Tokyo NYE Part II
Hier, Japon ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C
We strolled back to Asakusa at about 7.30pm and wandered the laneways until we found a place we liked the vibe and the menu. We went in but the owner said "sorry sorry" because he was full. We went back out again and started to walk away when he opened the door and yelled out " sorry sorry, you come you come". An American family was just leaving. This restaurant only seats 16 people, so space is at a premium. We had an excellent meal of share plates of different sashimi, skewers, and cheese potato cod rice thing, the most delicious fried chicken and melt in your mouth prawns. Yummy.
We then came across a huge multi-storey Don Quixote, and since it was heaving with people and I hadn't been in one yet, and we had time to fill in between now and midnight, in we went! What a weird shop, but awesome in the quirky way you can only find in Japan. We bought a present for Finny, so worthwhile.
We then walked towards Senso-ji temple and there were loads of food stalls, many with very delicious looking okonomiyaki. Almost made me hungry again. Instead we lined up for some dessert ball things and waited, and waited, and waited. The line didn't move or get shorter whilst we watched granny and her old mate sun argue incessantly as he painfully slowly mixed the batter in a series of giant plastic bins with a giant electric drill and a piece of plastic tubing. Craig's notoriously short fuse for lining up was burning, so he wandered off and I ended up with an attack of the giggles, mainly because of the exasperated facial expressions of the guy in the line in front of us, and how ridiculous it was that we were still lined up more than 30 minutes later. Craig's ultimate appraisal of our dessert when we finally got it was "boring as bat shit". Both Kate and I were inclined to agree.
Since it was clear by now there was not going to be any huge "hurrah" at midnight, Katie relented on her desire to stay out 'til midnight, declared it was midnight in Australia, so we wandered back home via the waterfront for views of the skytree and our favourite giant golden sweet potato for a quiet drink at home.
Happy new year!!! 🥂 🎉En savoir plus
Tokyo NYE Part I
Hier, Japon ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C
We had a few goals for today, and sadly not all of them were realised to their fullest potential.
Goal #1 was to buy Kate and me some new spectacles because even though we had private health insurance, it is still cheaper to buy them here. Only catch was that same day service is for single focal length only. No worries though because Kate has apparently had bad eye sight forever but neglected to tell her parents, so she now has a lovely new pair of glasses and it is like watching a baby giraffe learn to walk... She is wandering around Tokyo like she is living in a whole new world now, literally with a look of amazement on her face. I bought a new pair of distance and a new pair of reading specs. All three pairs for just under $300 and ready within 45 minutes.
Whilst waiting, goal #2 was to walk along "kitchen street" (Kappabashi Dougu Street). Major disappointment here and I almost wanted to cry because this was one thing I really wanted to do in Tokyo; explore the kitchen shops. And pretty much every single one is now closed until next Monday. Wahhhh. There were a few knife shops open, and Craig bought himself his first shop-bought Japanese-made carbon steel knife. He has made them before at home. A lovely young Russian kid in the shop served us so had a good conversation with him, in Japan studying his MBA. There was one non knife shop open and I bought myself a new kitchen pastry brush. The shop lady said "hand wash only", I said "I will tell the kids no dishwasher" and she laughed, obviously recognising the futility of this statement. To my children: if you read this, do not put my new brush in the dishwasher... like ever!
After the quick pickup of the new specs, we headed to Akihabara which is the anime and tech district. Kate needed to buy some Pokemon cards as a gift. I was also thinking we would go to a maid cafe for lunch but the food looked crap, and I guess you are paying for the experience so we went to an izakaya instead, and it was brilliant! We couldn't spend very long (25 minutes to be precise) because we had a 3pm chopstick-making workshop to walk to 25 minutes away, but we were given a plate of sardines and other things to cook at a grill at the table which comes with the experience. This in addition to our share plates of nigiri and sushi rolls. Because we couldn't linger like we really wanted to, we are going to find another izakaya for dinner tonight as our last meal of 2025.
In a very un-Japanese way, our workshop was running 30 minutes late to start, so we could have actually lingered...
And we are now all the proud owners of our very own hand made chopsticks. Craig and I made ours out of Japanese Cedar, Kate made hers out of Hinoki Cypress. It was good fun. After that we walked home on the hunt for a stupid lightning cable so Kate can go out for NYE with a functioning phone. Craig seems to think there is no need to start staying awake until midnight, so I might end up out with Kate, although fireworks are not a big part of Japanese NYE, and in fact it is being actively discouraged to gather around Shibuya Crossing which explains why the rooftop garden was closed off when we wanted to go there yesterday. Katie and I think we might head to Tokyo Skytree since it is only 1.5km from our house. There is a gathering at temples at midnight where a gong is struck 108 times to dispel the 108 worldly temptations, so we may well end up there too.En savoir plus
Tokyo Shibuya and TeamLabs
30 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌙 10 °C
Katie had some shopping to do today, so we headed into Shibuya to start the day with the scramble crossing. To be honest, I think YouTube videos had hyper-inflated expectations here, and as it turned out, we ended up walking through it several times without much fanfare, although I did read that at its busiest there are 3,000 or so people using the crossing at each light change, which certainly wouldn't have been the case when we were there this morning. We left Kate in one of the multi storey clothes shops and headed off to find interesting things of our own. This included walking through a shop called Tokyu Hands which is a variety store full of practical and interesting things with a quirky three tier offset floor layout. Craig ended up buying a new sketch book here.
Rendevouzing with Kate, I was required to give an opinion on a new jacket. We then set off to walk through nearby Cat Street which was supposed to be a pedestrian friendly trendy vibe unique fashion and cool street food place. It seemed to be more international shops like Patagonia, Adidas, Nike etc. It was still a cool street, and we grabbed some street food here for a light lunch.
We took a long way back to Shibuya Station to walk through Miyashita Park which is a shopping complex with a rooftop green space and apparently on a clear day there are views to Mt Fuji. But just like the Imperial Palace Gardens, this week the rooftop is closed off. Kind of weird...
We had a date at TeamLab Planets Tokyo about an hour away, so we jumped on several trains to make it to our 2.30pm reservation time. This was a mix of some super cool immersive experiences where you are wading around in white milky water to just below your knees with light generated koi fish swimming all round you, to many different 3D light and mirror experiences, to a hanging garden where orchids are suspended and raise up and down as you walk through them. After a few hours in here, we walked to Toyosu Gururi Park for sunset views across to Tokyo, and then walked on a little further to Odaiba Seaside Park. We had a yummy Udon noodle dinner here with the twinkling lights of Tokyo, the Tokyo Tower and views of the rainbow bridge, although no coloured lights on it tonight.
It was nearly an hour home view several trains tonight and we got our first experience of being packed in like sardines. It was kinda weird because this guy starts chatting to us, and to us he looked Japanese, but he was being a) chatty on the train and b) super helpful to people getting on and off and speaking to Japanese people in English so we could tell he was not local. Had a lovely conversation with him, an international student from Khazistan who is studying his Master's here for 18 months, and he makes a funny joke about how no-one bothers him as he looks Japanese even though he is a foreigner.En savoir plus
Tokyo Ginza district and tower
29 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C
All alarms were turned off this morning so we could have a lazy start to the day without any rush to catch something or to do anything by a certain time. Bliss.
We did a load of washing before we went out. Craig also discovered a good/bad thing depending on how we look at it. Bad = we are not flying out from Tokyo but rather Osaka so we need to catch a Shinkansen at about $170 each early Friday afternoon for a 9.45pm flight home. Good = we discovered that today rather than rocking up to the wrong airport on Friday!
The plan today included a fair bit of walking, with the first destination being the Imperial Palace Gardens about 4km away. About 5 minutes down our street though Craig comments on a giant building which I look up and it is the Ryogoku Sumo Stadium, which explains all the people lined up. And just as we pass it, we comes across three actual sumos in the street dressed in the their mawashi showering off under a garden hose on the footpath!!! Wow! I demonstrated great restraint to not stop and ask for a photo. Kate on the other hand refused to even cross the street because she didn't think it was proper to walk past near-naked men on the footpath. She is strange sometimes.
When we got to the palace, the entire precinct is closed for the week. All this enabled was for Craig and Kate to add a sleeping swan and a new duck to their bird list. Next stop, Itoya, the multi-level stationary story in the Ginza district, but on the way we had to walk past the Tokyo Station, which in fact just invited us to go in and have lunch in one of the shops in the vast underground shopping malls underneath the station.
When we got to Itoya, we left Craig on the third floor in all the fountain pen buying craziness to enquire about the Platinum (brand) ultra fine nib pen he has been eyeing off, and Kate and I ventured up each floor to floor 7. This shop sold all sorts of beautiful papers and pens and stationary stuff I didn't even know existed. It was beautiful, but also very busy. Too many people for Katie, so she was happy to get back outside again. Craig was successful in his pen purchase, getting it tax free, and discounted for an end-of-the-line pen, so he was a happy camper. We continued along the very expensive shopping street full of Louis Voutin, Jimmy Choo, Prada, Valentino, Tag, Rolex etc.
We were going to head to the fish markets, however by now they would be close to closing, so we scratched that idea and headed to Tokyo Tower instead.
Kate and I think we eat more sushi in Australia in a week than we have in Japan and decided that this needed rectification, so I searched for sushi restaurants near our accommodation. Kate wanted a train, so I found a place where it is made to order, and delivered on a conveyer belt. We decided to walk home first, have a bit of a rest and then walk the 1 km to the sushi restaurant. However, on the train we worked out if we just stayed on it for a few more stops we would more or less be at the restaurant, so did that instead. And what a find! OMG I think we ate our body weight in nigiri with velvet fresh sashimi tuna and salmon. Kate counted 22 dishes between the three of us, and including drinks it was $58. I feel like I have died and gone to sashimi heaven. In addition, the sushi restaurant was right next to the giant golden sweet potato we saw when we arrived in Tokyo yesterday (which is actually the Asahi HQ building), so we were able to see the sweet potato at night.En savoir plus
Hakuba to Tokyo
28 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌙 6 °C
It was impossible to book a taxi on Sunday morning in Hakuba, so we decided to don the backpacks for a brisk walk through the fresh snow to the bus terminal to line up for the first come first served unreserved bus seat to Nagano. Both Kate and Craig got to see wild monkeys on the bus trip.
to
In Nagano, we changed over to the Shinkansen and scored unreserved seats again, on our way to Tokyo. A last minute decision to get off one station earlier, we were able to catch a single metro train to near our accommodation and only had to walk 1km to drop off our luggage. We weren't able to check-in until 4.00pm so we had three hours to kill. We backtracked to the Asakusa area to see the Senso-ji temple area and it was a district packed to the rafters with people. Katie was not enjoying it with so many people. We grabbed some lunch and decided to cross back over to our side of the river to scout out our local konbini and then after finding the elusive souffle cheesecake from Osaka, we took it down to a local park to just sit for a while. Craig has started tracking birds using an app called Merlin which has been delivering him a bird of the day. He actually managed to spot a bird of the day from a few days ago in the park! There was a fee museum in the park, so we spent a bit of time in there, covering an earthquake from the 1920s and the air raids of Tokyo during WWII.
We topped at the konbini across the road from our Ninja House Secret Base. This is a narrow two-storey plywood house in Sumida City which Craig booked. It even has a ninja costume we can get dressed in, with a warning not to wear it outside as the police might shoot you 😄. We are sitting in the front living room area with a toughened shoji screen between us and the footpath outside, watching a dubbed Last Samurai Standing on Netflix. Craig is incredulous at the low security level required in Tokyo.En savoir plus
The wild horses showed up again
27 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☁️ -5 °C
We woke up to a beautiful snowy morning with clear blue skies. Still anxious but with the place looking so wonderful, and my body betraying me by not contracting 24 hours flu after all so I woke up feeling perfectly fine (grrr) if not a little muscle fatigued, we headed off again. I was a bit determined not to let this stupid skiing sport beat me. We got a good seat on a half full bus, didn't have to faff about buying lift passes, no line up for the gondola. A dream run!
Headed off down the same green run, with Kate having declared she was heading up higher to do her own thing, and she may have said as she was skiing backwards in some amazing feat.
Anyways, over the edge, and I got to the bottom in a faster time, with maybe about 10 falling overs. Not bad. Chair lift with the husband, not so great. Our poles got tangled up as we stood up to launch down the run, which caused me to face-plant right in front of the chair. All I can say is lucky skis are designed for the boots to detach under extreme pressure or I would have had two broken ankles or knees or something. The chair lift man came to rescue my skis as I crawled off to the side wondering how I got where I was.
A bathroom stop and the first proper coffee in days was in order by then. It would be tempting to blame my poor skiing performance on bad coffee for the last 5 days, but that would be disingenuous.
Anyway, we were off for another run! Like, two whole runs before lunch! This time I also managed to get off the chair lift and only fall over after skiing to the bottom, so things are looking up. Katie met us at the gondola restaurant for lunch, and before long we were off on our third run of the day. This time I only fell over about 5 times and feel like the "getting it" is slightly within grasp. At the bottom, Kate and Craig reckon they will do two more runs to my one. Up the chair lift, fall off again, go down the run by myself and just as I reach the bottom, not having fallen over one single time, Kate is already waiting for me, which proves that I was very slow, but still managed technique of some description because on my final run of our ski holiday, I have managed to not fall over!!! Craig arrived a few minutes later looking like a pro (in my eyes anyway 🥰).
Time for my first ever snow angel before calling it quits on our skiing "adventure". Craig is slightly concerned that because I ended on a high there is now a small possibility that I might suggest going skiing again one day 🤭.
I felt ridiculously happy on the way down in the gondola that I had managed 4 runs today, Craig managed 5, Kate some untold number because it was so many she didn't need to count. All up, a positive way to end it. I feel less of a failure and so glad we stuck at it today. Quite a few bruises on my left leg, which is weird since it didn't hurt at all to fall down a gazillion times, but obviously I was banging myself up in some fashion.
We had a delicious pork hotpot for dinner just down the road, and since we haven't booked any buses out of here, are currently contemplating how and when we will be able to leave Hakuba tomorrow morning in order to get to Tokyo.En savoir plus
What idiot invented wild horses?
26 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ❄️ -3 °C
I hardly slept the whole night with anxiety about heading off to ski today. Every fibre of my body was saying "don't go you idiot!".
We went. It had snowed non-stop all night so Hakuba was blanketed in snow. And it didn't stop snowing all day...
It is a nice start to each day when waiting for the shuttle bus that you get these 20 minute snippets of conversation with the same people lining up. Craig has been with a french sounding American guy in his 60s called Peter who is lovely. His wife is not a skier, so she has been doing very sensible things like going on day trips to see the snow monkeys bathing in the hot springs, and heading to Matsumoto to visit the castle. My snippets have been with a family from Cairns who live at Redlynch and the wife is a teacher at Freshwater State School which is where Craig went to primary school.
It was a full bus this morning and we were the last to board, which meant standing up holding skis and poles with one arms stretched out precariously trying to hold on to an ill positioned rail. The bus driver hit a road sign, so there was a lot of lurching and sudden stopping happening too.
Next task, buy lift passes for two days. ✅
Next new experience, getting on and off the moving gondola. ✅
Next hurdle (and it was about now my desire to throw up grew sizably) was launching ourselves over the edge of the green (easiest) run. Hmmmm. First little bit lulled me into a false sense of security, because after the first little bit, there is a steeper bit, and remember that at this stage we have still not mastered turning around or stopping as well as would seem prudent if the edge of the ski slope was coming at you faster than you would otherwise desire.
So somewhere between the top and the blessed relief of being at the bottom, I fell over more time than I can count (and I stopped counting after about 15), hyper-ventilated so much I managed to fog up my goggles, spent a lot of time trying not to cry and telling myself that (nutty in my opinion) people find this fun and it is a mental game not to psych yourself out (a game at which I was failing badly). Pretty sure my quads have never burnt this much in my whole life!
I will add that Craig was doing pretty well, and Kate was skiing down a little bit and waiting for us (mainly me) to catch up, offering words of encouragement. I am very glad I looked up a YouTube video before I left the hotel this morning on how to stand up when you have fallen over. I am beginning to perfect that technique, but man is it exhausting. By about now I am pretty much hating this entire thing.
Now for the chair lift... Kate went with me and tried to prep me for what lay in wait in terms of how to get off the jolly thing. And, somehow I managed it! Success. With that, I caught the gondola back down to the bottom, and Craig and Kate skied down Route 7 to the bottom, arriving only a few minutes after I did. Lunch and a rest!
Those persistent and frankly very f***ing annoying wild horses dragged me back up again after lunch to try and conquer the anxiety which was now meaning I could barely eat. I am not really an anxious type of person, so this is all very unfamiliar territory. Anyways, here I am at the top faced with another torturous journey down the green run. Once again, I lost count of the number of times I fell over because I am just not getting "it". "It" is all so counterintuitive... to lean forward to slow down, and lean left to go right and lean right to go left. Argh.
At the bottom, Katie and Craig decide to go up the mountain to try something different so I say I will call it a day... Which means going back up the chair lift to get to the gondola to get back to the bottom, this time by myself. Well, I discovered why the chairlift occasionally stops when you are on it because I was the cause of it being stopped. I got to the section where you are supposed to stand up and then ski forth down a frankly way to steep hill in my opinion, and my fatigued muscles just couldn't do it. There is no "down" on the chair lift, so you have no choice but to get off. So the chair lift stops as it has turned the bend, with me still on it, so I now had to plop off the chair lift, which thankfully or otherwise was into about a metre of snow below. I didn't land gracefully, so here I am now flailing around in the deep snow trying to work out what way is up so I can crawl out of this mess. Stand up, try to regain what little composure and dignity is possible at this stage, and then amazingly manage to do three beautiful turns slowly down the hill to the gondola. Craig thinks it makes no sense because that bit was steeper than other bits where I was falling over all the time. Hop on the gondola, head back down as Craig and Kate arrive, and we catch the bus home.
At this point in time, I am now developing a sore throat and swollen glands, come home, have a shower, get into bed and fall asleep, glad that this terrible, terrible day is finally over.
Craig is quietly gleeful that I will never, ever try to convince him that a skiing holiday will be a great idea again. Like EVER. I was too whatevered to even go out to dinner, so the husband kindly went foraging and bought pizza for dinner, bless his little cotton socks.En savoir plus
Merry Christmas
25 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌨 4 °C
"How are you supposed to wear all this gear?" was the main theme of the morning dressing routine. Like what order to do up your boot bindings, how tight, how do the weird pants with extra floppy bits work etc. Walking in "very hard to walk in" boots, we staggered off to catch the bus to Hakuba47 again to meet our ski instructor.
Kate bought a lift pass and headed up the mountain by herself. Craig and I started what can only be described as the longest two hours of our entire life, which was in the rain the entire time. Without a doubt this skiing caper is the hardest thing I have ever done!
Craig only ended up on his bum once, I lost count of the number of times I ended up on my butt. So at the end of two hours, neither of us can sufficiently stop and can't really turn. Kate met us at the end of the lesson to witness the debacle and we went off for lunch. Once inside and with our jackets off we went from way too hot to quite cold, I suspect that all our nervous energy made us so sweaty that with our jackets off we were evaporatively cooling quite quickly.
Over lunch we declared ourselves too buggered and too wet to continue on in the drizzle, so headed home. I slept pretty much all afternoon (it was after lunch on Christmas day after all!). I can't believe that two hours can make you so knackered!
After all our family Christmas calls, we headed off to dinner in the yummy Malaysian restaurant in front of the hotel, and we'll be in the land of nod in no time.
Merry Christmas 🎄En savoir plus
All dressed up and nowhere to ski
24 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌧 7 °C
Bonus buffet breakfast with the hotel booking which I didn't remember requesting!
We asked the front reception man about what people do in the snow when it is raining and not a fine sunny day. His suggestion was that no-one skis and that it is icy. He also told us that Happo One lower runs were closed, and better to go to Hakuba47 Ski Resort as it was better for beginners, so that's what we did. Dressed in our snow pants and jacket and gloves, we left skis, poles, helmets and goggles at the hotel and wandered down the street to wait for the free shuttle bus. Luckily some other Australians there set us on the right path of which bus to get on, and in no time we were at Hakuba47, heading for the ski school building.
No luck for lessons today, and in fact no group lessons tomorrow either, but for $250 we could get a two hour private lesson tomorrow morning, so in desperation I said yes (even though it is supposed to be raining tomorrow too). Signed up, and as we were sitting down going through the ski lift advice the lady had just given me, Eric walked over and introduced himself as our ski instructor tomorrow. He was waiting for someone to turn up for a lesson and was not expecting her as she didn't show up the day before either, so he stayed and chatted to us for about 30 minutes or so. A 69 year old Italian from Verona who was married to the Japanese lady I had just signed up with, and they split their time between Hakuba in the winter, Verona, Singapore where he lived for 10 years and Phuket, a true geo-arbitrager. He was a civil engineer, and obviously very well travelled. He grabbed some skis and gave us a few ski instructions ready for tomorrow. If two hours proves to not be enough tomorrow I think we will just buy another two hours. There is a slim possibility we might be on a beginner run by tomorrow afternoon. Erik said last year at Hakuba was a bummer snow season with a large December dump, this year not much snow and it is a problem world wide. To prove his point he hurried off to find his phone to show us dismal pictures of snowless ski areas in Austria.
We then spent three hours sitting in the big-windowed restaurant watching people come down the red run, the people standing in the rain at ski school group instruction just in front of us, and generally watching the world go by. Kate and Craig did some mini sketching and painting. This included a lady who decided to walk down the mountain sideways, dressed in a very nicely colour coordinated ski outfit whilst the boyfriend walked down beside her trying to cajole her whilst carrying her skis. A dude who lost his glove near the top bit we could see, then basically tumbled with his snow board down 1/4 of the run, tried to walk back up until a nice person swiped up his glove and brought it down to him, and most disconcertingly, the person who came down in a cocoon slung between two medics, was then attached to a skidoo and quizzed over to a waiting van which did not have any ambulance signs on it, so I am really hoping they were breathing in there, otherwise we just witnessed a dead person.
We caught the 1pm shuttle back into town for lunch, a bit of grocery shopping (since I've now cottoned on to it being Christmas and all tomorrow), which then meant we thought more about the need to book a restaurant for tonight and tomorrow night... And our first choice was already booked out for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Eeek...
Craig went for a walk with Kate and has booked us into a Japanese Curry Pizza place reserved under the name of "Craog". And I found an Italian place where I have requested a reservation for tomorrow night for our Christmas evening meal, where I am hoping to be resting all exhausted from a successful day of earning how to ski!En savoir plus
Takayama to Hakuba
23 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☀️ 6 °C
Another big(ish) travel day from Takayama which should have required several trains, a Shinkansen and two buses, but because we got lucky and managed to find ourselves on a direct train and a direct bus, there was a lot less switching involved. Pretty sure we paid for the luck though. It was also supposed to be a day where we were going to get Kate to do the navigation as a learning experience. This was thwarted by the daughter's ownership of a stupid iPhone with a cracked screen, no phone charge within the first hour or so of leaving Takayama, a dodgy battery pack and her not having brought the correct cable from Australia despite several reminders of her father to do so, which then led to requisite teenager attitude being deployed as though all of those things were our fault. Happy days. 😔
Once we hit the Hakuba bus terminal we were supposed to be met by the hotel shuttle where they were also picking up four others. No shuttle in sight, a bit of stalking of parties of four, and we found our fellow hotel guests, which at the very least confirmed that we hadn't missed the shuttle. They were just very late. We are now checked into the Shakespeare Hotel, aka Australia Hotel. It is quite run down, so you are paying for the privilege of it being near snow rather than anything flash, like... the toilet... which is fully manual - no electronics and no heated seat. What??? How will we cope? The barbarians at the Shakespeare Hotel do not even issue toilet slippers! (Actually, they forgot to give us towels and a shower curtain too, but at least these were standard issue when we did ask).
It was nearly 4pm, so we then did a mad dash a few kilometres down the road to a ski gear rental place. Apparently this was something we were supposed to have booked in for, but they kindly squeezed us in. After emptying our wallets, we are now fully geared up for four days in the snow. Skis, poles, helmet, goggles, gloves, boots. Bad news though, the "no planning anything" method of travel I am finding myself in seems we have missed out on being able to get any ski lessons tomorrow, and after ringing a ski school and talking to Dan the Australian on the phone at 7pm, we are now left with ski rental shop suggestion of just rocking up tomorrow at Happo One ski resort and seeing if they can fit us in.
An early dinner at a tiny little pub thing right next door to the hotel for ramen and yakisoba and we were tucked up in bed by 9.30pm or so. It is predicted to rain all night tonight and all day tomorrow and the next day, so a postcard white Christmas with us frolicking in the snow is looking a bit doubtful at the moment. ❄️En savoir plus
Takayama
22 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ⛅ 3 °C
It was a "feels like" temperature of sub zero most of the day today, so a real taste of winter for us topping out at 4°C. After catching the shuttle bus from the hotel back into town, we stopped for a coffee and croissant for breakfast (very Japanese 😁). We visited a couple of morning markets, but the benefit of a reasonable number of tourists in a town is that things seem to open a lot earlier, which gave the markets and streets of the old town area a bit of a vibe. It wasn't long before we stopped for another coffee and a local pastry found in the region. Craig did a bit of sketching whilst we were at this stop.
There is a retro museum in the old part of town, so we decided to go through that too. There was a rotary dial phone in there, so Katie is asking how to use it. Rudely, the husband seemed to remember every other phone number in Cairns from his highschool years other than mine. 🫤 But we got to pay some arcade games including PacMan, Donkey Kong, Galaga and a few other we could not work out at all!
We walked up to the top of town to the Higashiyama Walking Circuit which skips between cemeteries and temples with views down over the city. Hida beef is the local wagyu to this area, and despite setting out to eat this for lunch, Craig and I ended up with some delicious eel, and Katie with a beef and rice dish. This needed to be rectified a bit later with a street cooked beef skewer. OMG, it was like eating melt in your mouth velvet. Kate announced she could eat a lot of them easily. Totally agreed.
We tried to check out a pen and ink shop Craig had spied yesterday, but that was inexplicably closed, so we did the long long walk to the Hida Folk Village on the opposite side of the river and town. This is a collection of old buildings set up as a living museum. Really worth looking at, although we were pretty cold by the time we got to the end, so probably skipped a few in favour of not taking our shoes off and keeping the feet warm. We hightailed it back to the train station in record time to catch the 4.30pm shuttle back to the hotel, stopping in at the awesome resort shop to buy some noodles and sake for dinner in our room.
Craig and I visited the onsen. Kate declined declaring that "being naked with other naked people is not my thing". I tried to talk about "when in Rome" and all that, but to no avail. A bit of logistics planning for the multi train journey tomorrow and making up our own futons since we declined the housekeeping offer, and we are getting ready to tuck up in bed for the night.En savoir plus
Osaka to Takayama
21 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌧 10 °C
I said to Lynette on the way down the elevator I was reminded of the Friends episode where Chandler was moving in and as Monica said goodbye to Rachel who was moving out, she burst into tears and exclaimed "I have to live with a boy!". And so it is that I have had my last meal with Lynette and abandoned her in Osaka, we say goodbye to our fabulous Japanese adventure together as Craig, Kate and I move on to Takayama today. Sorry it is such a rainy day in Osaka to end what has been a dream run in the weather department.
We navigated a train, Shinkansen and accidentally snagged an express train to Takayama arriving just after 1pm. I don't think I realised how much regular feeding my 17 year old actually requires given she can usually forage for herself! So after stowing the luggage in a locker, we set off for a nearby restaurant which was excellent. We backed up last night's dinner with another yakisoba and it was delicious and inexpensive. It was light drizzly rain which kinda hampered what we could do for the afternoon, but I did find Takayama Jinya which was a large Edo period government administration complex we could look through, satisfying the "it's not in the rain" criteria perfectly.
With a bit of foraging in a supermarket where we also bought some sushi for dinner, we ended up back at the train station to catch the shuttle bus back to the hotel. This hotel is out of town, so no casual night time stroll into town for us. I selected it because of the onsen, but it is also a weird blend of why we think resorts catering to Japanese tourists sprung up in the 1980s in north Queensland. I have taken the opportunity to do washing for the first time in two weeks, and since I only brought two sets of clothes, I changed into Kate's clothes so I could wash everything. My nervous first time onsening family set off to the onsen, and I joined Katie not long after. She was boiling to death so didn't stay in long. This place has an infinity pool on the 5th and 7th floor, and takes turns alternating men and women. Craig was on the 7th today, we were on the 5th. Something about Craig in a yukata (or more so the slippers) made me sing Queen's "I want to break free" 🙂
Back at the room, the housekeeping staff were setting up our futons for the night, and we had our sushi and cheesecakes for dinner. Craig and I then went for a wander around the hotel to find the hotel shop was amazing! We used the sake tasting machine for six shots of different local sakes and a souvenir cedar sake cup which just so happened to be on Craig's list of souvenirs he wanted. We then hung out in the bar for a while before calling it a night.En savoir plus
Nara to Osaka
20 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌙 13 °C
Not a massive journey today, but we were still up earlyish, ate half of our ¥194 apple each, and set off to the train station to journey on to Osaka. The train station that bamboozled us a few days ago on our way to Koyasan was equally as bamboozling today, but we eventually stumbled on to the correct metro station. Unfortunately for us, mainly because Lynette did a bit of shopping yesterday so her pack now weighs at least 5kg more, there are three hotels with the same long name before the little bit at the end that differentiates which one is which. We walked to the wrong one! It was a long walk back the way we came to walk to the correct one. And here I am reunited with my husband and daughter.
After dumping the packs, we set off to Osaka Castle, but didn't even make it to the first block from the hotel when we heard a crowd down the street, so we gravitated to that the minute we realised they were doing mochi pounding. We narrowly missed seeing this a few days before elsewhere. And the most awesome thing was that we were invited to actually pound the mochi! Refer video, ignore obviously bad technique on my behalf.
A long walk to the castle, we then made our way around the edge and into the Dotonbori district of neon lights and a lot of people... Like a LOT of people. We hung around for the 3D dog billboard, had our photo taken with the Glica running man by a kindly gentleman in the crowd who seemed to just be offering to take everyone's photo of the Glica man, which at the time of him gesturing to us to assume the Glica man position, I was completely unaware that this is "thing". I have now researched this phenomenon and I am now suitably informed.
Lynette and I had looked up a capybara cafe yesterday so after telling Kate about it she was now the prime navigator to the cafe location through what was very visibly the funky party of town. We made a reservation for 15 minutes later, but in the meantime looked up how much having a drink next to a giant guinea pig was going to cost and decided we don't like oversized rodents that much, so rescinded the reservation and meandered back to the hotel to check in.
We then headed out a little later to trawl through the Semba Buildings which are a series of shops in the bottom level of at least 9 identical buildings built over a metro. We were in search of some obis, and managed to find them just as the shops were closing up for the evening. We then started the slow walk back to the Tonbori Canal to find places to eat. It was barely 5.00pm but Kate was starving. We found an okonomiyaki place right on the canal and were able to sit here just out of the main crush of people enjoying life going by. That is our third okonomiyaki now, and I think the Hiroshima style was my favourite.
We wandered along the canal back to Ebisu Bridge to check out all the neon billboards in their glory before meandering back home. And I thought that was it for the night until my daughter told me she had gone to the 7-Eleven with her father and bought one of the famous cheesecake souffle things famous in Osaka. Craig and Kate are staying in a different room to Lynette and I. So shoes were back on and I was now on the hunt for two cheesecake souffles... Two 7-Elevens and a Pitstop later, I am back at the hotel empty handed because they had all sold out! Disappointing to say the least.
After all our smaller, quieter villages, Osaka has been sensory overload!En savoir plus
A lazy day in Nara
19 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ⛅ 7 °C
The lovely Lynette was excited when I woke up at 8.30am and she sprung out of bed with a "you're welcome" after she had spent two hours patiently waiting for my eyes to open. 😴
We faffed about for a bit before hitting the road in search of coffee and breakfast. The first place we came across had good coffee but a lousy food offering, so we decided a progressive breakfast was in order. The second place had amazing breakfast and lousy coffee, so between the two we had a good start to the day.
Craig was teasing us last night about our (excellent in my opinion) itinerary organisation with some commentary along the lines of how we can't help ourselves and we can't be spontaneous. Red rag to a bull and all that, we just walked today and if we came across a thing, we went to it.
So this is what led us to finding ourselves spending about half an hour in the Nara Karakuri Mechanical Toy Museum, free entry, with a lovely older Japanese lady sitting with us at each table showing us how these old hand made toys worked. We learnt a game similar to Chinese checkers, but actually much more strategic. There was also a game there which was from the Edo period which was suspiciously bey blading! A small donation later and we were on our way.
We then found ourselves in the Naramachi Koshi-no-le Lattice House (free entry again) which was a preserved merchant house in the Naramachi district (which we are staying on the edges of) and it was amazing. They had very narrow frontages because they were taxed based on how much street frontage but the houses were long. Great to see inside. We wandered around the Naramachi district a fair bit today, and for some reason I can't stop humming or singing La Cucaracha. 🙂
Continuing our theme of free things we just wandered into, we also went to the Nara Prefecture Museum of Art and the Nara Craft Museum. We also continued our search for obis which saw us back at the same shop we bought our kimino/yukata from yesterday, where Lynette picked up some more. I snapped a picture of the kimino-wearing ET today though. We also decided to buy one of the giant apples we have been seeing in the shops and have brought that home to have as a snack on the road tomorrow as we make our way to Osaka. Despite our lazy day, we still managed to hit 16,900 steps. And proved Craig wrong!
Craig and Kate have flown out today so we had a bit of chatting with them late morning because their flight was delayed two hours, so they will have a very late arrival into Osaka, probably in the wee hours of the morning before they get to their accommodation I suspect. To boot, my darling Finny, who is never unwell, had a bit of a medical episode today, so I have had to worry about him from afar. Luckily he has Eleanor there to take care of him now that he has been abandoned by both of his parents.En savoir plus
Koyasan to Nara
18 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌙 4 °C
This morning was a jam-packed schedule all before 9am with a relatively early wakeup to go watch the early morning Buddhist ceremony where three monks did a series of gonging, chanting sutras, cymbals, and bells. It lasted about 25 minutes and was very mesmerising, almost trance like to listen to. No photos allowed of this one. The monks wore slightly more ornate robes for this ceremony than there plain cotton daily wear we were greeted in the day before.
Breakfast was another traditional meal in the main dining hall, with a quick chance in between to clean the teeth before the goma/homa (fire) ceremony commenced at 8am. This ceremony is unique to Esoteric Buddhism, performed for the purpose of destroying negative energies and thoughts. The night before we were invited to write your name, age and a wish/prayer on a flat decorated stick which is then burnt and offered to the deities. It was such a special event to witness.
It was a chilly 1°C when we left the monastery, so with no coffee shops open we raided a vending machine for a hot chocolate. The drink was very well positioned to heat our hands up perfectly, too bad it didn't really taste great.
Despite only having to travel about 70km if we were driving today, the public transport options saw us walk, catch a bus to the funicular, catch the funicular down the mountain, and then catch three other trains to get to Nara. Apart from one tricky thing where we circumnavigated a building because we took the wrong exit, we made it relatively easily into Nara. We are staying at a guest house here for two nights, and it wasn't manned when we arrived, but they kindly gave us the pin code to get in and drop our luggage off so we were unencumbered for the rest of the afternoon.
First order was lunch because we were getting a little peckish, and that saw us in a second floor restaurant we found in an arcade which was Chinese! Probably one of the most excellent sweet and sour porks I have ever eaten.
We then followed the crowd to the east end of town and spent the next few hours walking through the Kasugayama Primeval Forest which contains many many temples which are all world heritage sites. This is also home to the famous wild deer which roam around harassing people for food. They have learnt to bow their head as you pass by and I strangely felt compelled to bow back to these deer. It was an odd feeling. I read a blog on the train from someone who declared them all assholes because he kept getting bitten by them. Given just as we walked into the park we saw one tourist yelling and swearing because he had been harassed by a rather persistent deer, and then later and old man who had evidently fallen off his bike because of the deer and was lying on the path with his face covered in blood, I would agree with this assessment. We stopped for a matcha ice-cream (we are still attempting to like this awful matcha stuff), and kept getting butted gently by a couple of them. One the matcha front, we both agree matcha ice-cream is the best use of matcha so far.
On the way back to the guesthouse, we took a convoluted route to a place which sells second hand yukata and haori. It was a jam packed tiny store with an ET wearing a kimino on the top shelf (funny). After rummaging through the stock, we picked up a yukata each at a great price, so we can now bring a little bit of Japan home with us.
Our room is semi Japanese with tatami mats, and good grief, we don't have someone to make up our futons tonight 🙂. Our heads are supposed to point away from the North (because we are not dead) but we have been guided by the location of powerpoints rather than cultural taboo. The "semi" is that we are sitting on poang chairs from IKEA to write this. They are a welcome clash of culture in my humble opinion, as my hips are ready to pop out of their sockets with the amount of cross legged floor sitting we have done in the last 24 hours of Buddhism.
Dinner tonight was a strange clash of rice, omelette, bechamel sauce and prawns, which was then grilled. Kinda like a Japanese mac and cheese. We have agreed on a lazy start to the day tomorrow, although having said that, Lynette's idea of what constitutes sleeping in and my idea are probably on different planets.En savoir plus
Miyajima to Koyasan
17 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☁️ 6 °C
In our own special Japanese version of train, planes and automobiles, today's travel journey from Miyajima to the mountain Buddhist village of Koyasan required us to walk to the ferry, then take the ferry across to the mainland, then catch a local train, then a shinkansen from Hiroshima to Osaka, then catch a metro subway, then transfer to a local train, then switch over to another train, then transfer onto a funicular to head vertically up a mountain, then get on a bus into Koyasan proper, fore walking the last then few hundred metres to our Buddhist monastery where we are staying the night. The modern day version of a one day pilgrimage?
And despite an extraordinary number of connections, the whole thing went incredibly smoothly thanks to the precision of Japanese public transport and the voodoo magic that is google maps.
Koyasan is the centre of Buddhist study and is a major monastic complex, where 50-60 of them offer overnight stays for visitors, offering meditation, Buddhist cuisine and sutra copying. We are not doing the sutra copying.
After dropping off our luggage and getting an early check-in tour by a young monk, we headed off to the far end of Koyasan at the suggestion of Chat GPT. Here we wandered around the Danjo Baran Complex with many large (and I mean large!) impressive temples. Most were originally built in around 816 or thereabouts, but have been subject to fires and therefore been rebuilt many times. With so many wooden structures in Japan, we can certainly see the importance of a constant water source and the local fire brigade in each village. We paid to go to the main temple (Daito) which contained a large main Buddha and was surrounded by four other Buddhas. No photography, but suffice they had a beautiful golden glow. There was a monk giving a tour whilst we were in there so they did some praying/chanting which was lovely.
We then walked the entire length of the village back to the one thing I have been very excited to see which was the Okunoin Cemetery. There are over 200,000 gravestones and monuments and it is 2km long. In particular, I have wanted to walk through it in the evening. Luckily it gets dark early in winter, so we got to walk in during daylight and out during twilight just as it started to have light misty rain. Definitely worth getting wet for! The mausoleum of the founding esoteric Buddhist monk (Kobo Daishi) was at the end. It too was a visual feast for the senses, surrounded by centuries old cedar trees and the main pavilion had hundreds or orange lanterns lit. No photos allowed.
Dinner was at 6pm in the dining hall, seated on tatami. This was a traditional washoku kaiseki meal which also was spectacular to look at and very tasty. At 7.30pm we went to the main hall for 20 minutes of meditation. We were rugged up but luckily I was also sitting right next to a kerosene heater. It was toasty, and needed to be as it is freezing here tonight, but I think I'm lucky my polar fleece didn't spontaneously combust. It was hard to sit still for that amount of time because I'm pretty sure my hip was about to pop out of its socket. Old lady Rinetto was offered a stool by the young monk and was all indignant that he thought she was old. I reckon I'll use the stool at the morning ceremony tomorrow so I can walk afterwards 🤫
Whilst we were at dinner, our futons were made up and come with a much needed electric blanket. We did a trip to the onsen to bathe and warm up and are now tucked up in med. The toilet is at the opposite end of the complex, so I'm now restricting water so I don't need to brave the cold hallways again until tomorrow morning.En savoir plus
Hiroshima to Miyajima island
16 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C
After a hearty continental breakfast in our hotel this morning, we packed up and walked down to the pier to catch a boat over to Miyajima, opting for a more expensive but scenic river cruises leaving a short stroll from our hotel rather than the ¥200 ferry that required a train or two to get to it.
We were on the island reasonably early, so dropped our bags off at our hotel and set off for the day. This island is a haven for day trippers, so we did a bit of reconnaissance down to the waterfront to see the most iconic thing on the island, the red torii gate in the water, Otorii.
There is a cable car which takes you up in the mountains with fabulous views, from which you can then walk to the summit of Mt Misen. If there is a mountain to climb, we feel compelled to climb in, but this one was relatively easy when all was said and done.
Time for food! There is a famous maple leaf shaped pastry on the island called Momiji Manju, which comes either fried or baked with various fillings, and since we were overdue a coffee, we combined the two. Mine had a custard filling and Lynette went for chocolate. I also had a beef and oyster curry filled friend pastry thing. Strange combination but it seemed to work. It was quite a sweet curry, but good street food! If you are into oysters, this is your island. They are farmed extensively in Hiroshima Bay, so EVERY shop sells every possible type of oyster thing. I did not know oysters with grilled cheese was even a thing until today.
We donated ¥300 yen each to the upkeep of the main shrine and to walk the slow 10 minutes through it to the other side. Entry fees to things in Japan so far have been ridiculously inexpensive. We had a bit more time to kill before check-in so went for a walk along the main length of the village to the outskirts and back again. We then bought the baked version of our special maple leaf pastry for Ron.
Check in was a bit of fun. We got to choose our yukata from a wide variety of patterns and styles, our obi colour, and then were given a little dilly bag to select a range of amenities like body lotion, hair bands, thong socks etc. We were then accompanied to our room (bags already here, bargain), and the gentleman noticed that the room was missing a pair of room slippers, a set of towels and a haori jacket. Off he toddles, and then comes back with the missing stuff, but notices that there is now a missing complimentary maple-leaf pastry (I promise we did not eat it). He disappears again, and at this stage we have just left our door open. Some time later, two older ladies jabbering away to each other in Japanese wander into our room, start looking around in the bathroom, poking around in the room, take the one maple-leaf cake that was there and leave two packets of some flat things and jabber off again. Lynette and I have discussed marauding marauders more often than you would think possible in the last 10 days, so I asked her if she thought we had just been scammed out of our special maple leaf cake by cleverly disguised marauding marauders... She agreed we had.
Anyway, there is an onsen footbath at this hotel, so we got changed and went off to soak the tootsies, came back and went off to use the inside and outside onsen (the outside one had water which was at a much more tolerable temperature), came back and got changed to go out for dinner. Earlier reconnaissance had shown us that not much was open late, so an earlyish dinner was on the cards, after which we went back to see the torii gate at night and wander a bit more with basically the island to ourselves.
Oh, and this island has wild deer wandering around the village, so we also found it necessary to take lots of photos of them and include more than a fair share of "no idea" jokes across the day 🤭En savoir plus
VoyageurThe children did not appreciate my deer jokes that I bombarded them with on the island. I ate the giantest crumbed and fried oysters there. We went to that shrine over the water and saw a traditional Japanese wedding where no one smiled in the photo but once the photo was done, everyone was smiling and laughing. Odd!
Himeji to Hiroshima
15 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌙 4 °C
After coffee and pastry at a patisserie between our hotel and the train, we bought our Shinkansen ticket from a helpful human and were on our way for the next 1 hour to Hiroshima. Whilst waiting at the platform however, two shinkansen travelled through the station without stopping. Holy moly, being that close at that speed was amazing. I caught a video of a third one which seemed to be a bit slower and the train wasn't as long.
Once in Hiroshima, we walked to our accommodation, dropped off our packs and headed out to the Shukkein Garden and wandered through there for about 45 minutes, stopped at the museum cafe on our way out for a coffee, and headed off to Hiroshima Castle. It was flattened by the bomb, rebuilt temporarily, dismantled and rebuilt again, so in this castle it wasn't so much about showcasing the buildings itself as at Himeji, but rather what life was like in the castle for the Shogun and samurai.
After that we headed off to the heavy stuff for the day, which kinda seemed fitting given the happenings back in Australia at Bondi. First stop, the Atomic Bomb Dome, then the Children's Peace Monument, passing by the Flame of Peace and the Hiroshima Victims Memorial Cenotaph onto the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was probably one of the more crowded places we have been here in Japan and for about two hours, we pretty much only heard feet shuffling as you moved past the stories and exhibits. It was very quiet and harrowing as one would expect. Reminded me very much of our visit to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site in Germany in terms of the sombre mood.
We headed back to our accommodation which is a bargain at $77 in total for both of us for the night including breakfast. If we had timed things better that also included a free drink at happy hour. There is an onsen here too but we gave that a skip tonight.
After a "normal" shower, we headed out to the Hondori which is the main covered shopping street/arcade. Lynette had to return a shirt at UniQlo (tick) and then we decided to have a Hiroshima Okonomiyaki to see if it was better than Kyoto Okonomiyaki. Answer = yes it was, by a country mile. It came with an experience of it being placed on a teppen in front of you and you getting your own mini spatula to cut off bits to transfer to your plate. The beer was the cheapest I've had re t, so all up a bargain dinner, even if the restaurant itself had an ambience that was cool, but would not pass Australian food safety standards I suspect 🤭En savoir plus
Narai to Himeji
14 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌙 6 °C
We woke up to rain and clouds in our little village this morning. Breakfast was minestrone and ciabatta, and a stewed plum and coffee. Just the right amount of food.
We dashed down the main street, thankful for some eaves to shelter under as we walked to the train station. In this village, one of its defining architectural features was that the second floor jutted out further than the ground floor, and that the roof therefore provided shelter. Great planning for a rainy day!
We caught a suburban train to Nagoya, heeding the advice of the train lady and her translating device to change trains for the express at Fukushima. What she neglected to do was to sell us the correct tickets for that train, so when the conductor arrived, and we were in the reserved section and without the correct tickets, this was promptly fixed by us paying for the correct ticket and moving to the correct carriage for the unreserved seats. It didn't seem like the first time he had come across this scenario and he was very nice about it.
More train confusion ensued at Nagoya when we bought two shinkansen tickets but couldn't get through the gate. After the man told us something in Japanese about ten times, and in none of those times did it become any more apparent what we were supposed to do to rectify the issue, a lady arrived and she spoke English and took us off to buy yet another ticket because you weirdly need two different tickets to ride the shinkansen. It seems her sole job is to help foreigners work out what tickets they need.
Tickets in hand, we nabbed seats in the unreserved cards and settled in for the trip to Himeji. The train we were on topped out at about 300km/h but it didn't feel like it at all.
Our hotel is right outside the train station, so we dropped off our bags and headed off for lunch and the on to visit the famous white castle. The bargain price ticket of ¥1,050 ($10.50) got us into the castle and the garden next door. The castle ticket alone was ¥1,000 so for an extra 50c we thought throwing in the garden visit couldn't be any worse than the ridiculous rock garden for ¥300 a few days ago.
The interior of the castle was amazing! So much timber and really big pieces of lumber. The stairs inside were really steep with small treads, almost like oversized ladders. A few people were tripping or falling throughout, not made any easier by the fact we were all in our socks and the floors are well worn timber so a quite smooth. Outside the castle we came across quite a few warriors dressed up and either posing, or standing around stoically.
We came back and braved another onsen experience, indoor onsen bath first, then used the sauna (lasting a whole 5 minutes) before using the outside onsen. This hotel had the luxury items in the onsen so we sat there like a local blow drying the hair, smothering our dried out skin in lotions and potions. There was also a free ice cream machine for when you leave the onsen, so we had a snack on the way back to our room. Three is also a guest area on level two with free tea and coffee, soft drinks, sport drinks, "lactic acid drink" available in the morning (aka yakult), and after 9.30pm at night a free half size ramen noodle bowl. All for $117 for the two of us. Bargain.
We went out for dinner at a Nepalese curry house which had a 'blink and you would miss it' door on the street leading up a very steep and narrow set of stairs to a kinda grotty but good enough restaurant. A very gigantic naan was had with a very yummy curry!
Then a walk up the fairy light lit main boulevard to see the castle lit up at night. On to Hiroshima tomorrow.En savoir plus
Fukushima to Narai
13 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☀️ 6 °C
Today was our last day of walking the Nakasendo Way, with a train to Yabuhara and then a hike from there to Narai where we are staying tonight.
I helped Lynette not give in to time-based planning anxieties by not allowing her to catch the accommodation shuttle that meant we had to be up 30 minutes earlier than necessary just to sit at a freezing cold train station for that 30 minutes. Instead we arrived, bought tickets, and waited less than 10 minutes for the train.
Our hotel breakfast was yet another Japanese feast that was just way too much food for anyone, but we battled through vowing to skip lunch again. I swear these meals would easily feed several people, but maybe I'm finding it too much because I actually stopped eating breakfast a few years ago thanks to Dr Michael Mosley's influence.
The walk from Yabuhara took us over the Torii Pass. This was apparently the most difficult pass for travellers to traverse in the Edo period, but we didn't find it too onerous. It was only about 3.5 kms up to the pass and then 3 kms to Narai. Here we dumped our packs in a locker and walked 2.5 km to the next village of Hirasawa and celebrated the official end of our hike.
It was quite chilly going over the pass and we had could see frost, snow and ice in patches on the road. No bears were encountered due to the diligent ringing of the bear bells and the melodic tinkle of the Ken San bell on Lynette's pack.
We left Yabuhara about 9.30, got to Narai by about 12-ish, and stopped for coffee (and cake) and booked our accommodation for tomorrow night which was the one unplannednight of the trip. That has now ended our unplanned, spontaneity. Order is restored.
Narai has about a kilometre of traditional post-town style shops and houses running down the main street to the train station. We ended up walking its length 4 times over the afternoon, first on way to Hirasawa via the luggage lockers and then wandering up and down waiting for check in time at La Terra, our accommodation, which was not open until 3.30pm. We were passed by three fire trucks on the main street, which wouldn't be remarkable except that each of them was smaller than a Ford Transit. Because all the buildings are wooden, fire and water management are extremely important to the juku towns.
Our accommodation appears to be a small house converted to be a bespoke guest house that is on the expensive end of the places we have booked this trip. As a result is a very well appointed apartment with lots of little luxuries including padded winter yukatas and fluffy winter pyjamas, and not one, not two, but three different slippers to wear in different sections of what is in essence about 14 square metres.
However, our room excitement was relatively short-lived when I used the remote controlled toilet and it wouldn't flush, but did not have a manual flushing lever. So, we had the most digitised toilet on planet earth, and it can't do the one thing it is supposed to be good at. I took the remote back downstairs to chat to Towa-San, he then translates on his phone that we need to fill the tank and gives me a giant oversized cup. So perhaps it hasn't been used in a while.
We have a luxurious bath, an amazing Italian-influenced dinner courtesy of Towa-San who has been at cooking school for a few years. I had venison cooked to perfection. Four courses, and all bellissimo.
And after dinner the toilet investigation continues... Towa-San's offsider came up, and came back and told us it was working. Huzzah. We came back after dinner and couldn't work out how to use it. Lynette was last seen in her provided grey fluffy pyjamas looking like a giant koala standing over the loo taking photos and trying to figure out how to use it, including a manual reset. It has multiple LED light options, a button to make the seat go up and down... Everything except the basics of actual flushing! Sometimes a toilet can be too smart for its own good. I'm killing myself laughing and she may have just told me to f### off. I'm not taking it personally because she is saying it to the toilet too (which sounds like she is having an argument with R2D2 every time it beeps and then does nothing else). 🤣 We will just have to put up with the recalcitrant toilet.En savoir plus
Nojiri to Kiso Fukushima
12 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☀️ 5 °C
This morning started with our first Japanese (non western) breakfast. It too was a giant feast and set us up for the day such that we didn't need to have lunch today.
Ijime San wandered into the foyer with our washi cards just as we came down from our room. Excellent timing! Unfortunately my artistic vision didn't quite eventuate as I had hoped in my head 🙂↕️. Lynette syas to himhe had given us one extra that wasn't ours. A gift he says from him... And then we see how perfect it is and realise how how far we need to go to become a washi master.
There was no option for a shuttle bus to take us up to the beginning of the trail head to walk the loop of Aterra Gorge, so nothing to do but to walk there instead. The whole walk was alongside the Atera River. The loop at the end was a little more treacherous, but really lovely forest, rickety bridges and ice and frost on the ground. At the end was the only toilet we have come across without a heated seat, which was a little sad because it was about 2°C. We think the loop was about 8 to 9km.
On return to the hotel, we picked up our backpacks, walked another 2km into Nojiri, bought a train ticket and then because we had a little bit of time to kill, went to a coffee shop, as of course the only non-local customers because this is not a tourist town. The owner gave us a painted piece of timber as a gift. Mine had a dancing daikon radish on it and Lynette's had a very happy carrot.
We then caught the train to Kiso Fukushima which is where we were being collected at 4.30pm so had half a day to fill in. We hired a locker for the day at the train station for our back packs, noting that in this order you were not allowed to keep the following in your lockers: Valuables, Dangerous items, Dead bodies, Animals, Firearms and swords, Filthy items, Items prone to spoilage.
We stopped for another coffee before going to seek out Tommy San, our guide from yesterday, so we could take a gander at his coffee bean retail business. He then selected a Guatemala bean he had roasted this morning, although later said it needed a day or two to develop more flavour. He made a hand poured drip filter where the filter paper is made from washi, and it looked like a very exacting business. So two espressos later (and now four coffees in for the day which is double anything I ever have in a day), we set off to visit Kozenji Buddhist Temple and Kanuntei, the most spacious rock garden in Japan. The temple was closed, and we will consider the ¥300 we paid for the 1 minute experience a donation to upkeep of the far more interesting (and free) cemetery next door.
By now it was sub zero temperatures and Lynette had left her big coat in the locker, so we headed to the public onsen footbath, hoicked up the pants and sat there for quite some time contemplating life. Annoyingly I have carried a towel all week, but the towel was in the locker too, so we used our buffs to wipe our feet and headed back to the train station to await the shuttle bus to our wonderfully posh accommodation for the evening, Nukumorino-yado Komanoyu.
Not long after arrival, wearing a very beautiful yukata, we were headed to the private onsen, which was downstairs in a rock wall lined cave of sorts. We couldn't last the fully allotted time, but the shampoo is of better quality so my hair feels normalish again.
Dinner was in a very beautiful tatami dining room and was the fanciest fare we have had so far, but once again with 14 different things, we asked if we could skip the rice, miso and pickle bits because we simply couldn't fit it all in. After dinner we rugged up in many layers since it is -5° outside (feels like -8°), cracked some new pocket warmers and went down to the lobby to wait for the shuttle bus for a free star gazing session at a look out 10 minutes up the hill. The owner guy had taught himself astronomy so he could conduct this session, he had a telescope and was even showing us photos he had taken of andromeda galaxy. There is a meteor shower tonight and tomorrow night over Germany (he said), so we saw several shooting stars, Saturn, Jupiter, and several constellations I had never heard of, and quite a few that I had. Orion's belt was in full glory tonight. It is about now that all sensation in my toes has ceased, so we were very grateful when he said it was time to come back. We had bold plans to go to the public onsen when we got back, but all desire fled our body in preference of getting warm in our bed. We have two rom heaters on, and are still a bit chilly.En savoir plus
Nagiso to Nojiri
11 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☁️ 9 °C
We were collected from our hostel this morning by our guide for the day, a lovely chap by the name of Tommy. We were taken to a local washi making artisan nearby where Ijima San (who spoke almost no English) successfully guided us through the art of making washi. Tommy was a helpful translator so between great gesticulation by Ijima San, Tommy and a lot of nodding and hai's, we had a fantastic few hours.
We were presented with the option of making a large sheet of thin washi or a smaller thicker postcard size. Being the practical types, we opted for the postcard size.
Step 1 was to design your bits and bobs to decorate in a dry run using dried leaves, coloured paper, string, seeds, and even little tiny origami love hearts. Our mould consisted of five postcards, so that required five separate creative bits of artistic inspiration. Not my strong suit really... After that you do one scoop of slushy washi mix, translate your design in reverse into the moulds, then two more washes. After that there is some wet/dry vacuum extraction, some rolling over a towel to extract more moisture, removing the frame, tamping down the edges to smooth the paper, and transferring it to a large heated frame with a fire behind it to dry.
Thinking we were at the end, Ijima San says that we then had to make five more! Which meant five more little creative inspirations etc etc.
At the end we had a bit of a tour around the sheds to understand the process right from the native timber. It is only able to be made about three months a year, and Ijima San is paid by the local council to do this to keep this traditional cultural art alive. Otherwise he has a restaurant making handcut soba noodles and also looks after the mountain rest stops and restroom facilities. What a guy! We will have our dried paper delivered to our hotel either tomorrow morning or the next day depending on how long it takes to dry.
Tommy then took us to a local soba noodles restaurant for lunch before we started at 8.4km walking through the Kakizore Gorge. The water was crystal clear, the pools and waterfalls were beautiful and the tinkling bear bell a constant sound. We did a round trip hike and ended back at our Onsen hotel for the night. This place looks like its heydays were in the 1970s but it is still quaint.
Lynette and I took our relationship to a whole new level with an onsen experience after working out the yukata, the "how to" of onsen etiquette, the anxiety of trying to make sure we get it right, weird slippers we have to take on and off all over the place, not putting your towel in the onsen water but rather keeping it on your head (mine fell off into the onsen water... eeek). We met the two Australian ladies from the team room a few days ago when we were in the change room. They had been outside with nervous energy so because we are now old hands we were able to ease them into taking their relationship to a whole new level too 🙂.
Dinner was a seven+ course visual feast. Beautiful sashimi salmon, squid, little dishes of beautiful looking creations. We had finished, and still hadn't eaten everything when the waiter brought out more food of miso, pickled veggies and a bowl of rice. I had just finished reading about how rude it is in Japan to leave uneaten rice because of the amount of effort to make it, but I couldn't eat another thing (except dessert which then followed), so the girls in room 205 must now have a black mark against their name.
Fantastic day all round. Just when we think our holiday can't get any better, it does!En savoir plus
Magome-Juku to Tsumago-Juku to Nagiso
10 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ 🌙 2 °C
This morning was a chilly -2° to start the day. We rolled out of bed, dressed in our supplied pyjamas and toddled downstairs for breakfast with the Belgium couple... dressed in pyjamas. Strange, but when in Rome and all that! Beautiful buffet prepared by Ken with his homemade yoghurt, homemade blueberry jam, granola, toast, juice and coffee.
After breakfast we did a daylight reconnaissance of the village, before saddling up the packs , which now feel like they weigh 30kg. Weird since we have used some toothpaste and hand cream so it should feel at least 30 grams lighter!
Today's mission was a 8.9km walk to Tsumago-Juku and then a 3.8km walk to Nagiso but we ended up walking 17.1km. We cannot work out why as we stayed on the trail pretty much the whole way. I think the tourist guides must be wrong.
The first hour was solidly uphill, beautiful scenery with a constant sound of a river beside you. We came across our first bear bells, and rang most of them. We were also accompanied by the constant tinkle of the bear bell on Lynette's pack. There is a famous free tea house on the route that we stopped at for a cuppa which is tended to by a friendly old Japanese man. We sat down and started to chat to two women who are also hiking who were from Brisbane (Wynnum and Kedron to be precise). The water on the ground next to the trough was frozen, and it was about here we started to notice frost on the ground.
We had an excellent recommendation from Ken for a lunch place called Otokichi for when we got to Tsumago which was located off the beaten path. Best $12 lunch ever of chicken tonkatsu (see photo). We then continued on to Nagiso with a quick stop walking up a hill to Tsumago Castle ruins, luckily for a nice view because castle ruins was poetic licence in the description.
In Nagiso, we walked across the Momosuke Bridge which is a 247m wooden suspension bridge. After a stroll around Nagiso, we went back to the railway station to await collection from our hostel. We decided we did not want to walk the very long uphill walk to the hostel in the mountains. They were running late, so we enjoyed another Japanese quirk and got a hot chocolate in a weird can/bottle from a vending machine for ¥180. The can was so hot it was almost impossible to hold when it came out. Very sweet, but we were starting to get chilly waiting outside, so it did the job to warm us up a wee bit.
The Yui-an Hostel is in a 250 year old restored farm house. We were greeted by Erika who is a delightful young lady who has a bubbly infectious personality. Lynette asked about bath etiquette so we were able to avoid all anxiety and both of us were bathed in a wooden tub and squeeky clean for dinner in the hostel. I will say dinner was a lot nicer at Ken san's, but the company was great with Erika and a young kid from Thailand who is hiking solo, so it more than made up for it. Tonight's room also has a new experience with coal filled bed warmers under our doonah. It is getting down to -3° tonight, so we hope to be nice and toasty. Another fabulous day.
Tomorrow we are being collected for a washi making workshop in an artisan village somewhere.En savoir plus
Kyoto to Magome-juku
9 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☀️ 8 °C
We started today with what turned out to be a progressive breakfast because we wanted espresso over drip filter coffee espresso coffee. The trick was to find somewhere that did both, which we didn't. But we did have a very expensive coffee in a very trendy looking cafe, before coming across a cafe for the rest of breakfast. Quick walk back to the hostel to pack our bags and we were off with fully laden backpacks for the first time (ie day bags packed inside). With the knowledge that we now had to hike with them today, our 12kg felt like 20kg all of a sudden.
We walked to the train station to catch a local train to Kyoto Station and then our first shinkansen to Nagoya and another local train to Nakatsugawa. All relatively straightforward, with just slight confusion navigating the exit from the Shinkansen and entry to next train using two different tickets and just one ticket machine. We asked a human and all was put right.
Shinkansen travel was speedy but not as remarkable as I had thought it might be. You get used to travelling several hundred kms per hour very quickly it seems. The guy we were sitting next to had the blinds down due to the sun position, so we didn't really have a good view of the world speeding by.
At Nakatsugawa we got directions from a helpful tourist information lady to the start of the walk and headed off on the first leg of our walk along the Nakasendo Way, the whole initial reason for this trip with Lynette in the first place.
For those who don't know and might be interested (skip this bit if not), the Nakasendo Way was a historic "Central Mountain Road" during Japan's Edo Period (1603-1868), one of the Gokaido (Five Routes) connecting the imperial capital Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo). Winding through mountainous central Japan, it featured 69 post towns (juku) for rest, attracting samurai, merchants, and pilgrims. Today, well-preserved sections, especially in the Kiso Valley (like between Magome and Tsumago), offer hikers a chance to walk cobblestone paths and experience traditional architecture, stepping back into old Japan (thanks Lynette for Googling that for me!)
The path took us from the centre of the old town (the original Nakatsugawa Juku) via a shopping centre to get lunch. I thought I would have three little chicken skewers. Gesticulated to the lady, she indicated they were all chicken. Great! I sat down to eat the then realised they were not breast or thigh, so I guess I ended up eating some other part of the chicken. Tasted like the mother lode of chicken liver pate on skewers, so very, very rich... But I made it to the end.
We set the officially set off on the hike with what ended up being quite a number of uphill bits. The first half was mostly through the edges of Nakatsugawa and then the through the adjoining town of Ochiai. Then we hit some actual forest and less populated areas, and more steep bits before heading down into Magome-Juku, our destination for today.
Of course, the uppy bits didn't end there, because once in the middle of town we had another 450m of very uphill path to get to our accommodation, Sakanomichi Hostel. That last hike was a bit of a struggle, but we made it in the end! I may have mentioned straws and camels a little too many times on that last 450m.
Today's walk was about 9 kms all up so a lot shorter than the last two days but, with about 12kg packs on and a lot of steep uppy bits it was not a walk in the park. We were thankful to reach the end.
We have certainly made the right choice in terms of time of year to come. The day was cool. But not freezing and we were literally the only people doing the walk. That might change tomorrow when we walk to Tsumago as that leg is the most popular...
Our hostel is new and the owner, Ken, is lovely and very helpful. He has even given us a bear bell to take on the next leg of our trip, as there has been a bear sighting a day or two ago. Ken worked for 5 years at the hostel we are staying at tomorrow night.
There are only five guestrooms in the house, with shared bathrooms and toilets. Our bedroom has given us our first experience of tatami flooring and futons, and it was all very comfortable. It was also our first real experience of taking slippers on and off in different parts of the house.
The hostel had a nice new bath so we decided to use that. Ken filled it, told us to give him 10 minutes... I then tittered off for my relaxing bath. Once I was immersed in 42°C of boiling hot bath, and had satisfied myself that my dermal layer had not in fact peeled off my body, I then realised that I had probably broken the rules of bathing. Once I got out of the bath I felt the need to "stage a shower" so it looked like I hadn't broken the rules in the shower room which is where I was supposed to clean myself before getting into said bath. It turned into quite an anxiety filled event, and in the end, Lynette decided to take a shower instead. We will try to do better tomorrow.
Dinner was chicken or vegetable curry and was hand made by Ken. It even had rice that was grown down the road by Ken in his own rice paddy!!! We also had mochi ice cream - beautiful.
We ended up chatting over dinner and for the next few hours to the only other couple staying here, who are from Belgium. Jella and Anshe. Anshe works for the Australian embassy in Brussels, so we had wide ranging conversations, and she told us she has a side project for repatriation of first nations objects from Belgium museums. They were a delight.En savoir plus
Osaka Fushimi Shrine and Gion District
8 décembre 2025, Japon ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C
We were determined not to walk anywhere near as much today as we did yesterday, with the reason being that we start our Nakasendo hike tomorrow so wanted to save our legs. Epic fail! We spent 12 hours out and about and walked 34,000 steps. Eeek.
We were up nice and early, heeding all advice that if you wish to avoid the crowds at the Fushimi Inari Taisha that you need to get there early. We decided to walk the 5km to get there, which was simply delightful in the quiet streets of Monday morning Kyoto. Still quite a crowd once we got to the Shrine site, but as soon as you peeled away to do the circuit walk to the top of Mt Inari it thinned out considerably and was quite peaceful.
We meandered through the thousands of vermillion tori gates, managing to catch a few snaps in the beginning which look like we had it to ourselves ( we didn't), but in fact once the influencer types gave up and you kept walking up to the top of Mt Inari, there were quite a few sections without many people which was lovely. On the way to the top we passed loads of beautiful family shrines, all the more gorgeous for their moss covering and forest settings.
There were a few spits of rain which also had the magical effect of clearing the crowds. It was 11.30am by the time we got back to the bottom, and since we were still sans breakfast and coffee, we stopped at a cafe called Vermillion. Lynette had read a blog recommending it (so influencers are useful for something right?). The owner was a local who had lived in Australia, so our avo on toast came with a smear of Vegemite, and they were determined to bring back espresso coffee. Best. Coffee. Beautiful cafe looking out over a lake.
Next stop was to walk to the Hanamikoji and Gion districts, famous for geisha. In Kyoto they are known as geiko and maiko (the apprentice geiko). This was all quite bustling. Our goal was to stay until sunset so we could see it lit up with lanterns. On the walk there we came across half a dozen true trainspotters perched up on a train overpass with gigantic lens cameras. We hung around to see what was the special train they were waiting for. Many trains came and went, they didn't snap any of them. So we continued on, none the wiser of the special train we were missing out on.
We accepted a suggestion from the lady out the front to visit the Gion Kagai Art Museum which included two dances from a geiko and maiko which are performed at a traditional tea ceremony. The museum was done extremely well. Very engaging. We sat inside on a tatami for about 45 minutes afterwards looking at the garden, doing a bit of stretching and enjoying the fact that we had our shoes off. Lynette spent some time finding a nearby masseuse, so we set off in search of that establishment. When we got there, the sign at the elevator said "men only" so we figured that was not the kind of place suitable for refined middle-aged ladies like us. By then we had our second wind anyway.
Dinner was at the first place we passed at the time we thought it was time to eat, which was a quirky place that sold only one meal of okonomiyaki (vegetarian option for Lynette). It was a strange place which played the one weird little song over and over, had lots of collections of figurines around the walls, and fully dressed mannequins sitting at several of the tables. Cheap and cheerful.
We wandered back through the district in twilight, no real-life geishas spotted, with a quick dash into UniQlo for Lynette to buy a couple of spare tshirts to end the day. OMG, so much cheaper here!
A physically exhausting but absolute highlight day!En savoir plus
VoyageurHappy New Year to you too. We were with Kate- in bed at 10 😬