Japan - Family, Tour and Friends

Almost 7 weeks ago (end of September), Murray and I flew into Narita, Japan for a 2.5 week visit. We planned to spend the first week with family, the second week on a tour, and the last few days with friends in Tokyo. 

My son Benn and his girlfriend Daina couldn't have been better guides for our first visit to Japan. They have been living in Narita for 2.5 years, flying for one of Japan's airline companies. By following their example, we became accustomed to the Japanese customs of greeting and thanking (including bowing), and after the first few days I was even able to ask for the bill (check) in Japanese!   
On our first night we were introduced to some of the local bars in Narita, and the following morning we visited a nearby temple and walked the street of a local village. We saw many unfamiliar sights, including a local eatery where live eels are beheaded and thinly filleted, threaded on wooden skewers, cooked on a grill, then served piping hot to customers. All of this is done in full view of passers by. 

Osaka

Next stop: Osaka. Funky bars and cafes were everywhere in the myriad of alleyways. What a buzz to visit here on a Friday night. We found a quaint little cafe on this canal, and enjoyed dining outside. A light rain started around 11pm as we sipped our mojitos, but it was gone by the time we wandered home an hour later. 

Under overcast skies, Daina navigated while Benn expertly maneuvered our rental car through the city highways and tolls and eventually reached my brother Chris and his wife Mandy's mountain retreat in Mori, about an hour south-west of Matsusaka. Soon after our arrival the clouds disappeared and we had a beautiful day to enjoy a delicious BBQ of famous Matsusaka beef - even more revered locally than the famous marbled Kobe Beef. Expertly cooked by Chris and ably assisted by Mandy.

After Benn and Chris took a board ride down the river, all 6 of us checked into a nearby resort for the night. We dressed up in our traditional robes (yukata) provided by the resort,  and sat down to a traditional Kaiseki dinner which included some seafood, Shabu Shabu (one pot cooking) of Matsusaka beef and a variety of vegetables. We were drinking lemon sours - a refreshing drink of Shochu (liquor made by fermenting grain or sweet potato) mixed with soda water with fresh lemon juice squeezed into it. See photo below.

Helped by a few alcoholic drinks to numb our prudishness, we made our way to the Onsen (thermal heated/communal bathing). Using the onsen is a very traditional form of bathing, and certain protocols are followed - thankfully we had Chris and Mandy to show us the ropes. At the onsen, males and females are segregated. On entry, you discard your slippers (provided in all hotel rooms in Japan), then move further inside where you discard your robe and undergarments and place them in cane baskets. All you have is a small white hand towel, sometimes called a modesty towel, which can be used like a fig leaf, until you get into the water - then it is kept high and dry ready for when you get out. Once disrobed, you enter the cleansing area where you sit at individual cleaning stations and body cleansing lotion is provided and you begin the cleansing ritual. Once cleansed you can enter any of the indoor heated pools. One pool has only thermal water, another has an electroplate at the base of the thermal pool, and the third pool had additional therapeutic minerals added to the water.  After you have spent time in the various indoor thermal pools, then it is time to move to the outside pool - the water here was even hotter, and I couldn't stay in it for more than a few minutes. When you are ready to leave, you return to the cleaning stations where you can rinse off and shampoo your hair. All body cleansing and shampoo lotions are provided at each station. Then you dry off and get dressed and you can enter another room that is set up with hair dryers. When it is cold and snowing outside, Onsens would be especially appealing, and at any time they are very relaxing and are a historic cultural tradition for Japanese people. 

Layout of Onsen showing entry, cleaning stations, indoor thermal spa

pool and outdoor thermal pool 

The next morning Chris and Mandy served up delicious scrambled egg, bacon, toast and coffee which we ate under their Sakura tree on a glorious morning. Fortified with breakfast, we said our goodbyes and drove to Nara which in the year 710, was the first permanent capital city of Japan.  We visited the Todaiji Temple, where deer roamed free. We cast our eyes over one of the largest buddha statues in the world. 

We caught the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Osaka to Hiroshima and toured the museum - a very sobering visit.  We stood on the outside of the Genbaku Dome, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the only building left standing after the atomic bomb destruction of August 1945. 

"Not only is it a stark and powerful symbol of the most destructive force ever created by humankind; it also expresses the hope for world peace and the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons. (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/775). 

From Hiroshima we caught a ferry across to the pretty island of Miyajima, reportedly one of the crown jewels of Japan. We walked around the island, and visited the Itsukushima Shrine with it's floating torii. This was the view from the restaurant where we stopped to have lunch. Beautiful 

During the first week Benn and Daina navigated us through the complex Japanese rail stations and their various networks. Our most enjoyable rail experience was travelling on the Shinkansen, also known as the bullet trail. Some of the trains can reach maximum speeds of 320 km/h (200 mph), although the ones we took were around the 300 kph mark. So quiet, so smooth and always on time. They run very frequently and are an efficient way to travel between the cities. We had one free day after Benn and Daina returned to work and before our official Japan tour began, so we caught two local trains to reach a bullet train station, and had an adventure on our own. We felt very proud of ourselves, and Benn said by undertaking and completing this task, we passed his course! Phew!

Our official tour was done through Japan Deluxe Tours, and it was a wonderful way to see parts of the country. We joined the tour in Osaka, and for the next 7 days we enjoyed the sights and commentary from our tour guide Hidesada Shimazaki, a Tokyo native. We learnt the different ways kimono's are worn and why, and visited many temples and shrines. It was refreshing to note the absence of graffiti, and the cleanliness of public toilets. 99% of toilets had heated seats and were fitted with bidet flush options. We got very spoilt. Only 2 or 3 times over the 2 weeks we didn't have the choice of a western toilet, and had to use the traditional Japanese toilet seen in the photo above left.

In the photo above and below you can see the early autumnal changes - so pretty.  

The countryside was so interesting - wherever there wasn't a building it seemed there was a rice field or some form of crop growing. Approximately 75% of Japan is made up of mountains, so any flat land needs to be cultivated to feed the 127 million inhabitants! Note that in each photo of the crops below, there is a backdrop of mountains. 

Japanese cuisine is varied and flavoursome. We tried many of the dishes and mostly enjoyed it all. The top photo of this collage was taken from our official tour banquet, introducing us to a typical Japanese formal dinner. I think their tempura vegetables were the best I have had. To complete our culinary experiences, we paid a visit to the famous Tokyo Market and sampled sashimi and sushi there - it is supposed to serve the freshest seafood in the world. Who could believe that raw fish could be delicious! The middle photo was taken at a noodle cafe near to where Benn and Daina live in Narita. We were taught the basics of noodle and soup ingestion! The bottom photo was taken on the last night of the tour - we joined a lovely couple from Brisbane and a delightful lady, a dermatologist from Geelong, and had a superb feast of Matsusaka beef and vegetables that we grilled at the table. 

Benn thought that a visit to Japan was not complete without participating in a karaoke session and a visit to the Robot Restaurant. Both outings were conducted late at night, and we got home after 1am. In fact, it was 3am one night. Not my usual 'modus operandi', but I must say, both outings were memorable! The lights, colours and decor of the Robot Restaurant were mind boggling, and the karaoke was a lot of fun. The lemon shochus helped!

Robot Restaurant

One of the bonuses of doing a tour is meeting other like-minded individuals and sometimes even developing lovely friendships. We made some delightful friends from our UK tour last year, and this year on the Japan tour we met a mother and son from USA and it has been great to keep in touch with Barb by playing Words With Friends and texts. Hopefully we'll get to catch up with her again, either in her part of the world, or in ours! Barb and her son Jake are in the photos on the left. 

The day our tour called into Mt Fuji, it was overcast, and we even had some rain. Consequently although we could see the mountain, the top third was covered by cloud. It had lightly snowed the night before with the first snow of the season - according to our guide, this first snowfall was 11 days later than usual. I wonder what this mean's for Japan's winter this year? A few days after our tour completed, our guide was going past Mt Fuji and took this photo. He gave me his permission to post it on the blog. Thanks Hide-san. 

In the year 1999 (yes, 16 years ago), I was fortunate to be selected for a 12 months course for Senior Military Officers. I have just watched one of our colleagues from the course giving a speech on TV in his role as the Chief of the Australian Air Force, and another of my illustrious colleagues is currently the Defence Attaché in Tokyo. Scoop and his wife Deb were also in the USA during my posting there in 2002 - 2003, and Deb gave us numerous shopping tips to get us in the groove. Sadly Deb was in Hiroshima with visiting family members while we were in Tokyo, so we didn't get to see her, but we had a very comfortable stay at their Embassy apartment. On both evenings of our stay there, we walked to the local area where Scoop introduced us to his favourite bars and eating haunts. He has totally embraced the Japanese culture and conversed readily in Japanese with the bar/restaurant staff. In my hand is a bottle of sparkling sake...another first!

As you can see from the map below, our travels kept us way south of the nuclear zone of Fukushima. What isn't shown on the map is our flight from Narita to Osaka. I ran out of time to do a separate overlay! If this blog didn't get done today, it would never get done! 

Ret's 60th Birthday in Sydney

Aunty Dympna, my sister Gemma and her husband Bill caught a train to Sydney recently to join with other family and friends to celebrate my youngest sister Loretta (Ret's) 60th birthday. Murray drove down separately and caught up with an ex-RAAF colleague and played a few games of golf over several days. It was a small interlude that distracted Murray briefly from his grief at the loss of his eldest son Jeremy, who died suddenly the night before we returned from the USA. I don't think anyone can ever get over losing a child - it will be more a matter of coming to terms with the reality of not having Jeremy at the other end of the phone, and him not being in Melbourne when Murray goes down to visit. 

Dympna and I honing our rummicub skills on the train!

Ret's son Peter and his wife Sam threw a wonderful party for 30 of Ret's family and friends and it was especially great to catch up with our cousin Margie and her daughter Rosie. Sadly Margie was at the funeral for her husband Maurie the same day that we attended Jeremy's farewell. It was a great opportunity to catch up with several other friends of Ret's that I hadn't seen for years. 

My brother Tony, sisters Gemma and Ret (holding her grandson Noah), cousin Margie, Aunt Dympna and me at the pharty

Murray Trish and Ret

Sydney was as beautiful a city as ever. On the day after Ret's birthday party, Gemma's daughter Claire and her husband Al (who had flown down from Brisbane for the party) arranged breakfast for us at the swish Dunbar House at Watson's Bay, before we all caught a ferry back to Sydney Harbour. We had a 2km walk back to our accommodation, and as luck would have it, the halfway point happened to be the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place - this was where 2 females hostages lost their lives during a siege in December 2014 - the lone gunman also died in the siege. We called in and conducted taste tests on the hot chocolate and some delicious treats. 

A bit of cloud cover to dim the view of the Opera House as we came into the Harbour

After Mass on Sunday we had a foray to the famous Paddy's Markets - several floors of stalls with very attractive goods at low prices. We spent several hours getting lost in the numerous aisles! What a buzz! You can see Gemma is having a wow of a time. It sure was a lot of fun.

We bumped into Ret and Pete as we were heading to the Manly Ferry 

Panorama of beautiful Manly Beach

Nothing beats fish and chips on the Corso at Manly (except gelato afterwards!)

Murray and I no sooner got back to Ballina and emptied out our suitcases before it was time to pack them again ready for our trip to visit family and friends in Japan. We had booked and paid for this trip before we left for the USA, and the trip has seemed so far away. Now I can't believe that we fly out tomorrow...keen to see your smiling face waiting at the airport Daina!

RV Sold - The End of an Era

Nine years in a row we have camped in this site (or one nearby) on beautiful Audubon Lake in North Dakota. We have met some great locals here over the years, and we have enjoyed returning each year to visit them. However, 'the time has come, the walrus said', and we realised that we needed to sell our RV to enable us to pursue travels to Europe and the UK in the coming years. We know we will miss our American friends, so I can see us returning to the USA at various times in the future. 

Once we all got together at the lake, it was only to be expected that the dominoes would come out - we really enjoy playing together as it gives us a chance to catch up, and also gives Milt a chance to 'go out' 8 games in a  row!!

Nancy and I at the Hawaiian party in 2008

We had paid the campground up until Sunday 28th July, but at the end of last week, Nancy and Laurance, friends we met at their Hawaiian party during our second year camping at Audubon (2008), saw our 'For Sale' sign and mentioned it to their son Mike and his wife Talesha. They have 5 children and had been looking for an RV for a few years. On Monday, Nancy and Laurance brought out Mike and Talesha to look at the RV The next day, Tuesday, they brought out a cheque to pay for it. Done deal. By 5 pm Wednesday we had cleared out of the RV and moved into a hotel, as they wanted to take their new RV camping on Thursday. Phew. It was as big a move for us as it was for them - 9 years of living to clear out of the RV for us, and shop and pack up for their family for Mike and Talesha! But we did it. Whoo hoo.

Second last dusk in the RV

Thankfully this storm shed just pea-sized hail

So 9 years after Murray got handed the keys from Lazy Days salesman Rod, it was time for Murray to hand the keys over to the new owners.

Murray with Talesha and Mike

Mike driving off in his new RV

Before we knew it, it was time to farewell our North Dakota friends. We had a night out with Avalyn, Wes, Kathy and Milt, but sadly Frieda, Lenny and Irene were not able to make it. Frieda was in hospital and Irene was on a Mary Kay weekend in Dallas. Our ranch friends were busy winning the Reserve Champion prize for their steer at the North Dakota State Fair. Congratulations Taylor, and team Filipek. 

Before we said our final goodbyes to Kathy and Milt, we went over and caught up with her mother Helen, sister Carrie, and niece Hannah. I  showed them this beautiful red cardinal fleece that Kathy had made for me for my birthday. How special is that! She arranged to have it made in Florida while she was down there, and brought it back up to North Dakota for me. Thanks very much Kathy and Milt - it will be with me until my end!

It was likely to happen - we had one suitcase of 'stuff' too much, and some fishing rods that we physically could not take home with us. We arranged with Avalyn and Wes to store the items at their home, and we called out there today to say our goodbyes, and leave proof that we intended to return! While we were there we visited Wes's son Rick and his wife Janet next door. They have created the 'Apple Creek Winery' and hold tastings at their newly built facility. Janet took us on a tour of the winery tasting room and the 'distillery'. They donate 100% of the proceeds to a local charity. What an amazing contribution to make to their local community.

Raccoon Hunting Dogs

After touring the winery we visited Rick's hunting dogs (he takes them 'coon hunting). Before you get upset, the dogs hunt the raccoon until it runs up a tree, and then Rick pulls them back and starts a new hunt. No raccoons are harmed in the process (well, if they are, it is a very rare occurrence). Their little dog house is heated, so nice and cosy for them in the winter when there is snow all around.

Tomorrow we drive to Omaha, Nebraska in a rental car. Our RVing days may be over, but we have 9 years of fabulous memories to fall back on. Thankfully I can pull up the blog at any time and re-live our RV adventures at any time. Farewell North Dakota - for now!

Jen and Pete Visit USA 2015 - Part 2

The Duluth waterfront on Lake Superior, Minnesota was a flurry of activity during our visit on July 3rd, the day before American Independence Day. Everything was getting set up for the big event (fireworks, bands etc) the next day. The Aerial Lift Bridge in this photo is the major landmark in Duluth. The bridge can be raised to its full height of 135 feet in about a minute, and is raised approximately five thousand times per year. We watched it lift up (counterweights on either side) to allow boats to pass under, and then minutes later be back to allowing cars and pedestrians to cross over it. We chose to walk under it instead. The photo on top right is us after walking under it to the other side. The photo on the bottom right shows people out and about at dusk - taking horse carriage rides, riding dual-pedal cycles, walking dogs and with the backdrop of the downtown buildings on Lake Superior. 

The Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior is considered to be one of the prettiest in the US. It was a grey day when we visited, so the photos weren't fabulous. Unlike our visit to a Christmas Shop nearby - always a fun visit! But for a taste sensation, on the recommendation of my friend Andrea, we visited Betty's Pie - what a popular place that was! The pies were amazing - although a tad rich for our Aussie palates. Murray took a photo of Jen, Peter and I climbing on these huge Adirondack chairs. I still laugh when I see this photo - reminds me of how silly we must have looked up there!

On our last day in Duluth, we took a drive up to visit the Enger tower built to honour a Norwegian immigrant who left a huge part of his estate to the city of Duluth - including the beautiful golf course that Murray and Peter played on one day. It gave a nice view over Lake Superior (pity about the fog) and it had a pretty Japanese garden. We thought of you Chris and Mandy. 

During their trip we had several campfires - some a bit smokey, but worth it! We toasted marshmallows, threw our peanut shells into the fire and generally enjoyed the ambiance. Sometimes we ate out, and other times we ate at the RV site. The weather was obliging.

After we left Duluth, we drove to check out the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Nowhere near as majestic as how she looks at St Louis, Vicksburg, or Memphis, or where she meets the Gulf of Mexico in New Orleans, but special just the same! 

After 2.5 weeks of RVing we arrived in North Dakota - Jenny and Peter's final destination before flying back home to Australia. Our visit to the Badlands was fantastic. Such an impressive landscape - my photos just do not do it justice. Peter and Murray played golf on the picturesque Bully Pulpit Golf Course in the Badlands, while Jen and I drove the 60 km (36 mile) loop of the Theodore Roosevelt NP - we stopped along the way to watch the prairie dogs, check out the bison and wild horses, and just absorb the view. It took us 2 hours to drive the loop, and we could have spent a lot longer, but we knew we needed time to check out the shops in town before the guys rang us to pick them up after golf! 

Albino bison, stag, yellow finches and a prairie dog

We had an opportunity to introduce them to some of our North Dakota friends at a steakhouse at nearby Mandan, just over the Missouri River from Bismarck where we were staying. 

Roy Rogers, Irene, Wes, Avalyn, Milt, Kathy, Jenny, Peter, John Wayne, Trish, Murray 

On Jenny and Peter's last night, we drove out to Clint and Amanda's ranch, about an hour NE of Bismarck. Amanda had marinated some beef from one of their own steers, and she also marinated some chicken. Clint cooked them on skewers on the BBQ. It was very hot when we arrived, but it soon cooled down enough to sit outside, but still too hot for a campfire. It was great to see their four daughters, Taylor, Hayley, Emilie and Macey, and meet Amanda's mum Cheryl who was visiting fro Tasmania. Hayley took Jen and I for a ride on the four wheeler to get some sunset photos, while Clint drove Peter and Murray to a nearby field to take dinner to two neighbours cutting hay. The neighbours had to keep working to get the hay baled before it rained - we left the ranch about 10 pm, and the neighbours were still out in the fields working under lights. We got Jenny and Peter back to their hotel just before 11pm. A late night for all! 

It may not look like much of a distance on the map, but during this RV trip Jenny and Peter passed through 10 US States including Washington DC, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and travelled over 3218 km (2000 miles). Not bad for a 20 day road trip! We thoroughly enjoyed showing them the USA through our eyes. 

Over 2000 Miles (3218 km) and 10 US States