Trip diary: March 21st, 2007

Putting lumber in my bag doesn't help.

After Charles' morning caffeine injection we made our way to Shin-Osaka eki to pick up our rail passes and get shinkansen (bullet train) tickets for Kyoto. The guy who helped us was an old hand at the process. He had our passes and tickets ready in no time flat.

When two people get tickets together the normal assumption on the part of the ticket agent is to give seats next to each other. That is not a good thing when both people are the size of Charles and I. Especially with the size of the seats in Japan. We were pressed in tight together.

The ride to Kyoto only takes 15 minutes so we had barely had time to complain about the tight quarters.

Our first stop in Kyoto was the market, Kobo-san. This market is held on the 21st of every month. It has been in operation for about 700 years.

Entering the market we went looking for some food and found a stall selling takoyaki (octopus balls). We had been told to eat takoyaki many times so we each got a 6 pack and sat down to eat. They were good but I felt that bonito flakes were too much.

We went looking for stuff and I bought a kimono for my friend Robin and Charles bought a noren to put over the door to his living room.

After we had seen all the stalls and looked though all the knick-knacks we headed out to find a certain temple that was supposedly having a display of Noh chanting. We went to the area where the temple is and tried to find it. We couldn't find it. Even the locals we asked had never heard of the place. By this time we knew that we had missed the chanting so we went looking for lunch. We tried to find something good that wasn't overly expensive. Unfortunately this was a very touristy area of town so everything was more expensive than normal. We gave up on the search for good and just settled on 'not expensive' and went to KFC. I don't know how it is possible but KFC is even worse in Japan then it is here in Canada.

Our next intended destination in Kyoto was the Taiko Centre. It is a store that sells taiko related stuff. It wasn't very far from where we were so we walked down there. We were greeted by a closed store front. It was a national holiday in Japan that day so most stores were closed and this was no exception. As we stood there cursing our luck we noticed a delivery van making a delivery to the side door of the store. Charles walked over to the people doing the deliver and asked if the store was closed. The answer was affirmative so Charles proceeded to lay it on thick. “We are from Canada and came all this way to come to the store. We can't come back tomorrow because we are leaving.” The woman looked at us and asked what we were looking for. After we told her we just wanted bachi (drum sticks) and such she let us in to look over the merchandise. We bought some bachi and shoes and CDs and such. It was an expensive stop for us.

Our next destination was Otagi Nembutsu Ji. It is not very well known. It has 1200 statues there which are all kinda silly and odd. It's very different from the normal Japanese temple where everything is very serious and sombre.

To get there we had to take a long slow and hot street car ride to the outskirts of town. On the street car there was a guy who kept clapping in front of his mouth. His mouth made the clapping sound really weird. Neither of us could do it right when we tried it. We then had to walk through a bamboo forest and a very up-scale touristy area filled with expensive shops.

The walk was mostly uphill. We came to a place called Nembutsu Ji so we paid 500¥ to get in. The place was just a big grave yard. We were confused. We asked at the ticket gate where Otagi Nembutsuji is and they pointed up the hill.

The steepness of the climb was increasing as we went higher. We were starting to get annoyed at whomever decided that the tops of big hills was a good place to put a temple.

We found the place eventually and went in. There were very few people there. The place is not very well known even among Japanese people (we met some locals who had never heard of the place). We spent the next little while looking at all the statues and exploring the area. We had the place almost to ourselves. There was a family looking around and some people washing the temple but that was it. We took lots of pictures of statues we found interesting or funny.

Eventually we had seen all we needed to see and went out of the temple. There was a bus stop across the street so we went to wait for the bus. A local walked past so we asked him when the bus came and he said it would be there in about 45 minutes. Our feet were killing us but we decided to walk back down to the street car. On our way back we passed a rickshaw with two geishas sitting in the back. Those were the only geishas we saw on the whole trip.

When we got back to Kyoto station we took time to explore the station itself. The building is really cool. It's about 10 stories tall and open concept. We took escalators up to the roof top and looked out over Kyoto. It was a very nice view.

I'm told that Godzilla destroyed this building once. They Japanese are very good at rebuilding after Gozilla related incidents. They have had a lot of practice.

We grabbed dinner at a restaurant in the underground mall at the station. It was OK but not very remarkable. The most interesting part was getting the panties shot. It was taken surreptitiously while the waitress was taking our orders.

We went down to Osaka and went straight to the hotel. Our feet were telling us that they planned to make our lives miserable if we persisted with this silly walking idea of ours.

We slept soundly that night.

Trip diary: March 20th, 2007

Was that her pet duck?

I woke up early as usual. Charles woke up at about 7 and after he had had a few coffees we went out to find somewhere to have breakfast. We went down to Tennoji eki and went looking for breakfast places.

We settled on going to Mos Burger. When we walked up to the counter there was a frantic discussion amongst the staff about who would have to deal with the strange looking foreigners. Eventually one girl lost out and came over to serve us. We got some ham sandwich things (with mayonnaise!) and sat down to watch the rush hours crowds run through the station.

That kept us amused for a while.

After breakfast we returned to the hotel. On the way we turned down a small covered street and found ourselves in a pedestrian shopping mall. Kinda like Namba, but less trendy and more scuzzy.

We were supposed to meet Asuka, a girl Charles met on the plane ride over from Vancouver, at 11 but she was late. Then there was a mix up as to what exit she should use at Shinimamiya eki. Eventually we hooked up and went to go down to DenDen Town, Osaka's electronics district. We wandered in and out of stores looking at prices and were sorely disappointed.

We went for lunch at a “things on a stick” type restaurant near the base of the Osaka tower. Apparently this place is quite famous for not allowing double dipping. Asuka got a little bit drunk and started telling us all about her life and how it is seriously messed up. We coined a term that day: The Asuka Syndrome. It means “a Japanese person who wants out of the Japanese life”.

We spent a long time in the restaurant. We talked for a lot longer than any of us planned.

Eventually we left the restaurant and made our way over to Kobe to meet a friend of Asuka's. There was some confusion with the trains and we were late getting to Kobe. The friend was waiting for us even though Auska called the wrong number to say we would be late.

The friend's name was Saho. She was a very quiet and shy girl who didn't say much over the course of the evening. Apparently she is a Opera singer. At the time she was staring in Carmen. We tried to convince her to sing for us but she didn't.

Asuka took us to a Brazilian restaurant for dinner. The meal was good. Lots of meat.

After dinner we went out to admire the Kobe skyline by night. It was amazingly beautiful. I decided right then that Kobe was the best city we had been to. I am still awed by that sight.

At about 10 o'clock we made our way back to the train station so we Charles and I could go back to Osaka. We arranged to meet Asuka again on Thursday to go to Himeji. We invited Saho to come with us but she couldn't come because she was teaching opera that day.

We returned to the hotel and went to bed.

Trip diary: March 19th, 2007

Put it on a stick and I will eat it.

Woke up at 4 in the morning and couldn't fall back asleep so I played with my PSP. Charles got up at about 7 and left to go to see the sumo fights. I took a leisurely shower and wrote the journal entry for the previous day.

At around 9 I made my way out of the hotel with every intention of getting lost in Osaka so I would have to figure out the city. I took the subway to Nipponbashi eki which is connected to a huge underground shopping mall. I wandered the shopping mall and took an exit that I didn't know from my previous visits to the mall.

I found myself in a parking lot. Turning left out of the parking lot and taking a few random turns brought me to a major intersection. I turned left again and started walking.

I was in a business section. Lots of tall buildings everywhere. I think I was the cause of quite a few discussions around the water cooler. I haven't mentioned yet that I had decided to wear my kilt that day. Under normal circumstances Japanese people stare at me but in a very polite way. They try don't want me to know that they are staring and whispering to each other. With the kilt, all pretence of politeness went out the window. They openly stared at me. They pointed and giggled.

Walking along this major street I saw a sign saying “Osaka Station” with an arrow pointing straight ahead. On the train trips to and from Kobe the day before we spotted a building that we dubbed 'Funky building' that was near Osaka eki. We were thinking of going to get a close up view of it anyway so I kept walking in that direction.

About an hour after I first saw a sign for the station I made it there. Osaka eki is huge and complex. You can get lost very easily. I had been here on my last trip to Japan so I thought I remembered how to get around. I was mistaken. The station has changed quite a bit in the past 5 years. I got lost and then found something I remembered but everything else around it had changed. I then got lost again and the process would start over.

Eventually I made my way out the north exit of the station and saw Funky Building. It was still a couple of blocks away so I looked for a way to get to it. Between me and it was a large industrial section that I had to take the long way around. The whole neighbourhood had a bit of a blue collar feel to it. It was very different feel from the big business feel on the south side of the station.

Keeping 'Funky Building' in sight I weaved my way towards it. It looked like it was really close but no matter how much I walked it never seemed to get any closer until suddenly I was right there.

Funky Building's real name is Umeda Sky Building. Trivia point: this building was one of the buildings you could get in SimCity 3000.

I didn't feel like going up to the observation deck because by this time I was regretting my decision to wear the kilt. My inner thighs were chaffing like mad and I was tired. The combination of pain and sleep deprivation was making me cranky.

It was about 11:30 by this time and I was getting hungry so I thought I would get lunch at a Yoshinoya I passed on my way to Osaka eki. I walked back to Osaka eki and made my way through without any problems this time.

I walked back down the major street until I saw the Yoshinoya. It was at this point that I learned a major axiom of life in Japan. “Never ever go for lunch at around lunch time”. Yoshinoya was packed. And there was a line up. Every food place had a line in front of it. I kept walking and passed the enterence for an underground shopping mall. I went in and found the area of the mall with all the restaurants. There were people everywhere. I went out and kept walking down the street.

By this time I had adopted the 'sumo walk' to keep my thighs from getting any worse. The sumo walk is the walk I noticed all the sumo guy doing. It involves holding your feet further apart than is normal. The stance makes you walk a little bit more with your hips and a little less with your knees.

At around 11:50 I passed a Mos Burger that wasn't overly crowded. I studied the menu for a little while and decided on a chicken burger. The only seats available at that moment were at a table that had tall stools around it. I took a stool and sat down. I then realized that I was probably flashing all the people on the other side of the restaurant. I tried to close my legs but the chaffing was so great that I couldn't do that without pain so I stuffed the fabric of the kilt down between my legs and made do.

I sat at the restaurant for a while hoping that the pain would recede a little. It didn't. I reluctantly got up and started making my way back down the street. I passed a subway entrance so I decided to take the subway back to the hotel.

I went in to the station and looked at the subway map. Stroke of luck! The line that goes right in front of the hotel stopped at this station. I bought a ticket for the ride and walked through the gate. I needed to take the Midosuji line to Dobutsuenmae eki, which has an entrance directly in front of the hotel. There were signs that said “Midosuji line this way” so I followed them. They led me down a long corridor and some stairs to a platform, but it was not the platform I wanted. At the far end of the platform there was another sign saying “this way!” so I went that way. Up a flight of stairs and another long hallway and down some more stairs and I was at another platform. Still not the one I wanted. At the far end of the plat form was another sign saying “just a little farther”. I was just about ready to punch someone but I kept on. Some more stairs and another long corridor then some more stairs got me to the platform I wanted, just in time to see the train pull out of the station. Whee!

I waited a few minutes for the next train to come and boarded it with all haste in an attempt to get a seat. All the seats in the car were full so I had to stand.

At Dobutsuenmae eki I managed to exit via the wrong exit. Not a big deal. Just meant a little bit more walking.

I got in the hotel and bought a drink from the lobby vending machine. I went up to the room and put the cold bottle between my legs to cool the burning caused by the chafing. I turned on the TV and flipped through the channels. I found a cool show for kids to teach chemistry called “Super Chemistry”.

I soon fell asleep out of shear exhaustion. Next thing I know it is late at night and Charles came back to the hotel. We chatted for a little bit and I fell back asleep.

Trip diary: March 18th, 2007

The sumo guys are laughing at me.

Didn't sleep well. The futons at the hotel were very thin and it was little better than sleeping on the floor. Because I sleep on my side I had bruises on my hips. And the pillow was very thin as well. And I was fighting the affects of jet lag. I woke up at 5:00 and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a while. Eventually I decided to go down to the lobby so I could walk around and not disturb Charles. The same guy who was working the night before at 11 was setting things up. He must have worked the night shift.

Charles came down at about 6 and thought I was all ready to go so was surprised that I was still wearing my slippers and hadn't brushed my teeth or anything. I went back up to the room and got ready. When I came back down I saw that Charles had found the complimentary coffee and was drinking it like it was ambrosia.

We went to Tennoji eki (for those not versed in Japanese, eki means 'station') and caught the Osaka loop line to Osaka-jo (jo = castle). We wandered around the castle grounds for a while but everything was still closed as it was so early in the morning.

We went back to the Namba area because the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium is near there and Charles wanted to buy his ticket for the next day's sumo fights. We found the arena and went in so he could buy his ticket but they didn't start selling next day's tickets until 10 o'clock so we had an hour to kill. We went to Namba Parks (a shopping mall) and sat on a bench until 10. Charles got his ticket (way up in the nose bleed section).

We decided to explore the same areas that we did last night with the added benefit of daylight. The area looked a lot dingier in the day. We found an electronics department store and went in to compare prices with the prices back home. In general we found the prices in Ottawa were lower. Usually $10 less on most things. There goes that myth.

By this time Charles was feeling the affects of only having one coffee that morning so we went to a Mister Doughnut. While eating doughnuts we decided to go to Kobe, which is really close to Osaka. We hopped on an express train at Osaka eki and sat back for the ride. Our primary purpose for going to Kobe was to visit Ikuta shrine. Supposedly it is one of the oldest shrines in Japan (nearly 1700 years old). The shrine is very nice. It's a popular place for girls to go to pray for boyfriends. This tradition is fairly recent. Two big Japanese celebrities got married at that shrine so it has now become a place associated with romance in Japanese people's minds. To quote Asuka (you will meet her later) with regard to this practice:“Japanese people are easily led. A celebrity does something and the next day everyone else has to do the same thing.”

We decided to see the Kobe Earthquake Memorial at the harbour so we walked in that direction. Along the way we walked into China Town. There was a public demonstration of Chinese dancing going on so we watched that for a little while. Us being the size we are, no one behind us could see anything so only disinterested school kids who were not there by choice stood behind us.

We continued on our way after two dances. Lunch was some deep fried things on sticks bought from street vendors and drinks purchased from a vending machine.

The memorial is a harbour pier that was destroyed in the quake that happened in 1995. The pier was never repaired. Instead it was left exactly as it was after the quake hit.

After viewing the memorial we walked around the area and found a swap meet. We didn't find anything of interest.

By this time our feet were killing us so we decided to take a ferry back to Osaka. Looking at our map we noticed that the ferry going where we wanted was near the station where we arrived in Kobe so we went back to the station and started walking south to find the ferry dock.

After walking for 20 minutes and complaining endlessly about our feet we looked at the map again. The map said that we had only walked about 1/3 of the way to the ferry. We also noticed that there is a train that goes from the station to the dock. After cursing our own stupidity for a while we decided to stuff the ferry and walked back to the station to take the train back to Osaka.

We decided to do a Lawson dinner. Lawson is a convenience store chain in Japan. They sell various pre-made meals there. We went back to Tennoji eki and started walking because there was a Lawson between the hotel and the station. We forgot that the Lawson is actually across the street from the station that is on the other side of the hotel. We could have saved our feet an extra 15 minutes of walking by simply remembering that fact. Heading back to the hotel from the store we discovered that there is a soup kitchen next door to the hotel that all the homeless people in the area go to. Lots of smelly insane people were wandering around.

Once back in the hotel we watched a Japanese game show that I forget the name of while we ate. Soon after we went to sleep.