11/9 - Universal Studios Japan

Well, today was a play day at USJ, or Universal Studios Japan.  Of course, we started the morning with a Matsuya breakfast.  I wonder if the Matsuya morning staff are starting to recognize us.  It's a Monday morning, so we are caught up with some of the morning rush, but we find it curiously absent of salaryman having their breakfast.  We thought it'd be busier.

To get to USJ, we actually have to take a JR train today.  The JR train takes us directly to Universal City and the USJ entrance gate.  So we didn't use any of our special passes today.  We just paid cash at the ticket vending machines for our fares.  Also, because we'd be on amusement park rides for most of the day, I decided to not lug around my DSLR.  My shoulders needed a rest from all carrying all that stuff.  So we relied on N's little Canon IXUS for our shots this day.

We walked in from the Universal City JR Station to the giant USJ gate.  Again, it seems like Asia goes all out just before Christmas.  So USJ was all decked out in Christmas decorations.  And maybe you thought we had way too much Christmas back home.  I don't think so now.

So upon entry, we planned to head straight for one of the more popular rides to get it out of the way before the day got too busy.  We got to Spider Man The Ride, but found out that it was closed.  Grr... that wasn't a great start to our day at USJ.  So we settled for the Back to the Future ride next door.  Did you know that Christopher Lloyd spoke Japanese?  I didn't either.

After about a 30 minutes at Back to the Future, we just headed next door again to Backdraft. This is not as interesting because there's a lot of talking.  And since this was Japan, all the talking was in Japanese.  Ah, Ron Howard-san, genki desu ka?  I think Backdraft is a redo if I ever get to a Universal Studios in the States.

Just following the path, we then headed over to Jurassic Park.  This was a pretty fun ride with the huge water drop at the end.  We bought the el cheapo poncho from the vending machine.  USJ was definitely milking our money today.

After 3 rides, we were already feeling peckish.  We came across a little food kiosk that sold a Snoopy shaped bun.  It was very cute.  We bought one to share.  Of course, this experience would not be complete without a photo.  I was very curious as to the taste of the bun.  Once I bit into, I exclaimed, "It's a Chinese yellow custard bun!!!"  Seriously, it tasted the same as the yellow custard buns I can buy in the frozen food section of T&T, except that I paid extra for the stylishly black Snoopy nose, eyes, and ears.

All right, enough trademarked food then.  We made our way over to the Jaws ride.  It's funny how everything is decorated like a New England fishing town here, but everybody speaks Japanese.  Even our "boat guide" was a young Japanese gentleman who hammed it up with his giant "rifle" when the shark got really close.  Good thing he was expressive, otherwise, it may not have been so entertaining.  N got unlucky when some water got on her as Jaws "buzzed" our boat. 

As if there wasn't enough water involved with Jaws, we went next door to the Peanuts area where we came across Peppermint Patty's Stunt Slide.  It's basically an enclosed water slide where you ride a two person raft through the tubes.  Even though it was pretty similar to what you might experience in any waterpark, it was still fun for thrill.  How it's related Peppermint Patty?  No idea, but my pant legs were pretty wet after this ride.  Arrghh!

We grabbed some lunch in this Peanuts themed area.  N ordered the doggie meal, literally, complete with dog dish, but with human food.  I can't say that burger and fries were all that good, though.

After lunch, we went into the Peanut Gallery with whole bunch of Peanuts characters to take pictures with.  Birchwood School was there complete with Charlie Brown's teachers unintelligible speech.  I guess it doesn't matter what language his teacher speaks in, it never makes sense.

Once we finished visiting with the Snoopy and Charlie Brown, we headed to the only roller coaster at USJ - Hollywood Dream, The Ride.  This was obviously the big attraction in the park featuring the longest wait of all the rides.  Hollywood Dream features your choice of 5 songs to ride along with.  I originally wanted to listen to The Beatles, but screwed up and accidentally selected Enimem.  Not what I was looking for.  We would have to come back later.

11/8 - Back in Kyoto so soon

We hopped onto a green Keihan train to leave Uji for Kyoto.  We would have to transfer along the way, though.  We went back the way we came and actually did the train station transfers instead of walking the 20-30 minutes to transfer near Momoyama.  When we got onto the train for Kyoto, we were surprised that we would boarding the Ise-Shima Liner.  This is a fancier longer distance train coming in from Ise, which is 151 km away from Kyoto by car.  It looked very different from the regular urban trains that we had been riding.  It was more streamlined and had some very fancy seats in a first class area.  We weren't allowed on the first class car obviously, but the seats in the regular car were a little more comfortable to accommodate for a longer ride.  A train ride from Ise to Kyoto is 2+ hour ride.  Too bad we were only on this train for 10 minutes at most.  It would have been a nice comfy long distance ride.

We arrived back in Kyoto Station, but we were in a totally different part of this large train station and had to find our way back to the main entrance in order to figure out where we were.  Once we found the main entrance, we could re-orient ourselves and head into the underground mall for another round of takoyaki.  It was just as good as the first time.

After dinner, we wondered the mall for a bit, but there wasn't much that interested us.  So we went back up to Kyoto Station's Sky Garden.  To be honest, there wasn't much to see.  And you could see hand prints on all the windows that offered views of the city.  I didn't find it that impressive up there, plus it was feeling very cold this evening.  So went back down.  There was a piano recital going on in the large amphitheatre just on the way down from the Sky Garden.  There were all these school-age kids playing their songs.  I think we stayed for 3 songs.  Unfortunately, 2 of the songs were the same.  They must have the same piano teacher teaching the same piece.

And because it was nearly Christmas, there was a giant lit up Christmas tree that was just above the amphitheatre stage and could be seen by the milling transit riders below.  I think Christmas is more over the top in Asia than it is back home.  We just never see gigantic electric trees back home.

11/8 - Uji - the city of the Tale of Genji

We wondered along the Uji River and came across the local tourist centre.  We had been collecting rubber stampings all this time and we found the Rekishi Kaido stamp for Uji. Rekishi Kaido is a society that promotes Japan's historical and cultural resources to the public.  So their rubber stamps is one way to promote Japan's history.  I think it's a great way for kids to get excited about history.  Here's the website sample of the ink stamp we got, except they don't provide such colourful ink for the rubber stamps.

We crossed the a small pedestrian bridge onto a small island in the middle of the river.  There were a lot of boats tied up to the shore.  They looked like pleasure boats used to entertain guests for drinks and possibly dinner.  The island itself had a small park on it.  There was even a temporary Sunday Market set up.  But we obviously missed it because most of the stalls were empty and people were packing their goods away into their tiny Japanese minivans.

On the other side of the river, we made our way up a tiny incline towards another shrine.  It was very quiet in the shrine and in fact, the shrine was almost dead except for a couple of other tourists.  The sun was starting to set, so the autumn leaves looked beautiful in the sunshine.  But otherwise, I didn't think it was actually worth walking up to this shrine.

A little ways up past the shrine was a museum dedicated to the Japanese classic, The Tale of Genji.  Now I never read this novel, so I had very little reason to go into this museum.  I remember hearing about it in an Asian Studies class and that it is sometimes considered the world's first novel.  But other than that, I know very little about the story.  However, Uji and it's surrounding area is apparently featured in the story.  There is also a statue of one of the characters from the novel closer to the middle of town.

So we completed a giant loop around Uji by walking back to the Keihan train station.  The sun was setting and we were going to have to find dinner soon.  We decided that we would head back into Kyoto to grab a bite to eat and probably have some of that yummy takoyaki again.

11/8 - Uji - The Thousand Year Old Temple of Byodo-in

We got off at Keihan Uji Station.  Outside the train station, we were quickly greeted by the sound, smell, and sight of the Uji [宇治] River .  It was a very wide flat river.  Even though, the river runs through the middle of a city, it felt idyllic with cranes perched upon their legs in the middle of the river on one side of the bridge and a lone fisherman wading out into the river to ply his trade.

We crossed the bridge to the other side where there were more shops and restaurants.  As mentioned previously, we were hungry after walking for 20-30 minutes in the Momoyama train station area.  We found a small sushi restaurant in the tourist stretch of shops.

We both ordered Zaru Soba (green cold noodles), but we ordered different sides.  I had the assorted sushi side order while N ordered the inari side order.  We were really hungry at this point and happy to be sitting.  The price was actually very reasonable for these two meals.  I think we paid under ¥2,000 for both meals.  That's not a bad price considering we were right beside one of the most famous temples in all of Japan.

After lunch, we saw a line up for matcha green tea ice cream.  Essentially, the green tea ice cream came out of what looked like a soft ice cream machine.  Then their piece de resistance was adding fresh matcha powder onto the ice cream itself.  There was quite a line up here, so that peaked our curiosity.  Plus, after being inside Byodo-in for about 2 hours or so, we felt like having a snack.  It was the perfect snack for this warm autumn afternoon.

That famous temple would be the Byodo-in [平等院]. According to Wikipedia, this temple was built in 998.  This place is likely one of the oldest places I've ever been in.  The surround complex is beautifully manicured and is very peaceful.  There is a giant reflecting pond that surrounds the Phoenix Hall, which is the main building within the temple.  The Phoenix Hall was built in 1053 and is only accessible for an additional cost of ¥300 on top of the ¥600 for admission to the temple grounds.  We debated about it at first, but the building is almost 1,000 years old, so we thought it would be worth the price and the hour wait until the next session.

While waiting for our time to enter the Phoenix Hall, we went off to the very modern museum on the grounds of the temple.  The museum was great and did not cost an extra yen.  There was a wonderful CG rendition of the Phoenix Hall when it was in its glory.  The Hall houses a large golden Buddha, which isn't very golden in real life.  Plus the walls of the hall would have brightly painted and almost heavenly.  In another room, were the original statuettes that hung on the wall of the Phoenix Hall.  They were removed and moved indoors in order to preserve them.  And, of course, what museum is complete without a gift shop.  

Our appointed time of 3:15pm was rolling around and so we went back to the Phoenix Hall and lined up.  At 3:15pm a tour guide brought us across the tiny bridge across the pond to the hall.  We had to take off our shoes in a designated area.  There were even numbered spots for people to place their shoes for safe keeping.  I guess this way, it's easy to remember your number and come back for your shoes.  I also took note of the sign that said no photography.

Inside the Phoenix Hall it was very dark.  This was in stark contrast to the image that the CG rendition portrayed.   Obviously, time had taken its toll on this ancient structure.  The giant Buddha still sat in the middle of the hall with eyes peering over the pond.  Unfortunately, all the tour guide's explanation was in Japanese so we hadn't a single idea of what was going on, but just being in this ancient hall was impressive enough.  I would think a millennial celebration is in the works for 2053.  We'll see if I'm still kicking around then.

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.

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.