11/8 - Which way to the train station?

All right.  H here.  I don't know what I was thinking, but I decided not to follow the map as outlined on our Kansai Thru Pass.  We were on our way from Nara to Uji, but I saw that there was at least two transfers according to the Thru Pass Map.  However, I had seen on a different map somewhere that a station on the Kyoto-Nara Line was walking distance to a station on the Uji Line.  So why bother transfering twice when we could just transfer once with a small walk.

Hm.  Wrong decision.  We got off at Momoyamagoryo-mae Station on the blue line above.  According to the map, like on Google Maps below, it looked fairly close to walk to Kangetsukyo Station, but boy was it hard to figure out where the station was while on the ground.  No wonder the Thru Pass Map makes it look like it was really far.

We got out of Momoyama Goryomae station and walked east towards the main road.  However, that's where I couldn't figure out if I had gotten to the correct road or not.  So I decided to keep walking.  I found a set of train tracks thinking that it was our desired station.  However, I noticed that it was JR train station.  We weren't planning to travel on a JR train, so this was totally the wrong train station.  We would have had to pay extra if we hopped on a JR train today.

We double backed to the main road.  Road signs are so hard to read sometimes in Japan.  The road name on the map didn't correspond to the name on the street sign.  But this was the only main road, so we started to walk south.  There weren't many stores and the afternoon sun was beating down on us.  So needless to say, it was sunny and warm and I was anxious to find this station.

The busy road made it's way down the hill, but I still couldn't see the station.  I was starting to wonder if we were going the right direction.  When I finally saw a train running right beside a perpendicular road at the bottom of the hill, I felt we had found our desired station.  As we got closer, we could finally make out the station sign - Kangetsukyo.  Phew.

We crossed the busy intersection and we made our way into the station.  Double checked that we were on the correct platform (a very important detail) and waited for our train to Uji.

After an unexpected midday hike under the afternoon sun, we were really hungry.  Next station - Lunch!

11/8 - Nara, the ancient capital

This day we were heading out early to get more out of our Kansai Thru Pass.  We weren't originally planning to head out to the city of Nara.  However, since we had an extra day left on our Pass and since we had extended our stay an extra two days, we decided to make the most of it by visiting Nara and Uji.

That morning, we headed for breakfast at Matsuya again.  I'm starting to tire of this fast food breakfast, but it is admittedly a quick and filling meal. Then we hopped onto the subway station for one stop to Namba station and then made a transfer to a Kintetsu train bound for Nara's Kintetsu station.

It still amazes me how close all these cities are.  The ride to Nara was a very quick half-hour ride on a comfy Kintetsu train.  It was a Sunday and the train was not any slower than any other day as far as I could tell.  The Kintetsu to Nara runs mostly underground through Osaka, but it comes up to the surface in further reaches of the eastern part of town.  Then it makes a turn northwards in a residential district as it scales up a hill towards a mountain tunnel.  As the train briefly travels up the hill, you can look back at the towers of Osaka's city centre in the west.  It looks pretty far away, but it's only been about 15 minutes from the time we boarded back at Namba.

The train made its way through the mountain range and exited on the other side.  After being on this train for quite a while, I started to notice there were a lot of school age boys on the train this morning.  Many of them were wearing the exact same athletic wear, which suggested to me that they were all from the same school.  Station after station, a couple more boys with the same track suit would board the train.  Plus, all of them were on their portable gaming systems.  It made me wonder if they were already playing wirelessly with each other before meeting up on the train.

We arrived in the ancient city of Nara and made our way to the large giant city park just east of the Kintetsu Nara station.  The very first thing we noticed were all the deer inhabiting the city.  This must be the largest collection of semi-domesticated deer in the whole world.  Obviously, being the good tourists we are, we took gobs of photos of the giant rodentia and even bought the deer snacks from the streetside vendors.  These deer can be pretty aggressive.  N had a few surrounding her and one or two nudging her from behind.  Thankfully, it looks like all the deer have their horns trimmed right down to prevent unnecessary gouging.

We kept walking deeper and deeper into the park and there were more and more deer everywhere.  There were sleepy deer who must have had enough food from tourists for the day.  There were deer standing in the middle of the road waiting for cyclists and vehicles to go around them.  There was one deer lapping up water in a tiny stream by one of the temples.  Then my favourite deer of all was the iron-deficient deer who was chewing on the tough metal chain-links of a fence.  Mmm...tasty...

Our first big destination of the day was Todai-ji [東大寺].  This is the largest wooden structure in the world which also houses the largest statue of Buddha.  What is even more amazing is that the temple is only a reconstruction of what was an even larger original wooden structure.  The current great hall of Todai-ji is actually 30% smaller than its predecessor!  The original building must have been even more impressive.

Just behind the giant Buddha statue is a giant wooden column with a hole at the bottom.  The hole is apparently the same size as Buddha's nostril.  Apparently, the belief is that those who can squeeze through this hole, a representation of Buddha's nostril, then you will attain enlightenment.  Well, we came all this way, so we couldn't pass up this opportunity.  However, it was a lot more fun to watch people trying to squeeze through than it was actually doing it.  I actually had to go through twice because N's camera didn't work the first time around so I lined up again.  Does that make me doubly enlightened or did the second time around nullify my enlightenment?

What was even more fun was a Japanese motorcyclists who tried to squeeze through.  First of all, he was still wearing his bulking riding pants complete with buckles.  Second, it looked like he had contorted his body the wrong way in order to pass through.  My, was he ever stuck in that hole or what?  A tourist complete with netbook and webcam saw the proceedings and recorded everything directly onto his hard drive.  I don't think the guy ever made in the end after two attempts.  To add salt to his wounded pride, a little kid went right after him with no difficulty whatsoever.  Everyone had a good laugh at the biker's expense.

After Todai-ji, we walked a long walk towards Kasuga Taisha [春日大社].  This is probably the most important Shinto shrine in Nara.  It was really busy this Sunday because many families had brought their children for the 3-5-7 celebrations.  So many well dressed families in Western and traditional garb.  Some of the kids' clothing were hybrid traditional Japanese and Western dress.  We thought about exploring the deep interior of this shrine, but decided against it when we saw the crowds and thought it was enough to just see the outside and part of entrance area.  It was just fun people watching Japanese families during this time of ritual.

We head back down towards the train station, but not before passing through a lane lined with stone lanterns on either side.  Many a deer were poking their heads out in between the lanterns.  Cute little rascals when they leave me alone.  I guess as long as I'm not feeding them, I'm not getting tugged on and nudged at.  The stone lanterns were quite impressive and some of them had characters engraved on them.  I got the impression that the characters were usually the names of people who had perhaps donated to erecting these stone lanterns.  I think a few of the lanterns even had corporate sponsors from the looks of it.

We took a different road back to the train station and happened upon a little market area.  I suspect we had come across the northern section of the Naramachi shopping area.  There were a lot of folks milling about on this Sunday morning.  So we could resist grabbing a little something to eat while in this area.  We lined up for a little green tea mochi snack with a peanut type powder sprinkled over it.  Tasty little treat to hit the spot for our next leg of travel.   It wasn't quite lunch time yet so we thought we would wait until Uji before eating.  You'll find out why maybe we should ate first in our next post.  Mostly H's fault this time.

Kansai - Preparing to go

Hi, H writing here.

Welcome to N and H's travel blog of our recent 12-day trip to the Kansai region of Japan.  If you have not heard about the Kansai region of Japan, then you're missing out. Kansai is an area in West Japan that is centred around the city of Osaka. It also includes the ancient Japanese capitals of Nara and Kyoto. So there is a lot of history in this area of Japan.  Osaka is also famous for its variety of different food.  So Kansai is a very exciting destination for history buffs and food buffs alike.

We had a lot of work to do before flying off on our vacation.  N did the majority of the research and bookings because we used mostly Chinese and Japanese resources to plan our trip.  So all the kudos have to go to her for the planning.

We love flying Japan Airlines when going to Japan and sought out a travel agency that works with JAL. We found a Vancouver-Osaka package at Silkway Travel for about C$989. After all the extra charges and tax, the final cost was roughly C$1,100 per person for round-trip airfare and 3 nights hotel in Osaka.

However, after our last trip in 2006 to Tokyo, we knew that 3 nights and 4 days would not be enough to experience Japan. So we decided to tack on a lot more days. That way, we would be able to enjoy Japan on our terms and at our pace.

We definitely avoided signing up for any tours. We don't like being herded around from site to site at the direction of a guide.  We purchased a few books to help us on our travels.  Three of the books were in Traditional Chinese.  There was one book that we relied on the most.  It's this pink one shown below.

Sky Publishing HK(Chang Kong Chu Ban) is a popular publisher of trip guides for those who read Traditional Chinese.  The back of the book comes with many testimonies of Hong Kong celebrities.  The one above is actually newer than the copy we had.  We had the 08-09 edition.  There is a newer one available from YesAsia.com that is the 09-10 edition, or you could buy it at the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Seattle like we did.  The Chinese language travel books tend to be more focused on playing, eating and shopping.  Major historic sites are always mentioned, but some of the lesser known sights and museums are often left out.  One great thing about the Chinese travel books, though, is that they have tons of pictures in tons of colour.  You just have to know how to read it.  N is fluent in Chinese and I can read all the location names quite easily.  What's harder for me is reading the descriptions.  I can slog through some of it, but I don't understand everything.

I don't read Chinese as well as English and I wanted to have more a list of historic sites and museums, so I bought a couple of books myself.

Lonely Planet publishes tons of travel guides and thankfully, they had a Kyoto City Guide.  Unfortunately, the only other Japanese City Guide from Lonely Planet is Tokyo.  The Kyoto City Guide is almost strictly focused on Kyoto and its neighbourhoods.  Osaka and some of the neighbouring cities are mentioned in a handful of pages and lacks detail about those places.  There are very few colour pictures, but has a more extensive listing of historic sites and museums that would interest travellers from Western countries more.  One huge limitation of the Lonely Planet guide, though, is that they did not print the Japanese names along with the English place names except on the map legends.  So I had to keep flipping through the pages to match up the Japanese and English names.

I also got another book from Sophia Books on West Hastings (Sophia Books specializes in foreign language books).  Kyoto: Introduced in English & Japanese is a bilingual book printed in Japan, so it was an expensive purchase.  As a travel book, it's not all that useful.  However, it was good for reading up more on the cultural aspects of Kyoto including the difference between the shrines and temples.  It was all in brilliant colour, but perhaps it would have been better if I could have borrowed it from the library instead.  Out of all the books we had, I must say like the maps in this one the best.  Probably because the maps were bilingual in English and Japanese.  Some times I find it easier to know the Kanji name of a place.  Places often only display their names in Japanese and not English. 

We also had to find extra accommodation above and beyond the 3 nights packaged with our airfare.  My wife discovered the Japanese version of hotels.com, Jalan.net, through Chinese travel blogs.  Jalan.net assumes you know a lot of Japanese.  My wife has been learning Japanese, so she ventured on the site and found rooms at a central hotel for 7,300 Yen a night.  That's about C$80 a night.  When I checked hotel.com and other travel sites, the same hotel room was going for over US$100 a night.  So Jalan.net was great, but only because N managed to understand most of the Japanese on the site.

Just before flying off, I also came across a English version of Jalan.net.  Japanican.com is all English and would have been easier for me to book a hotel room if needed.  But since everything was already set by the time I found the site, I did not find use for it.

So we had our air tickets and our rooms all set.  We just had to figure out how to get around.  That was easier said than done, but N did a great job figuring out how to maximize the special tourist passes in Kansai.

to be continued...