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!