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Return to 16 September: Hiroshima to Miyajima
Once again on the Shinkansen, this time to Nara. Nara's one of Japan's ancient capitals, and said to outdo Kyoto in its beauty.
While in Nara, we'll be staying at Hotobil (basically a Japanese-style bed and breakfast).
Still no photos... iPad issues that don't bear going into, but that boil down to dumbass design choices. Will continue looking for a solution.
Today's primary job was to flee Hiroshima before the typhoon hit, and relocate to Nara, where we'll be spending 4 days. It was raining lightly when we left, but we have backpack condoms that keep our stuff dry, so it wasn't a problem. Caught the Japan Rail shuttle bus about 5 minutes from our ryokan, and made it to the Japan Rail station with enough time for a decent breakfast at one of the station restaurants: a huge bowl of thick, chewy udon noodles in broth for me, and cold soba noodles with tempura for Shoshanna. (Of course, we always share, so we get to try a bit of everything.) We were tempted by the station's okonomi restaurant, for one last try of the Hiroshima style, but they didn't open until too close to our desired Shinkansen, and by the time we finished breakfast, the line outside the okonomi place was nearly 30 people long. Nope!
Made it to our Shinkansen with time to spare, but for the first time, the cars with unreserved seating that we usually take were already full, so we had to stand (Shoshanna) and sit (me) in the space at the end of a car, between cars, but still indoors. So if you need to be sitting in the car, a word to the wise: reserve a seat if you don't know in advance that the train won't be full at your desired departure time. Anyway, lesson learned, but it wasn't a huge issue because several seats opened up about 15 minutes later, at the first stop after we got on, and we grabbed a pair. (We work well as a team: Shoshanna ran and grabbed the seats, and I schlepped the big backpacks.)
Transferred to a local train an hour and a half later, and made it into Nara after another half hour or so. We transferred at Osaka, and the station platforms were packed with people. But by the time we got to Nara, there weren't many people at all. By the time we arrived, it was raining heavily, although the main body of the typhoon is expected to bypass Nara. We have reasonably good rain gear, so we got to our hotel with only one small problem: we walked past it in the rain. (In our defence, it was offset about 30 feet back from the street, and not particularly well signposted. And it was raining hard. Did I mention the rain?) Fortunately, there was a tourist information centre just past the hotel, and when the stopped in to ask, they set us straight quickly.
For a last-minute, "any port in a (literal) storm" choice, the Washington Plaza (!) hotel proved to be a good choice. Only about 5 minutes walk from the rail station, and as clean and tidy, as all Japanese hotels etc. that we've stayed in thus far. Tiny, though: maybe 10 feet square, plus a bathroom just large enough to turn around in tucked between the (small double) bed and the door. The bed is a nice change from the tatami mats + futon ryokan experience: in a tatami (straw mats) room, it can be hard to get up and down from floor level after a long day walking. I foresee that in a few years, we may have to give up on the ryokans and go for rooms with western-style beds.
For dinner, we went to a small izakaya (a pub, sort of) called "Washoguya Happo". The head waiter told us there would be a half-hour wait, but we sat for only 5 minutes by their indoor koi pond (which contained two extremely skeptical-looking koi that maintained a safe distance*) before being shown to a table. Turned out to be much quieter than the other izakayas we've eaten at, which catered mostly to a younger and louder crowd. We ended up ordering about eight small dishes—some meat (pork and beef), some not (tempura veggies, deep-fried tofu), and some both (cold chicken on salad greens). None of it was spectacular, but it was all tasty. And it accompanied a warm carafe of local sake quite well.
* Koi have surprisingly expressive faces, and the look on their eyes was clearly "sure, you're just looking now, but we saw what happened to Fred last week, and we're not ending up as sushi for gaijin".
The rain had stopped by morning. We walked down to the train station, along largely deserted streets. The station has two of the few places that are open sufficiently early for breakfast. We opted for the one opposite Kotoka, which was the other open place; it didn't seem to have an English name. It was another one of those places with a meal ticket machine by the doorway, so you feed the machine coins, make your choices, and print meal tickets before entering the restaurant, and then present your tickets to the waitress once you're seated. We both chose the "silver salmon" Japanese set breakfast: a tiny filet of grilled salmon (with skin on, hence the silver part of the name), miso soup, fermented adzuki beans, nori (crisp, dry seaweed in little cellophane packages), and a raw egg. Feeling adventurous, I dumped the egg into the rice (as is the practice), stirred it around vigorously, added the beans, and topped it with a generous helping of pickled (onion?). Glutinous, but tasty, and the raw egg isn't horrible once you get past the Western aversion to eating uncooked egg. The adzuki beans are somewhat tasteless, and when you remove them from the bowl, they remain firmly attached to the beans in the bowl by these hair-thin, endlessly extensible strings of bean paste, but they mix well with the other stuff. I also tried them alone, but this time with hot mustard and a bit of soy sauce. The taste and eating experience is much improved. For a special treat, we ordered hot coffee with our breakfast. It was weak and came in a tiny cup*, but it was a nice change from vending machine coffee.
* Only North Americans drink coffee the way God intended, namely in mugs large enough you could take a bath in them.
On our way home, we stopped in at a supermarket attached to the train station. (That's actually a great location, since you can catch all the workers coming home as they step off the train.) Did a bit of food tourism, which is always fun, and picked up some Japanese snacks (caramel corn and a chocolate bar), plus some peaches for snacking on later. Also, canned coffee, which (cold tip!) is significantly cheaper in the supermarket than from the machines. The caramel corn was sort of like Cheetos with a thin coating of peanut infused caramel, and exceedingly addictive. The Ghana-brand chocolate bar was luscious dark chocolate, though perhaps on the sweet side of semi-sweet. Forgot to mention that we also picked up a handful of momiji earlier. These are trademark Hiroshima snacks: soft, cakey cookies, with a range of fillings. Think "fig Newton" and you'll get the idea, but with much better cake and more interesting fillings; we tried and enjoyed green tea and chestnut, and have a sake momiji left for later today.
Back to the hotel for e-mail check and typing up the blog before we walk (about half an hour) up to Hotobil, the home-stay where we'll be staying during our planned time in Nara.
Update later: Hotobil was an easy 20-minute walk, though carrying 50 pounds of luggage made it a bit of a sweat. Thank God it was overcast and reasonably cool! Typhoon Talim hit Miyajima hard, and everyone inshore is under storm watch, but at last check, it's only a category 3 storm, and the Japanese have long experience with these storms, and aren't panicking. The storm should mostly miss us here in Nara, though as I'm writing this (5 PM local time), we've got a good windstorm blowing outside our room. But really, nothing scary.
Though check-in time wasn't until 3 PM, our remarkably cheerful hostess let us drop off our bags around 11, then turned us loose for the day. We're just south of one of the oldest parts of Nara, so we spent the first part of the day wandering through old streets. Most of the homes have been updated to 20th century standards, but there are a few from the 19th and early 20th century that are still around, not to mention much older temples scattered here and there among the homes. Nara is very dense with temples, and we'll probably see a bunch of them tomorrow, when we'll be walking around with a local volunteer guide. (Hint: These guides are surprisingly common in big tourist cities in Japan, and usually guide you for the pleasure of meeting foreigners, polishing their English, and just being a good host. So if you're going anywhere you don't speak the local language, it's worthwhile googling for "volunteer guide" to see what turns up.
We wandered up to the tourist information centre just south of Nara Park, where a remarkably cheerful volunteer guide offered his advice on things to see and do. Though we're between festivals, there was a sake festival a short walk from the park (in practice, really more of a product marketing thing by a local brewer), so we went to have a look. There were free samples of one of the host company's products. We liked the Harushika sake enough that we went back for seconds and then thirds, and finally bought a bottle. It's nicely fruity and sweet without being cloying, has flavor from start to finish, and has nice body. After having our first sample, we took a short tour that led through the production facilities and showed us some of the things we'd only heard about in Saijo. Only in Japanese, but the colourful cartoon posters at each stage made it easy to see what was going on.
We tried out a bit of local food while there. The first was a small can (about the size of a can of tuna) filled with (pork?) meatballs. Tasty, but overpriced. Then we discovered the "food court" we'd missed, just beside the Harushika factory, and had the local equivalent of fried chicken nuggets, which were really rather good. Clearly fried, but not dripping grease or soaked in brine like KFC.
From there, we wandered up to Nara Park, periodically stopping to check out the various souvenir shops. At the first one, the proprietor offered us cups of iced coffee, which were lovely. He was an importer of tchotchkes from all around Asia, and we found a few suitable cat options that we'd like to use to thank our vet for all her help with Ben. We eventually settled on a cute pair of cats sitting on a bench, imported from Bali.
At Nara Park, we mostly stayed near the entrance, figuring that we'll see more of the place tomorrow. (We're scheduled to spend the day with a local student volunteer guide, Yuko. We told her to show us places that she likes and that aren't necessarily in the tourist guidebooks. No idea what will result, but it should be fun anyway.)
There's a lovely 5-story pagoda, originally from 710 CE but restored//rebuilt in the early 1400s, and an even lovelier temple. But what Nara Park is probably most (in)famous for is its deer, which are tiny (not much bigger than a golden retriever), delicate, and absolutely unafraid of humans and unashamed of mugging us for food. (Of course, the park managers sell deer-friendly food.) They're so tame Shoshanna and I sat down beside one and petted it, which it allowed even though we had no food to feed it. These deer clearly know who butters their bread, so to speak. Then we sat for half an hour and people-watched as an unending series of people came up to sit with "our" deer and take selfies or have someone photograph them. Through it all, the deer lay calmly on the ground, with the world-weary look of a celebrity grudgingly acknowledging its fans.
We wandered home along one of the main crafty/restauranty streets, peering in windows, and found some really nice ceramics. The shop we bought some souvenirs at had some of the most amazing glazes (autocorrect tried to turn that into Amazing Grace *G*), ranging from near-transparent to silvery metallic. Japan is justly famed for its ceramic arts. The really amazing specimens were an order of magnitude more than we wanted to pay, but we found some quite lovely pieces for a reasonable price.
Returned to Hotobil around 4 PM for a nap, chocolate break, and shared peach. Our second round of Japanese peaches was every bit as good as our first. At about $3 per peach, they're definitely not cheap (though they are about 2 to 3 times the size of a typical North American peach), but they're definitely worth the cost. Firm white flesh and subtle peach flavor.
In theory, we'll be going out for dinner, but the wind is starting to blow harder, so we may exercise the better part of valor and stay close to home.
Update: We didn't exercise the better (and wiser) part of valor. A quick check of the weather forecast suggested thunderstorms and winds reaching 60 miles per hour starting in a few hours, so we headed out early (a little after 5 PM) in search of food. We had a blustery but safe powerwalk up the main drag in search of any place that was open, and finally found one: "Take no Yakata". It's a moderate-sized place with massive old wooden beams and a high wood lath roof. We sat at the counter in front of the cooks, who worked over large (about 2 feet in diameter) boiling vats of soup broth. Into the broth went a bunch of interesting things: what seemed to be turnips, slices of some kind of squash, sausages, and a variety of mysterious round things.
They did have an English menu, and when we saw that they had six kinds of dumplings, we decided "why choose?" and asked for two of each. Turns out that "dumplings" really meant "small things what you can boil in soup", not the gyoza we'd expected. So we ended up with thick-skinned tofu slabs, potatoes, burdock root wrapped in something very much like sausage meat, a hard boiled egg, seaweed gelatin (very, very chewy), and mysterious disks about 2 inches in diameter that resembled some chewy kind of rice flour patty. It was all good, but the nuclear yellow mustard they provided made it quite wonderful. That and the thrill of running out into a growing storm that we occasionally heard howling outside the door. Still, I was reassured at the number of locals who were eating in the next room; clearly, they weren't worried by the storm.
Paid in a hurry and rushed home, because we wanted to beat the thunderstorm. GoreTex is all very well, but in a heavy rain driven by gale-force winds, it can only do so much. Best line on the way home goes to Shoshanna: "So we turn left at the parking lot and continue on until the talking poo?" (The telephone pole at the corner of our street has a poster instructing dog owners to clean up after their dog; it's a cartoon, and the dog is delivering the message, presumably "please stoop and scoop", and the poop emoji beside it is undoubtedly replying "no shit!") Made it home with nary a problem, despite the growing wind (sometimes strong enough to stop us in our tracks) and occasional rain. A surprising number of bicyclists, presumably returning home or running errands with no fear of being blown to Korea.
And off to bed early, since we need to meet our local guide tomorrow.
Continue to 18 September: Nara
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