tokyo with roughly a dozen stops is about 530 miles and we covered it in 4 hours 21 minutes of train travel (plus a generous 17 seconds allowed to change trains in Tokyo).  Joking aside, I think we had about 35 minutes to change trains.   It rained the whole day, heavy rain too but our luck continues to hold.  We could get to the station from our hotel under cover and if a day is going to be all rain it might as well be when you’re travelling.  An hour or so outside Tokyo on the Kyoto side a message ran across the electronic display warning of possible disruption due to an impending typhoon which was news to us and meant that it turned out to be an even better choice of travel day.  The typhoon came through that night when we were tucked up in a Kyoto bed but trains were cancelled, roads were closed and we met people later whose travel plans or day out had actually been a ‘washout’.   100 mph winds apparently.  A number of the temple gardens in Kyoto had trees down or damaged and the ground was littered with small twigs and branches everywhere which were being brushed up by hand with small besoms.  

The moss gardens were being brushed even more carefully by people on their knees.   A typhoon by the way is the same as a hurricane and a cyclone, the name given to it depends on geographical location, that’s all.  Meteorologists  know them collectively as Tropical Cyclones.

A slight digression here.  The popular roofing on the northern west coast is glazed gloss black wavy tiles which we hadn’t noticed elsewhere but I still couldn’t quite work out why the houses looked oriental and not European.  Then I realised that the ridges along the top of a roof and down the edge of a roof at a corner turn up slightly at the end. That’s all it is and there you have an oriental roof. 

The usage of English can be puzzling here.  Not the translations which are sometimes just not understandable but where the English is used.  We’ve walked into supermarkets where as you look round you can see at the top of the walls ‘Fresh Fish’, ‘Dairy Products’, ‘Vegetables’ or ‘Meat’ and that’s the only English in the store.  Nothing else has anything other than Japanese on it.   Many magazines and books have English words on the cover and again nothing but Japanese inside.  It’s just common usage in many places.   Just as with Japanese tourist s abroad, many people wear white masks but very many people wear white cotton gloves.   These seem to be mostly service staff, Train drivers,  Bus drivers, Taxi drivers and chauffeurs but it is very noticeable.

 

Kyoto Station

We had an Airbnb for five nights in Kyoto and it was now getting dark from storm clouds and raining hard and despite full pictured instructions online on everything we still got off the bus from the station too early.  Still we got there ok but we were a bit damp around the gills.  Nice little apartment though, clean, washing machine, space and right on the edge of Gion, a big entertainment, restaurant and nightlife area.   The typhoon came through in the night although I slept through it and the rain had cleared by the morning so off we set, working the Temples.  Our rail passes could be used on some buses and city trains but the 500 yen (£3.50) daily bus pass was a must with a fixed rate ride being 230 yen.  Unless I concentrate, some of the temples do merge into a sort of all purpose place with bits from all of them.    Then again, how many Cathedrals would you visit in a day and expect to tell them apart later.  The big highlights were the gardens which were really excellent.  Unfortunately for us and due to not finding our chosen breakfast place, our plans changed on the spot on one day and we visited different temples that day including the fantastic Golden Temple, set next to a lake dotted with islands planted with cloud pruned smallish (20 foot) conifers.  It was unfortunate because it was overcast while the following day was brilliant sun and blue sky.   We got off the bus for the Kinkaku-ji Golden Temple one stop too late, were looking in a café window when someone said hello and I thought it was a helpful local.  No, we turned round and it was Lizzie, the trainee doctor and former Dorchester resident from approximately a week and 500 miles ago. 

Kinkak-ji Golden temple

I make no secret of the fact that I really do not like Japanese food but we have been using chopsticks whenever we can although I can reveal that pizza is difficult with them.  I had always thought that chopsticks were supposed to be elegant and we westerners were looked down upon for using knives and forks.  Well when everything is cut up in nibble sized pieces and a bowl full of rice held up near the mouth to be shovelled in is elegant then ok but when you see a whole sausage in chopsticks chewed down from one end, then elegant it ain’t.

What a Smile !

We’re using two guide books here in Japan, Lonely Planet and the lesser known but very useful John’s Diary* (unavailable through Amazon).   We took LP’s advice about turning up early to miss the crowds and got to Ginkaku-ji  a couple of minutes after opening time at 8.30 and it was heaving with at least 500 school children of various ages wending their way around.  There were the yellow hats, the white hats, red hats and so on.  It seems that school parties have their own coloured

 quiet solitude at Ginkaku-ji

hat for trips out.  It was hilarious really as we shuffled around realising that we were really enjoying the temple and the haven of calm, peace and tranquillity that it represents.  After that we walked along a lovely little stream on what was called The Philosopher’s Walk to another temple, Eikan-do.  They really did sell Philosopher’s Walk t-shirts and I was aching to be asked to buy one, just so I could say “I’ll think about it”.  Sadly no one did, but then this is Japan not India.  Eikan-do, according to Lonely Planet is “possibly Kyoto’s most famous and crowded autumn foliage

Elkan-do

   

destination” so we were hesitant to go, it now being about 11.00.  We did and it scored all round, brilliant sun, spot on autumn colour and virtually empty.  It was one of, if not the best garden we saw.  What is noticeable everywhere  is how inexpensive these places are to get into compared to England.  A temple and garden is 500 or 600 yen each to get into, absolute tops 1000 yen.  Now 1000 Yen is just under £7 ($9).  A National Trust garden would set you back perhaps £15.  Go to an English castle and you would be expected to pay a similar amount.   Himeji Castle which we visited a few days after Kyoto was 600 Yen.  Actually we went to one top garden a week later at 400 Yen and by the time they’d taken off Old Fogies discount and the 10% off for the voucher the tourist office gave us, we got in for 120 Yen.  Amazing.

Eikan-do

*John being my oldest friend and who with his wife Elaine visited Japan last year.

Other major sights we got to here included the Emperors Palace (free) with a really beautiful water garden and the Castle which is impressive for the huge area, double moat and colossal cut stone walls.  We only scratched the surface here in Kyoto and I haven’t even mentioned the space age station with glass walkway goodness knows how many floors up and a huge open atrium.  I will mention the famous meditative stone and raked Zen gravel garden at Ryoan-ji which many of you will have seen pictures of.  It’s a rectangle of about 25 metres by 10 metres of raked gravel with

fifteen carefully placed rocks.  Only fourteen rocks can be seen from any one point except from directly above and because Buddhists believe that the number fifteen signifies completeness, once you can see all fifteen you have achieved enlightenment.   However, I’ve also read that no explanation was left by the unknown designer but the rock garden is believed to be anything up to 600 years old.  I can’t really say how impressed I was because I’d read so much that I would be but it certainly is interesting.  Personally, I much prefer a garden                                                                                with living things in it. 

 

Ryoan-ji Zen Garden (curved due to use of wide-angle lens)

 

The 50,000 Yen (£300) Sundae

One big shopping area we went to for meals in the evening was just across the river from us and it made Oxford Street look like a little country town shopping centre going through a bad patch.  We have really never seen anything like the quantity and variety of shops.  Dozens of roads and arcades, hundreds of shops, all open until late evening.  Department stores as big as a city block with the top three floors full of restaurants, by full I mean twenty restaurants per floor (yes reader, I counted them).  The Japanese really do understand that a city is vertical as well as horizontal, three dimensions and not two.

Heather photobombing the girls who got me to take photos of them with five different cameras

4. Leaving Hokkaido and heading for the west coast of Honshu

just an elegant front

slumming it in a Shinkansen

With the six weeks we have available we don’t have to rush everywhere, although we often seem to do so.  As we left Hokkaido at about 8.15, we were heading south using trains again, express, Shinkansen, then another express, for what was a long day’s travelling to Akita, close to the west coast of Honshu.   Anyway Heather had booked a nice traditional place for a couple of days with the hot-pool Onsen, despite originally having trouble finding somewhere.   

mother and daughter

What could possibly go wrong ?   Well, we didn’t know exactly how to get to the hotel from the station and arrived at about 5.15 at the Tourist Information Desk to ask.  Turned out that the hotel was in Akita Prefecture, not Akita the town and lay about a hundred miles away close to where we’d passed three hours earlier on the train.  You should have heard us laugh.  Well, the two ladies in the information place (miserably understaffed by Japanese standards) sprang into action.  The difficulty Heather originally had booking somewhere was because a conference was underway and hotel rooms were as rare as hen’s teeth.   One of the ladies asked what our budget was and began phoning hotels, having first cancelled the booking at where we thought we were staying.  After about twenty minutes she’d found one right on our budget, a business style hotel only a five minute bus ride away.  Armed with directions for where the bus stop was, which number to get, a map with the route drawn on it and how much the fare would be, off we went.  As we walked in, the lobby was lightly populated with businessmen in suits and ties.  We however looked a little the worse for wear after nine hours travelling, with our walking boots, rucksacks on our backs and perversely, small backpacks on our fronts.  Three receptionists in classic very smart uniforms watched us walk up to the desk.   Just on one hour from when our train had pulled into Akita station we were showered and changed and ready for dinner.

 

Akita is where the Japanese dog breed originally came from.  We didn’t see any but why should we.  If you went to Airedale or Dalmatia would you expect to spot one of those there ?  We didn’t even really want to be in Akita but it was much bigger than Kakunodate, an old town with preserved Samurai class houses about thirty minutes train ride away which we had decided was worth a visit.  And so it was.  This area was really off the westerner’s tourist route.  

Our hotel restaurant had a
Japanese menu with no translation into anything else and one local restaurant, called Raclette (a Swiss cheese meal) which we looked at only served steak.  The only non-orientals we saw in the entire two days we were there were at the tourist office, one Russian man and one Egyptian woman.   In Kakunodate the following day we saw only two westerners, Kevin from Australia and a young English woman who actually asked for my blog address.  So if you did use it and you’re reading this, I’m talking about you, Lizzie. 

two shots of those old Samurai Class houses in Kakunodate

Kakunoadate was a very interesting little place with a whole street of preserved houses which you could just wander up to and look in but not enter.  These were the classic old Japanese houses with rush mats on the floors, screens between rooms and virtually no furniture.  They really are austere looking places but wonderfully elegant.  The only food available in the town was Japanese and we each had a snack to keep us going.  Mine really was sticky rice in that it was exactly that, rice on a stick with soy sauce on it, as delicious as it sounds, like eating Twiglet flavoured well set wallpaper paste on a stick.  Mmmm yummy.   Many, many places in Japan make a big thing about what they have to offer in cherry blossom season, which unsurprisingly is cherry blossom.  Kakunodate’s offering is a two kilometre walk along the river lined both sides with old pink flowered cherries in Spring and dark green leaved cherries in October in what was now fairly gloomy light.   It must look tremendous when in the pink.

Cosplay in Niigata

Many hotels the world over claim to have an environmental conscience which mostly consists of notices saying  something along the lines of “if you are happy not to have your towels changed just leave them hanging up” .  This is universally ignored and we have never failed to have towels changed wherever we hang them.  There was a new twist for the environment at our very smart Akita hotel.  If we agreed not to have our room serviced for one day by switching a light on outside our room, our reward was a bottle of water each.  So we put on the light, had a redeemable card left which reception exchanged for, yes you guessed it, two plastic bottles of water.  Priceless.

the Japanese spaghetti harvest

We do tend to push the boundaries of our comfort zone somewhat on these trips and in what are quite non touristy areas of Japan, there are no concessions made to non-Japanese speakers.   All writing is in one of the two Japanese scripts with no translations.  So we’ll sometimes decide which bus stop is which by recognising that a place ends with ‘half a coathanger and an A upside down with an extra line through it’ for example.  It is quite fun really – when it works.  That isn’t to say that people are difficult, we’ve found that everybody we’ve come across is desperate to help.  Sometimes too much, for they never want to say that they don’t know or cannot help, this would be ‘losing face’.   In one place when we were trying to get a meal, one restaurant owner, who spoke no English, ran fifty yards or so to another restaurant where the owner did speak a little English to get him to come to us.  The tourist office or train information staff are unfailingly helpful, seem delighted to help and they are absolutely red hot on knowing their stuff.

a few of the steps

Our route was in a vaguely south westerly direction along the coast of Honshu for a while, stopping for a day at Tsuruoka, in order to go on a walk up a Buddhist pilgrim’s path and see the various buildings and stuff along the way.  It was something like 450 metres climb and 2,200 steps to the top with the huge advantage that the scheduled bus service that took us to the bottom had a route which picked us up at the top.  There were some very impressive temples at the top, a service underway and the biggest bell I’ve ever seen.  The path was through woods the whole way and the flight of stone steps was very impressive in its own right.  It was quite a haul up though.

on that Pilgrim's Walk

one of the temples at the top of the Pilgrim's Walk

Bus maps and train maps here are complicated but understandable with a little application, assuming that destinations are in English but the quite regularly seen public maps in the street have to be checked carefully because north is at the top only occasionally.  Sometimes south is at the top, sometimes west and now and again SW or NE.   So while it is true to say that just because we’re wandering we’re not lost, sometimes there are times between not being lost where we’re not exactly certain where we are.

Now, anyone who has been to Japan and is reading this will know that at some time I would have to write about the lavatories because they’re so, well Japanese.   Almost every one we’ve seen is a technological wonder connected to an electricity supply, a sort of electric chair.  Seats are heated, sometimes almost to radiator temperature, sprays of warmed water cause eyebrows to rise as they hit you in the fundament or a nearby location, some then have warmed air to dry you off.  A series of buttons on a control panel are to operate all this lot.  We’ve seen the seats in shops at up to £900 each.   A couple of times we’ve come across ones where the top lid of the lavatory cistern is a small hand basin and as you flush, water begins to run from a tap into the plugless basin.  This is actually how the cistern is filled so that the water you use to wash your hands becomes slightly grey water for the next flush.   Being Japanese, there’s no room for soap which seems to be the Japanese way.

Well, I seem to have got to the bottom of this blog so I’ll sort out some photos to go with it and sign off.