11/4 - Arashiyama, Kyoto

After the Torokko Train, we ascended up from the station and promptly found another stamp station.  Stamps have been our personal mission on this trip it seems.  Like I said before, it feels like Expo all over again.  But it's fun to have something to collect as we travel.  It's a heck lot cheaper than collecting thimbles or teaspoons.

After collecting our stamp, we followed the signs to Tenryu-ji [天龍寺] temple. The signs lead us through the bamboo forest that surrounds the temple.  As the Lonely Planet guide points out, this bamboo forest is a dead-ringer for the bamboo forest in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".  Just waiting for Chow Yun-Fat to suddenly start jumping from bamboo to bamboo. It's all very serene walking along the path through the forest.

We entered Tenryu-ji from the north entrance and walked through the temple grounds.  This Zen Buddhist temple is most famous for its gardens.  The temple was serene and beautiful, but not as awe-inspiring as the Kiyomizu-dera [清水寺] temple that we visited the day before.  Tenryu-ji is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so at least I can say I've been here.  I just don't think I was in enough of a garden state-of-mind that day to truly appreciate Tenryu-ji.

From the temple exit, we made our way to main road in Arashiyama [嵐山].  The road is exactly where the Keifuku Arashiyama Station ends and it also leads onto the Togetsukyo Bridge [渡月橋].  We walked down to the bridge and could see the Hozu River flowing from the mountains in the west.  Arashiyama is clearly a tourist area so the place is pretty clean and sanitized.  Plus, there are plenty of souvenir shops to peruse.

Both our cameras were low on batteries, so we rationed whatever shots we took in Arashiyama.  We would be saving up our battery life for Kinkaku-ji [金閣寺], or the Golden Pavilion.  With little to shoot and all the stores perused, we were getting pretty hungry at this point.  We searched the street for restaurants.  Some were a little on the pricey side.  We found an udon place with reasonable prices and ducked into the restaurant.  So I had a simple Ebi (shrimp) Tempura Udon while N ordered a Tonkatsu set.  All for roughly ¥1500, it was a good deal in touristy area.

Now that we were well fed, it was off to our next destination by bus.  However, I think we must have missed our bus because we waited like 10-15 minutes.  At least I got a rickshaw photo op while waiting. 

11/4 - Sagano Romantic Train (aka. Torokko Train)

November 4 was a regular weekday Wednesday and we were off to the little known Sagano Romantic Train, also known as the Torokko Train in Japanese.  This particular attraction is not even listed in the Lonely Planet.  We must be onto something if the Lonely Planet doesn't know about it.  I think the reason it's not well known, to English travellers at least, is that there is very little info available in English for this attraction.  The official website is totally devoid of any English.  So if you don't read Japanese, good luck.

Our morning started with a visit to Kyoto Station.  We didn't want to be carrying all our stuff around, so we went looking for coin lockers in the bowels of Kyoto Station.  Luckily, it wasn't very hard to find them.  For ¥300, it was not a bad deal in exchange for lightening our load.

Then we went back up to the JR platforms in search of our JR train towards Umahori [馬堀] in the northwest sector outside the main town.  Luckily, we got some breakfast at the local Lawson (a popular convenience store).  I got a onigiri (rice packed together in a triangle and wrapped in dried seaweed), while N bought a whole bowl of hot oden (a winter dish with a variety of ingredients in a soy-sauce flavoured broth).  On the train, we were about to eat the oden, but once you took off the lid of the bowl, the fragrant aroma of hot food permeated the whole cabin.  I think in Japan, it's highly frowned upon to eat on the train.  So the oden would have been way too obvious that we were sneaking a bite to eat.  So we quietly munched on our onigiri instead.

We alighted the train about 20 minutes later at the JR Umahori []station and walked to the Torokko Kameoka [トロッコ亀岡] Station (the leftmost station on the orange line on the map presented).  It was only a 10 minute walk and the air was fresh in this very rural part of Kyoto.  We were very early for the next ride.  The station wasn't bursting with tourists yet.  There was your standard gift store attached to the station and thankfully, washrooms.

We washed up and finished off our breakfast.  I was really starving at this point.  I was very happy to have food in my stomach at this point.  The oden was still pretty hot, so that was a bonus.  We were about 30 minutes early, so we just took our time.  However, as I looked out the window, I could see a tour bus pulling up.  Our solitude was not long lived.  It was a Taiwanese tour group that suddenly flooded the station within minutes.  I was hearing Taiwanese and Mandarin left, right, and centre.

Luckily, N had already purchased our tickets for the ride.  She already knew beforehand that Car No. 5 on the Torokko train is the best car to be on.  Why?  Well, because it is the open air car with no glass getting in the way of your view of the Hozu River and the rest of the scenery.  She had read all about it in her Kansai Travel Book from Sky Publishing of Hong Kong.  Eat your heart out, Lonely Planet.

Pretty soon, the train came into the station.  One group got off the train and we got on.  We were greeted by a masked ojisan - a mascot of some sort.  I think I'll call him our onboard entertainment.  Not a very pretty face, but he was there to mingle with the passengers.   He even joked around with a group of young Japanese schoolgirls and took a group photo with them.

The entire Romantic Train ride was about 25 minutes through some breathtaking scenery.  Unfortunately, the red leaves were not out in full force.  I guess the autumn had been pretty warm up to this point.  However, the view of the Hozu River below was very enjoyable and relaxing.  When you think of Japan, you often think of giant metropolises towering over the land.  It's nice to enjoy the nature side of Japan for once.  Even our little Miga got to take in the scenery.

 

 

 

Some people who take the Torokko train in the opposite direction from Arashiyama to Kameoka will take the Hozu-gawa River Boat ride back to Arashiyama.  N said we had time to do it, but I think 2 hours on the boat ride would have taken away our time from doing other things in the Kyoto area.  From the train, we could see a few boats in the river below.  It looks fun, but I think 2 hours was too long.

We got off at the Torokko Arashiyama [トロッコ嵐山] Station with most of the tourists.  The train was a nice way to start off our 2nd day in Kyoto.  A totally different change of pace from urban Japan.  Luckily, it was not busy season for the train.  The cherry blossom, or sakura, season in the spring would likely be the busiest time for the train.

The Arashiyama Torokko Station put us right at the entrance of the bamboo forest and within walking distance of Tenryu-ji [天龍寺]

11/3 - An Evening in Kyoto

We got on the bus to head to Central Kyoto. After a few stops, it was really crowded. It looks like everyone was going to the middle of town tonight. It was a national holiday after all. We managed to nap a little on the bus because we were fortunate to have a seat. We got to a major intersection in the middle of town and got off the bus and wandered. However, I was so tired that I had no idea where we were heading and N was apparently just following my lead.

We eventually found one of the shopping arcades that N was looking for.  N originally wanted to visit the Nishiki Market [錦市場] in the morning in order to get some extra fresh fish for breakfast.  But it just didn't work in our schedule.  We wandered part way down the Nishiki Market.  Most of the shops were in the process of cleaning up for the night.  There were a few places selling some things, but there was not much left.  All I could do was get a photo op and say that we visited the Nishiki Market.

We then went over to Teramachi [寺町] which is another long shopping arcade in Central Kyoto and is just perpendicular to Nishiki Market.  One of the famous sites in this shopping arcade is that there is a stone torii [鳥居] that is literally embedded into the buildings on either side.  They managed to preserve a piece of history, but I guess the builders didn't care if they encroached on that piece of history.  Right across from the torii, was the entrance to a street temple.  The temple looked much bright and exciting with the dozens of Japanese lanterns that decorated the entrance.

We went up and down Teramachi for about half an hour and we were really hungry.  We originally wanted to have dinner at Watami [和民], but the restaurant was all booked with business parties.  N didn't really want to eat any Western food while in Japan, but I kind of wanted to try some.  We came across a French restaurant called Paris 21e.  It was on the second floor of a building along the Teramachi shopping arcade.

I ordered a glass of Suntory Half-Half beer to start.  It's basically a Japanese version of a Black and Tan.  So half dark and half light.  In this case they took Suntory's dark and light beers and mixed them together.  We don't get any Suntory drinks in Vancouver, so I thought this was worth trying out.  Even N liked it and she really doesn't like dark beers. 

For our food, we ordered a salad, charcoute, and a seafood paella.  The salad was really good.  It had a mix of egg and shrimp.  The charcoute is an Alsatian dish of sausages and veggies in a pot.  This dish wasn't bad, but it was a little salty for our taste.  Then there was the seafood paella.  It was not what I expected.  The sauce was really weird.  I can't even begin to describe the flavour.  I was expecting more of a tomato flavour.  In the end, the salad was the best and dinner seemed to go downhill from there.  At least I had my Suntory to wash down the food.  And like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation says:  it's Suntory time!

After dinner, we took the bus back to K's House Kyoto.  We got into our spartan guest room for two.  We dropped off our gear and went downstairs to finally get some Internet access.  While N was checking her messages, I noticed that the bulletin board had an introduction to a sento right across the street.


A sento [銭湯] is a Japanese bath house where you pay to go in.  The sento is divided into men and women's sections and we paid around ¥300-400 for the one we went into.  We took advantage of the tiny sento across the street.  The showers at K's House Kyoto are shared, so we might as well do the Japanese style of bathing.

Honestly, I had no idea what I was supposed to do.  All I knew was that I must wash completely before bathing in the actual baths.  The man at the bath house spoke no English, so it was a little hard to figure each other out.  I really had to mouth out to myself the cost that he had quoted me for admission.  It wasn't all that busy as far as I could tell.  The man had a television running on the men's side of the sento. He was watching the Japan Series, the Japanese baseball championships, between the Yoimuri Giants and the Nippon-Ham Fighters (mmm...Ham Fighters :P).  Fortunately, there were a couple of other men who came in with me.  So I just followed their lead.  The men had their own towels and wash basins; whereas, I had to borrow from the bath house.  Thankfully the towel, soap, and shampoo were all complimentary. 

As I took my seat on a stool by one of the many faucets along the wall, I peeked out the side of my eyes to see what the other men were doing.  They would fill up their wash basins with the gloriously warm water.  It was a bit chilly tonight, so the warmth hit the spot.  Both men had brought their toothbrushes and shaving kits.  So they were brushing their teeth as they used their wash towels and wetted their naked bodies.  They would then lather up their hands with shampoo and wash their hair.  The body was next.  So foreign me just followed their lead minus the brushing and shaving.  The best part is when I fill up the wash basin with the warm water again and just pour the whole basin over my whole body. 

After a thorough cleansing, I got into one of the two baths.  The introduction at K's Kyoto House had already warned that the baths are usually hotter than what foreigners are accustomed to.  They weren't kidding.  Holy smokes!  It was really hot.  I had to really ease myself into the tub slowly.  After the bath, my whole body felt warm and pulsating.  I bought a bottle of milk, which is apparently one of the things to do after bathing in Japan.  I thought wtf at first about drinking the milk, but it felt very refreshing to drink the milk.

When I walked back to the guest house, the wind just didn't have the same chill anymore.  I was warm all over and felt as bright as day.  So if you don't mind bathing totally naked in front of complete strangers, I would highly recommend partaking in a sento.  It was a glorious feeling and I felt more connected to Japanese culture by just experiencing it. 

And that was the end of our first full day in Kyoto.  And what a full day it was!  The sento really helped to usher me into a wonderful slumber for the night.  Tomorrow would be another busy day with an early start again.

[sento image from pingmag.jp and originally from "Sento - the Japanese Bathhouse.” © Julia Baier]

11/3 - Ginkaku-ji, Kyoto

From Kiyomizu-dera in the southern part of Higashiyama, we had to take a longish bus ride to the northern part of Higashiyama to find Ginkaku-ji　[銀閣寺], aka. the Silver Pavilion. Along the way, we passed by what seemed to be a museum district and a giant red torii [鳥居].  A torii is one of those traditional Japanese gates.  But this one was massive.  It straddled a four-lane road and simply towered over us as we passed underneath it.  We didn't have time to stop and figure out what it was, though.  It was getting late in the afternoon and we wanted to get into Ginkaku-ji before it closed.

The bus dropped us off on the main road and we had to walk a few blocks to Ginkaku-ji.  The sun was starting to set and a warm glow was washing over the streetscape.  We bypassed all the shops on the way to the entrance to Ginkaku-ji.  We got to the entrance, bought our tickets, and entered.  After a twist and a turn through a corridor with bamboo walls, you come instantly face to face with the Silver Pavilion.  It's actually amazing how close you actually are to the building itself.

The only bad thing during our visit that day was that the Pavilion itself was under renovation.  Seeing part of Ginkaku-ji covered was simply anti-climactic.  We must not have seen the signs telling us that it was under renovation.  Or perhaps we had seen the sign, but it was all in Japanese and we did not take any notice of it.  In any case, we had paid and we were here, so we were going to make the most of it.

The garden surrounding the pavilion is quite special.  There are a few special sand gardens, called kogetsudai [高月代], that are a part of the garden.  One "garden" was a giant pile of sand in the shape of an upside down cone.  Another garden had been specially-raked in a pattern of alternating of even and uneven sand.

 

After walking the lower portion of the grounds, the sightseeing route takes you up the side of the hill and the trail then overlooks the Pavilion and the gardens below.  You can also see outside of the Ginkaku-ji grounds to some of the surrounding buildings.  It was almost sunset, so the sun was shining straight into our eyes as we looked westward over the grounds.

Then just as soon as we were up above the grounds, the trail took us back down and we were soon by the exit.  We stopped by the gift shop and bought some bookmarks as souvenirs for some of my coworkers.  That's when we discovered the first of our many stamps.

For Vancouverites, you may remember all the stamps you had to collect during Expo 86.  Every single pavilion had a stamp and you would run around and try to collect as many as you can.  In Japan, almost every single tourist attraction has a free stamp somewhere on the grounds.  The Ginkaku-ji stamp was just outside the gift shop (and not too far from the WC).  So this was our first of many stamps.  Then after stamping our books, we realized that we totally forgot to look for one at Kiyomizu-dera.  That was a total downer.  Well, at least we got the stamp for Ginkaku-ji.

We exited the Ginkaku-ji grounds and walked back down the street towards the main road and passed many shops.  Some of them were already closed for the day because it was already late in the afternoon.  We walked down a little further and made a turn somewhere and stumbled across a neat little store called the Chirimen Craft Museum.  We didn't know at the time, but this was one of many stores around the Kyoto area.  The store sold beautiful cloth crafts of various sorts including animals, nature, and Japanese festival icons.  It was a beautiful store with beautiful crafts, but if I bought something, where would I put it.

N had a hankering for walking through a Japanese supermarket.  Fortunately, near the bus stop to go back to Central Kyoto, there was a supermarket.  We wandered around a little and picked up some drinks.  We were getting very thirsty at this point.  I also bought some Kleenex because you never know when my nose is going to act up.  Also, you can't always get napkins everywhere you go.  Although I would say napkins are more scarce in restaurants in China and Hong Kong.

After the supermarket, we waited shortly for the bus to Central Kyoto and we were on our way again.  Nightfall was definitely setting in at this point.  So was the fatigue.

11/3 - Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto

After a short bus ride south from Gion, we arrived at the bus stop at the foot of the hill to Kiyomizu-dera　[清水寺].  Kiyomizu literally means "clear water."  So it's the clear water temple?  Maybe that's too literal of a translation.

A lot of people were visiting the temple and the surrounding shops today.  We had to go up a narrow street with an even narrower sidewalk.  We were basically walking almost single-file up the hill to the temple.  The street had a few shops, but it was actually more of a residential street if anything.  Lots of cars were making there way up the hill.  Some were lucky to find parking spaces off to the side.  We, as pedestrians, just had to make sure we got out of the way if a car was coming up the hill.

We arrived at the top and were greeted by the giant red gate that marks the entrance to Kiyomizu-dera.  Then we looked down the other street that lead up to the table and realized that we missed all the shops.  So instead of going into the temple grounds right away, we decided to peruse the shops and stalls first.

There was quite a bit of food and snacks available on this busier stretch and so we partook in some of the local flavours.  There was the mochi snack with seaweed.  There were a variety of souvenir food gifts.  And, of course, good old fashioned souvenir stores.  I bought some souvenir food box for work.  When I tried it, the biscuit tasted savoury at first, but then the cinnamon-like sweetness kicked in after a sitting on the tongue for a while.  However, that first bite was a skull-cracker (just like my coworker said after she tried one).

We ventured into one little laneway and discovered a Hayao Miyazaki [宮崎 駿] theme store. Basically the store is full of Totoro and other Miyazaki film characters.  That was a neat little find nestled in behind another gift store.  At a fork in the road, there was a set of stairs that went down to more stores.  There was a store right on the corner that specialized in spices.  You could actually ask for samples of some of the different spices.  It reminds me of trying ice cream samples at Mondo Gelato, except the flavour was far from sweet.  N got a special Hello Kitty spice for herself and a friend at the store.  Is there any product in the world that doesn't have a limited Hello Kitty edition available?

We ventured down the set of stairs and came across a different store that sold a lot of cloth products with Japanese prints.  The store was halfway down the staircase.  Some products were meant to be handbags.  Some were cloth specially meant for bento boxes.  Others were just plain handkerchiefs.  That was a neat little shop halfway down the stairs.

We walked down a little further and made a turn somewhere.  We had another snack or two, but we were starting to become really hungry.  Lunch was in order, especially since it was around 2 in the afternoon by now.  It also happened that it started to sprinkle a little rain.  Many were now just standing under the eaves of different shops along the side of the street, but we decided to press on.  Eventually, the rain got worse and we just decided to hop into a restaurant and get some grub.

After a 10 minute wait, the server took us to the back of the restaurant that was separated from the front by a neat little garden piece with a overhead opening.  We ended sitting right beside a French family of five.  The couple had 3 boys and the youngest was probably about a year old.  We ordered our food and all. Eventually, at the table behind us, a pair of Canadians was seated.  N was looking at the embroidered Canadian flag on the guys backpack and they must have been staring at us once N whipped out her decommercialized Miga (Miga sans the green Vancouver 2010 scarf).  So basically all the foreigners in the restaurant had been effectively placed in the back of the restaurant.  I didn't feel discriminated in any way, but I just thought it funny that all of us in the back of the restaurants were "gaikoku-jin."

Once lunch was done, the sun had started shining again. It was time to finally make our way to the temple itself.  At the temple entrance, we hesitated a little wondering if it was going to be worth the price of admission.  I reasoned that we would not be in this part of the world for ages.  So it was now or never.

Were we ever glad that we paid to go in.  You round the corner from the ticket booth and are greeted the grand view from the grand balcony of the temple.  It was a beautiful view of the trees below and the Main Hall above it.  It was a busy day at the temple, but there was still plenty of room to move around.  As with many temples, there is a giant cistern for incense.  Some young foreigners had bought some incense sticks and were in the process of lighting and planting them in the cistern.  Just around the corner from the giant Main Hall, there was a section where you could pay into a box and ring a bell.  I'm not clear what the ringing of these bells represent, but it is cute to see little kids try to ring those bells.

 

 

We eventually made our way down from the Main Hall to an area where people were lining up to collect water from 3 flowing fountains overhead.  It was a long line up and we didn't understand what it all meant.  So we passed on the water thing, but it did offer a good photo op.

That was it for the temple.  We were soon exiting the temple grounds and making our way back to the main road to catch a bus to our last tourist attraction for the day, Ginkaku-ji, or the Silver Pavilion.

11/3 - Gion, Kyoto

From K's House Kyoto, we walked out to the closest bus stop.  We were going to spend most of the day in the Higashiyama [東山] area of Kyoto.  This area is home to a lot of Kyoto's famous ancient buildings.  Our first stop would be Gion [祇園].  Gion is most famous for catching a glimpse of geisha, especially at night.  Our goal wasn't really to see geisha today, but to just walk around the neighbourhood.

In the Gion neighbourhood is also the Yasaka Shrine[八坂神社].  The shrine's bright red gate looks over one of the major intersections in Gion.  It's a huge intersection in fact.  It looks larger to me than most Canadian intersections because the corners are all rounded so it's easier for traffic to make left-hand turns (Japan drives on the left side of the road, so a left-hand turn is equivalent to our right-hand turn).

We walked up through the gate and wound our way past a few food stalls to the actual shrine.  There was no charge for walking through.  We lucked out on a small event at the shrine.  Some families were bringing their children to participate in Shichi-Go-San (七五三, seven-five-three) rituals.  Basically boys and girls who are aged 3, 5, and 7 were dressed up in traditional Japanese kimonos and .  So there were dozens of cute little kids in traditional wear walking around the shrine.  The proud parents were snapping away with cameras.  It was a very neat scene.

After our visit to the shrine, we went back out to the busier part of Gion on Shijo-dori.  We walked up and down the stretch.  There were a lot of souvenir stores given that Gion is popular with tourists.  Food shop vendors offered some small food samples of their special gift boxes.  One of the bigger shops on Shijo-dori was Yojiya [よじや].  Yojiya is a special cosmetics company that was founded in Kyoto in 1904.  Their most famous product is their oil-blotting facial paper.  We wandered through the store for a few minutes.  N ended up buying a little something, but not the blotting paper.

We walked down a little further and came across an okonomiyaki restaurant that was featured in N's Chinese-language travel book.  It is famous for the statue in the front.  The statue is made up of a boy and a dog.  The boy is in traditional Japanese clothing and he has a box of take out.  However, the boy is running and afraid because of the dog.  The little white dog has a firm bite on the boys pants and is literally pulling down the boy's pants revealing his little wee-wee.  It's very interesting what restaurants will do to get your attention and pull you into their restaurant.



We were walking back towards Yasaka Shrine to get the bus to our next stop for the day, when I noticed a sign post marking a special road.  The sign was only in Japanese and would read "Hanami-koji" in Romaji.  N said that this is the road where you can most likely find geisha.  However, because it was still morning, most of the restaurants and shops were closed.  We decided to walk up and down the street to see what was there.  Interestingly, there were no sidewalks on this street.  Pedestrians and cars just had to share the road.  We walked down to Gion Corner, a theatre that specializes in many different traditional arts from Kyoto.  On our way back from Gion Corner, we came across a little delivery van painted with a Canadian flag on its side.  The van even had a Vancouver address and phone number printed on the rear.  The van belonged to Seaborn, a company that sells Canadian gourmet food in Japan.  (So what is Canadian gourmet food and is it good business?)

We headed back to the road where we had been dropped off by the bus. We were now ready to head off to our next destination in the Higashiyama area - Kiyomizu-dera Temple.

11/3 - Osaka to Kyoto

It's our first full day in Japan and we're already on the move.  We leave our luggage at the Hearton Hotel Shinsaibashi and grab a quick breakfast at Matsuya.  Matsuya is basically Japanese fast food where you buy a ticket at the machine for the food you want.  Present the ticket at your seat and you quickly get your food.  It's very cheap food, but pretty filling.  We were at the location just outside Loft department store and it was amazingly quiet at 8am.  Maybe everyone was at work already.  Then again, Shinsaibashi is more of a shopping area than a working area.

We took the subway up to Umeda to change to a JR train to Kyoto.  In the middle of transferring from the subway to the JR Umeda Station, we went topside to the Osaka Visitors Information Center.  We had to buy our Osaka Unlimited Pass before we forgot.  Just like the Thru Pass, we wouldn't be using it right away, but best to get it now so that we don't have to search for a vendor later.

The JR train was about a half-hour ride from Umeda in Osaka to Kyoto Station.  I tried catch some z's, but I don't sleep well on most moving vehicles.  If I can nap even a little, though, that's great.  Kyoto Station is a massive train station.  Not only do JR trains (regular and bullet trains) stop there, but so does the Kyoto Subway, the Kintetsu Line, and is home to the main bus terminal in the city.  It's a gigantic structure.  It's a modern gateway in a city famous for its ancient buildings.  While at the station, we also bought another pass, the Kyoto City Bus Pass.  We knew we would be using this one today.

The first thing we wanted to do was to head over to K's Kyoto House.  K's House is a hostel/guesthouse featured on hostelworld.com and in the Lonely Planet.  It was a 15-20 minute walk from Kyoto Station. There were lots of foreigners in the lobby coming and going.  Most were going out for the day.  We checked to see if we could drop off some extra belongings to lighten our load for the day.  We were lucky, our room was ready to store things, but the bed just hadn't been made.  Perfect.  We went up to our room and dropped off our stuff.  We were soon off to see our first sights of the trip.

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.