Izakaya – Where to, Gumshoe?

Okinawa/Sapporo (Day 59): From Summer to Winter

April 28, 2016

Our last morning in Okinawa was just packing everything up before the check out time at 11am. The sun was shining and it was about 28°C. We checked the forecast for Sapporo and it was a high of 11°C and a low of 3°C. We basically picked the two most extremely opposite parts of Japan (climate wise) to visit back to back.

Before checking out we went downstairs to the Family Mart and grabbed a few things for lunch – an egg salad sandwich, a fried chicken drumstick, and inari. We checked out and made our way to Asahibashi Monorail Station to take the train to Naha Airport. The train ride to get to the airport was 260 JPY = $3 CAD each. We arrived at the airport dripping in sweat, it was not a pretty sight.

When we arrived, we checked in and noticed that Tim’s boarding pass said Star Alliance Gold. He didn’t think he still had status this year but apparently he still does? Or maybe this is because he had gold status when we booked these flights. Anyway, we went to the ANA lounge and they scanned his boarding pass and we were allowed in. The lounge was very business oriented and quite small. They had some fresh juice, fountain drinks, Suntory Whiskey, Orion Beer, and some Japanese cracker snacks. Their Orion Beer pouring machine was really cool. Tim took a good video of it.

While sitting in the lounge, there were a bunch of fighter jets taking off from the airport. Except this time, these fighter jets were part of the Japanese Self-Defense Force. (Tim: We saw two jets take off in tandem and banked left together immediately after taking off… which was pretty cool). We had some drinks in the lounge before heading to our gate.

Our flight was delayed by 10 minutes, but still ended up getting to Sapporo on time. The flight was about 2 hours and 45 minutes. ANA domestic flights don’t offer much in terms of food or drinks (they only have coffee, apple juice, green tea, or consomme), which is a bit disappointing for an Asian airline. The best airline we’ve flown has been Bangkok Airways. For a domestic flight in Thailand (that was only an hour long), they served us drinks and a meal.

When we arrived in Sapporo and stepped out of the plane, we could immediately feel the cold crisp air, a stark difference from the warm humid air we were in a few hours ago. After we got our bags we headed for the JR New Chitose Airport Station where we caught a train to Sapporo Station. The train ride was about 35 minutes and cost us 1,070 JPY = $12.45 CAD each.

Our hotel, Nest Hotel, is about a 6 minute walk straight up the street from Sapporo Station. On our walk there, my sweatshirt was not cutting it. It was so cold! I don’t think we’ve been this cold since some time in February when we left Vancouver. Tim’s going to say it wasn’t that cold, but it was (Tim: it wasn’t that cold). We got to the hotel and checked into our room. The room was similar to other typical Japanese hotel rooms – small, double bed, with minimal space to put your luggage. But as always, everything is very clean so there’s not much more you can ask for. We got a pretty good deal on this hotel room, we’re paying $245 CAD for 4 nights here. We booked on Expedia and had a promo code for $100 off from TD Rewards.

We settled in and layered up. I wore my Heattech shirt from Uniqlo, brought out my scarf and my toque (I basically brought my toque just for Sapporo). We did a bit of research on what restaurants were close by since our plan for tonight was just to grab dinner and plan our next few days here. Since it was so cold out, I was actually craving ramen (which rarely happens). Sapporo is known for having good ramen, Hokkaido ramen, which is more of a miso based broth (vs. tonkotsu broth from Fukuoka/Hakata). My favourite ramen in Vancouver is Santouka on Robson, which is originally from Hokkaido. There’s actually a ramen area in Sapporo but it was too far of a walk for tonight, so we continued looking. Tim found a yakitori place one street over that sounded really good so we headed there.

When we got to the yakitori place, it did look really good but the wait for dinner was 45 minutes so we passed. We’ll try to go back again another day. We walked down the street and found an izakaya whose menu looked good so we went there. The izakaya was filled with smoking businessmen and women. We were seated at the counter since all the tables were full. Unfortunately, everyone to my left was smoking and blowing it my direction (I used my scarf to cover my nose when it got bad). We ordered a salad, yakitori, chicken karaage, fried squid, pork belly fried rice and edamame (which we thought was free but I think it’s free if you order drinks). Our bill came out to be 4,049 JPY = $47 CAD. Everything was tasty (we have yet to have a bad meal in Japan. *knock on wood*), but towards the end we wanted to leave as soon as possible since even more smoke was blowing our way.

The Sapporo Clock Tower was close to the hotel so we decided to take a quick look. We took a picture and then walked back quickly. It was too cold!

Looking forward to exploring another part of Japan in the next few days. It’s our last Japanese city we’ll visit before heading back to Taipei on Tuesday. April went by so quickly, I can’t believe it’s almost May. We’ll be more prepared with layering up even more tomorrow.

Steps today: 7,000

Tokyo/Okinawa (Day 55): A Warm Tropical Welcome

April 24, 2016

After a relatively late night of packing and getting things sorted, we woke up and were on our way out of the apartment by 11am (which was also our check out time). We were happy with our Airbnb experience in Tokyo and would be happy to stay in that apartment again.

We made our way to Shinjuku Station to take the train to Haneda Airport. It’s nice that we’re flying out of Haneda since it’s a lot closer to the city centre than Narita is. Our flight to Naha, Okinawa was at 2:45pm. We arrived at the domestic terminal at 12pm and took our time getting to the gate. While on the train, we were happy that our flight was on a Sunday, since maneuvering around the station and being on the train with our backpacks would be horrific during a weekday.

There are a quite a few stores in the public areas of the airport but once you cross security there isn’t much in the domestic terminal. We had lunch at Tenya (the same tempura don place we ate at in Osaka). Tim and I both agreed that we can eat cheaply in Japan and would be happy with it as we don’t seem to appreciate (Tim: the value proposition of) super expensive tempura. The jumbo prawn tempura I had in Roppongi Hills was the most expensive tempura I’ve eaten – at $12 for one piece (Tim: more than our entire meals combined at Tenya)!

Haneda is a nice airport, though the domestic terminal is kind of lacking in stores, I’m sure the international terminal is much better. Since we are flying ANA back home in July, we will be connecting through Haneda again for two hours before our final flight back to Vancouver. I was trying to scout out what stores are available on the international side (past security) so I know what I don’t need to buy until July.

While planning out Japan, one of the first two flights we booked was our flights to Okinawa and Sapporo. We knew we wanted to go to these two places but since they’re either not on the mainland or pretty far north, it wasn’t as easily accessible with the JR train pass. Luckily, I remembered my former manager talking about cheap domestic flights within Japan that are only available for foreigners. We did some research online and booked our two flights as soon as the flights for the spring and summer were available.

All domestic flights within Japan (regardless of how far) can be booked for 10,800 JPY = $120 CAD. This is a really good price and you also get the full amount of miles (Aeroplan points) for the discounted fare (Tim: I can’t remember the last time I got full miles on an Air Canada flight… you have to purchase Flex Fares which are close to double the price of their typically advertised Tango Fares.). All you have to do is provide your passport info as well as your booking number for your arrival and departure flights to Japan. You can book these discounted fares through the ANA’s Experience Japan Fare or through JAL’s Japan Explorer Pass (JAL seems to also have something called the Yokoso/Visit Japan Fare and Welcome to Japan Fare which seem to be similar promotions). We picked ANA mainly because it’s part of Star Alliance, so if you collect Aeroplan points, it’s best to fly ANA as JAL is part of One World (Cathay, British Airways, etc). When we looked to book the exact same flights as we wanted without the foreigner’s promotion, the price of the tickets were over $800 per person. A lot of people know about the JR pass but if you need to go between cities quickly or ones that aren’t as accessible, taking advantage of these cheap tickets is the way to go.

Our plane took about 20 minutes on the tarmac before taking off. They had to double check something on the plane. The flight to Okinawa was about 2.5 hours, and there was quite a bit of turbulence as we were getting closer to landing. The plane was a lot bigger than I thought it would be for a domestic flight (Tim: 777), but I guess Okinawa is a popular destination for a lot of Japanese people.

It was my first time flying ANA and I was actually surprised they only served us drinks for this flight, but I guess it was only a domestic flight. Drinks choices were green tea, apple juice, coffee and chicken consommé (?!).

As soon as we landed, you could tell it was super humid as the windows on the plane on the outside fogged up immediately. We were now closer to Taiwan than were to mainland Japan. When we got out of the plane, you could feel the warm tropical air and it was 27 degrees Celsius. Walking through the terminal, it felt like Hawaii in a sense. Everyone waiting for their flight out of Okinawa were in shorts and t-shirts and were slightly tanned or burned. And it seemed like the staff uniform for a lot of stores were floral printed shirts – very tropical looking.

We caught the monorail (which was only 2 cars long) to Asahibashi Station and walked about 8 minutes to our guest house. This was our first test walking with our backpacks in tropical weather and we both were sweating quite a bit. Are we going to die in Vietnam in June? (Tim: I’m pretty sure we won’t die since humans are pretty good at heat acclimatization).

When we we finally got to Villa Coast Nishimachi Guest House, we followed the instructions for the self-check in (the reception is only open until 6pm) which is pretty easy since they also sent me an email after we booked with instructions on how to get there and check in. We booked a double bed studio off Expedia after reading really good reviews about this place. When we got into the room, I was both very pleasantly surprised with the space and cleanliness for $62.44 CAD a night.

I realize that when posting these pictures for people back home, this doesn’t look very impressive but anything that’s extremely clean (Tim: not too hard to find in Japan), we’re happy with. And if it has a washer, even better! I see why this place has high ratings on TripAdvisor, there’s a guide for the room and even a list of suggested restaurants around the area that are favourites of the guest house managers. Although reception isn’t around 24 hours and it feels like we’re staying in an apartment rather than a hotel, you feel very supported.

We decided to pick a place from the suggested restaurants for dinner tonight and plan out our next three days in Okinawa. We went to an Izakaya restaurant called, Himitsu-Kichi, about a 3 minute walk away. The building looked a bit tiki-hut-ish and we were seated upstairs in our own private little booth. All the food was really good, and the drinks were very cheap (alcoholic cocktails were only like $3 CAD, too bad I don’t really drink). We ordered a salad, chicken skewers, grilled squid, an omurice with gravy, chicken karaage, an Orion Beer (an Okinawan Beer), and coke for 3,988 JPY = $45 CAD.

After a delicious first meal in Okinawa, we headed back to the guest house and bought some water along the way at Family Mart. It was now pouring rain (but still very warm) on our walk back. It’s rainy season right now, so hopefully it won’t be crazy rain all the time.

I first heard about Okinawa while working at my Aunt’s store in Stanley Park (Tim: and I first hear about Okinawa while watching The Karate Kid Part II… looking forward to witnessing some ice breaking, since that’s a thing right?). I used to work there each summer when I was younger and got to meet a lot of people from around the world. One of my coworkers was from Okinawa and I heard it was like the “Hawaii of Japan”. The way she described home sounded awesome. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, so when I think of Okinawans, I think of her. Since then, I’ve always wanted to visit.

The city of Naha is a very slow and quiet town from what we’ve seen so far. A totally different scene from Tokyo. It feels nice to take it down a notch after being in two large cities back to back.

Looking forward to exploring more of the island and seeing a very different part of Japan.

Steps today: 8,000

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