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Published: July 22nd 2006
Shojin-ryori
Vegetarian delights in the temple. There were no less than 5 types of Tofu here. Absolutely delicious and amazing presentation.Sitting in a Tokyo Bay restaurant, you can make out the blurry night skyline through the rain as the Yurikamome driverless train snakes across the harbour bridge. This is the "Bladerunner" style Tokyo I had always dreamed of seeing and I can safely say its all here. The glaring neon, the heaving gadget-laden crowds pouring along the skyscraper lined streets, the screeching advertisements blaring out of loudspeakers overhead - Tokyo is a very exciting city!
We arrived for our two week stay on the 1st of July and met Catherine's cousin Paddy at Shibuya station near the Hachiko statue. Things started on a very good note as he handed us a welcome cold beer, and we set off for his house in Hirama. Hirama is a pretty quiet satellite town between Tokyo and Yokahama where Paddy lives with his wife Eiko. Paddy and Eiko had offered us their home as a base for our entire time here in Japan - so first things first - we need to say a major thank you to them for being so generous and giving up their living room to us smelly backpackers! They even left us the keys and gave us the use
Geisha - Kyoto
Ponto Cho alleyway. of a mobile phone while they went off to climb Mount Fuji.
Our first few days were spent visiting Tokyo and exploring the city. There is so much to see and do here it's impossible to get bored and to be honest one of the major attractions is to just sit and "people watch" and take in the crazy fashions of the teenage guys and girls that frequent the Shinjuku and Shibuya districts on the weekend. We couldn't help snickering at some of the insane fashions on display but knowing how these things usually work, we will all be dressing like this in a couple of years so better not make too many hasty comments - LastTrain Financial Tip - invest in Tangerine Fake Tan stocks now!. In Tokyo we also visited the Ginza shopping area which hosts such nerd must-sees as the Sony Centre and Apple Store. These had lots of products that aren't out in the UK yet and when we get back we won't be able to afford them so I won't go on about them now but lots of fun nonetheless.
For food we were feasting on sushi a lot, in fact fish seems
to make up the major part of the Japanese diet as a trip to any supermarket shows massive fish aisles and much smaller meat freezers. The sushi was beautifully prepared and relatively quite cheap from the takeaway sushi bars - our favourite place was just at the Hirama train station - delicious. Paddy and Eiko returned on Sunday and Eiko made us a delicious salad and spaghetti dish. Eiko is a fantastic cook and we were treated to some slap up feasts at their place. We stayed one more night with them and then we headed south for Kyoto.
Japan is the first country we have visited where getting around is actually the most fun part. The Shinkansen (Bullet Trains) that criss cross the country are incredibly comfortable and are run as efficiently as a "Swiss-German Time Keeping and Efficiency Conference" in Basel would be. All staff members of Southern Rail and Iarnrod Eireann should be sent here to see how to run a train system. It's amazing - when the train picks up full speed you feel like you are literally flying through the countryside - brilliant fun. And the staff bow every time they enter and leave
the carriage - and not only that - when the Shinkansen arrives into a major station, all the cleaners bow to the train!! The Japanese commuters also have an incredible respect for property and make sure the train is kept clean as they disembark. No "Jonny loves Trayo" graffiti anywhere.
So if Tokyo is the hi-tech consumer capital of Japan - then Kyoto is definitely the cultural capital with close to 2000 temples in and around the city and more UNESCO World Heritage Sights than you can possibly take in in just a few shorts days - but nonetheless we did our best. The city has some really beautiful Zen Buddhist gardens and temples and we managed to take in quite a few of the main ones. Some highlights were the Golden Pavilion - Kinkakuji, The Temples of Ryoanji and Tenryuji and the nearby beautiful Bamboo Forest. We also managed to spot a real life Geisha making her way through the backstreets of down town Kyoto on her way to an appointment. This was a real treat as we had purposely made our way to Ponto Cho alleyway in the hope of spotting a working Geisha. We spotted her
initially in the distance and had to make a dash paparazzi-style to find her again as she had slipped down an alley way. In the end we caught up with her as she was hailing a cab. Catherine approached her and asked her if we could take a photo - she agreed and struck a rather serious pose in her amazing costume. Then slipped away into the night - just as mysterious as we had imagined these elusive girls to be.
From Kyoto we took a day trip to Hiroshima which was a real education. The town centre hosts the A-Bomb dome which marks the point where on the 6th August 1945 the worlds first Atomic Bomb used in warfare exploded. "Little Boy" went off roughly 600m above the building which still stands today. It is estimated 137,000 people died here in the aftermath of the explosion and by 1995 the figure had risen to 192,000 dead. The Peace Memorial Museum had a special display of art which had been submitted by survivors of the attack in the 1980's. Most of these survivors were young men and women at the time of the bombing and their paintings were incredibly
sad and moving. The museum made a good attempt to record fairly the events that lead up to the bombing and the town of Hiroshima is still very involved in the movement for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world - sending letters on the 6th of August each year to the governments in possession of nuclear weapons technology. As the number of survivors disappears over time however, and with increasingly hostile military manoeuvres from North Korea taking place, an underbelly of right wing sentiment is slowly growing in Japan and urging the government to develop its own nuclear capability. Worrying times for Japan...
Whilst in Hiroshima we also visited the beautiful island of Miyajima.The "Floating Torii" gates that mark the entrance to the Shinto Temple of Itsukushima is one of Japans top three views and is indeed very beautiful. (Japanese apparently according to Paddy have a top three for everything - Onsen, cherry blossom viewing points, mountains etc.!).The island was inhabited by tame deer who hang outside the train station and attempt to mug visitors of their Rail Passes when you arrive. Very cute.
Our penultimate destination in the south of Japan was the beautifully scenic area
of Nara. Nara Koen park has 1200 sacred deer and we fed them deer biscuits. It also hosts the amazing Todai-ji which is the largest wooden building in the world and contains the Daibatsu (Great Buddha) - who is made up of 437 tonnes of bronze and 137kg of gold. The other smaller temples in Nara Koen were also very impressive and it was well worth a day trip from Kyoto. Finally we stayed one night in the temple town of Koya-san. Koya-san is located up in the mountains and is made up of 50 temples all part of the Shingon Sect of Buddhism - centred around a Chinese Buddhist monk called Kukai who travelled to Koya-san and entered a deep meditation there hundreds of years ago. All Shingon Buddhists believe he will come out of his meditation eventually and as a result there are 500,000 graves around the tomb where he is meditating - its a creepy place at night we discovered. We stayed in a temple lodgings Shukobo in the Rengejo-in temple. Here we participated in meditation and chanting at 6.00 am. Just Cat and Pat and the resident monks no other tourists -a great experience for us.
Vending Food
Soba noodles with tofu and raw egg. We also ate incredible food there called Shojin-ryori. This is food that is prepared without meat, fish, egg or garlic. It was delicious and the Koya tofu was like something we had never tasted before. Again we had the whole dining room to ourselves and it was just like a scene from a samurai movie.
Soon it was time to head back north to Hirama and we met Paddy and Eiko in nearby Kawasaki for a great night out. We were treated to a massive Japanese dinner with loads of beers. Afterwards they brought us to a Karaoke bar where we all had a go at destroying our favorite songs very loudly. The next day they showed us around nearby Yokohama which is considered the romantic city of Japan and has a lovely sea front. That night Eiko made us a delicious roast dinner!
We left them again as they returned to work for the week and we headed to Nikko which again had really nice traditional Ryokan style accommodation. We are convinced however, that Nikko is the Japanese for heavy rain as we were washed out of it for our entire two days there. Nonetheless we visited
the local temples of Toshuo-gu. They were very nice too but not as nice as the temples we had seen in the south and were over run by school kids on day trips from Tokyo. In the evening we visited Yahionoyu Onsen. Onsen are natural spring baths where the Japanese go in the evenings to bathe and there are many of them all over Japan. This was a pretty nice one and had an indoor and outdoor area. It's relaxing but would have definitely been more fun to go with a group of friends as we both spent our time trying to stick to the rules and not chatting to any of the locals unfortunately.
Leaving Nikko we travelled to Tokyo where we decided to stay in a more central location -we ended up near Ueno which proved a good location for getting around. From here we visited Tokyo Bay on the futuristic driverless Yurikamome line and ate in an Indian restaurant looking out across the bay - amazing views. Next morning we visited Tsikuji Fish Market which is where all the thousands of tonnes of fish caught daily ends up and is bought and sold which makes for
and electric atmosphere at 7.00am. You really have to jump out of the way of the speeding motorized vans and delivery trucks as you make your way through the staggering array of exotic fish on sale. We had delicious fresh sushi and beer for breakfast and then headed up to the excellent MORI museum of modern art in futuristic Roppongi area of town.
That night we ended up where we began our Japanese adventure. At the Hachiko statue in Shibuya where we met Paddy and Eiko just two ludicrously short weeks in this amazing country. This time we went out in Shibuya for beer and Yakatori with all the Tokyo salary men letting loose after a long week. It was a great atmosphere. We also took the inevitable trip to an Irish bar called The Shannons where Paddy used to work. It was jammed full (as usual with Irish bars) and we said goodbye to our gracious hosts in Japan as they gave us Japanese style fans as a parting gift. Eiko you were right - the fans have been really useful in Bangkok - very hot here!!!!
So as you can see we crammed a lot in
but only skimmed the surface of what you can do in this amazing country. The Japanese proved to be the most welcoming people we have come across so far and their politeness, hospitality and great sense of humour make this an essential country to visit at least once in your life.
Make it your mission to go there...
Next stop - Bangkok! ... stay tuned
PS One final thanks to Paddy & Eiko, hope we can return the favour sometime in the future.
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John
non-member comment
Glad to see you did Karaoke in Japan, how cool! hmmm how do I convince my work to open an office in Japan??