Where to, Gumshoe? – Page 11 – Follow us through our day to day travels and adventures

Osaka/Nara (Day 45): Sakura and Deer

April 14, 2016

After such a rainy night, we woke up to blue and sunny skies. Our plan for today was to visit Nara, a small city that is about 30 minutes away from Osaka. After Kyoto, Nara has the most historical sights (temples and shrines) in Japan. But more importantly (for me), Nara is home to a lot of wild (but very tame) deer that roam around the parks. I had been waiting to go to Nara for a while and was quite excited to see the deer after getting a small taste of it while in Miyajima.

While we were getting ready to head out, I received an email from an old manager of mine from EY. He had just gotten back from Japan (Kansai region, where we are now) and told me about a cherry blossom festival hosted by the Japan Mint (in Osaka) that should be in full bloom right now. It sounded interesting because the Japan Mint has over 100 different breeds of cherry blossom (and over 300 trees overall) that line the river walkway. We looked online and saw that the last day of the festival was today, so we decided to check it out before heading to Nara.

When we arrived at the train station closest to the Japan Mint, there were police all over directing traffic. We thought there was a police incident since they weren’t letting pedestrians through on one side of the bridge. We later discovered that the reason why there was crowd control and so many police officers around was because of the cherry blossom festival.

When we made it to the grounds, it was quite crowded (but not too crazy). The cherry blossoms had fully bloomed and some already had quite a bit of green to them. They all looked so beautiful and I liked how the walkway was one way so you could walk in sync with everyone else down the 500m cherry blossom walkway. We spent a lot of time stopping and taking pictures of the beautiful blossoms and looking at all the different types that we haven’t seen before. We each took a lot of pictures (Tim took over 100 pictures!).

We’re lucky that we happen to be in Japan for their sakura season as many people purposely plan to come to Japan specifically for their blossoms. Japan during April just fit into our trip planning perfectly so that’s why we’re here.

We’re happy that we got to catch the last day of the festival and lucky that my old manager emailed me this morning to let us know or else we wouldn’t have even known it was going on in Osaka (we didn’t do much research).

We had a few hours to go to Nara before we had to come back to Osaka to meet Tim’s Great Aunt for dinner. We took the JR train to Nara Station and walked towards Nara Park to see the deer and also some historical sights. My first impression of Nara is that it’s a very laid back town. I think because when we got to the station and walked out, I didn’t see a sea of people like in Kyoto. Even the main walking street to Nara Park didn’t have that many people walking along it, which was nice and relaxing.

When we made it to Nara Park, there were a lot of deer around. I kept wanting to stop and take pictures and pet them, but Tim kept saying there will be more as we go on so we don’t have to stop at each spot. He wanted to go to Todai-ji, a wooden temple that until 1998 was the largest wooden building in the world (Tim: pretty impressive for something built in 1709).

On our way to Todai-ji, there were crowds of deer, just roaming the park, resting in the shade, or chasing down people who would feed them. Around the park, there are vendors who sell deer food (stacks of round crackers) for 150 JPY = $1.75 CAD. My observation of the deer is that they’re very calm, until they see you have food and then they will follow you around and sometimes even tug at you if you don’t give them the crackers. Some people start to run away from the deer, which make the deer chase them… We saw a lot of Asian tourists hold the crackers and walk around with them holding them up high (teasing them), which made the deer more annoyed and more aggressive.

After walking around for a bit, I decided I wanted to try to feed the deer. I was a bit hesitant since I saw other people who fed them being a bit harassed by some deer in the process. I also figured they were teasing the deer so that’s why they were being aggressive. We bought a stack of crackers and the plan was to just hold on to the stack as we made our way back and we could feed deer along the way. Well, that plan didn’t last long as the deer knew I had them in my hands and followed us down a path. As soon as I turned around and tried to get the paper off that wrapped around the stack, they became aggressive and started to nibble at my shirt and backpack. I was panicking a bit and tried hard to get the crackers out as quickly as possible. One of the crackers got stuck to my shirt on my stomach and a bunch of deer tried to bite it off. Tim was taking a video of me the whole time.

Tim also decided he wanted to feed the deer. The deer seemed to have more respect for Tim and weren’t so aggressive with him while he was feeding them. We have videos of both our feedings, it’s quite a drastic difference.

Despite that semi-traumatizing experience of feeding the deer, I had a lot of fun in Nara. I enjoyed the peacefulness of the area and the deer were pretty cool. On our way back to the train station, we stopped by a takoyaki stand and shared an order of six.

We got back to into Osaka just in time to go back to our room to change (needed to change shirts after mine had deer saliva all over it). We met 7 Yi-Ma in our lobby downstairs and went for dinner in the department store top floor again, but this time to a traditional Kyoto style restaurant.

The restaurant is called Minokichi and is one of the oldest and historical restaurants (opened in 1716) in Kyoto (with a branch in Osaka). 7 Yi-Ma treated us to a very delicious and unique seven course meal. Everything was so beautifully put together and unique in flavours. We haven’t had such a traditional Japanese meal before, so it was a nice change from what we’re used to eating as Japanese food.

Second course was a special (Tim: white miso) miso soup that I forgot to take a picture of.

It was a wonderful meal and we’re so thankful for 7 Yi-Ma for taking us there and for being such a gracious host to us while we’re in Osaka. We’ll see her again on Sunday, before we leave for Tokyo.

After we finished dinner, we bought some yogurt from Family Mart for our breakfast tomorrow and just relaxed for the rest of the night.

Steps for today: 21, 500

Kyoto (Day 44): Bamboo, Inari and Izakaya

April 13, 2016

Today’s plan was to go to Kyoto for the day to do a bit of sightseeing and meet up with one of Tim’s friends from Vancouver, William, who is also visiting Japan and has been in Kyoto for about two weeks.

Out of everywhere we’ve been to in Japan so far, Kyoto has the most tourist attractions (mostly temples and shrines). You could easily spend weeks there going to each sight at a leisurely pace. While doing a bit of research on what to see in Kyoto, I really only wanted to see two sights: Arashiyama Bamboo Forest and Fushimi-Inari-Taisha.

We took the JR train from Osaka Station to Kyoto Station, which took about 20 minutes. I didn’t realize Kyoto and Osaka were that close, it’s like taking the skytrain to Burnaby. Kyoto Station is large and bustling with hundreds of tourists. We decided to grab lunch before heading to Arashiyama. After looking through all the restaurants on the basement level of the station, we decided to just get something quick and easy at Lotteria. We thought that we could have a cheaper lunch since we would likely have a bigger dinner when meeting up with William.

After lunch we took another JR local train to Arashiyama to visit the Bamboo Forest. I’ve always seen pictures of it online and thought it looked so mystical. When we arrived, it was very crowded in the main area and it was hard to get a good picture of just the bamboo or a pathway with no one around, which obviously detracted from the mystical nature of the forest. We were able to get some better shots around the pathway, but it was less dense in that area. I was a bit underwhelmed by the forest overall as I think I had it hyped up in my head. Don’t get me wrong, the forest is very nice but I think my expectations were very high. While walking through the pathways, you could see the bamboo starting to sway in the wind, which was neat. The signs around the forest said to be quiet so you could hear the bamboo sway in the wind, but it was hard to hear with so many Mainlanders around.

After spending some time in the forest we walked back towards the Arashiyama train station and headed back to Kyoto Station. The two sights I wanted to see happen to be on opposite ends of town. This was okay though because we were able to go back to Kyoto Station and try a green tea soft serve that was highly recommended by William.

When we got back to Kyoto Station, we went straight to the ice cream place. We shared a twist cone (vanilla and green tea) and it came with sweet red bean and mochi balls. This was totally worth our trip back to Kyoto Station.

After our delicious waffle cone, we caught another JR train towards Fushimi-Inari-Taisha. This the number one sight in Kyoto, according to Trip Advisor, and one of the most photographed places. When we arrived at the entrance, like many other tourist sights in Japan, it was packed with tour groups. I read on Conde Naste Traveler that Japan wants to double the number of tourists from 20 million a year to 40 million by 2020. I already think it’s too crazy in the tourist areas.

We started along the pathway under all the red torii gates and aimed to make it to the top of Mount Inari. As soon as we began to walk, about every few seconds people in front of us would stop to take pictures, which made the walk a bit annoying. Like the Bamboo Forest, it was hard to get a picture without anyone in the background (Tim: but we’re sharing pictures without anyone in the background anyways). Since we planned to walk up to the top, Tim was right in thinking that if we walked even about 10 minutes from the entrance there will be less tourists (Tim: especially since it’s uphill). I think most people, especially those on a tour bus, only have time to go to the first section of the torii gates, take their pictures and turn around. I’m glad we walked up the whole mountain to get some peace and quiet and to see some nice views of Kyoto.

We spent about an hour and half at Fushimi Inari enjoying the peace and quiet (and very fresh air). It rained a bit while we walked up (quite hard at some points) so we had to wear our rain jackets and luckily we brought our umbrella or else we would have gotten drenched (Tim: lucky in the sense that we looked at the weather forecast and planned accordingly). But since we were walking up hill for about 45 minutes, we were both really warm/sweaty.

We made our way back to the train station to catch the subway to the Gion area to meet William for dinner. We ended up getting there a bit early so we walked around Nishiki Market. Since we got there around 6pm and the market is mainly food, more than half the stalls were closed for the day (Tim: We had similar issues in Korea, where we really got used to “Markets” being “Night Markets” in Taiwan, and had to get used to the fact that typical markets are actually early in the morning or day time affairs).

When we met William, we decided to go for an izakaya type place. It was more casual and the type of izakaya we were hoping to have with Mable and Keith in Osaka the day before (not a fancy place). William mentioned the izakaya was a chain from Nagoya and are most known for their pepper fried chicken wings. Knowing us, you know we both love fried chicken, so he didn’t need to convince us any more.

The izakaya is called Yamachan and is in a basement on one of the major shopping streets in Kyoto. I’m happy we met William for dinner, as he knew where to go and showed us places that we would have likely passed by. We got a table in the non-smoking section of the restaurant. Being from Vancouver, where you can’t even smoke a few feet away from any building entrance, it’s a bit foreign to me (still) that you can smoke inside restaurants in Japan (Tim: the key to a long life?).

This was probably one of my favourite and most satisfying meals in Japan. The food was good, prices were very attractive and the atmosphere of the izakaya was casual and friendly. We ordered 14 dishes, 4 orders of wings and 4 drinks (2 of them alcoholic) for 8,866 JPY = $104 CAD ($35 CAD per person). This is about the same price I would expect to pay per person at Guu in Vancouver (an izakaya restaurant) but we got probably double the amount of food I would expect to get back at home. The food came as it was cooked, so it was hard to get pictures of everything since it would often come one at a time. That and I think I was too hungry to care about taking photos of every dish.

After dinner, we decided to walk around the Gion area, which is Kyoto’s most famous geisha district. When we got out of the restaurant, the rain was coming down really hard. Luckily, along the shopping area in Kyoto, you can walk undercover all the way until you get to an intersection. The awnings cover the entire sidewalk, which was perfect for a night like tonight.

It was around 9pm and most of the stores leading up to Gion were closed. When we go to the Gion area, we saw five different geisha being dropped off by taxis and rushing into restaurants to meet their clients. I felt like a paparazzi trying to get photos of them as they hurried down the street with their umbrellas. Considering they are wearing traditional Japanese wooden sandals, they walk really quickly. A common western misconception is that geishas are escorts/prostitutes. But a traditional geisha is just hired to accompany male clients to dinner, serve them food and entertain them in some way (singing and/or dancing). I know, it sounds a bit weird.

It was getting late and raining harder, so we decided to head back to Osaka. We said our goodbyes to William and said we’d probably see him again either in Osaka (if he ends up coming down on Friday) or Tokyo (as we have overlap with him there as well).

We made our back to our hotel after a relatively long day out and about. I always fall asleep on trains, which is good, it makes the train rides go really quickly. I think I was just really tired from the day, so it felt heavenly washing up and getting into a nice cozy bed.

Steps for today: 32,000

Osaka (Day 43): Osaka Castle and Bright Lights

April 12, 2016

Today was another sunny day in Osaka. The temperatures looked a bit better than yesterday which made for a perfect opportunity to go to Osaka Castle and hang out at the park in afternoon. Our only other plan for the day was to meet up with my friend, Mable, and her boyfriend, Keith, for dinner in Dotonburi.

Since it was such a nice day, we decided to have a picnic in the park around Osaka Castle. I’ve noticed that there are so many take out options at restaurants with nice bentos that look so pretty and tasty. Below the department store beside our hotel is a basement full of food options. we decided to go there to see if anything caught our eye. After making a quick loop at our options, we decided to go for battera sushi, which Osaka specializes in.

After getting our sushi, we took the subway to Osaka Castle. We also wanted to get some other food, possibly a salad, from a convenience store. We thought we would find one closer to the castle since convenience stores are everywhere in Japan. But when we got out of the station, we couldn’t find one at all. We walked for about 10 minutes or so down another street and we finally found a Family Mart… There were actually two within a block of each other.

At Family Mart, we got a salad, Glico pudding, and a hot chicken cutlet (Tim: and a grape soda). We headed to the Osaka Castle park area with our picnic food in tow. We were really excited to eat our lovely spread outside on a nice spring day. We found a nice bench under a tree and unpacked our lunch. Tim’s sushi was very pretty, some people even took a picture of our lunch.

After our nice and relaxing lunch, we made our way past the walls toward Osaka Castle. The grounds were quite busy and we noticed there were many tours heading into the castle (lots of cruisers). The castle costs 600 JPY ($7.10 CAD) per person (Tim: or adults) to go in. Each floor has an exhibit and there’s a viewing deck at the top which has views of the city from all sides.

We walked up to the top of the viewing deck and made our way down through each floor (which is their recommended route). Osaka Castle is the nicest castle I’ve seen on our trip so far. Fukuoka’s Castle is basically ruins and Hiroshima’s wasn’t as grand looking. Like many of the other cities, Osaka’s Castle is not the original building. It was rebuilt during the 1930’s to match the original and was funded by citizens of Osaka.

IMG_20160412_152801 — Infront of one of the largest rocks (Tim: I think it’s the largest rock) used to build the original wall.

After we were done with the castle we walked towards Dotonburi, where we were meeting Mable and Keith. We took a leisurely stroll along the Tosaborigawa River and walked along the walkway, which I enjoyed a lot. The city outside of Dotonburi is so calm. It’s not that I don’t like big cities (referring to my post yesterday), I just don’t like huge crowds, they make me really upset.

Eventually we made it back to Shinsaebashi, where we visited a few shops again before meeting Mable and Keith in Dontonburi. There are a lot of shops that sell just Japanese snacks. These shops make me so happy.

We met Mable and Keith infront of the Forever 21. Lucky we picked a store to meet in front of because if we had just said the bridge near the Glico sign, then we would be in trouble as there were so many people.

We headed to an izakaya place called Kitazo, which was more of a local restaurant than a tourist joint. The food was good but a little pricey for an izakaya considering we didn’t order a whole lot. But it was okay since we planned on going out after to try some street foods that are a lot easier to share amongst four people instead of just two.

After dinner we went across the bridge to check out the Glico sign. It was the first time we had been in Dotonburi at night, which looks nicer at night than in the daytime (in my opinion). The neon lights everywhere gave the area so much life!

After taking multiple pictures on the bridge, we headed to a store called Don Quijote. This is a Japanese department store (Tim:ish) that literally sells everything. You wouldn’t think so, but the top floor has high end luxury goods! This location had 6 floors of food, cosmetics, electronics, clothing… everything! The busiest part of the store was probably the first floor full of Japanese snacks and treats. Mable and Keith are in Japan for a total of 3 weeks, and heading home next week, so they were able to buy a lot of stuff. When I saw them loading up their basket for gifts to bring home, I was a bit jealous. She said she has one dedicated suitcase full of food! In some ways, I was able to live through Mable telling her what I would buy to bring home, and she would end up putting it in her basket.

After the takoyaki and gyozas, we had the best thing for dessert, a warm melon bun filled with vanilla ice cream. A melon bun is basically like a Chinese pineapple bun (bolo bao), but the Japanese version of it. Tim and I ordered one to share and it was very good. Tim says it’s one of his favourite things he’s eaten all trip. The melon bun was freshly baked, which was a nice surprise.

This part of Dontonburi had stalls/food trucks around with a seating area. We sat down and ate our ice cream and then ended up getting some drinks (beers for them and a peach Canada Dry for me) and sat around to chat for a bit. It’s great to hear about their adventures in Japan as we’ll be going to some of the cities they’ve already been and vice versa. They liked Sapporo the best and made their food sound amazing. I can’t wait to go visit ourselves!

I know I’ve always said it’s nice to see familiar faces while you’re away, but it’s even better to see good friends. Mable and I agreed that as nice as it is to travel with your significant other, it’s great to be able to see friends, as you can try more food with them, they can take pictures for you (instead of asking randoms (Tim: with questionable photography skills…)), and you can talk to someone else besides your significant other in a country that doesn’t speak English. I’m glad we were able to meet while we were both in Japan.

Today was a fun day. It also turned out to be a longer day since we didn’t come back to the hotel at all. We’re thinking of heading to Kyoto tomorrow for the day, it only takes about 15 minutes on the Shinkasen from Osaka. It’ll take us longer to get to Osaka Station than it will to get to Kyoto.

Steps today: 25, 200

Spending Summary: Korea

Kait and I spent 6 nights in Seoul, and while it’s a much smaller sample compared to the 30 days we spent in Taiwan, hopefully a review of our spending will still be useful to people.

First, the total up front. Over 7 days and 6 nights in Seoul, we spent $1,095.88 CAD (Everything will be in CAD unless otherwise noted). This works out to $156.55/day. Here’s the breakdown:

Accommodations: $577.98
Food: $340.48
Transportation: $68.05
Activities: $107.47
Souvenirs: $1.90

Of note, we also spent $181.83 “Shopping” which includes gifts and everyday things for ourselves which I wouldn’t categorize as travel related (unlike souvenirs, which I think of as travel related keepsakes).

For comparison, here’s a table of spending by country. Numbers in brackets are per day averages.

Accommodations

Nothing too interesting here. We spent our entire stay in Korea at the same hotel in Seoul. We paid $577.98 for 6 nights which worked out to $96.33/night. (The reason the per day average is different is because I averaged the cost of accommodations over our total days). This was a discounted rate because we booked our flight to Korea on Expedia and they give you an opportunity to book hotels at a discount at your destination. (And not a fake discount. We did a lot of comparing the discount rate vs non-discounted rates on a variety of sites including Expedia itself). I was expecting the per night cost to be higher in Korean compared to Taiwan, but I was happy we found a good hotel with a great location for less than $100/night.

Food

Food in Korea, both in restaurants and on the street, appear to be more expensive than comparable food in Taiwan. I would estimate things were +25% more anecdotally. The bigger jump in our per day spending came from the fact that we had a longer list of things we wanted to try in Korea, so we ate at pricier places more frequently due to our shorter stay.

Transportation

We had no intercity travel at all since we stayed in Seoul the whole time. However, if you consider Incheon Airport outside of Seoul, we spent 10,000 KRW ($11.32) on an Airport Bus into the city and 6,900 KRW ($7.81) on an Airport Express Train back to the airport per person. The Airport Express Train was by far more comfortable, cheaper, and more convenient (assuming you can get to Seoul Station without too much difficulty). The rest of our transportation costs came from taking the Seoul Subway. Most rides (under 10km I think) were 1250 KRW ($1.41).

Taiwan’s total for transportation was higher primarily because we did a lot of travelling between cities in Taiwan. Comparing the intracity travel costs, Taiwan was significantly cheaper that Korea (or really, just Seoul). Lots of rides on the Taipei Metro were only 16 TWD, or $0.64 compared to Seoul’s $1.41.

Activities

There were only two activities that we spent money on in Korea, and over 90% of it was spent on our DMZ tour. The other activity was the entrance fee to Gyeongbokgung Palace. The rest of our time was spent walking around exploring neighbourhoods… and shopping.

Souvenirs

As mentioned in the Taiwan Spending post, we tend not to spend too much on Souvenirs. For Korea though, I set aside some coins as keepsakes since I collect coins and I’ve never been to Korea before. 50 and 10KRW coins are difficult to come by (basically nickels and pennies). Your best bet would be when there are percentage based sales (e.g. 30% off) or in my case, our hotel happened to have coins for me to exchange with them.

Overall, our spending in Korea was pretty much in line with my expectations, and even the amount spent on gifts and personal shopping were quite reasonable. We’re in Japan now, and while I originally thought Japan would be more expensive than Korea, I have a feeling our spending average will be close (or even less). We’ll see how it goes. We’ll be in Japan for just under 30 days, and we’ll be travelling throughout, so we should get a pretty good idea of average spending across Japan.

Anyone have experience travelling around Japan and Korea? What were your experiences with cost comparisons?

Osaka (Day 42): Overwhelmed in Dotonburi

April 11, 2016

It was our first morning in Osaka and the sun was shining. We didn’t have any plans for today, which was nice. We took our time getting ready and did a bit of planning for the upcoming legs of our trip. The hotel has a pretty large desk that both Tim and I could work on (perfect set up). We decided to just walk around the city and head towards the popular Dotonburi area for lunch.

When we walked outside, the sun was shining but it was very windy and there was a cold breeze that we haven’t felt since leaving Vancouver at the end of February. We walked briskly and made sure we were on the sunny side of the sidewalk to stay warm. It was about a 10 minute walk to the Dotonburi area, not 25 minutes according to Google Maps.

Once we got to Dotonburi, I was feeling very overwhelmed with all the craziness and frenzy of the area. There were so many tourists and people in general that it made trying to decide where to eat difficult. The prices around that area are a lot more inflated than what we saw on the way to Dotonburi (obviously). There were a lot of takoyaki street stalls, which Osaka is famous for, that we’ll save for another night. We walked up and down the streets and couldn’t decide or find something that we thought looked like good value. We decided to walk one block out of the craziness and ended up going to a ten don restaurant (tempura restaurant).

The restaurant is called “Tenya”, it’s a casual Japanese restaurant that serves assorted tempuras over rice. It’s a Japanese chain that is based out of Tokyo. Inside the restaurant were a lot of locals having their lunch breaks (I guess they know not to even go into the main part of Dotonburi for lunch).

The food came quickly and it was tasty. I think we were both very hungry as we ate pretty fast. After we finished lunch, we continued to walk around the shopping area, hoping to make it to the Yodo River. We ended up in an area called, Shinsaibashi, which is Osaka’s main shopping district.

We went into a Uniqlo and stayed there for about an hour. We’ve been into multiple Uniqlos in Taiwan, Seoul and now Japan, but this is the first one I’ve been in where I actually tried on some clothes. I had a basket full of clothes to try on and went to the fitting room. When the sales associate lead me to the room, I walked in and she politely told me I needed to take my shoes off. Now I know that you have to take your shoes off while trying clothes on in Japan. I’m a North American small or sometimes medium, but here, I’m a medium or large(!!). At first my basket was full of items that were good deals but not practical for the trip, so after some thinking, I ended up buying practical items that I would need on this trip. These were mainly their Airism tank tops (light fabric that’s anti-odor and anti-bacterial) and a HeatTech long-sleeve (that I feel like I’ll need for here and for Sapporo). Airism tank tops and HeatTech were all 990 JPY = $11.80 CAD). Tim ~~was~~ [is] very patient with me ~~at Uniqlo~~ (Tim: fixed that for you), he found WiFi and sat on the bench and waited for me.

It’s too bad that for Tax Free shopping in Japan, you need to buy a minimum of 10,000 JPY = $119 CAD at one store in order to get 8% tax back. In Korea, you only needed to spend around $30 CAD. A small annoyance about Japan is that they charge tax on top of the marked price (just like North America) (Tim: Not universally, some places include tax, some places don’t). This is uncommon in Asia, as all the others countries I’ve been to have tax included in their prices.

We walked a bit more through Shinsaibashi and went into a couple more stores to browse. There was a 3 level Sanrio Store, which got me excited. My Mom used to own a Sanrio Store in Vancouver when I was young and I have always loved Sanrio stuff. I went to each floor and looked at everything, the one big difference between the Japanese Sanrio store and ones they had North America (do they even have any stores left?) is that they don’t have a candy section. I was looking forward to getting some cool gum or suckers.

After a fairly draining afternoon in Dotonburi and Shinsaibashi, we went back to the hotel to rest and do some work before we went back out at night. I ended up watching two episodes of the Amazing Race while I unpacked and repacked everything in my suitcase, did some laundry and took inventory of my Korean socks and face masks. Tim worked on his blog post about our final spending summary for Korea (which will be posted later today). Before we knew it, it was already 8:30pm when we went back out for dinner. We thought we would just stay close to the hotel and not go back out to Dotonburi as originally planned since we were likely going to end up there tomorrow night with my friend Mable and her boyfriend, Keith (who are also in Osaka for the next few days).

We went back to the top floor of the department store beside the hotel, where they have a bunch of restaurants. When we went outside for the short period of time to cross the street, it was really cold out. I think it was about 5 degrees Celsius, so it was good we stayed in tonight as we weren’t dressed appropriately.

We ended up picking a restaurant that had an assortment of udon and rice dishes. Tim got an Oyako Udon and I got a beef an egg donburi. Our dinner was very simple and quick. The food was good, but a tad overpriced compared to donburis outside of a department store.

Tomorrow we’ll be going to Osaka Castle and then meeting up with Mable and Keith for dinner around Dotonburi. We’re thinking of going to an izakaya since we’ll have more people so we can order and try more items. Looking forward to meeting up with friends from back home.

Today was a good, restful, and productive day. Osaka is a sprawling city and we’ve only ventured into a very narrow part of it. I’m looking forward to going to the Castle tomorrow and walking through the parks, away from the crowds for a nice afternoon stroll. I think I’m a mid-sized city kind of girl (if that’s even a thing). In terms of liveability, I can see myself living in some of the cities we’ve visited but it’s hard for me to picture living in a city as big as Seoul or Osaka. I enjoy big cities but I think large sprawling metropolitan areas intimidate me.

Steps Today: 14, 500

Miyajima/Hiroshima/Osaka (Day 41): Oh Deer!

April 10, 2016

We woke up later than we planned on but the bed was really comfortable. Tim researched that high tide in Miyajima was around 11:00am so we were still good on time. We checked out of the hotel and left our bags there around 9:30am. We decided to just walk to Hiroshima Station since we just missed one of the street cars and didn’t see any other one in the near distance. The walk was actually really nice and refreshing.

We made it to Hiroshima Station with a bit of time to spare as the next train leaving for Miyajima was at 10:13am. I bought a tuna onigiri (110 JPY = $1.30 CAD) and grape juice (100 JPY = $1.20 CAD) from 7-Eleven for breakfast on the train. The train ride to Miyajima was only about 20 minutes (Tim: we caught an express train that only made a few stops), so it was a quick ride there. Once we arrived, we had to take a short ferry across to Itsukushima, where the famous O-torii Gate is in the water.

When we got off the ferry and walked a short distance through town towards the shrine and O-torii Gate, we were greeted by some friendly Japanese deer.

After we finished walking through the shrine and temple area. We walked around the streets of vendors, which mostly sold a Miyajima specialty called, “Momiji Manju”, which are pancake like cakes shaped in a maple leaf. Another popular local dish are oysters prepared all ways: fried, grilled, or raw.

We had to keep a close eye on the time since we had to return to Hiroshima, grab our bags from the hotel, and be back at the train station by 4:17pm to head to Osaka. Surprisingly, we didn’t feel as rushed as I thought we would, we were ahead of schedule by about an hour so I felt a lot more relaxed than I did yesterday thinking about today (Tim: just thinking about the possibility of not being on time can stress Kait out).

We made our way back to Hiroshima Station to have lunch. Since we failed at eating tsukemen last night, Tim found that there was a Bakudanya at the train station! Considering we were only in Hiroshima for 24 hours, we were able to eat two dishes that they’re “most known for”: okonomiyaki and tsukemen.

The final consensus was that Tim’s cold tsukemen was better. I can imagine eating it on a hot summer’s day, it would be really refreshing. I like how they give you paper bibs since there is a lot of splashing when you dip your noodles into the soup. (Tim: You can also choose the level of spiciness, with the (sane) range going from 1-20. I chose 3 and felt like it was a reasonable level of spice. You can go extreme and get levels up to the 100s though… I shudder to think.)

After lunch, we walked back to the hotel. We were really full from lunch so it was good to walk it off. The sun started coming out so it was actually really warm walking back. We had to switch to the shadier side of the street. We got back to the hotel and picked up our bags and caught the street car back to Hiroshima Station. I was happy that we were able to walk to and from the station and only took the street car back when we had our heavy backpacks (saved ourselves 640 JPY = $7.70 CAD) (Tim: and more importantly, got to take in the sights and sounds of the streets as a pedestrian).

We got back to Hiroshima with a half hour to spare before boarding our train to Osaka. It was important we didn’t miss this train because we were meeting Tim’s Great-Aunt (7th Aunt on my Dad’s Mom’s side) on the platform at the station. She knew our train number and which car we were in and said she would be waiting on the platform for us (she also does not have a cell phone). Once we arrived at Shin-Osaka station (after a 1.5hr ride from Hiroshima on the high-speed rail), she was there waiting for us!

Tim’s Great-Aunt has been living in Osaka since she was 26 after finishing her medical degree there. She came to our wedding (we just realized it’s our 6 month anniversary already), so it was nice to be able to see her again this year. Tim doesn’t know her exact age, but she’s still working 4 days at week at the hospital (very impressive).

We took the subway to the hotel she booked for us for a week to drop off our bags before dinner. Osaka definitely feels like a huge city compared to Hiroshima and Fukuoka. I could only imagine what it would be like when we get to Tokyo. Tim says it’s good I eased my way into Japan, so I wouldn’t be so shocked going to Tokyo.

Tim’s Great-Aunt is very kind and hospitable and booked us at the Sheraton Miyako Osaka for a week when she found out we were coming to Osaka. This hotel is the nicest hotel we have/will stay at on our trip (Tim’s scared I’m going to get spoiled now). When we walked into the lobby with our huge backpacks and our hoodies, it felt like we didn’t really belong. Our room is on a the 18th floor so it has great views of the city. It is a normal North American sized room, which feels huge compared to the Japanese sized rooms we’ve been staying at the last few days. We’re both really happy to be able to just settled down here for a week.

Once we dropped our bags off, Tim’s 7-Yi Ma (Great-Aunt) took us for dinner at a restaurant in the mall that’s connected to the hotel. The restaurant was on the top floor of the mall and specialized in unagi. Tim mentioned that last time he was here with Jessica, his Great Aunt always took them out for unagi so he predicted we would have that for dinner as well, and he was right. She ordered dinner sets for us as well as an appetizer of tamago (egg) with unagi inside and a skewer of unagi innards.

After a delicious meal, 7-Yi Ma brought us downstairs to the grocery store and bought us fruit. I was joking to Tim that she probably looked at us and thought we needed to eat more fresh fruit. She bought us strawberries and oranges. Japanese fruits are all so perfect looking. We just finished eating the strawberries, they were all very sweet.

We decided to just relax in the hotel and catch up on the blog and roughly plan out our week. Looking forward to spending time in one place (with a couple of day trips close by). I think if we had to move out of a hotel room each night, I would burn out very quickly.

As always it’s so nice to have family around, and 7-Yi Ma has been so sweet to us. I know we are extremely lucky to be surrounded by such loving families.

Our total steps today: 22,000

Hiroshima (Day 40): Peaceful Day

April 9, 2016

Today we left Fukuoka at 9:45am and took the Shinkansen (high-speed rail) to Hiroshima. We planned on spending one night in Hiroshima on our way to Osaka, where we’ll be spending a week. Our plan was also to use Hiroshima as a base to check out Miyajima tomorrow.

The Shinkansen train to Hiroshima, which is about 285km from Fukuoka, only took an hour. If only all trains were bullet trains. Once we arrived at Hiroshima Station, we lined up for the street cars to take us close to our hotel. My first impression of Hiroshima when we got off the train was that there are a lot of non-Asian tourists. There were a lot of Americans and Europeans all around the station, I don’t think I’ve seen so many non-Asians in one place since leaving Vancouver.

The street car ride was a bit of a painful ride down, it took about half an hour to get close to our hotel (the same amount of time Google says it would take us to walk). For some reason we were stuck at a stop for about 8 minutes. The subway card (IC card) we got in Fukuoka was not compatible with Hiroshima’s transit system (one of the only major cities in Japan that doesn’t make its card compatible with others) so we had to use coins to pay for our fare, which was 160 JPY = $1.92 CAD each.

We finally made it to Hotel Sunroute around noon. Check in time was supposed to be at 2pm, but when we checked in they had a room ready for us. We settled down and planned to go for lunch and then go to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The room was nice and clean and it had the exact same layout as the hotel in Fukuoka. I showed a picture to my Mom and she said it’s the same layout as my parent’s hotel in Tokyo. I guess most Japanese hotel rooms are the same (Tim: based on Kait’s sample size of 3).

While looking up lunch options on Trip Advisor, it was mainly okonomiyaki restaurants and the number one ranked location was called “Nagata-ya”. Okonomiyaki is a savoury Japanese “pancake” and is mainly associated with Hiroshima and Osaka, although the two cities’ versions of okonomiyaki are quite different. The Osaka version is more popular outside of Japan, and if you have Okonomiyaki in Vancouver, it’s probably Osaka style.

We walked down the river towards the restaurant while passing by the Memorial Peace Park. The river and bridges around the memorial are quite nice and remind me a bit of a European city (Tim: I think Kaitlyn associates any city with bridges over rivers/canals as being “European-like”, or if there are taller buildings around, “Chicago-like”). The area was busy with tourists but at the same time, it felt very peaceful and calm.

When we got to Nagata-ya, there was a long line up. We decided to just stick it out and line up. The line up was mainly tourists, as expected given the location of the restaurant and how many foreign tourists we saw walking around the area. We waited about half an hour before being seated at the counter.

The okonomiyaki was good, but it was different because all elements were layered instead of being mixed together (which is what I’m more used to). The okonomiyaki was pretty big, so half way through, I think we both regretted not sharing one instead (at least I did). But I think having waited in line for a while, it made us feel like we should just order our own (rookie mistake). Overall it was good, but I’m sure we could’ve gone to any place and it would’ve been good too and we wouldn’t have to wait.

After lunch we walked to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The cost per person is 200 JPY = $2.40 CAD. Apparently the prices have gone up since April 1st as it used to be only 50 JPY. Part of the museum is closed for renovations so it was basically just the Main Hall that was available for viewing. When we entered the exhibit, the place was packed, so going through each item and reading the plaques took a while.

The museum wasn’t as extensive as I thought it would be, which is a bit of a shame. Tim says the exhibit that was closed explained more about Hiroshima pre-atomic bomb, which would have been interesting (Tim: There was also a lot more about Hiroshima’s ongoing global role in promoting the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons). It’s always a bit depressing to go to any museum of this sort. It’s been 70 years since the atomic bomb was dropped, the city has gone from rumbles to a beautiful one that represents a plea for world peace.

(Tim: It’s too bad that half the museum was being renovated, but I have no doubt it’ll be great when they’re finished. I hope they find opportunity to showcase more individual survivor stories as I find those most compelling. At the end of the museum, they have a row of video monitors where you can queue up videos of survivors giving their first hand accounts of the day. They reminded me of John Hersey’s New Yorker article, “Hiroshima“, which I highly recommend reading in its entirety if you haven’t read it before.)

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Hiroshima castle, where we stumbled upon a ceremony taking place outside one of the shrines. The park looked like it used to have cherry blossoms all around, but now the majority of them are gone.

As we were still really full from lunch, we went back to the hotel and caught up with some writing and rested a bit before going out for a late dinner. Tim did a bit of research on what else Hiroshima is known for, food wise, and he found that tsukemen ramen is from here. Tsukemen is where you dip the noodles and other ingredients into a small bowl of soup/sauce. At around 8:30pm we headed out to find the restaurant, but when we got to the location, it was closed! They had a sign saying they relocated, but we couldn’t read it or understand the map.

We decided to go back to the main area close to us, Hondori, where we saw a lot of shops and restaurants. There was a CoCo Curry (Tim’s favourite) so we ended up going there for dinner. The last time we had CoCo Curry was in Bangkok, when we were craving something other than Thai food. Tim ordered chicken cutlet curry and I had the hamburger steak. It was pretty tasty and hit the spot for both of us.

We walked back to the hotel with full stomachs and prepared for tomorrow morning’s activities in Miyajima. We also FaceTimed my nephew, Nate, who was dancing the hokey pokey for us!

Hiroshima is a beautiful city with a very sad history. While standing on the bridge on such a beautiful day, you can’t help but imagine the horrors of that day (being right around the hypocenter of the A-bomb) on August 6, 1945. We can only pray that an attack like that will never happen again.

Steps today: 19,500

Beppu (Day 39): Japanese Onsen

April 8, 2016

Today, we caught the train at 9:21am from Hakata Station for Beppu Station and planned on spending the day there. We reserved seats for a train back to Fukuoka at 8:20pm. Beppu is a small town (with a population of ~120,000 people) east of Fukuoka in the Oita Prefecture. It’s known as the onsen capital of Japan with over 2,000 hot springs.

The JR train we took there wasn’t a high speed train so it took about 2 hours (145km away). Tim had downloaded Hockey Wives so we watched that on the train ride and then I slept for the remaining hour. The train we were on was interesting as half way through the ride, we had to turn our chairs around and face the other way (Tim: This happens on trains when the tracks look like “Y”, with the station at the bottom and the incoming and outgoing tracks at the top).

When we arrived at Beppu Station, we went to the information desk to find out more about the Jigokus (known as “Hells”) and onsens (hot spring spas) in the area. We ended up buying a one day bus pass and entrance to all 8 Jigokus for 5,200 JPY = $62.50 ($31.25 CAD/person) for both of us (we got a slight discount for having a JR pass).

We caught the 41 bus to take from Beppu Station up the mountain to an area called Kannawa. Kannawa is home to 6 out of the 8 Jigokus. Each Jigoku is unique in their own way. Going through them all was quite interesting (although some were a lot more interesting than others).

Umi Jigoku
This was the first and my favourite out of the jigokus. This one is called “Sea Hell” in English as the hot spring has a cobalt blue colour, which makes the water look really beautiful. You could feel the hot steam coming from the Jigoku when you passed by, the water is about 98 degrees Celsius and there’s even a bucket of eggs being cooked. Most of the Jigokus sold spring boiled or steamed eggs for around 70 JPY =$0.84 CAD (60 JPY =$0.72 CAD on the street).

As we walked around the beautifully landscaped grounds, we saw a sign for a “leg bath”. We walked over and saw people dipping their feet and legs in a small pool. We joined in and it was really nice and relaxing. The water was very hot and you can tell how far the water came up to our legs as there was a clear white and red distinction. After we dried off, and put our socks and runners back on, our feet felt super comfy and like we were walking on air.

Onnishibozu Jigoku
The second Jigoku is named after mud bubbles. This one was neat but wasn’t as spectacular as the Umi Jigoku. I felt like they got less exciting as we continued on.

Yama Jigoku
The third Jigoku was called the Mountain Hell as the hot spring was against a mountain. This was probably my least favourite out of the 8 Jigokus. You could tell that this Jigoku had to make up for it’s lacklustre display as they had some animals like hippos, peacocks, flamingos, Japanese monkeys and rabbits in fairly small cages on display along with the hot spring.

Kamado Jigoku
The next Jigoku we went to was “Cooking Pot Hell”. This Jigoku wasn’t very fun to visit because there were two Korean tour buses there at the same time so it was unusually loud and the foot bath was packed! The boiling hot spring water was used to steam eggs, steam buns and custard pudding. We tried the eggs here – they had a distinct taste and were actually quite good.

Oniyama Jigoku
This jigoku is called “Mountain Monster Hell”. The monsters are crocodiles. The hot spring water is used to breed crocodiles in Beppu – there are about 80 crocodiles at this Jigoku in cages.

After visiting the first 5 jigokus, we were getting hungry. There were a couple of restaurants down the block so we decided to give one of them a try. I like how Japanese restaurants have plastic food to display their menu, it makes it much easier, especially if they don’t have an English menu. The restaurant we picked was run by (or what looked like) a husband and wife in their 70’s-80’s and their 40 year old son. The husband was manning his stall outside selling steamed eggs and yams while the wife and son were inside in the kitchen. But when the son had to step out for a bit, the husband came inside to help out with customers while she cooked. I ordered a katsu don (pork cutlet and egg on rice) and Tim ordered katsu curry (his favourite!).

Considering this restaurant was in a very touristy location and there was only one other restaurant to compete with it on the block, our expectations weren’t that high, but at the same time, knowing the older lady was cooking was a good sign. When the food came, we were both super happy with everything.

After lunch we went to visit the last Jigoku in Kannawa before taking a bus to go to the remaining two.

Shiraike Jigoku
This Jigoku is also called “White Pond Hell”. It was a very pretty Jigoku with a nice garden surrounding it. It also had aquariums (a bit run down) filled with piranhas and barracudas.

We rushed out of this one pretty quickly since the next bus to get to the other Jigokus was arriving soon and the next one wasn’t for another 40 minutes. We made our way to the next two Jigokus, which were a short bus ride away from the Kannawa area.

After about a 5 minute bus ride further up the mountain, we made it to the last two Jigokus. It was about 4:30pm and we also wanted to check out a traditional Japanese onsen before we had to leave Beppu. The problem with going to an onsen town is that there are a lot of options and with limited reviews in English online, it’s hard to pick. Luckily, the next Jigoku had free WiFi so we were able to do some last minute research.

Chinoike-Jigoku
This jigoku is also called “Blood Pond Hell” because the water looks red (more like a rust colour). This is the oldest of the Jigokus that we visited and also has the coolest waters at around 78 degrees celsius. The clay from this hot spring is used to treat skin disease and is sold here. I was pretty tempted to buy it but didn’t know if it was a gimmick or not (Tim: Unlike the products sold in (Korean) cosmetic stores which are definitely not gimmicks…). This was the last Jigoku we saw that had a foot bath (yay!) (Tim: Double-yay!!).

Tatsumaki-Jigoku
The last jigoku is called “Tornado Hell” because it’s a geyser, not a pond/pool like all the others. The geyser erupts every 30-35 minutes, which is very frequent in comparison to Yellowstone’s “Old Faithful”. They built an enclosure so the water wouldn’t spray everywhere since there are buildings all around. It would’ve been cool if they didn’t have it so we could see how high it would shoot up (Tim: Apparently the signs said without the enclosure, it would go up around 30m).

While waiting for the geyser to erupt, we decided we would to go to a public onsen called Hyotan Onsen. I had seen it on a list of recommended public onsens and the reviews looked decent. Hyotan is located in Kannawa, close to where we were for the other 6 jigokus so we had to go back. We were keeping a close eye on the time because we knew we had to be back at the train station by 8:20pm.

After getting a tad lost while walking to Hyotan (Tim: Dear Map Makers, if you’re not going to point North in the “Up” direction, then please include a frickin’ compass! Oh! And scales would be nice.), we made it there around 5:20pm. We noticed there was a tour bus outside but luckily, the Korean ladies were all leaving. When we arrived inside, we had to take off our shoes and put it in a locker. Similar to Ichiran, there is a ticketing system to pay. We decided to try the sand bath (which are more unique) and go into the public baths.

That’s pretty much all the pictures I have. We aren’t allowed to take our cameras in to the sand bath area or the public baths (for obvious reasons). The sand bath was the only area where Tim and I could be together. We both got changed into our yukatas (we forgot about taking pictures) and headed into the sand bath area.

The sand bath was interesting. There are different areas based on how hot you want your sand to be. We picked the medium sand and started to dig our hole. Once I had a shallow hole dug, Tim shovelled hot sand on to me, covering my whole body except my face and toes. It felt really heavy and hot. You’re supposed to stay under the sand until you’re sweating or as long as you want. Since I was already under the sand, Tim had to shovel sand on himself. He was sweating a lot already from having to shovel sand on me in a sauna-like room. Once I had enough, I shoved sand on to Tim’s arm and put more on top of him. It was an interesting experience, we both said we probably wouldn’t do it again though.

After the sand bath we both went our separate ways into the segregated baths. At first I was a bit shy about being naked around other ladies but looking around, no one cared so I didn’t either (Tim: I had a similar experience. I went from hesitant about the concept to strutting around sans towel in about 10 seconds). When I walked into the bath area, there is an indoor area with several different baths and some massage waterfall fountains, but before you go into the baths, you have to wash up. There is a bathing area with around 20 stations with a mirror, shampoo and soap, and a shower head. You sit down on stools and bath yourself before you go in (Tim: I sprayed and soaped down my stool first). I think we got there at a really good time because there weren’t that many people in the baths, which made it really relaxing. The pools were quite hot, so I wasn’t able to stay in each of them for that long. After checking out all the different indoor pools I went outside. I enjoyed the outdoor one the most, it had a waterfall coming down and rocks all around (Tim: What!? The Men’s side didn’t have a waterfall!). The sun was setting as well, so it was nice and peaceful. It was great for me because there was no one outside when I went, so I was able to enjoy some time to myself for about 15 minutes. There is also a steam room to go to, I went in for about 2 minutes and then I left and sprayed my face with cold water at one of the washing stations (probably not supposed to do that).

(Tim: I spent some time with the waterfall massage fountains. There were about 15 “stations” and when I went in, there were two people already inside. They both looked like they were perhaps in their 60s. One was doing pushups under a waterfall, the other was in a prone position letting the water hit his back. The both were stretched out so that 2-3 waterfalls were hitting them. I started upright, but soon decided to do as the locals do. After one pushup… I decided to follow the other guy instead and I lay prone and let the water work my lower back.)

We spent about 45 to an hour in the baths and came out pretty refreshed. Tim came out of the men’s bath with a huge smile on his face. He enjoyed his “Tim time”. Overall, we were both really happy with Hyotan and our first onsen experience was a success. (Tim: I’m definitely on board the onsen train now).

After feeling relaxed and rejuvenated we made our way back to Beppu Station. We caught a bus, which took about 15-20 minutes to get back to the train station. It was about 7:45pm, so we needed to find a quick bite to eat. There wasn’t much selection around Beppu’s train station and the restaurants inside the station closed at 8pm. We decided to go to Lotteria, which is a Japanese fast food chain.

On the train ride back to Fukuoka, we watched Masterchef Canada together and I fell asleep (as usual). We got back to our hotel around 11pm. It was a long day but a great one. We both enjoyed Beppu and the slow pace of the day. We didn’t get any pictures but from the top of the hill on the bus, you could see all the steam coming out of houses and onsens – it’s quite amazing.

Steps for today: 14,200

Fukuoka (Day 38): Change of Plans

April 7, 2016

We didn’t fall asleep until around 2am last night so this morning we woke up around 10:30am. We still planned on going to Nagasaki, despite sleeping in, but were going to catch a later train. After getting everything together, we left the hotel for Tenjin Station to catch the subway to Hakata Station (where the Japan Rail Station is).

Before our trip, we bought a 14 day Japan Rail Pass (JR pass) from the JTB office in the basement of Hotel Vancouver for $558 CAD each. The JR pass is offered to foreigners traveling into Japan, where you can pay a set price for unlimited train rides. The pass is offered at a significant discount and must be bought before coming to Japan. You have to show your passport to prove that you are visiting Japan as a temporary visitor and not on any work visa.

When got to the JR office at Hakata Station, there was a long line up for the JR pass. There were probably over 50 people ahead of us and we only had about an hour until the 12:55pm train we were planning on taking to Nagasaki departed. The line up didn’t seem to move at all for the first 15 minutes, but then they started opening more wickets and the line up moved a bit faster. We had to bring the papers we got from the JTB office in Vancouver as well as our passport to redeem our JR pass. The lady checked our passports to see that the sticker (Japan doesn’t stamp passports) said temporary visitor. At this point, we could also reserve seats for trains that we knew we were going to take in the next few days.

After the lady processed our JR pass, she told us that the train we were hoping to catch to Nagasaki was cancelled due to severe rain. The forecast for today was rain but we didn’t realize how heavy it started to rain because we had been indoors most of the morning. She said the next train would be 1:55pm, which didn’t really work out for us because the main point of going to Nagasaki was to visit the Atomic Bomb Museum and it closed at 5pm. We decided to change our plans and stay in Fukuoka since the weather was bad. Now we know that the JR pass line ups can get really busy, so we should make sure if we need to reserve any tickets from now on we should make arrangements the day before if possible.

Although it would have been nice to see Nagasaki, I was also glad we could just stay in Fukuoka and take it easy. I was behind on blog posts and we needed to do a bit more Japan planning and research on things (plus I’ve been a bit tired trying to fight off a cold). I think one of the biggest things that I have to get over is that we won’t be able to see everything, eat all the “must eats”, or buy all the things I would have bought on a normal trip. I’m used to short trips and I know if we travel the way I would on a two week trip, we’ll burn out quickly and I could already feel it a bit.

So I suppose the train getting cancelled is a blessing in disguise. We headed to the other famous Fukuoka ramen place called, Ichiran, for lunch. There is a location attached to the Hakata train station, which was perfect. When you get there, you have to use a machine to pay for your order and it prints out a ticket. Once you’re seated you give the waitress your ticket and your food comes. It was a neat yet very anti-social process and eating experience (Tim: the ticket machines are pretty common throughout Japan).

And the winner between Ichiran and Ippudo is (in our opinion) Ippudo! Ichiran is very good too but their meat was the weakest link, it wasn’t that tender and it was sliced very thin. Ichiran is also just over 100 JPY more expensive and they charge for kikurage mushrooms that are already included in Ippudo’s bowl. Although the Ichiran experience is novel, I enjoyed my bowl of Ippudo ramen more.

After we finished eating, we went outside and it was raining very hard. We decided to go back into the station mall and buy an umbrella. Japanese people all carry clear umbrellas here, so we thought we’d join in. We found a store that was relatively cheap in the basement and sold an umbrella for 410 JPY = $5 CAD (Tim: More expensive than what I remember umbrellas going for the last time I was in Japan in 2009). Despite having waterproof rain jackets, this type of rain needed an umbrella and I also had my laptop in my backpack today (I was planning on writing while on the train).

We decided to have a leisurely walk back to our hotel from the train station, but first stopping by Hakata’s Canal City Mall. Since it was pouring, the best place to be is inside a mall. The Canal City Mall is the mid-way point between Hakata and Tenjin Station (where our hotel is). Once we arrived, I was excited to browse around at Uniqlo and Muji, stores that I’ve been in many times but never in Japan!

As expected, Uniqlo is about 20% cheaper than what it is in Taiwan and Muji is also slightly cheaper. While browsing through Uniqlo, there are a lot of things I would like to buy but I don’t have any room in my luggage. They’re clothes I would want to have when I get back to Vancouver, not necessarily clothes I need on this trip. I’ve made notes to myself that I would like to go back to Seoul and Japan just to shop in the future and I’ll bring an empty suitcase (Tim: because clothing is so different around the world it necessitates travelling across an ocean to get what you need…).

Every hour the canal in the mall has a water show. We caught half of one that was happening at 4pm. The water show was choreographed to”Be Our Guest” from The Beauty at the Beast. The show was better than the one we waited for in the cold in Seoul at the Danpo Bridge (Tim: I decided it was better within the first 5 seconds).

We headed back to Tenjin Station and figured we would have an early dinner and just go back to the hotel. It was such a wet day out that we thought once we got back inside we wouldn’t want to go back out again.

Tenjin Station has a large underground mall that connects all the department stores to office buildings, City Hall and the subway station. We’ve been to a lot of underground malls in Seoul, but this one was a lot nicer. The stores were mainly Japanese clothing stores along with a lot of French bakeries. I noticed that a lot of Japanese stores are named in French, although some spelled incorrectly. (Tim: is “Flench” the equivalent to “Engrish”?)

After going through part of the mall, we left to go find something for dinner. It started to get very stuffy inside and I think the dim lights and being underground made me feel a bit uneasy. I find that in Korea and Japan, when it’s a bit colder outside (it wasn’t actually that cold today at 18 degrees) they blast the heat inside too much. So whenever we went inside a mall or department store, Tim and I would be sweating.

We went to one of the shopping plazas connected to the underground mall and found that on their basement level there were several restaurants that looked quite good. We picked one called, Kisuimaru. Tim ordered their chirashi don (Tim: they called it Kisui-don) and I had a dinner set.

At first we were hesitant because it wasn’t that busy (but I guess it was only 5:15pm after all), but the food was good. When we were finishing up, more people (what seemed like locals) started to come in. I feel like we won’t have any horrible dining experiences in Japan (*knock on wood*).

We came back to the hotel after dinner and caught up on our blogging and did some more research on the town we’ll be going to tomorrow, Beppu (the onsen capital of Japan). Our wedding videographer, Henry, just went to Japan for a bit and told us the whole town is steaming, sounds pretty cool to me!

Our train tomorrow is at 9:21am, so we’ll get a good night sleep tonight!

Steps today: 14,600

Fukuoka (Day 37): Japanese Baseball (Go Hawks!)

April 6, 2016

Today was our first full day in Fukuoka and we were ready to explore the city. The weather was overcast and about 18 degrees celsius, which was perfect weather for walking around. After having ramen last night, the next thing we wanted to have was obviously sushi. One of the first restaurants (highly rated on Trip Advisor) to come up when I Google searched was “Chikae Fukuoka Shop”. Our plan for today was to go there for lunch and walk around the city – a pretty low key day.

Chikae Fukuoka Shop was about an 8 minute walk from our hotel. When we arrived at around 12:30pm, there was a long line up outside. The line was a mixed bag of businessmen in black suits, older Japanese ladies and a few tourists (we seemed like the only North American tourists – most were Korean or from Hong Kong). The line up went fairly quickly and we were in the restaurant in less than 15 minutes. The restaurant is quite large with fish tanks in the middle of the restaurant with counter seating around it as well as tables around the counters. We were lucky to get a seat at the counter so we had a good view of all the fish in the tanks.

At lunch, there were only two lunch sets on the menu, each for 1,400 JPY ($16.90 CAD) – we got one of each. While we ate, we noticed that some locals would order sashimi and the sushi chef would come out of the kitchen, grab the fish out of the tank and chop it up behind the counter and serve it. There are no prices for these fish that we could see, so we just stuck to the lunch sets.

After we finished lunch around 1:30pm, there was no longer a line up outside the restaurant, good to know if we ever come back in the future. We started to walk towards Maizuru Park, where the Fukuoka Castle ruins are. During the Edo Period (1603-1867), the Fukuoka Castle used to be the largest castle in Kyushu. It was subsequently torn down during the Meiji Restoration as it symbolized Japan’s feudal past. Today, it’s a park in the middle of the city with some view points and surrounded with cherry blossom trees. Since Fukuoka is in southern Japan, the cherry blossoms have already bloomed here and are now starting to fall and tree are sprouting green leaves. The views of the city were nice, as we looked to the left, we could see the Ohori Park lake, Fukuoka Tower and Fukuoka Dome – where we were heading later in the afternoon.

As we made our way towards Ohori Park, we passed by the Gokoku Shrine and took some pictures. The area was very quiet and peaceful. I really enjoyed having so many trees surrounding us during our walk – it felt really good to breathe in some fresher air.

Ohori Park was our main destination on our walk, it is Fukuoka’s main park in the centre of the city with a large pond and many small bridges. We sat down on a park bench facing the pond for a bit just to sit and relax. We noticed as we walked around the pond that many people were by themselves and looked like they were doing some self-reflection as well.

After our relaxing stroll around Ohori Park, we made our way to the Fukuoka Dome and Umi no nakamichi Sea Side Park. This walk took about 20 minutes through the city – passing by more canals.

When we got close to the Fukuoka Dome around 4:00pm, we noticed there were a lot of locals heading towards it. The Fukuoka Dome is home to the city’s baseball team, the SoftBank Hawks. We were excited because I had tried to look up a game schedule but their English website only showed their 2015 schedule so we thought we missed out. As baseball is Japan’s most popular sport, we were hoping to catch a game at some point. Once we made it to the top of the stairs, it definitely looked like game day! I read that the Hawks are one of the best teams in the league as they have won the league championship multiple times and are currently the reigning Nippon Professional Baseball League champs (two years running).

We went to the ticket counter and asked for the section in the outfield with the second cheapest seats – 1,000 JPY = $12 CAD. The most expensive tickets we saw on the price list were 60,000 JPY = $72 CAD. The lady at the ticketcounter told us “this section is very excited”, which meant to us that it was likely the team’s supporter section which sounded perfect to us!

We found out the game didn’t start until 6:00pm, but there were already so many people lined up at 4pm to get into the dome as the doors opened at 4:30pm. We decided to walk to Momochi Seaside Park (as planned) that was beside the stadium and come back a bit before the game started to grab food and walk around the concourse.

Momochi Seaside Park was nice to walk around on the “sea wall”. It seemed like this place would be a lot busier during the summer as there were a lot of businesses and shacks that weren’t open. The beach itself had a surprising number of teenagers just hanging out with their shoes off.

We made our way back to the stadium around 5pm and headed in. It turns out you can bring your own food in – which is why so many people had big backpacks and why Family Mart (a convenience store) inside the Hilton was crazy busy. We could’ve brought in our own food but at the same time we wanted to try “Japanese stadium food”. They had MOS Burger, bentos, takoyaki, ramen, and other American stadium food. The prices were typical of a stadium – about 30-40% more than what it would be outside.

We got to our seats and they were better than I expected for 1,000 JPY. We were right beside the main supporter section so every time the Hawks were up at bat, everyone would be standing but when the other team was batting, you could sit down. We got to our seats well before the game started and there were a lot of people already seated and enjoying the pre-game entertainment. The game was a lot of fun mostly due to the songs and chants they had for each player (my favourite was for Yuichi Honda). They would say a bunch of stuff in Japanese and then say the player’s last name repeatedly until they were done. This taught us (or just me) how to pronounce some of their last names properly. It was a lot of fun and it was probably the best $12 CAD we spent this whole trip.

Unfortunately the Hawks lost to the Chiba Lotte Marines 4-3, which is too bad because the Hawks pretty much dominated the game in terms of hits but they weren’t able to convert (they had the bases loaded three times). The Marines, on the other hand, hardly had any hits but got 3 home runs.

What I enjoyed the most wasn’t the baseball game but watching everyone around us having fun while supporting their home team. There wasn’t a “type” of Hawks fun, it was basically everyone (it seemed like everyone in Fukuoka was there) – young and old, men and women, from all walks of life and age (babies to people who look like they’re in their 80s). I find that at most live sporting events in North America, it’s mostly dominated by groups of men and you rarely see large groups of girls or women without any guys, but at this game there were a lot of groups of just women (and they didn’t look like “puck bunny” types).

I’m really happy we “stumbled” upon this game and we were lucky enough to have experienced a Japanese baseball game with some really die hard fans. If only Canucks games were as fun!

After the game was over, we walked back from the stadium to our hotel in about 30 minutes. We didn’t want to bother with going 3 stops on the subway since it was so busy – must have been close to 30,000 people in the stadium all trying to get home. On our way back, we stopped by Lawson’s (Japanese convenience store) to pick up some onigiris to eat as we weren’t that full from the food at the game.

We stayed up really late (until 2am) and decided to just play tomorrow by ear since our plan to go to Nagasaki early didn’t look like it was going to happen.

Steps today: 30,000