11/7 - Evening in Dotonbori

After an afternoon break back at the hotel, we headed back out into the town.  A great area just hang around at night would be Dotonbori [道頓堀].  It's at the southern end of the Shinsaibashi-suji shopping arcade.  You know you've reached Dotonbori when you see all the bright lights and giant neon advertisements lined up right next to the tiny river.

However, our highlight tonight was not the touristy stuff, but our dinner.  We found an okonomiyaki restaurant that was recommended by one of N's travel books.  To a foreigner, you probably wouldn't pick this restaurant out except for the crowd lining outside the door.  At first, I thought the restaurant was really tiny with only 10 seats right up against the cooking area.  The cooks literally cook the okonomiyaki on the giant flat grills right in front of you.  It's pretty neat to see it all, and to smell it all.

Originally, I thought the staff were trying to tell us that the wait would be another 1.5 hours and were asking us to come back.  However, as we were making our way out of the restaurant, the server rushed out and grabbed us and redirected us upstairs.  Upstairs?  I didn't realize there was an upstairs here.  Upstairs actually had tables with mini-grills in the middle.  Good thing the server came out to grab us; otherwise, we would've missed this great meal.

I felt that the occasion called for a glass of local brew.  Yebisu was the brand they were pedalling so I decided to partake in it.  It was a light lager type of beer, but it was pretty tasty.  I'm not a huge light beer fan, but this one was definitely a good one.  We ordered a set meal consisting of two mini-okonomiyakis and one regular, larger okonomiyaki.

After dinner, there was a really long line up.  We were glad that we had gotten a littler early to the restaurant.  Otherwise, we'd really be waiting 1.5 hours for dinner.  We went back to the Dotonbori Bridge and took in the giant adverts.  Even if you don't plan on spending any money, it's great just to stand and bask in the glow of the commercial lights and watch tourists pose as their favourite snack brand athlete, the Glico Man.

The bright Dotonbori River lights are not the only draw on this stretch.  There's also many larger than life store signs along the pedestrian walk that is directly south of the river and runs parallel to the river.  Right on the corner of the pedestrian walk and the Dotonbori bridge is a giant crab.  It simply dominates this particular corner.  Obviously, the restaurant on which this sign resides sells crab for dinner.  Go figure.

A little further down, there is a variety of other signs.  There's the Red Devil Takoyaki stand complete with red demons adorning the whole front.  There's a giant lit up puffer fish with giant "fugu" hiragana letters noting the presence of a fugu restaurant.  (Every year, a handful of people die eating the poisonous puffer fish).  There's also a Dotonbori icon that looks like a Japanese man with thick round glasses wearing a clown suit decked out in American colours.  A famous landmark and icon to Japanese, but it's not really accessible to those who do not speak Japanese.

We then headed back to river and walked along the quieter riverwalk.  There was a lot less activity here. There was a giant vertical ferris wheel that wasn't in service, but was definitely lit up in bright neon colours.  Even the main Dotonbori bridge had a touch of light built in underneath the span.

Again, just walking around Dotonbori is nice enough.  You don't even have to really buy anything.  We had walked across to the other side of the river to get back to Shinsaibashi-suji.  However, we soon realized that we were in sort of a red light/night club area.  Oops.  Always be careful where you walk off to, I guess.  Japan is a fairly safe country to walk around, but you likely still want to avoid the shadier areas of town.

11/7 - Morning in the Market and an Hour in the Bookstore

After running around Kansai for the first few days since we arrived in Japan, it was finally time to have bit of down time and just hang around Osaka itself. We were back again at the Hearton Hotel Shinsaibashi which is very central and within steps of many major shopping areas.  Today was just a day to walk around and explore the areas around the hotel.

First of all, we slept in this morning.  That was a nice change of pace from our frantic scurrying around of the first few days.  Our first stop of the day was the Kuromon [黒門] Market.  There were lots of fish and veggie stands in this market.  We decided to wander, but my morning hunger was starting to make me "hangry".  So I grabbed a quick snack first.  A small doughnut vendor was making fresh doughnuts right in the market.  It was really fluffy tasting and not too sweet.  I really liked it.  I'd say I would prefer this doughnut over a really sweet Tim Horton's donut.

N's hunger finally started to kick in and we found ourselves in a little seafood place that catered to tourists who wanted to sit down and eat in the market.  From listening to all the guests seated around us, it became quickly obvious that everyone here was Chinese.  There was a quartet of Taiwanese tourists, a group of 8 really boisterous and excitable middle-aged Hong Kong ladies, and two younger Hong Kong women.  The two younger ladies vacated their seats for us.  The middle-aged Hong Kong ladies were definitely the loudest.  For every bit of seafood, they were loudly "oohing" and "awing".  It was pretty funny.  But most Japanese are not so loud, so they really stuck out like a sore thumb.

For our food, we had unagi and rice, sashimi and uni (sea urchin).  I don't think I've ever had so much seafood for breakfast.  First the Arima Onsen breakfast and now this one.  Decadent.

After finishing breakfast, we headed down to a shopping area known as Sennichimae　[千日前].  One small and tight shopping street in Sennichimae is not your usual tourist attraction.  However, it may be of interest to those who like something ordinary, yet different.  This street specializes in kitchen and restaurant supplies.  Some shops were wholesalers for giant grills and ovens.  Some shops sold tableware.  Some shops specialized in selling different sorts of restaurant uniforms.  It was especially interesting to see some of the traditional Japanese style restaurant clothing that they had for sale.

Further south past Senichimae, we came across a large bookstore.  The bookstore was directly across from a large comedy theatre.  Apparently, this theatre is famous to the locals and Japanese tourists, but it would be useless for us to make a visit to watch Japanese comedy - way over our heads.  The bookstore, on the other hand, kept us occupied for at least an hour.  N was looking at the manga of one Takagi Naoko [高木直子].  She spend quite a bit of time debating whether to buy a couple copies of her books or not.  I was over in the train section. Japanese bookstores literally have a whole bookshelf dedicated to books and mags about their trains.  It's pretty impressive if you're a train fan.

Today, however, what caught my eye was a magazine with a box attached to it.  At first I wasn't sure what this mag+box combo was.  Then I started to realize that there was a DIY camera inside the box.  It was an old style Twin Lens Reflex camera.  This was tres cool, I though.  I looked at the price and it was only ¥2500.  For about CAD$25-30, I thought this was worth the cost.  My only concern when I picked up the mag+box was how to fit it into my luggage.  But what a find!

Travel Day(s) - flying into Osaka

H blogging here.

November 1st was our travel day.  We had our passports in hand, travel medical insurance covered, and I had 4 immunization shots two days beforehand. (NB: do not wait until the last moment to get immunized; very bad on my part).  I had a mild fever right after my shots, but thankfully I was fine on the day before because packing was not done yet.

On the day of our departure, we got to the airport and checked in.  The line was longer than we thought for 3 hours before boarding time.  The flight was full of people bound for different destinations.  It was obvious that some people were just laying over in Tokyo to go to Hong Kong or India.

So once we checked in our luggage and got our boarding passes, we did a very Chinese thing.  We went for dim sum with our family.  Because heaven forbid that an airline would properly feed you.  I guess this is all part of the trip experience, even if it is in Richmond.  The dim sum place opened up at 9:30am and we were there when they unlocked the doors.  After stuffing ourselves with dim sum.  We were dropped off at the airport.  We went through security without a hitch and were soon whisked away into the wild blue yonder with Japan Airlines.

Our flight was bound for Tokyo's Narita International Airport.  We had to fly through Tokyo because JAL no longer offers direct flights from Vancouver to Kansai International Airport, aka KIX.  One person told me that the landing fees were quite expensive for KIX and most airlines would avoid that airport if possible.  Also, the Kansai Airport is much further out of town than the smaller Osaka Airport.  So our itinerary had us fly into Tokyo's Narita International Airport, then catch a connecting JAL Express flight from Narita to Osaka's Itami Airport.

[Side note about Kansai International - the airport is built on a man-made island and sinks a meter or two every year because of the weight of the structure.]

Our flight was just under 10 hours from Vancouver to Tokyo.  I normally do not sleep well on planes, so I usually end up watching the movies or reading the paper to pass the time.  I watched two pretty good Japanese movies on the plane.  One was called The Taste of Fish about a successful worker from a trading company who discovers a new life helping out his girlfriend's father's business in the world's largest fish market, Tsukiji.  The other was Summit: A Chronicle of Stones to Serenity.  It was about a team of early 20th century cartographers from the Japanese army who set out to map and ascend to the top of Mount Tsurugidake.  Both were interesting films.  The Taste of Fish was light and comical.  Not surprising since the movie is based on a manga.  Summit was a very serious drama about how the explorers braved the elements to map an entire mountain range and attempt to climb to the top of the unclimbable Mount Tsurugidake.  I was on Japan Airlines, so I might as well watch the local cinema.

We landed about 20 minutes ahead of schedule in Tokyo.  We had to disembark and go through customs.  After customs, we went to collect our luggage from the carousel.  Once we got our luggage, we quickly found the domestic check-in to go to Osaka.  The lady at the desk offered us a couple of seats on an earlier flight. We were ecstatic about getting to Osaka earlier and took the offer.  However, the flight was to take off in 30 minutes.  We had to go back through security.  Unfortunately, they only had one line open for security for domestic flights.  Our 30 minutes soon whittled down to 10 minutes to take off by the time we got through security.  We rushed to our gate.  I don't know if you have had this experience, but my flights always seem to be parked at the furthest, or next to furthest, gates in the airport.  Most of the plane had boarded already, but thankfully there was a half-dozen of us rushing down the hall to get to the flight.  So we didn't feel so bad about being stragglers because there were so many of us.

Once on the plane, we took off for Osaka.  It was a short 1 hour flight and my flight fatigue was definitely starting to hit.  I think I managed a wink or two on this quick flight.  But it was up and down with one drink service.  It was sort of like the Vancouver to Calgary flight.

We arrived in Osaka on very blustery Monday evening.  We had left on a Sunday morning and lost a day after crossing the International Date Line.  It was really, really windy.  I was happy that I had two layers of clothes and three layers of jackets with me to bulk up. Even then, I was still feeling the chill.  Mind you, I do get the chill easily.   Did I say it was really windy?

Before leaving the airport, we remembered to get the Kansai Thru Pass from the info desk.  We wouldn't need it right away, but there aren't too many places that sell the pass.  After getting our passes, we exited the terminal and found our way to the elevated Osaka Airport Monorail Station.  We bought our ubiquitously tiny Japanese transit tickets and waited for the train. We were excited to be in Japan, but I was feeling a bit of the exhaustion.  However, I had my SLR camera out like the good photog I'm supposed to be.  I snapped photos of the platform and the signs.

 

The announcement for the next train was broadcast.  Then low and behold, a PINK monorail car glided into the station.  I was not expecting my first ride in Osaka to be a pink train, but it was all good.  I madly snapped shots of the train, but I had my 35mm fixed lens on and could not get a shot of the whole train as it entered the station.  Once on the train, we instantly soaked in the warmth.  I snapped a shot of the interior.  That instantly caught the attention of the locals.  They must have been thinking "Gaikakujin," or foreigner.  Perhaps it's the same thing we think when we see Japanese tourists in town.  I didn't really like the attention so I put my camera away.

 

We took the monorail about 4 stations to Senri-Chuo station.  We offloaded with our luggage in tow.  The connecting subway station was apparently across the street in the very bottom level of a shopping complex.  We were happily dragging our luggage along and making the easy descent down a series of escalators until there were no more escalators on the last section down to the subway mezzanine level.

We ended up manually taking our ~20 kilo pieces of luggage down the stairs.  No wonder I always put out my back, alignment, and shoulders after a trip to Asia.  Where have all the escalators gone?  Thankfully from the mezzanine down to the platform, there was an elevator.  We definitely took advantage of that.

Senri-chuo is the northern terminus station for the Osaka Municipal Subway's Midosuji Line.  We were bound for Shinsaibashi Station in the middle of town and many stations away.  I don't really remember how long the ride to Shinsaibashi was.  It must have been a mix of the elation of being in Japan and the exhaustion of the long flight to Japan.

Once we got to Shinsaibashi Station, we ran into the same problem with stairs.  There just weren't obvious signs of where the closest elevators or escalators were.  So we ended up pulling our luggagge up the stairs step-by-painful-step.   Luckily, the very last ascent had an elevator available to take us to street level.

Before flying to Japan, we had taken a virtual walk of the area to figure out where our hotel was.  I remembered that we had a McDonald's nearby.  So we walked down the main stretch until we saw a McDonald's.  I thought we were right around the corner from the McD's.  Unfortunately, the McD's was actually a block further than our hotel.  So we had walked to far.  What I forgot was that Google Street showed that there was a Kate Spade New York store directly across from our hotel.  If I had remembered that, we probably wouldn't have done a loop around.  At least, the block wasn't too big.

Kansai - planning to get around

H continuing the blog here...

One of the hardest things about travelling in a foreign country is figuring out what the best way to get around is.  When I looked initially at the transportation maps for Osaka and the surrounding Kansai region, my eyes just boggled.  It looked like a tangle mess of coloured lines running in every direction, with a minor exception of a nice big circular loop line in Osaka.  Needless to say, we needed planning.

One of the things about most transit systems in Asia is that you pay per ride and you pay by distance.  So finding the cheapest ride is not necessarily the fastest ride.  Ideally, we needed to have as little transfers as possible, so finding direct routes is best.  The other major wrinkle is that there are at least 7 different train companies running in the region in and around Osaka.  So once you change from one company to another, you have to pay again.

N did a lot of calculations and recalculations about what combinations would give us the best bang for our buck.  She really poured over the different websites and entered different permutations in a spreadsheet.  She even had to go into the Japanese side of many websites to access trip fare calculators to see what a trip would cost.  I'm very thankful that she has more of a mind for math than I do.

One thing that a lot of people buy before heading to Japan is a JR Rail Pass.  However, we weren't planning to travel outside of the Kansai area and we weren't going to be riding the Shinkansen.  So the JR Rail Pass looked like a waste of money for us.  Especially since there are 6 other rail companies that criss-cross the region.

One thing that we decided to get is the Kansai Thru Pass (or Surutto Pass).  What is wonderful about this pass is that it gives you unlimited travel on 6 of the 7 major train companies in the Osaka area for the duration of the pass.  The pass covers almost all rail except JR Lines.  We had the option of a 2-day or 3-day pass.  The 2-day pass costs ¥3,800 and the 3-day pass costs ¥5,000.  The pass must be purchased at select locations.  If you're flying into Kansai, then it's best to buy it right at the airport.  The Kansai Thru Pass also gives you coupons to use at select locations, like a tourist attraction.  Sometimes you get a small discount or you get a small complimentary gift. These coupons are only good on the days that you are using the pass.

We were planning to be in the Kansai for well over 3 days, so we needed to figure out what else to do about transport on the other days.  We knew we would be spending a lot of time in Osaka itself.  So we looked into getting the Osaka Unlimited Pass.  The Osaka Unlimited Pass has a 1-day version (¥2,000) and a 2-day version (¥2,700). Between the 1-day and 2-day passes, there is more than just the difference in time that you must consider.  The 1-day pass gives you unlimited access to 6 of the 7 major train companies within Osaka's city limits and access to the bus.  The 2-day pass only allows you unlimited access to the Osaka Municipal Subway lines, the New Tram, and the city buses.  So you have to be careful that you know which pass you have before just trying to enter a station.  Just like the Kansai Thru Pass, you can get discounts, or even free admission, to some attractions.  Again, you can only get your discounts on the day(s) that you are using the pass.  Also, the discounts are different depending on whether you have the 1-day or 2-day pass.  The Osaka Unlimited Pass can be purchased at Kansai International Airport or at one of four Osaka Visitors Information Centers.

Confused yet?  I hope not.  The two passes were life-savers.  There was one more pass that we bought when in Kansai and that's the Kyoto City Bus Daypass.  For ¥500, you get unlimited travel on almost all Kyoto City Buses.  After 3 rides on a bus, the day pass will pay for itself.  When N looked at the attractions we wanted to see in Kyoto, she noticed that many of them were not close to the train lines.  However, the buses could bring you really close to the sites.  So for the two days we planned for in Kyoto, N decided that the Kyoto City Bus Daypass was the way to go.  We just had to buy it twice.  The easiest location to get this pass would be at Kyoto Station.  At the station, either purchase the pass at the info centre or at the bus loop's info kiosk.

All right.  With transportation all planned, we ready to head off on our little adventure in Kansai.

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...