Adventures in Japan

Day Parque Espana (with a little squiggly line over the n): PARQUE ESPANA (WITH A LITTLE SQUIGGLY LINE OVER THE N)

Any day that doesn't start before six is a good day. Days that start with you waking up at eight after 12 hours of sleep are brilliant. Not that I plan on making a habit of it. In addition to the spacious room and gracious host, our hotel also has a nifty breakfast. And cheerful music. It ain't muzak if real instruments are used. Yes, a music box is a real instrument. It made everything sound better. Happier, at least.


We were happier this morning than we have been for quite some time. Maybe it was the music. Maybe it was the food. Maybe it was the sun. Maybe it was the fact that we were sitting outside on the dock behind our hotel drinking our delicious coffee. Whatever the reason, we were pleased as punch and that is really how every day should start.


We would have loved to spend some more time there, but (as ever) we had a schedule to follow. We followed our schedule to Parque Espana (It's not pronounced 'park'. It's not pronounced 'butter' either.), the Spanish themed theme park about a half hour bus ride from our hotel.

We got there just as the park opened. And even though it was a lovely day, the place was not crowded at all. We were giddy. Not so giddy that we forgot the lesson of Space World. We hit all the big rides right off the bat. They were good.

Actually, the first ride we hit wasn't all that good. It was a bullfight based roller coaster. An indoor roller coaster. It was all herky jerky and banged us around. We didn't much cotton to that. But there was one highlight, literally. Most of the ride took place in the dark, with glow in the dark swords and capes and other bull fighting paraphernalia breaking up the gloom. At one point, the ride jerks to a halt and you sit there in the dark. The lights fade up and you realize that you're in the middle of a bull fighting arena with a crowd of spectators cheering. That part was neat, the rest was not.

But the next ride was all neat all the time. It was better than neat. It was five shades of all right. The Pyrenees is one of them inverted roller coasters. Or is the term suspended? Whatever: your feet dangle. That kind. Instead of the jerkiness of the previous ride it was all smooth and lovely. While still whipping us violently. That is good coaster design. It turned tilted and flipped and dipped. Often all at once. And there is a part about midway through the ride where the coaster slows down a touch along a straight bit of track and then jets off again. The ride tries to mess with your brain. We rode the Pyrenees a lot.


The second most ridden ride was the Gran Montserrat. Getting into the roller coaster car, it looked like a kiddie ride. It was a colourful little train. And then the ride started. That cute little train plays rough. Except still smooth. Carla and I were both really impressed with how intense yet non jarring these rides were. And we were also impressed by the views the rides afforded. The rides were too crazy to try to takes pictures from, so we have no real good example to show you.


Parque Espana (with a little squiggle over the n) needs a ferris wheel for picture taking. On one side there is the lovely lake and the rest of the parque, on the other is nothing but miles and miles of green trees. Lovely stuff.

The rest of the rides were just plain gentle. There was a boat cruise through a peaceful lagoon, disrupted occasionally by cannon fire.


There was a 'light ride':dark tunnels with bright lights.


A shooting game, where you sat down and manned a laser crossbow and took aim at all manner of animatronic baddies. I scored way better than Carla. She didn't seem all that impressed.

There was a musical ride where a bunch of animals had to fight off some sort of evil thing. We thought it would be lame, but we gave it a shot because our tummies need to settle a bit. And it did start off lame. We just sat and watched some singing animals sing. We were in the middle of the room and where we were sitting rotated to follow the action. Then the singing stopped and the platform we were sitting on dipped below the floor into a subterranean passage filled with lights. Then our seat platform moved (wasn't expecting that) forward and we were raised through a different hole into a different scene. It did that a total of four times. That was pretty cool.

I'm trying to think of the other rides, but they weren't all that remarkable.

Not as remarkable as the park's grounds. Parque Espana (with a little squiggly over the n) looks pretty dang Spanish. Not that we have ever been to Spain, but the parque looked like all the photos of Spain that I have seen.


The food however... just because the rice is yellow and you put a shrimp on it, that don't make it paella. The churro I had, though, was really good. Fresh out of the fryer.

Speaking of frying, it was a hot day. Luckily there was a ride with a big splash of water at the end. We rode that a few times too.

But soon our time was up, the park was closing and we had to say goodbye. We said sayonara to Donki, the dog dressed up like Don Quixote (who is the mascot of the parque) and his friends.


We spent a great day at Parque Espana. In Kashikojima as well. It receives our highest recommendation. Maybe we were just glad to have a break from all the history and culture we've been cramming in.

And it is back to the cramming tomorrow. We have some old buildings to look at and some fish puking birds to watch.

Day Thirteen? Ise and Kashikojima

The days, as I have mentioned, are all blurring together. I guess it's not so much the days. I can remember most of what we have done so far on this trip. Maybe I might screw up the order, and there's no way I'd be able to tell all the names of all the cities and towns we've been to. Or how we got to and from them. But I could compile a fairly complete list of deeds done.

It's the nights and the mornings that screw me up. All the hotels look basically the same. Some have nicer television sets. Every morning is a slow scramble to check out with all our stuff intact. Every evening is spent blogging and moving stuff off of cameras and planning the next leg of the trip. The nights always go late. The mornings are always too early. We are constantly lacking in sleep.

Which is one reason why I can fall fast asleep during a five minute train ride. (And all the train sleeping during the day makes it hard for me to fall asleep at night. When, I ask you, when will this vicious cycle end?)

Which is also why I am not sure how we got to the Ise Grand Shrine. The Ise shrine is actually two shrines. An Inner shrine and an Outer one.

Oh! I remember why I don't remember getting to Ise! That stupid overnight bus! Anyhoo...

We went to the Outer shrine first. It was within walking distance of the station. Gekuu, it is called. The two shrines are basically the same, one is just bigger than the other. We started with the smaller of the two. Note to everyone else: don't bother with the Outer Shrine. Not that it sucks or anything, but it's just a shrine. Peaceful and green and nice, but kind of underwhelming. If that's a word (I know it's not 'cause I looked it up)


But the Inner Shrine (Naiku by name) is lovely. Bigger. Greener. More people yet more peaceful. Better in every single way. The neighbourhood neighbouring the shrine grounds is also quite nice. Full of old buildings repurposed into restaurants and shops. Full of funky tchotchkes and tasty snacks. And locally brewed beer. Tummies thus sated, we entered the park/shrine.

To enter the shrine grounds you first cross over a large wooden bridge that spans the Isuzu gawa (yup, gawa means river). The Isuzu river is clear and cold and looks refreshing as all get out. And it was sparkling like a parking lot in a bad part of town.

Crossing this fast flowing river is supposed to wash away all the crud that a person's spirit accumulates between shrine visits. Once you're across you can actually make your way down to the banks and literally wash yourself in the river.

I could try and describe all the structures and such on the shrine grounds, but that would bore both you and me. They looked like shrines and such. All shriney and what not. The grounds themselves definitely exude a sense of history (they should, they've been around almost as long as AD), but the buildings are all new. All the buildings, all the utensils used for building the buildings , all the utensils used inside the buildings, all the robes and clothes, all of it is rebuilt every twenty years. Using only the techniques that the original builders used. No nails. No electricity. No fooling. Every building on the shrine grounds has a vacant lot adjacent to it for its replacement to be erected upon.


There is a big ceremony every year when all of the ancient religious iconography (which is not rebuilt every twenty years) is transfered from the old shrine to the new. All the old wood is holy, so it cannot be burned, it is shipped off to other shrines around the country to be used in repairs and such.

The are at least a couple reasons for this twenty year cycle. One is to keep the ancient traditions and knowledge of such traditions alive and well. The other is that the renewing of the shrines every twenty years also renews the gods' blessing on the people of Japan.

I used to be a teacher.

After all the Ise shrines we caught a train to Kashikojima. Which is a quaint little port town. We stayed at the Puchi Hotel Kashikojima Harbour, and it was awesome. The least money we've spent on this trip got us our biggest room by far. With a nice view of the bay. And the owner was super friendly, even though his English was fairly limited. He told us the best place to take in the sunset (which are said to be fairly fine) and recommended a place to eat. Kashikojima is not that jumping a joint, especially in the off season, so an insider's knowledge was nice to have.


We walked over to the bridge that had been recommended as a good sunset watching place and watched the sun set. We didn't stick around for the whole thing, the sun ducked behind some clouds before it ducked behind the horizon, but what we saw was lovely. The bay was all shimmery, and there were boats about and jet skis and it was all just so dang... pleasant.


Our meal was more than pleasant, it was fantastic. All kinds of katsu. Katsu are a kind of Japanese cutlet, but with a lighter batter. Scallop katsu is just frickin divine.


As we were walking happily home from our scrumptious supper, the owner of the hotel pulled over to the side of the rode and gave us a ride home. Now that is service!

As soon as we were back in our room, I flopped onto the bed and within five minutes was fast asleep. This was at about 8 in the evening.

Carla stayed up and kept planning the rest of our trip and charging what needed charging and being a trooper. I would've loved to help, but I was just done. The night bus followed by a full day of shrineing was just to much for me to take. For us to take. We need a break from all this historical sight seeing. We need some dumb fun. We need

Day the Next: Okayama and Kurashiki

It rained quite a bit last night, but today was sunny and nice. Which is lucky because the plan was to walk around a garden and see another castle while we were in Okayama.

We took a little detour on our way to the garden and found a statue of Momotaro. Momotaro is a very strong little boy who was born when an old man (soon to be his adopted grandfather) tried to cut open a giant peach he had found floating down the river.


The gardens were very green. A lot of that green was due to all the grass. Living in Osaka, I think this is the most turf we've seen in forever.


And whilst we were walking along the lawn we happened across some Japanese theater.


Kagura, Carla tells me. She's always right.

We didn't actually go in to Okayama castle. We were running short on time. And we've seen the insides of a fair few castles recently. The castle looked nice from the outside. Pretty black. Which is why it is also known as the Crow Castle.


After walking around ancient castle grounds we rode a train so we could walk around slightly less ancient streets.

There is a neighbourhood in Kurashiki that has been preserved since the 17th century. With white walled buildings built along a tree lined canal. It is prettily atmospheric. Its shops are also nice. As is its Museum of Art. Nice place to spend a sunny afternoon.


Kurashiki also has


Tivoli Park. Which is either based on or is an exact replica of a theme park of the same name in Copenhagen. Having just googled the name I now know that Tivoli Park, the original, is totally frickin old. So if its rollercoaster is as slow as the Japanese one, that is understandable. It is frickin old. The Japanese one? No excuse! I've seen octogenarians with walkers going uphill that are faster than that roller coaster. Lame.

Outside the park, there is a Hans Christian Andersen clock/fountain. It is near the foot of said fountain/clock that we caught our night bus. How do I hate night buses? Let me count the way: LOTS!!!!!

Stuff I didn't fit in anywhere else:

Getting kaiten sushi (sushi on a conveyor belt) just before the shop closes is a stupid idea. It's just the dregs of the day endlessly spinning round and round.

In the same building as the sad, sad sushi was a shop called Luca. I give you one chance to guess what floor it lived on.

Day Eleven: I ask Carla where we went today and she sez Setoda and Tomonoura

We did two things today. Both required a couple different modes of transport to get to, both really could have used some better, more informative signage to help travellers actually find what they're looking for, and both were totally worth all the aggravated wanderings it took to find them.

Let's start with Setoda. On the island of Ikuchijima (for those of you playing along at home: Yes. Jima does mean island). To get there, we took a train and then a ferry. Carla did fairly well, she didn't get sick or anything. I did pretty well too, considering we didn't have enough time to grab any breakfast. And it was raining.

We wandered around in the rain for a while (which was kinda stressful, cuz we were on a tight schedule, damnit), only going the completely wrong way once. We finally stopped and asked directions from a nice old lady who then walked with us (in the rain) until she could point us in the right direction. She was cool.

We were on this island to see a temple.


Nope. Haven't got sick of 'em yet. Might as well see them all now, while we can. Canadian shrines just don't compete. Maybe some rich Canadian can take a page out of Kanemoto Kozo. He was a rich industrialist in the earlier part of the century just past. He also really, really loved his mother.

When she died. He lost it. And found religion.


He resigned from his company and used all of his money to create a suitable resting place for his mother. To do this, he cherry picked all the best bits from all the temples around Japan and recreated them in his Kousanji temple park.


I mentioned before that we had a schedule to follow. And we did. We left way before either one of us wanted to, it would be easy to spend a whole day there. There are about ten halls, three towers, four gates, an underground cave, a huge statue of Kannon (the Goddess of Mercy) and a massive mound of marble. There is also a cafe. And an art museum. The place is nuts.

You don't get the sense of history from Kousanji that you do from most other temples, but you can sense his mania. In a good way. Everything is turned to eleven. The colours are so bright and then embellished with gold. Why have one carving of a dragon when you can have twenty?


But the best part, for me, was the massive marble mound. I only say that for the alliteration.

It is more like a hill (Hill of Hope is its name, actually). A hill of marble. With all sorts of marble sculptures along the path to the summit.

Standing on that summit...

The rain had stopped, but mist still clung to everything. Standing on top of a spiral of white stone, with all the surrounding hills disappearing into the sky...


I don't know what I felt, but I know that it felt good.

Which made it hard to leave. But leave we did. We had a plan to follow.

The ferry ride back was about the same as the ride out, but the ferry itself was way more awesome. It was obvious that the decor had not been changed since some time in the seventies.


A lot of brown and orange. It was cool, baby, cool.


Then onto a train and from the train onto a bus and from a bus onto a ferry. No time to stop in between any of that. There was a fishing show to see, and it wasn't about to wait for us. All of this transit, and not a bit of food in our stomachs. Last thing we ate was okonomiyaki at around eight last night. The fishing show was at one thirty. Sorry, we did have a bit of spare time around Tomonoura, but they had nowhere to eat. Nothing but souvenir shops. Grr.

So hungry.

For one month out of the year, this month, the people of Tomonoura have a... fishing festival? They fish like they used to from way back when. First there is a bit of pomp and circumstance. The old ladies of the town get all dressed up and do a dance.


Then the old dudes drum and sing. Then a lady in a kimono comes out and does a few dances herself. I may have gotten the order a bit mixed up there, but whatevs.


After all the chanting and the dancing, all the tourists are herded onto a boat. Our big ferry boat followed their small fishing boats. Their first stop was at a shrine on a very small island.


Then they sailed around in circles for a bit. The men chanting and the kimono lady dancing.

Then they sailed out further and the fishing began. Like a lot of fishing, there was a lot of waiting. There were two fishing boats.


For the previous bits they had been tethered together but now they separated, trailing their shared netting behind them. They made a big circle with said net and then joined back up together. The net having been set, the men began hauling it back in. The old fashioned way. Hand over salty, sore, soaked hand.

Chanting all the while.


Eventually the massive circle of net was gone. In its place was a bunch fish, caught between the two boats, thrashing wildly. Then the two fishing boats (with the fish betwixt them) met up with our boat.

Right: at some point during all this, Carla won for us a bottle of hooch. I hope it's not made of fish. Who am I kidding? I'd still drink it.


So the passengers from our boat made their unsteady way onto the fishing boats to buy the exceptionally fresh fish? How fresh? After your money hits a fisherman's hand, the business end of a claw hammer hits a fish's brain.


That's a small target.

Sometimes the hammer guy missed.

That hammer got a good workout that day.

After all the fish were gone, we decoupled from the fishing boats and made our way back.

We got a special, historical bus ride back to town. Some old Japanese dude went on and on in Japanese about the bus and the town and the history and the...

Carla and I both have problems with moving vehicles. She gets motion sickness. I get sleepy.

We ended our day in Okayama. We walked a few blocks, in the rain, checked in and zonked out.

Now we have to go, our 3 hour block of internet time is almost up. Yeah, we caught another overnight bus. And yeah, this one sucked too. If you have a motorized vehicle that I have trouble sleeping on, you have yourselves a piece of junk.

Later.

やった！

Right now we're on a boat watching a demonstration of traditional Japanese tai fishing, and I just won a bottle of liquor! Lucky! Plus the free candy they gave us when we boarded the boat is really tasty.

What a great day we're having, eh Tyler?

Day Ten: Miyajima and Hiroshima

You may recall that we have been to Hiroshima before. Back when Nate and Trev and Kim were visiting. We went to the Peace museum. And Miyajima. Except Carla had to work, so she didn't make it to Miyajima. We righted that wrong today.


Today was another beautiful, sunny day. We have the grotesquely pink skin to prove it. But still hazy.

We went mainly to take pictures of Itsukushima Shrine and the giant Tori in the water. One of the three most beautiful views in Japan. (Japan likes quantifying things) The shrine and the Tori were constructed so that it looks like they are floating on the water when the tide is in. At this time of year, the illusion is not quite complete but it is still a wonderful place to wander around. Unless you don't like deer.


Carla is not the biggest fan of deers, which is why there are no pictures of deers. But plenty of pictures of the shrine.

And some pictures of the 5 story pagoda.


And this scary wood face.


When the tide is out it is possible to walk nearly all the way out to the Tori. Sometimes deer like to wander around on the wet sand.


Wait. Carla did take a picture of a deer. A picture of a drawing of a deer.


This sign is warning you not to give kanchos to deers. A kancho is an ancient Japanese tradition where you ball your hands together, with your pointer fingers (and your ring fingers as well if you're feeling saucy) extended and then you jam your fingers into some unsuspecting person's butt. Yeah, I don't get it either. Kanchos and giant ropes.


We went shopping when we got back into Hiroshima. More like window shopping, I suppose. On our way home from that, we ran into Big Steve. Big Steve is a fellah with whom we sometimes drink at Captain Kangaroos. On Fridays. This was a Friday. We decided to go for drinks.

After okonomiyaki. Carla and I wanted some okonomiyaki. Big Steve did not, but he told us a great place to get okonomiyaki at. Second best place in the city. No one can agree on number one, but everyone agrees that Michan's is pretty dang good. It was pretty good. Don't know about the dang. The best part was the sauce. Still prefer Osaka style okonomiyaki, but we were smart enough not to say so out loud. Almost weren't smart enough to find the restaurant. The building it was in was laid out in such a way that you had to take the escalator from the first floor to the third floor and then wander around on the third floor until you found a different escalator to take you down to the second floor.

One more thing to mention about Hiroshima: it has a great English map. Helpful, well laid out, well written. The map made me want to stay in Hiroshima longer so I could use it more.

Day Nine:Tsuwano and Hiroshima

Tsuwano is basically known for one thing: fish. Tsuwano has a lot of fish. More fish than people. Not counting the tourists. Which we never do.

The fish aren't in an aquarium or anything like that. Oh no, they are quasi free range fish. They live in the water filled gutters of the town. It's not as dirty as it sounds. The gutters are there specifically for the fish. They are all nice and clean with clear water that is constantly circulating. It is all quite nice to look at. Picturesque. Ironically, we have no pictures of the quaint streets lined with fish. Funny.

We do have pictures of a whole bunch of red tori gates.


We counted them.


We counted 903.


We believe we miscounted.

There was a lovely view from the top. And a nice Inari shrine.

It has been fairly hazy during the duration of our journey thus far. Makes landscape pictures a little drab.


We tried to spice it up as best we could.

In addition to a bunch of fish, this town has a lot of cranes. There might be a correlation there. They have a festival every year where people dress up as cranes and dance around.


Those aren't real people, those are statues.

The sun was really beating down on us as we descended from the shrine, so we decided to grab some coffee. This town also has a lot of funky little coffee shops. I think it has something to do with all the fish. We also stopped into a great little art shop. It was a real family affair. The guy we talked to ran the place, his wife made all the pottery and dishes and such and his sun supplied the paintings. Everything in there mocked us and our lack of funds. We wanted to buy it all. The painterly sun has a website, if you want to see which way our tastes run: www.akira-berlin.de Have fun navigating in German. It's like navigating in English, but angrier.

We also poked around in the souvenir shops. Lots of cool souvenir shops in Tsuwano. We didn't buy anything. We did buy some YakiAisu. If you've been playing along at home, you'll remember that Yaki is the Japanese word for cooked(basically) and Aisu is their way of saying Ice which is short for Ice Cream. Cooked ice cream. Not deep fried ice cream, no. A scoop of ice cream is placed between to soft, sweet, lovely bits of bread (more cake than bread) and then this "ice cream sandwich" is placed in a sandwich maker and toasted up. So good.

I got some soft serve wasbi ice cream as well. This region is known for its wasabi. (And fish and birds) The wasabi ice cream was... very wasabi-y. It cleaned out my nasal cavity.

We did all this over the course of a couple hours. Carla had scheduled us to be there for a few more, but we felt that we had done enough. No sense in over doing it, right?

So we took a train into Hiroshima.

Oh yeah! This is the map of the town (Tsuwano) in the visitor's centre.


It was made by junior high kids. It rocked.

Day Eight: Izumo and Iwami (Ninja Edit Edition!)

We went to a couple different towns today...

(Ninja Edit: I left this stuff in so that future generations may bask in my incompetence)
Man! I can't remember the names of anything!

Carla did all the planning, my job is the blogging. But I can't blog if I don't recall the names of the places. And Carla is asleep so I can't ask her for her notes. And there is no way I am digging through her stuff to find it. That never ends well. I'll just post some pretty pictures and then insert some text later.

(Ninja Edit: New content starts now!)

Mornings suck. I am amazed that we have not left anything behind yet. I probably just jinxed us. I only mention this because I don't actually remember leaving our hotel. The first thing I remember is waking up on the train. We were traveling past a large body of water. So large that the other side could not be seen. I'm thinking it was either the inland sea or some kind of ocean. Not only could you not see the other side, it was not all that easy to see the horizon line.

It all just blurred together in a light blue haze. Maybe the Langoliers don't leave behind a black void, but a more calming (and, somehow, spookier) baby blue one.


Izumo Has a very famous shrine. One of the oldest in all of Japan, maybe even the oldest. It was also the largest shrine in Japan way back in the day. Then it burned down and was rebuilt on a slightly less grand scale. But still quite grand. A shrine dedicated to Okuninushi-no-okami should be nothing less. Yes, that's right, the shrine is dedicated to the same deity as Okami, the video game. The game was good, but I liked the shrine more. It was in the middle of a nice, quiet wooded area. There were a lot of interesting buildings and vegetation.


And random statues of guys praying to Dragon Balls on top of tidal waves.


And trees covered in paper. The papers are bad fortunes. You tie the bad fortunes to the tree to rid yourself of them. There was also a really big rope.


No. That wasn't the really big rope. I admit that the above is a really big rope, but it was merely the second biggest rope we saw that day.


Now that is more like it! Look at that thing!


You could kill a man with that thing. You could kill man and all of his ancestors with that thing.
We saw people throwing coins into the bottoms of the rope, trying to get the coins to stick in. I guess because that would be good luck? We really don't know much about giant ropes and what they mean.

So the shrine was really nice. Green and beautiful and full of really nice woodwork and such. And tourists. The buses just kept coming. And they kept spewing out more and more people. Like I said, this temple is believed to be the oldest in Japan. It is a point of pilgrimage.

Carla and I pilgrimated over to Iwami. Iwami has a silver mine. To be more exact, it had a silver mine. It now has a tour of a former silver mine. It also has a bunch of little Buddha statues. 500 of 'em. All placed in little stone caves. Nice, cool stone caves. It was hot today. We're going to be peeling until around Christmas I reckon. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the little Buddhas, but we were allowed to take pictures of the mine. Here is just such a picture:

Most of our pictures are a lot like that one. The mine tour is basically just a slow walk through a small, dark, sometimes wet tunnel. Most of the time is spent bent over to avoid hitting your head on the low (even by Japanese standards) ceiling.


And, like the shrine in the morning, there were scads of tourist clomping through. I don't know why most of these people go on these tours. They just walk straight through, barely looking around at anything. Not that there was much to look at. We were expecting a bit more. Some informative signs., some dioramas, some... anything. Nope, all we got was a dark walk down a cramped tunnel and a well lit walk up a wide one.


And we got dripped on.


But the walk to and from the mines was scenic. There was a babbling brook and some flowers and a place that made tasty curry. One of which was a fruit curry.


Although we didn't get any pictures, one of the most interesting parts of the walk was seeing all the different tunnels along the way. The tour is only through one tunnel, the biggest one. But there are many, many more. All over the place. Most of them looked quite uncomfortable, dangerous and scary.

I really do need to take notes.