On to Hiroshima

We had a very quiet day yesterday, mostly spent on trains.

We had to leave the place in Kyoto by 10 so we made our way to the local station and moved to Kyoto station.

We pondered whether to wait there for our scheduled train to Shin Kobe.  But that wasn't until 13:40.  What would we do for all that time.  We couldn't go for a walk - we each had big cases with us.  So we took the local train to Osaka and on to Kobe. It was nice train ride.

We transferred to Shin Kobe and had lunch there. Vegetable tempura for Sandy.  I also had vegetable tempura, but with prawns on the side. Lindsey had a set menu.  It was all very tasty.

And then we caught our scheduled train to Hiroshima.

It's a ten minute walk from the station to the cute little flat that we are staying in.  There's a supermarket Just There. The flat is very tiny but has everything we need, including three comfortable beds. It has a definite Hello Kitty element.

So not much happened yesterday. A mere 7500 steps, no floors and only 31 minutes of exercise.   I expect we'll a bit better today, although Hiroshima looks fairly flat.  There may not be many levels.

More Shrines and Temples

Sandy had expressed a wish to go and look at something.  All I had really gathered was that it was full of orange things.  And that was at the next station along from our local station.  So I didn't know what it was we were going to look at.

Turns out it was a massive shinto shrine.  And it is absolutely filled with foxes and torii gates. It's also on a small mountain.  You can get right to the top of the mountain using steps and walkways, many of which are marked by torii gates.  We didn't get anything like that far. I think we probably got about a third of the way up.  That was far enough for my knees!

Foxes, guarding the rice granaries, bringing messages from the gods and bearing good luck:

Torii gates (and another fox!):

It was all rather lovely.

We had brunch in a little cafe, which we chanced upon when heading back to the station. Smashed avocado on toast with salad. I had a poached egg with mine.  Lindsey had bacon with hers. Sandy's was unadorned.  It was all very Australian - one of the options was cheese and vegemite on toast :-D

We hopped on another train and made our way to the other side of Kyoto to visit the Golden Temple.  It too was very lovely but the experience was all rather structured. In the Fox temple you could roam around at will.  The Golden Temple had a one way walk. No roaming allowed!  A pity, really. The temple itself was beautiful but so too were the grounds. We are a week or two early for the full effect of the autumn colours, but even so, the trees were beautiful in the sunshine.

We walked back to the station, having got to the temple by bus (our first experience on a Japanese bus!). It was slightly less than 3 km and all downhill.  I think we all agreed, when we got to the station, that next time we would take the bus back.  Our legs, hips, knees, backs were all beginning to protest.  Not quite 18,000 steps yesterday, and a mere 33 floors.  I'm sure my feet shouldn't be protesting quite this much!

Not expecting temples or shrines today. We are on the move again.

Mostly temples

We know there was a temple or a shrine at the top of our road.  We could see the signpost on the main road, plus the torii gate.  So we went up to see what was there

Lots of people were making their way up there, some in kimonos, some in suits, some quite casually dressed.

As we went up the hill we found a park with a temple and shrines. It was very beautiful and very peaceful.

An excellent way of spending Sunday morning. Peaceful, quiet, beautiful.

Further up the hill is a large temple complex, which you pay 500 yen to access.

I very much preferred the first one, which was free to enter :-)

We walked into Kyoto to visit the Kiyomizu-dera temple. I have been there before, on my very first visit to Japan. Austin, Jim and I had a day trip to Kyoto and went to the temple.  Yesterday Lindsey, Sandy and I went through the mausoleum to enter it.  It was all VERY busy!

Right.  That's enough temples for today.  We had lunch in a little place that we happened upon on our way to a shopping arcade.  I had already had a steamed bun and a cheesy squid thing on a stick so wasn't really hungry.  I had an apple pie. It was absolutely lovely.  Huge chunks of cinnamony apple in a not too sweet pastry.  And what was effectively a mango slushy to drink.  Got to be healthy, right?  Two lots of fruit!

We found the shopping arcade and had a potter in that. Then we took the train back to our local station. Got supplies from the little supermarket for tea and came back to our little house for the evening.

My fitbit says that I walked not quite 21000 steps yesterday, covering a little over 13 km and 53 storeys.  I slept very well last night.  It's no wonder!!!

On to Kyoto

We had a good trip to Kyoto. Local train to Shinagawa, shinkansen to Kyoto, local train for one stop, then a short walk.

The shinkansen was as comfortable as you would expect. Once again there was nowhere to put our luggage, but the conductor sorted that out for us. Mine was locked in her cabin. Fortunately she remembered to get it out when we got to Kyoto :-D

We got slightly lost (again!) trying to find our little house. The location is fabulous.  Close to two little temples. A very short walk to the main street where we found three little supermarkets in close proximity to each other. We are a half hour walk to the main Kyoto station but only a ten or so minute walk to the local station.

The house itself is fairly new. It's absolutely beautiful. And I would never stay here again!  The main problem is that there is nowhere to sit. There is a very small island bench in the kitchen with three stools but there are no lounge chairs, or small couch, or anything.  There is one bedroom downstairs which I am sleeping in and we are using that as somewhere to sit.  I am sleeping in that room because the stairs are so steep that I struggled to come back down them. The kitchen is remarkably badly equipped. No knives, so no buttering the bread. Glasses, yes; cups, no. Chopping knife, yes; vegetable peeler, no.  I keep looking at the house and thinking that it is very, very lovely - and completely impractical.  I was beginning to wonder if it was just me (the reviews are uniformly good). But Lindsey and Sandy also think that it is beautiful but impractical.

And all it would have taken, really, would be to have found some space for a couple of chairs or a sofa in some of the wasted space in the kitchen area and we probably wouldn't have paid much attention to the other inconveniences.  I can always buy a vegetable peeler.  (But I'm not going to buy an iron!  I shall have to live in crumpled clothes while I am here)

It looks lovely 

but it's ill-equipped and quite uncomfortable

On the upside - I have a bedroom with a view

Right.  Enough moaning about the accommodation. I'm off to sample the shower (in the courtyard!) which I'm told has good water pressure and plentiful hot water.  And then we might go and inspect the local temple.

In other news, look at the price of booze in the local supermarket

( about $AU15 )

Farewell to Tokyo

What to do on our last day in Tokyo?  We considered the Imperial Palace. We considered other things.

In the end we spent the day pottering around in Harajuku and Shibuya.

We went back to the Kiddyland toy shop. We wandered in the alleyways and laneways. We had lunch in a lovely little AngloIrish cafe that we will almost certainly never be able to find again. We introduced Sandy to the delights of Daiso. We pottered in the clothes shops, souvenir shops and junk shops.

We had afternoon tea:

My apple and prune cake

We went to UniQlo and back to Shibuya station to get our Shinkansen  reservations for our trip to Kyoto.  We found something more interesting for Sandy to eat than vegetables or omelettes in the food hall by the station.  We had an early night.

We spotted this shop sign while we were out.
We are not sure what they really intended to say!

And now we are more or less ready to move on to Kyoto. Although our train isn't until 12:10, so it is a little early to leave yet.  A quiet sit down before we move on



Bye bye Shibuya and Harajuku.  It's been lots of fun.

Mount Fuji and Hakone

In retrospect, we should probably have done the trip to Mount Fuji on Wednesday. We knew that was the best day this week for weather.  In the event, though, we went yesterday.  And we had a very good day.  Enjoyed it immensely. It was just a bit cloudy.  Which wouldn't normally matter but can be an issue when you are doing mountains :-D

We set off early in the morning and found the pick up place for the coach. After that we spent most of the day sitting rather than walking.  My feet were hugely pleased.

We were trundling along, getting close to Mt Fuji when Fumi-san, the guide, said that we now had one of the best views of Mt Fuji.  I couldn't see it anywhere. There it is, said Sandy.  Nup.  Can't see it.  Look, said Sandy.  There!  Looked and looked.  And then realised I was looking too far down.  The bit of Fuji that we could see through the clouds was up there.  Right up there.

These are Sandy's photos:

We didn't have very long at the 5th station, by the time we had got our Mt Fuji cakes, drunk our coffee and got back to the bus in time to get back on board. So we more or less had to choose between looking at the view down below, or trying to convince Fuji-san to take off her hat and reveal her head.  Alas, she remained hatted while we were there

Visitor Centre

Mt Fuji in cake form

Mt Fuji was quite tasty, but I rather preferred the cream cheese pancake

We had lunch in a restaurant in a forest somewhere.  It was a ninja themed restaurant and I have to say the lunch was remarkably good for a tour lunch. It was beautifully presented and was very tasty.  And the venue was lovely

Then on to Hakone and Lake Ashi.  We went on a boat ride and on the cable car.  The weather by the lake was quite pleasant. 

Shall we go to the cable car by swan?

or by ship?

But no, we went on the pleasure boat we were supposed to be on

A tiny, tiny tori gate, apparently protecting us from a large, ferocious  dragon

As we went up the little mountain we went up, up, up into the clouds. By the time we got to the top it was like walking into a Doctor Who episode. Where you would expect there to be lots of people milling about, it was completely empty, with dark shapes coming into view from time to time

The trip back had the option of return by coach or return by shinkansen.  We hadn't paid the supplement for the shinkansen because we have train passes and it seemed rather a waste of money. We had intended to stay on the coach, until we realised that the shinkansen would take 35 minutes to get back to Tokyo and the coach would take almost two hours. We deployed our train passes!  

It was a great day.  Should you find yourself in Tokyo, contemplating what to do, I would recommend this tour.  But go on a sunny day!

Lindsey's preferred mode of transport