Advertisement
Published: October 31st 2009
This week Glenn and I travelled around Honshu (the big island where Tokyo, Kyoto and other big cities are on) by Japan Rail Pass. The pass wasn't cheap, but if you cover alot of distance, it is worthwhile. Hence, our itinerary of a new city each day. Glenn calls it Hell Week but I call it productive, efficient tour week. Many of the places you don't need more than a day to see the highlights because they are small towns. Anyways, you judge for yourself if it's an experience you'd like to enjoy.
We started the week off travelling from Hakodate on Hokkaido to Kakunodate. Kakunodate is located in northern Honshu and is famous for its samurai district. There is an old part of town that has keep the old lay out of the old samurai homes and streets intact. In fact, it is considered the best example of samurai lifestyles in Japan. It is known for the wide streets with covered gutters running along either side. The streets are bordered by uniform 5ft dark wood fencing with the samurai housing compounds behind them. A couple of the most important samurai homes managed to preserve their compounds and are now
Hiroshima - Dome Monument
Left to show the damage near ground zeo where the bomb droppedopen to the public. It was amazing! I could imagine how elegant, aesthetic and exotic this part of town would have seem compared to the tight narrow lay out of the area beside it occupied by the trades and towns people. It's worth a visit if you're in the neighbourhood but you won't need more than an afternoon.
The next day we travelled to Hakone which is near Mt. Fuji. It was raining the whole day and it turned out to be a bust. The reason I wanted to go to Hakone was it's view of Mt. Fuji but it was totally clouded over. On the other hand, Glenn didn't want to go to Hakone so the day already started on the downside. We were suppose to take a gondola/cable car down a mountain to Hakone towards the end of the journey but it was cancelled because of high winds. In the end, we had to backtrack nearly to the beginning of our route and take a bus around the mountain. When the bus dropped us off, it was really pouring down rain and we couldn't find a taxi to take us to the hotel. We finally found the
Hiroshima Peace Park
Cenotaph for the A bomb victims and the Flame of Peace and the Dome Monument in background taxi stand and that's when the trip turned around. 10 mins in the taxi and it delivered us to the Prince Hotel Hakone. Let me tell you that was a welcomed sight. After paying the taxi driver and leaving a pool of water in his back seat, we were swished through check in and delivered to a modern spacious room with the most comfy king size bed we've slept in to date. We both hung up our wet clothes, Glenn crawled into bed and I went to use the Women's only japanese public bath in the hotel. The best part of that was sitting in a covered outdoor hot spring tub overlooking a mist covered lake. It got so hot I had to sit outside the tub and let the occasional breeze from the lake cool me down. Room service, bed and the day was over!
The rain had stopped by the next morning but the mist covering the lake and Mt. Fuji was still there. My view of Mt. Fuji was not to be had. Mt. Fuji has the reputation of being cloud covered most of the time but I had to try. ( Unexpectedly, I eventually did
Takayama
Glenn's gonna take a leek!!! see Mt. Fuji! On our plane ride from Okinawa to Tokyo, Glenn pointed out it when we were flying over the region and saw its peak floating above the clouds. Mission accomplished!!!)
After we dressed in our dry clothes (thank god for quick drying synthetic travel clothing!), we checked out and headed to Odawara train station ( this required a 10 min taxi ride and a 50 min bus ride!) to catch our next train to Nagoya. This took us out of the mountains and rain and into the sunshine. It was a beautiful day in Nagoya. We has a leisurely day of visiting the Nagoya Castle and the Noritake Garden/Museum. Noritake is Japan's largest porcelain manufacturer and has been around since 1904. The best part of the day...... sitting in Noritake's sunny patio having an ice coffee surrounded by their garden. Really nice after the hectic transportation challenged day we had the previous day.
The next morning we headed off to a little town called Takayama 2 hours away. Only one train ride away. Yeah!!! It is known as "Little Kyoto". Historically, it was a small town built by and for the merchant class. In this way,
Hakone
Prince Hotel Hakone on Lake Asahi it is laid out differently than Kakunodate. The "old town" is wonderfully preserved and has a tremendous amount of ambiance. The day was spent wandering the old town and taking advantage of photo ops. For dinner, we had some Hida beef skewers. Hida beef is one of the local specialities.
Day 5, we went to Kanazawa. 2 trains and 2.5 hours away. Not too bad. Highlights included ordering my mystery lunch from a vending machine. The machine was all in Japanese so I wasn't sure what I was ordering except I was going to get some sort of noodles from a stand on the train platform. It turned out very well. I had tempura shrimp on Udon noodle soup with a couple of rice balls Tasty. Upon our arrival in Kanazawa, we visited the Myoryuji Temple aka Ninja Temple. It was built with hidden stairways and rooms and trick doors by a paranoid Japanese lord for defensive purposes. Ninjas didn't have anything to do with the temple but it was an accurate nickname for it. Oh, a Japanese girl recognized the Lululemon logo on the back of Glenn's jacket and asked if he was from Canada. All we need
Kakunodate
Sitting at a low table with floor cushions. Having a mountain veg with local soba noodle soup. now is a secret handshake for Canadians. That'd be cool. Glenn didn't feel like visiting a garden so the taxi dropped him off at the hotel and I went to see the famous Kenrokuen Garden. It is considered one of the 3 best landscaped gardens in Japan and was started in 1670. It was very beautiful and offered different styles of Japanese gardens also. My personal favourite was the Flying Geese bridge garden where the stepping stones/bridge was in the same formation as a flock of flying geese. Hence the name! As we've been travelling around Japan, we've seen the occasional women dressed in kimonos. At Kenrokuen, I saw my first man wearing a kimono. I'm going to be honest. I stalked him trying to get a good photo but most of them were blurred. Why couldn't he just stand still??!!!
On the taxi ride back to the hotel, we drove by the prime shopping district. I was amazed! I couldn't believe a city of 500,000 would have their own Louis Vuitton store and a number of other designer stores also!! The Japanese certainly love their brand name goods!!!!
That evening, Glenn and I went to a local
Kakunodate
Open hearth in the living area of Samurai's house restaurant recommended by our hotel. As per our guidebook, we tried the local specialty called jibuni. It was a duck and veg stew in a clay hot pot and it was delicious. The restaurant only had a Japanese menu and our waiter only spoke a few words of English so ordering turned into a bit of a farce. Though we liked some dishes more than others, the quality of the ingredients were top notch and we enjoyed the meal. It happened to us quite often in Japan. Though we were familiar with Japanese food, the process of getting a meal did not always go smoothly. However when you got your meal, you can be assured it would be of an excellent standard. The Japanese take their food seriously.....as do most Asians!!!
We didn't feel a trip to Japan would be complete without a visit to Hiroshima. We got in early afternoon and headed over to the Peace Park where all the museums and monuments pertaining to the atomic bombing were. The museum does a good job of telling both sides of the story about why and how the atom bomb got dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WW2.
Hiroshima
Clothing from an A-bomb victim There was also interesting information about life before and after the bomb fell. There are a number of different monuments in the park dedicated to different victims of the bomb. The one that surprised me was the one dedicated to the Korean victims. Apparently, 20,000 Koreans were in Hiroshima as forced labourers were also killed by the bomb. For 29 years the monument was located outside of the park until 1999 when the mayor called for the end of prejudice against Koreans and moved it inside the park. Hhhhmmmmm......As I hear more and more historical stores about Japanese occupations and actions during the war, it does seem that they were pretty brutal and ruthless. War is a messy business. Nowadays, Koreans are still quite bitter towards the Japanese. You'll be hard pressed to see a Toyota or Honda on Korean roadways. It is hard to marry the stories of the brutality with the politeness and correctness of the society we see now.
On a lighter note, we discovered a new Japanese food we never had before called Okonomiyaki. Say that 10 times fast. It took me days, maybe even 2 weeks, to learn to say it and spell it.
Takayama
Boxy styles of car we noticed mainly in the northern half of Japan They called it a Japanese pancake but it was not a pancake we've ever had. It was more like a layered concoction with a very very think flour tortilla at the bottom. In the middle, there was stredded cabbage, onion, carrot, beansprout and bacon. On top was an egg that was broken and used to hold the whole thing together. You could also add other ingredients such as ramen noodles, meat and seafood. When it was cooked, the chef drizzled some mayo and sweet hoisin type sauce on top. We didn't know what to expect when we finally took our first bite but it was a winner!!! We ordered 2 more different kinds of Okonomiyaki but couldn't finish them because we also ordered 4 side dishes. When we looked around , we noticed the locals just had one Okonomiyaki each and maybe a side dish to split. The owner must have thought he hit the jack pot with us! Anyways, we have to give a shout out to 2 of the side dishes. Thumbs up on the grilled pork with beansprouts (Glenn's fav) and the grilled oysters (my fav). Hiroshima is known for 2 foods. It is the birthplace of
Hiroshima Glenn cleaning off his dinner
Glenn scraping clean the grill after our Okonomiyaki dinner. Okonomiyaki and it is known for its oyster beds. The oysters we had were frozen but it was still the freshest, juiciest and tastiest oysters ever!!!! Osaka and Hiroshima have an ongoing rivalry regarding Okonomiyaki. So stay tuned for the Osaka Okonomiyaki experience.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.171s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0649s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
