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Japan 2023

September - November 2023
A 60-day adventure by Alan Read more
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  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 59

    Return to London

    November 6, 2023 in Japan ⋅ 🌬 23 °C

    There was a spectacular sunrise over Tokyo as Vera and myself left the hotel at 6am in a Green Onions taxi bound for Haneda Airport.
    Having said goodbye to Vera who was on a BA flight, I checked my bag in for the coach-share Japan Airlines flight although booked through BA. There was a long queue at the security gate, but it kept moving and I was through everything in an hour.
    The reason I'd booked this flight was because it was leaving at a reasonable time, 11,30, and would be a daytime flight flying from east to west with the clock.. However, I'd received an email some months before saying that the flight had been brought forward 100 minutes, presumably due to the inability to fly over Russia and the Ukraine.
    The Boeing 777 took off 30 minutes late at 10.20 and flew east before reaching the International Date Lane when it was 22.00 on both sides although one day apart. The plane turned north and flew through the Bering Straits before turning east over North Alaska and Canada, reaching 80 degrees north and maybe even further north at one stage. The daytime flight had turned into a night-time flight. After overflying Greenland, the flight continued south-east, reaching London Heathrow after 14 hours at 15.30 still on the 6th, 9 hours behind the time in Tokyo. The flight had covered 7000 miles at c500 miles-per-hour, and covered 225 degrees of longitude which, together with 135 degrees on the outward flight, meant that I had circumnavigated the world.
    On the flight, I'd listened to Rubinstein play Chopin, and Klemperer conduct Schumann's Rhenish Symphony. The silver service and food was very good.
    The temperature at Heathrow was 11C, about 10C cooler than Tokyo.
    I took the Elizabeth Line for the first time from Heathrow and then the Northern Line to Waterloo, arriving home soon after 17.00, 58 days after leaving the flat on this great journey.

    Approximate distances covered: 1st Part - Intrepid - 1660 km
    2nd Part - Intrepid - 2660km
    3rd Part - On my own - 830km
    4th Part - Inside Japan - 1250 km
    Total Journey - 6400 km = 4000 miles.
    Nights in 19 hotels: 38.
    Nights in 11 ryokans and minshukus: 17
    Nights in temple inn: 1
    Total nights in Japan: 56.

    Japanese set breakfasts; 11
    Japanese set dinners: 14    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 58

    Back to Tokyo

    November 5, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C

    After having my last Japanese set breakfast, we returned by ferry in a 1st class lounge rather than by hydrofoil to Niigata, and then by my final Shinkansen to a station on the outskirts of Tokyo, and then by a local train to Shinjuku Station from where we walked to the JR Blossom Hotel.
    I went to Hands, a large department store, to buy thirty Japanese Christmas cards, Y440 each (about £2.50), which had been made in China. Returning with my passport, I was able to purchase them duty-free and save 10%. Some of my friends and relatives thanked me for the cards although I think few used Google Translate to read the greetings in English.
    On the journey, I had my final dorayaki, a red bean, cream and sponge tart,
    The final group dinner was upstairs in an izakaya in Omoide Yokocho where there was lots of food. Afterwards, we walked the streets in Shinjuku seeing the neon lights and especially the 3-D cat.
    Back at the hotel, I said farewell to the group since I'd be having an early start in the morning.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 57

    Sado Island

    November 4, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    On a rare wet morning, we went to the Sado Gold and Silver Mine Museum which explained the history of mining on the island via four videos. Then we went to the Gold Mine, walking down passageways on duckboards and seeing working models of the activities in the Mine. It was well-presented.
    We also saw ruins of the Mitshubishi mining facility.
    We went to the reconstructed Office of the Magistrate with its many rooms of tatami flooring and sliding doors. Next door was the reconstructed Seriba where separation of the gold and the silver was done by crushing, milling and sluicing.
    We went to Konpan-ji which had a 5-step pagoda, shrine and peaceful garden with few visitors.
    After a visit to a sake distillery and shop, we went to Tokinomori Park to see the Toki-crested ibises. There is a breeding programme and release into the wild. The ibises turn pink in the breeding season. We saw a few in the fields.
    Back at the ryokan, I went to the rooftop onsen before going out for a sushi dinner.
    Lunch was in a building in a conservation area with a sea-view.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 56

    Sado Island

    November 3, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    We took taxis to the Niigata Ferry Port for the 2.5 hour journey to Ryotsu, the port on Sado Island. We sat in a reserved 1st class lounge on the 5th floor of the ferry.
    A guide took us in a minibus to a large Japanese-style convenience store to buy a snack lunch which we consumed by the beach on the west coast.
    We drove to Shukunego to walk round an old fishing village. Some of the group went on coracles inside the harbour whilst some of us had ice-cream sandwiches.
    Then we drove to the OgiTaiko Centre to play and have a demonstration on the Kodo drums which was good fun. The drumming tradition came from China. I played a drum called Mister Potato made from a tree 600 years old, and Miss Piggy made from an inverted tree branch. The drummers have two years of daily practice and abstinence before being qualified to play publicly.
    We checked in at the Yoshida Ryokan with bedrooms with tatami floors and futons. Dinner was a Japanese set meal, and there was a performance of classical Japanese dancing afterwards.
    Sado had a lot of closed premises and is suffering from depopulation as the young move away, e.g. there is no university on the island.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 55

    Niigata

    November 2, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    Using our IC Cards, we took a local bus to a rare Catholic church, and then to the Saito summer villa and garden, an example of Meiji-era architecture with sliding doors and some wall paintings.
    We walked to the Art Museum to see an exhibition by the local photography club plus a gallery of paintings.
    At lunchtime, I walked to the Hakusan Park and Shrine where small children in national costume were being photographed.
    I walked along the embankment of the Shinano River, the longest in Japan, for a few kilometres and almost reached the Sea of Japan, passing a few signs in Russian. Retracing my steps back into town, I went to the 20th floor of the Media Ship building for an overview of the city, river and sea.
    I had an early dinner at a western-style restaurant, and then looked at the Paris 2024 information on my iPad.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 54

    Niigata

    November 1, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    I received by email an invite to volunteer at the Paralympic Games in Paris in 2024. An invite to volunteer at the Olympic Games in Marseille came a few weeks later.
    Leaving Sendai and travelling west, the coach took us to a dairy farm in the hills near Zao where we made ice-cream. We put a small jar containing cream into a larger jar which was half-filled with ice. Salt was added to make it colder. We shook the large jar for 10 minutes using a hand-towel since it got colder. Both jars were opened and we ate the ice-cream which was stuck to the sides of the small jar.
    The next stop was at a viewpoint of a waterfall surrounded by the autumn foliage.
    We stopped by a small shrine and a hot-spring foot-bath in Zao.
    There were lots of ropeways since Zao is a ski resort. The coach climbed around many hairpin-bends to reach the summit and the Okama volcanic crater lake near Mt Kattadake.at 1720m. There was a little snow in some gullies, and the temperature had dropped. Steve ordered our lunches from a vending machine in the cafe at the summit.
    In the afternoon, continuing our coast-to-coast journey, there was a long drive to Niigata, the final 90 minutes in the dark through many tunnels and then rice paddies.
    We arrived at the Hotel Sunroute at 18.30.
    I had dinner with two others in a booth in a restaurant. I had a steak followed by ice-cream sprinkled with parmesan cheese plus a red-bean mochi.
    There was a thunderstorm during the night.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 53

    Ishinomaki and Sendai

    October 31, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    We went to the Ishinomaki City Kadonowaki Elementary School Ruins to see the effect of the Great east Japan Earthquake which occurred at 14.46 on 11 March 2011 and created a tsunami which hit the 500km coastline about one hour later, the waves at Ishinomaki, opposite the epicentre of the quake, being 7m high. Japan has quakes every day, especially along the Pacific Coast, but this was one of the most powerful ever experienced in the world. The Richter Scale is exponential, not linear.
    The ground floor of the school was flooded but all three levels of the front of the building were damaged by fire. None of the staff or children died, having moved to higher ground when the warning was received.
    The English former lecturer in English Conversation at the University gave a very good explanation of the aftermath, including the flooding of the ground floor of the Grand Hotel where we were staying and which became an evacuation centre where he stayed. Staff from the British Embassy counselled him about the risk of a nuclear explosion at Fukushima further down the coast wiping out the town, but he decided to stay and undertook PR to get international aid .
    4000 were dead or missing after the tsunami, the highest % casualty rate of any town along the coast.
    We went to the Ishinomaki Minamihama Tsunami Memorial Park and the Miyagi 3.11 Tsunami Disaster Memorial Museum. In the Park, there was a memorial stone to an American woman who had been teaching English and who had died in the disaster.
    The whole coastal area of the town had been rebuilt by 2020, including a controversial sea-wall 7.2m high. Some residents thought it wasn't high enough whilst others wanted the money spent on other defences further inland as a neighbouring town had done.
    A few of us went for lunch at a cafe where you keyed your order into a vending machine and pre-paid.
    In the afternoon, we drove to Sendai and stayed at the Hotel Vista. We went to the 31st floor of an office building to get a view of the lively city of one million. Dinner was at a restaurant where we used a tablet to order tapas.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 52

    Matsushima

    October 30, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    At a restaurant in the park, I had beef tongue, a local delicacy, for lunch before walking along the promenade to the 250m-long red Fukuurabashi Bridge which led to Fukuurajima Island Nature Park for a 30-minute walk and another ice-cream.
    Rejoining the group after a coffee-stop, we took a one-hour boat-ride around Matsushima Bay to see a few of the 200+ islands, the boat going around the oyster and kelp beds. The Bay and town had escaped the worst of the 2011 tsunami due to the contours of the coast and the many islands.
    The Bay is listed as one of the Three Great Sights of Japan.
    It was a short coach-ride to the Grand Hotel in Ishinomaki. We went to a chicken-and-vegetable skewer restaurant for dinner.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 52

    Matsushima

    October 30, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C

    We left Naruko Onsen on a smaller but still roomy coach, eventually got on an Expressway, and stopped at a modern petrol station where petrol was about £1 per litre.
    We arrived on the coast at Matsushima, parked near a marina, and walked to the Godaido Temple, built on an island connected to the promenade by two short bridges, The Temple was built about 1600.
    Then we ate a variety of ice-creams, some fishy, at a cafe in a park before entering the Zen Garden, where we had a brief meditation in the rock garden, surrounding the Entsuin Temple.
    At a restaurant in the park, I had beef tongue, a local delicacy, for lunch before walking along the promenade to the 250m-long red Fukuurabashi Bridge which led to Fukuurajima Island Nature Park for a 30-minute walk and another ice-cream.
    Rejoining the group after a coffee-stop, we took a one-hour boat-ride around Matsushima Bay to see a few of the 200+ islands, the boat going around the oyster and kelp beds. The Bay and town had escaped the worst of the 2011 tsunami due to the contours of the coast and the many islands.
    The Bay is listed as one of the Three Great Sights of Japan.
    It was a short coach-ride to the Grand Hotel in Ishinomaki. We went to a chicken-and-vegetable skewer restaurant for dinner.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 51

    Naruko Onsen

    October 29, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    We left Hiraizumi in a large coach and stopped at a typical Japanese roadside supermarket which sold local produce amongst many other items, and at which there was an audience for a live monkey show which wouldn't be allowed in many other countries.
    We stopped at Naruko Onsen and went to Katanuma Crater Lake where there was the smell of sulphur emanating from small fissures. My trousers split as I bent down to test the warmth of the water in a stream. We walked around the lake and had lunch at a cafe.
    Then we went to a Kokeshi Dolls museum and workshop, one of many in this area, where we painted and kept our own doll after it had been machine-polished. I said that the design on mine was pre-Columbian from South America.
    We walked down the steps in the Naruko Gorge to see the lovely autumn colours. Being a Sunday, there were lots of Japanese there as well but noticeable few non-Japanese tourists who tended not to venture north of Tokyo.
    We went on a short walk along duckboards to to see steam and hot water exiting from volcanic vents. There were sieves for boiling eggs in the hot water.
    Finally, as the light was fading, we walked across the Naruko Dam. The scenery could have been in Scotland.
    There was an outdoor onsen at the Kameya Hotel, and dinner was another set Japanese meal    Read more

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