Month: April 2007

From Osaka we took a train and then a furnicular to Koyasan (Mount Koya), where the monks live. Billed as ‘staying with the monks’ it would be more accurately described as ‘staying in a hotel the monks have set up to cash-in on the area’ and, although interesting, it wasn’t quite the spiritual experience it might be billed as.

Renoji Inn, Koyasan, where we were to stay:

Koyasan does have an impressive cemetery, however, with something like a million graves and rising:

It isn’t just a tourist attraction as real pilgrims come to visit the shrines and temples at the heart of the cemetery:

As well as ‘regular’ graves there were a number of larger monuments:

This ziggurat-type structure is quite far into the cemetery:

As well as traditional stone and marble memorials there are a number of corporate installations, such as a statue of a car worker which is there for Toyota workers. As with so many things in Japan there’s always room for something a bit different such as this space rocket:

The monk’s accomodation wasn’t the most luxurious. Although all fine, there wasn’t any of the things you might expect in a hotel, such as locks on the doors, a bathroom, or anywhere private to wash or brush your teeth. They did, however, have electric blankets to keep their feet warm. These seemed to form part of the table furniture and I’m left again to wonder why they have table-blankets but they can’t get round to putting legs on their chairs:

The monks also had a strange view of our sleeping arrangements, obviously deciding that all four of us were going to be sleeping in a free-for-all across two rooms. That’s what you get from staying somewhere that’s usually full of hippies, I suppose:

There was a religious aspect to the whole thing, though, with this great hall being the place where meditation took place. I tried it in the evening but the whole sitting crossed legged with your eyes closed for 40 minutes thing didn’t really do anything for me.

The furnicular on the way back. It’s steep:

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Next: Japan Trip, Part 9 – Tokyo and home

From Koyosan we had to travel back to Osaka and then a bullet train all the way to Tokyo (in about 3 hours) for our last night in Japan. I certainly don’t feel like I’ve seen anywhere near enough of the country and even with four nights in Tokyo had barely scratched the surface.

On the way back from Osaka to Tokyo we passed Mount Fuji and I was able to grab this hazy photo. It’s quite spectacular the way it rises from the ground in such a gradual arc:

In Tokyo we stayed at the Keio Plaza, a very plush hotel which we didn’t really get full value out of given the huge number of facilities it had. However, it was tall and had a good view:

A night view from the hotel room:

A similar view in daylight:

Our last meal wasn’t to disappoint in terms of strangeness. This time, we had everything cooked in a paper bag over an open flame:

And, for completeness, a photo of a plane taking off from Tokyo airport. (Obviously it’s not our plane otherwise I wouldn’t be back here, but it looked just like this one.)

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From Nikko we took a bus to Shirakawago, further into the mountains. Shirakawago is similar to Hida No Sato in that there are a collection of authentic traditional buildings, but the difference is that they’re all lived in and the whole place is a combination of working village and tourist attraction.

Shirakawago nestles nicely in the middle of some mountains, guaranteeing it bad weather all year round, I believe:

There were an awful lot of traditional houses there, though. Many were complete with electric sliding doors too:

The surrounding mountains themselves were impressive enough:

One of my favourite things to see everywhere was the racoon dog, which is some kind of mischevious thing (I guess a kind of furry leprechaun with a bit of vivisection thrown in). Usually they were plastic and sat outside houses, restaurants and other places, presumably to ward of something or other. This stuffed one was the finest example I saw, though:

A lot of the rivers we saw were very green tinted whilst still being clear. I don’t really know why:

A rice field in Shirakawago:

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Next: Japan Trip, Part 5 – Kanazawa

At the end of a day in Shirakawago we took another bus to Kanazawa. The journey between the two was particularly impressive as rather than navigate winding mountain routes the road cut right through mountains, with bridges over valleys, getting us to Kanazawa in under an hour. We must have travelled a fair distance and dropped quite a bit in altitude in that time as the temperature rose around 12 degrees centigrade. I personally also quite liked Kanazawa as it was the first Japanese city we visited after Tokyo and it had a very different feel – much more informal, a bit more free and edgy, and not as obsessively orderly as Tokyo.

The main attraction in Kanazawa is the Kenrokuen garden, which is where all the photos below are from. It was interesting to see how much a variety a garden could have without the colours from flowers, instead using different greens, mosses and trees, and contrasting textures such as smooth set against rippling water in a very controlled way.

We had a first taste of the powdered green tea, as used in Japanese tea ceremonies, with the small sweet, in the Kenrokuen garden tea house. This wasn’t a tea ceremony but was very pleasant sitting next to the water:

The inside of the sweet:

The tea house itself:

A spooky carp in the garden pond:

A water feature:

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Next: Japan Trip, Part 6 – Kyoto

From Kanazawa we took a few trains to Kyoto. The journey wasn’t particularly interesting as ended up standing for the whole two hours but we were glad that our bags were being shipped around without us having to carry them, making good use of the Japanese baggage shipping system which really did seem very efficient. (So no real surprise there.)

Unusually for a ryokan, our receptionist was a cat:

The shot below shows a pachinko hall. If you don’t know, pachinko is a game of almost no skill that, as I worked out, involves holding a dial in a single position and hoping ball-bearings fall into a hole in the middle. Imagine pinball where you don’t have to do anything except put your money in and you’re not far away.

The Japanese staff were very helpful taking my 1000 yen and showing me how to spend it too and although I’m glad I gave it a try it’s hard to imagine a less satisfying way of spending a fiver.

This was one of the stranger drinks we saw in a vending machine. Cider and condensed milk… mmmmmm…

Kyoto itself is jam-packed with temples:

And where there’s a temple, there’s a crowd:

We also visited the Golden Pavilion at Rokoyun-ji temple, a quite impressive building with two stories entirely covered in real gold (about 40 tonnes worth):

Bob and Jo both taking photos. I don’t see why one set of the same place isn’t enough, but there you go:

As ever, there were very well designed gardens around the pavilion:

Our Japanese guide for the day was very keen on taking photos of the four of us, so this is a rare shot with me in it:

Although obviously a new building, this construction around the garden still follows a very traditional style:

Another Kyoto temple:

The second day in Kyoto we decided to visit the Zen Buddhist temple complex, including Ryoanji, towards the north of the city. The main attraction is certainly the gardens with their raked pebble and rock formations:

This garden signifies how a rock thrown harder at water makes more ripples than a smaller rock dropped in. Duh!

One of the larger garden pieces:

A rock close-up:

The temple building itself was made of some of the widest floorboards ever, as this photo (with Ann being used for scale) shows:

It wasn’t all about rocks and gravel, oh no, there were trees at the temple too:

Sometimes the rock, pebble and moss formations really did look like land formations emerging from water, as these were intended to:

The larger garden, but with a bit more sun:

Round the corner from the Zen temples: a 99 yen shop:

From the temples we took a bus to Kyoto’s Nijo Castle:

We weren’t always particularly impressed by how defensible the things called castles were. After all, paper walls aren’t the most resistant to attack. These ramparts show the other side of things, though, and not something I’d want to try and climb up with a bunch of samurai waiting at the top:

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Next: Japan Trip, Part 7 – Osaka

From Kyoto we took the short train journey to Osaka and our hotel New Hankyu, next to the main stations in Osaka. Trips on the menu included the castle at Himoji (Himoji-ji) and then a general wander around Osaka itself.

Another of the strange sights we saw in a vending machine. This was 12 year aged water. I presume it’s actually whisky with water in it, but you never know:

In one of the restaurants we were given bibs, as Bob and Jo are sporting in this photo. It seemed something of a con that so many places either involved eating raw fish or cooking it yourself in the centre of the table which, although fun, seemed something of a let-off for the restaurant staff.

We also passed the Akashi Kaikyo bridge on the way out of Tokyo towards Himoji. This photo is from inside the train but it really is quite a big span and, so I’ve heard, the tops of the supports are further apart at the top than the bottom to take account of the curviture of the earth.

The next set of photos are from Himoji-ji – the huge castle outside Osaka. Although the entry fee includes the grounds and all the way to the top of the castle it’s really only from the outside that much interesting happens. Inside was so crowded (apparently this is Japan’s third most visited attraction) that it really was impossible to do much except follow everyone around in a queue. I wouldn’t recommend bothering to go up to anyone who visited, although the outside is worth a visit.

The gardens adjacent to Himoji-ji were also worth a visit and, I would say, more interesting than the castle itself:

Around the corner from the castle is – oh joy! – some more modern architecture, in the shape of the museum of literature by Tadao Ando. Although an interesting series of shapes I don’t see that it makes a particularly usable building, and there seemed to be a lot of investment in spaces that mostly seem unoccupied. The site was apparently based a lot around maximising views of Himoji-ji itself and although there are good views I don’t see how the design necessarily had a lot to do with them as the main building hides the views behind a large group of trees. But there you go.

Osaka itself is quite a bustling city and more centralised than Tokyo so, in some ways, easier to get to grips with in a short space of time. We visited the Sky Tower for some views from the top:

The journey up the Sky Tower itself is quite dramatic – a glass lift from about the 7th floor upwards which is quite an exhilarating ride. The last couple of floors are on an escalator which goes right through the central hole in the photo above and inside one of the two diagonal struts you can see above.

A model of the Sky Tower:

From the Sky Tower, views of Osaka:

A shot of the escalators from above:

Another example of how the Japanese really don’t mess when it comes to flyovers. This one goes right through the middle of a building:

One of the stranger pieces of ‘modern’ architecture, this hotel has what is, I suppose, a gothic wedding chapel half way up the building:

Another interesting sight in Osaka is the ferris wheel (an ever-popular Japanese installation – I saw more in two weeks in Japan than the rest of my life to-date) on top of a shopping complex:

Some parts of Osaka are more over-the-top than any part of Tokyo I found. This area was so full of advertising and lights that it was an overwhelming experience. Photos don’t really convey how full-on it was, but imagine being locked inside a small room with an entire fairground and you’ll get some of the idea.

We found an excellent restaurant around the corner, however, called Kakureya. The owner spoke excellent English and despite only having a Japanese menu was able to serve us up an excellent meal of nabe and, to our surprise, a free dish of rare beef to try and a couple of glasses of Sochyu. He was so good to us that I really hope anyone else going to Osaka tries them out.

This photo shows us four in Kakureya:

Another strange Osaka sight: a giant head, with legs. In true bizarre Japanese fashion, each head also had buttocks:

Another view of the ferris wheel on the department store:

Inside the department store were a number of ice-creams and things on sale. This one was amongst the most over-the-top: a sundae with a whole piece of cake on top:

We tried some ‘cider meets condensed milk’ and it actually wasn’t all that bad. Here is Bob’s endorsement (and note how he’s showing the label on the can like a real pro):

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Next: Japan Trip, Part 8 – Koyosan

From Tokyo we took a bullet train (or Shinkansen, as they prefer to be called on the train station signs) to Nikko which is up in the mountains northest(ish) of Tokyo. There’s a large temple complex up there as well as our first taste of a Japanese Ryokan, which is basically a type of hotel where they don’t give you a bed or any furniture, or your own bathroom.

Anyway, to the photos.

A bridge which you had to pay to go over, but luckily didn’t have to pay to look at from the free bridge (which is good as I don’t think going on it would be half as interesting). If they’d thought about it they’d charge it the other way around:

A copper basin next to the Nikko bridge:

The other three had bento box lunches in a small cafe (which is shown below). I had the curry rice ‘special’ (which came with a free tea), but it didn’t bear any resemblance to any curry I’ve ever had outside of a college canteen. The ingredients seemed to be gravy, curry powder and cat food.

One of the impressive temples in Nikko:

A more simple wooden shrine near the temples:

A large pagoda next to one of the main temples:

One of the most ornately decorated temples. It seems strange that on the one hand Japanese design is famed for its minimalism (witness Muji and the like), but on the other that temples even today are so ornate and coloured, much as Western gothic cathedrals would have been originally:

It was obligatory to take a photo of the three wise monkeys. We resisted the temptation to stand in front of them in mock wise monkey poses since it seemed too obvious a joke, although that didn’t stop hordes of other tourists doing it.

Another very ornate temple gateway:

The eaves sculptures were often incredibly detailed with dragons and the like. Apparently dragons are put there to ward off lightning to stop buildings catching fire. Personally, if I had a wooden building the last thing I’d want on it was a dragon, but there you are: that’s the Japanese for you.

Our ryokan (the Hoshi No Yado) was actually very smart, despite the lack of height of the furniture, and we had fairly good views of the mountains. I could never work out, though, why in a country that was so rocky that they didn’t make buildings out of stone, which was lying around everywhere, and with the wood they saved they could give all the chairs and tables longer legs and make the whole place a lot more comfortable.

Ann got into the spirit of having breakfast in her dressing gown:

Photographing yourself in front of everything is something of a cliched (if accurate) view we have of the Japanese but we also entered into the spirit of it. I think this takes it one step further with both Bob being photographed whilst taking a photo of a building:

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Next: Japan Trip, Part 3 – Takayama