Tag: travel

Mundane things: Last three classes on the “Heroes and Villains” ethics topic. I took Scully for a couple of walks, and did some ball chasing with her in the park. Weather was nice today, a warm winter day.

Speaking of winter… The next meeting of my ISO Photography Standards group is in November. In Tampere, Finland. The local organiser gave us info about the city, including typical and extreme climate data. The average daily high temperature for November is 1.5°C. The average low temperature is -3°C. The record high is 11.1°C, and the record low is -22.3°C.

Now… I live in a pretty warm place. 11.1°C is… well, I don’t even know if Sydney’s ever had a winter day that didn’t exceed that temperature. It gets lower than that at night in winter, but around where I live nowhere near as low as 1.5°C.

I don’t even own clothes that would keep me comfortable at temperatures close to 0°C.

I don’t even want to think about the possibility of experiencing temperatures around -20°C. Now, if I want to travel to such a place, I need to work out how to survive. Obviously I need some serious cold weather gear.

But, apart from this three days in Finland, I’m most likely never going to need such clothes again in my life. So buying heavy winter gear seems stupid. So today I searched to see if there was any way to hire suitable clothing in Finland. Maybe something at Helsinki Airport, where incoming travellers can pick up the stuff they need to survive the weather, and drop it back off before getting on their outgoing flight. It appears that such a service actually used to exist, according to one website I found, but the link to the company offering the service was dead.

And then I found some forum posts asking the same sort of question. Almost all of the responses I found said that sure, you can hire winter clothing once you get to Lapland – the northernmost region of Finland – but nobody knew of any place you could hire winter gear in Helsinki. I quote one:

In Helsinki, if you won’t be spending long periods of time outside, a ski jacket and wearing lots of layers might be enough – such as wearing a pair or two of leggings under your jeans etc. Although I’m saying this as a Finn, who is used to the cold and doesn’t mind freezing for a short while.

Great… I don’t have a ski jacket or two pairs of leggings to go under my jeans!! I don’t want to buy a ski jacket! And even if I have all this and I’m not a hardy Finn used to freezing for a while, I’m probably gonna die of the cold anyway! “might be enough”!

Anyway, I decided to email the local organiser in Finland to see if he knows any way I can hire some winter clothing for the trip. Hopefully he’ll come back with useful information and won’t laugh at me too much.

New content today:

• Irregular Webcomic! #2456
• The Dinosaur Whiteboard #866
• Square Root of Minus Garfield #5165
• Comments on a Postcard #5290

Today we slept in a bit. I had some salad for breakfast and then we walked over to Blue Bottle to get coffee and granola for my wife. We came back and did final packing before checking out of the hotel and leaving our luggage to be picked up later.

Then we braved the heat and humidity once again for a short walk south to Kitashinagawa, as recommended by my colleague’s wife the other night at the Ramen Museum. Although it’s only ten minutes from the bustle around Shinagawa Station, there is an old time neighbourhood in Kitashinagawa that is relatively quiet and has small local shops and cafes along an attractively old-feeling street. We walked slowly in a light rain, passing several interesting places, nice looking bakeries, cafes, and also a couple of shrines and a Buddhist temple.

We stopped in a place called KAIDO books&coffee, which had an invitingly cozy decor with many shelves full of books. Besides coffee, they did some interesting looking meals, with home-made sausages for various hot dogs, as well as some pizzas and soups. The hot dogs actually looked really good. We ordered cool drinks – I got an iced tea soda made with ginger and lemon tea. We enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere as we sat and refreshed a bit.

Eventually we had to leave and walk back. We grabbed some lunch at the French bakery just outside the hotel. I had a slice of quiche and a pain au chocolat, while my wife had some slices of a rye style bread and some small scones. We brought them into the hotel to eat, but were stymied by large notices in the lounge area prohibiting eating. So we went down to the food court and ate them there, flouting the numerous signs saying that bringing in external for was prohibited. Apparently there’s nowhere you can eat take-away food in the hotel unless you’re in your room. After eating we returned upstairs and collected our luggage and sat in the lounge area for a while to relax.

Our flight was scheduled for 22:00, which meant we wanted to leave for the airport pretty much in the middle of rush hour on the trains. That didn’t seem like fun, so we decided to go early, leaving before 17:00. We carted our luggage out and across the road to Shinagawa Station’s Keikyu Line entrance, which fortunately was on street level on our side, so very easy to get to. We queued for the train to Haneda and caught one which wasn’t too crowded.

At Haneda we checked the departures board, but our flight wasn’t yet listed. We were too early for our flight to appear at the end of the board, so we looked at some of the shops before going through the security and immigration checks. There was no queue at either, so that process was very quick. Once inside the security area I looked at a departures board again and noticed that the very first flight listed was a Qantas flight to Sydney, departing at 22:00, listed as delayed to 20:00 – presumably the next day. I checked my boarding pass and it was the same flight number. We had a brief moment of panic, thinking our flight home was delayed by a day, but realised that this must be last night’s flight, delayed until 20:00 tonight. Phew! After our experience with our last international trip (being stuck in Singapore Airport for over 24 hours), the last thing we wanted was a day’s delay getting home this time.

We slowly wandered the main terminal area, seeing where everything was. Then we found a comfortable place to sit for a bit and wandered around individually to get drinks and look at anything we were interested in. After a bit we got some sushi from the food court area for dinner and then moved to near our departure gate.

The plane was a bit late arriving from its previous destination, and the flight crew were sitting waiting with the passengers in the gate until it arrived and they could go on board. The first to board were the pilots, but the cabin crew stayed behind and continued waiting. I asked my wife why they wouldn’t also go on, and she said the pilots had a lot of work to do, flipping all the switches in the cockpit. Eventually all the crew boarded, and then passenger boarding began almost half an hour late.

As we boarded and I took my passport wallet from my wife and removed the passport, I noticed that two things that we’d put into that wallet for safe keeping weren’t there: the Magic: the Gathering card I’d bought in Nakatsugawa, and the receipt for the duty-free liquor I’d bought at Sydney for pick-up on our return. I asked her where they were, and she was dumbfounded and said she had no idea, they should have been in there with the passport. I suspect they must have fallen out when I pulled out my passport to go through customs and I just didn’t notice. With the plane boarding and no real hope of going back to find them, we had to be philosophical and just shrug and carry on.

Next day: 1 July

Once underway, the flight was uneventful and fairly short, coming in a bit under eight hours, compared to the nine and a half outbound. We arrived at Sydney a bit after 08:00. As we were taxiing to the terminal, the pilot announced that we would be disembarking by stairs to the tarmac and catching buses to the terminal! The cabin crew lady sitting facing us rolled her wyes. I wasn’t even aware that they still did this at Sydney Airport at all. I’ve never been on a flight that did this here, other than for small propellor planes for domestic flights that aren’t capable of hooking up to a jet tube.

So we managed to get into the arrival terminal by this unusual method, which took a bit longer. I also managed to pick up my duty-free bottles of booze at the counter, after confessing I’d lost my receipt. They just checked my passport to confirm my name and handed over the goods. So that was good.

But worse was to come. Although we had no checked luggage to wait for and could proceed immediately through to customs, we hit a brick wall there. Some other busy flights must have landed before us, and hundreds of passengers were queued up waiting to go through customs. We had to walk a long way to join the back of the queue. Annoyingly, some other people approached the exit, saw the size if the queue snaking across the baggage claim area, and decided to simply push their way in ahead of everyone further back. So the combination of factors meant we spent almost an hour waiting in the queue to get into the customs area.

And that wasn’t the end of it. Once we reached the front and handed our customs forms to an inspector, he instructed us to join some other randomly selected people for a sniffer dog test to search for illegal drugs or other banned items. So that took another few minutes. Ater getting the all-clear, we finally exited the arrivals process, well over an hour after having begun it.

We caught a train home, showered, changed, went out to do some grocery shopping to restock the kitchen with perishables, and then drove over to our dog-sitter friends’ place to collect Scully. She was very happy to see us again!

This morning (29 June – I’m posting this on the 30th) was another sleep in. We’re finally catching up on some of the sleep missed during earlier nights on this trip due to finding it difficult to sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. I had another salady thing, this time with large chunks of tofu, from 7-Eleven for breakfast and M. had the granola and coffee from Blue Bottle at Shinagawa Station again. After a lot of onigiri breakfasts we’ve really been feeling the need for something more like our normal diet.

Our first port of call today was Ueno. We caught the train from Shinagawa there and then took a leisurely stroll through Ueno Park, checking out the gardens, a small Buddhist temple, a larger shinto Shrine, and the lake, which was completely covered by huge lotus leaves. There were a handful of pink lotus flowers visible, but none in full flower yet. Presumably in a month or so the lake will be spectacular with huge pink flowers everywhere. There were several large crows cawing loudly and fluttering around – we’ve seen them in many places so far on this trip. But by the lake there was also a large Japanese cormorant preening its feathers, and I managed to get up very close to take a good photo with my phone, it was so tame.

Again the heat and humidity were oppressive and we walked slowly and sought shade wherever we could, lingering there before tackling the next stretch of sunny ground. We didn’t linger too long in the park before going to check out the shopping area south of Ueno station. At first we though it was similar to other areas and not that interesting, until we stumbled into an older region with smaller shops and stalls, kind of resembling a bazaar or permanent market. This was more interesting to wander through, with a wide range of products form cheap and tacky to household supplies to antiques to fine jewellery, and also many stalls selling fresh fish, meat, or vegetables, as well as lots of hot street food. We wandered few blocks and then found a covered alleyway with stalls long it and took this to get out of the sun.

We emerged near Okachimachi station, where there was a large Uniqlo store, which my wife suggested we look inside to cool off in the air conditioning and also to use the toilets. While browsing around in there we ran across a display and desk selling items including T-shirts and tote bags that could be customised by printing any design you wanted on them. Several examples showed photos of cats or dogs. My wife decided to get a bag with a photo of Scully printed onto it. It took a bit of fiddling to get a suitable photo transferred to their system from her phone, but once that was done the print was ready in just a few minutes, and turned out looking great.

Next order of business was finding some lunch. We wandered roughly southwards towards Akihabara, and ran across a square which I later discovered was called Okachimachi Panda Square. It had four food trucks parked in it, and we checked what each was selling. The first had corn dogs and karaage chicken and a couple of other fried things; the second shaved ice; the third waffles; and the fourth various meat-filled croquettes. The only sensible option for my wife was the waffles, so we checked the picture menu pasted to the side of the truck, and they had savoury as well as sweet! There was a ham and cheese filled waffle for example, and next to it what looked like a waffle filled with just melty cheese like a sort of toasted sandwich. We asked and the woman in the truck said it was cheese and honey. So we got one of those for my wife and I went back to the first truck to get some of the chicken karaage. A woman picking up a corn dog helped me with English translation because the woman in the truck spoke no English, and I got a large serve of karaage with spicy sauce (there was also a mild option). When I saw her start preparing it I wondered if I’d ordered way too much! I received a large box piled high with fried chicken pieces, coated in spicy red sauce. It wasn’t all that expensive, so I was surprised by how much I got. It was delicious, and I managed to eat it all, but was very full afterwards.

Since we were close to Akihabara, we walked a few blocks south and watched the streets transition into shops filled with electronics, video games, toys, and various geeky things. I’d picked four shops to try to find specifically to look for any interesting roleplaying games, or potentially worthwhile Magic: the Gathering cards. The first one we found was Retro Game Camp, but this turned out to have nothing but video games, despite some web articles mentioning it had card games. The shop called Grand Panda Canyon was supposed to be located in exactly the same place according to Google Maps, but it took some effort to find. We circled the entire block and returned to Retro Game Camp before noticing as tiny, worn sign indicating the store was up a dingy, narrow flight of stairs immediately next to the former. We climbed up and found a tiny store with trading card games, but almost all various Japanese ones. They had a small section of MtG cards, but not many and I scanned it in under a minute before leaving.

Around the next block was the Mandarake Complex, a series of shops spread over 8 floors with different things on each floor. I wanted to check the toys on level 8 and cards n level 7. We found an outdoor staircase leading up, next to a lift that bore a sign saying “Staff Only”. My wife didn’t like the look of the exposed metal staircase and said she’d wait inside the ground floor while I climbed up. I did so to the 8th floor first. When I stepped inside the door I found two lifts inside for customers! Oh well. The toy floor was not so interesting for me, so I went down to 7 for the cards. Again it was mostly Japanese games, but they had a small MtG section, larger than Panda Canyon, which I looked through quickly, but didn’t see anything that grabbed my attention to contemplate buying.

Next stop was Yellow Submarine, which was the most likely place for roleplaying and board games according to web reviews. They indeed had many of each. I was interested in any perhaps second hand or old D&D books. They had some 2nd Edition D&D, and of course 5th Edition, and several other games in Japanese, but nothing vintage enough or intriguing enough for me. The board game section was larger and had many interesting things, including a section of obscure games I’d never heard of, designed by Japanese designers. Some had English rules taped onto the outside of the box. I bought a couple of games I thought looked interesting, and also a game to give as a gift to our friends for dog-sitting Scully. Oh, and I found some cool dungeon tile map geomorphs which were pretty cheap and also flat for packing, so I bought one of those.

Finally we walked over to Yodobashi Camera to have a look at the toys floor in this giant electronics store. We went up and looked around quickly, using the toilets halfway through doing a circuit of the floor. There wasn’t very much of interest for me on Yodobashi’s toy floor, it being mostly kid’s toys, with only a very small section for card games and puzzles.

From here we went to Akihabara station, where we stopped at a Starbucks to get cold drinks and use the WiFi for a bit, before heading back to Shinagawa on the train. We rested in our room for about an hour, cooling down from the heat of the day before preparing for dinner.

For dinner we were meeting an old work colleague of mine and his wife at Ebisu station, and they were taking us to an okonomiyaki restaurant that they’d booked. We caught the train from Shinagawa and arrived on time. They’d said to meet at the west exit of the station, but when we exited the gates there was only a sign indicating the east exit. Presumably we were on the wrong side and needed to cross back over the tracks somehow to the western side of the station. We had to wander around a bit until I spotted a sign pointing to a west exit. We followed it down a long passageway and emerged down a long escalator to ground level that spilled us onto the footpath. We turned around and confusingly there were signs indicating that up the escalator we’d come down was the east exit, but right next to us another passage at ground level was apparently the west exit. I couldn’t see our friends, so we milled around a bit in confusion until thankfully I spotted one of them approaching.

He said his wife would meet us at the restaurant and led the way to a place called Suzume-no Oyado, which translates to Sparrow’s Inn, in a building complex called L’Gente Ebisu. There we met not only his wife but their two children as well, about 6 and 3 years old. They spoke good English and their father said they’d been raising them bilingual and in fact their English was probably better than their Japanese. We sat in a tatami room, removing our shoes to sit on cushions on the floor at the low table. They confirmed my wife’s food requirements and then ordered for us.

We got a series of appetisers including baby eggplant in a thin sesame sauce, insalata caprese, karaage chicken and karaage chicken gristle (crunchy! – the gristly bit near the breast bone), tempura avocado and corn, thickly sliced snapper sashimi, and grated yam in nori sheets. Then came the main course, the waitress firing up the hotplate in the middle of the table and adding some eringi (king oyster mushrooms) and asparagus to cook first. These were to eat separately while they prepared and cooked okonomiyaki, mixing the batter and ingredients at the table and putting it on the hotplate for us. We had two vegetarian ones, with cheese and vegetables, and three different meat ones. We took cut pieces once they were cooked and topped them okonomi sauce from a pottery jar with a bamboo dipper, mayonnaise, seaweed flakes, and shaved bonito flakes for those who ate meat. When we were too full to eat the last couple of pieces we had some dessert; I had the yuzu sherbet. The whole meal was very nice.

We also spoke with our friends and learnt about their time in Japan and the fact they were planning to move back to Australia after this year. As we were leaving, the restaurant staff offered us free peaches. They said they had too many and didn’t want to waste them. I said I’d take one, and our friends took one too. The peaches were large and fragrant and probably very expensive, give the prices for fresh fruit here in Japan.

With dinner over, they walked us back to Ebisu station in a light rain and parted ways there. We caught a train back to Shinagawa and our hotel for the night.

We woke up early with the sunlight from the 04:45 sunrise coming in through the rice paper windows, but snoozed until just after 07:00. Breakfast was from 7-Eleven again, but this time we’d found salad and vegetable options which were a nice change from onigiri. The vegetables were very fresh and crisp. I had a salad with some chicken pieces and a yuzu dressing, while my wife had vegetable sticks. Then we packed our bags and checked out.

Nakatsugawa station was just a short walk away and we tapped our Suica cards on for the ride back to Nagoya. A train pulled in just as we arrived, ready to turn around and depart in about 15 minutes. We got on board and waited sitting on the train. The train was a rapid service, skipping a few stops, and taking 50 minutes to reach Nagoya. It started mostly empty but slowly filled up along the way until there were several passengers standing. At Nakatsugawa a group consisting of two kids about 7 or 8 years old and what looked like their mother and grandmother got on as well. The women were speaking Japanese to each other and the kids were chatting in English with what we agreed was an Australian accent. I guess the mother and kids were from Australia, visiting the Japanese grandmother.

At Nagoya we had another weird incident with the gates between the normal trains and the Shinkansen. There was a Shinkansen ticket machine just before the gates and so I stopped to buy tickets to Tokyo. There was one confusing screen which asked if I wanted fare tickets and non-reserved seat tickets, or just fare tickets. I chose the fare tickets. Then when we tried to go through the gates it rejected our Suica cards, and also rejected the Shinkansen ticket. We went to the assistance window and a staff member there told us we needed the non-reserved seat ticket as well. I said we’d come from Nakatsugawa and needed to tap off our Suica cards. He did some magic with the IC card reader and got us to tap our cards there. Then he sold us tickets from Nakatsugawa to Tokyo and said we needed to insert both the new ticket and the one I’d bought at the machine together into the gate to get through. The card reader had cancelled our tap on fare, so overall we’d paid the correct fare, but again in an extremely convoluted way. It’s weird, at every other station the interface between regular trains and Shinkansen was straightforward and obvious, but both time in Nagoya we got stymied by it.

Finally managing to get into the Shinkansen platforms we headed upstairs and a train was just arriving. We walked down to car 3 for the non-reserved seating just in time to get on at the end of the queue of passengers. I thought we might have trouble getting seats, but we magically found a row of three seats completely unoccupied and grabbed it. The trip to Shinagawa took just over 1.5 hours.

Out hotel, the Shinagawa Prince, was right across the road from Shinagawa Station. It’s a confusing complex of four different hotel towers, with a maze-like warren of levels and passages between them. We tried checking in at one of the towers and were instructed to follow a convoluted path to another tower. They checked us in and gave us early access to our room, which was nice, since it was now about 12:30 and it would have been less fun to have to leave our luggage and walk around without having a chance to freshen up.

The first order of business was lunch. We found a 7-Eleven right outside the lobby level entrance to our hotel tower, and there was also a food court there. My wife suggested she get some onigiri from the 7-Eleven and I could get whatever I wanted from the food court. Looking around the half-dozen or so outlets inside the food court, I chose a plate of takoyaki, topped with cod roe for a change. They were decent, and very hot as usual.

Stomachs full, we went to Shinagawa Station to find a coffee shop and my wife spotted a Blue Bottle Coffee at the Shinkansen side, so we sat in there and I got some sparkling water to drink too. The shop had a view out a glass wall over the bustling people moving through the station, but there were signs saying no photography. Obviously it must have been problematically popular for photos.

After drinks, we boarded a Yamanote Line train for Harajuku. Here we visited the Meiji Jingu shrine and its beautiful garden. We went slowly because the air was oppressively humid. It was about 29°C according to the weather site I checked, but really steamy. The past cities were humid, but this was really an another level, and very energy-sapping. We didn’t spend long in the shrine itself, but retreated to the shrine garden, which is a tranquil place and a bit cooler with the cover of trees. We made sure to visit Kiyomasa’s Well, an ancient well which provides cool spring water year round, and which we washed our hands and forearms in to cool down. Being June, the irises were just starting to appear and the water lilies were flowering, which made the large pond quite pretty. Last time I’d been here, ten years ago, it was January, and the pond was partly frozen over.

Leaving Meiji Jingu, we decided to walk the kilometre or so to Shibuya. Fortunately it was downhill! We reached Shibuya Crossing, and took several photos at street level before entering the Starbucks and ordering some drinks so we could go upstairs and get an elevated view out the window. They had a Tokyo special, in which you could have a lemon cake blended into any drink, so I had that in a vanilla frappe and it was pretty good. We even managed to get seats at the window, and took a few photos and videos of people swarming across the crossing.

It was time to explore the area and check out some shops. Entering one likely looking building hoping to find a department store or mall we found ourselves in a for emporium that sprawled over multiple levels. This was a chance to use the toilets on the basement level, so we did that. Emerging, we went down a street or two and ended up in the Miyashita Park shopping mall, where we enjoyed the cool air conditioning while browsing around. Then we went out to the street to explore some more. My wife stopped by a Starbucks to post some Instagrams using the WiFi, and I searched for any vegetarian restaurants in the area, not really holding out much hope. But I find a vegan place called Izakaya Masaka, just a few hundred metres away!

We followed Google Maps to the location. It turned out the izakaya was located in a modern shopping mall, Shibuya Parco. In the basement restaurant level, called CHAOS KITCHEN (in all caps). It was a bit of a rabbit warren down there, with dozens of small restaurants in dimly lit and heavily mirrored passages. We located the izakaya and found several customers waiting outside on seats. I added my name to the waiting list and we sat down. One other group arrived shortly after us, four young adults speaking French. And then the staff took the waiting list away and replaced it with a sign saying they couldn’t accept any more customers for the evening. So we were lucky to arrive when we did.

As we waited, we saw several other prospective diners turn up, look at the sign, and walk away in disappointment. It’s amazing that vegetarian/vegan places aren’t more common in Japan, because many tourists seek them out, and it’s difficult to find any and when you do it’s often very hard to get a table. You’d think more people would open vegetarian places to cater to the obvious demand, but it doesn’t seem to be a popular move.

We ended up waiting maybe 45 or 50 minutes for those queued ahead of us to be seated until it was finally our turn. It turned out the place was tiny, with only two tables of four, a counter seating three, and six tables of two, cramped into a space barely large enough. The ordering was strictly by a QR code scan on a phone, but we couldn’t do that as we had no roaming on our phones, so the waitress gave us one of the staff’s phones to order on. We ordered a serve of gyoza, a side of szechuan spiced fried potato wedges, and two plates of karaage fried vegan “chicken”. These came with four fried balls per plate and a choice of sauces, from which we chose the sesame and the onion/lemon. The food was really good and filling, and definitely hit the spot after all that waiting.

We headed back to Shibuya Crossing to take some night time photos. Then we caught a train back to Shinagawa and our hotel. I grabbed a salad for breakfast and a carrot cake for dessert from the 7-Eleven and then we retired to our room for the night.

We slept in this morning, not getting up until after 08:00. We ate our breakfast and planned our morning activity. My wife wanted to visit a handicraft market that she’d found online, but couldn’t remember exactly which one it was. Searching was tricky, because a lot of the markets that came up were only open on one specific day of the month. We decided it was a toss up between the Kyoto Handicraft Centre, or the Kamigamo Handicraft Market. The first is a modern shopping mall full of traditional craft artisan’s shops, selling things like swords or probably expensive pottery and stuff. The second was an open-air market with over 250 stalls run by individual artisans in the grounds of the Kamigamo-ninja Shrine. The first sounded interesting but very expensive, while the second appealed more for the chance to actually find something we might be interested in buying, so we chose that.

We packed our bags and checked out of the hotel, leaving the luggage behind to pick up later. Heading out to Gojo subway station, we stopped at Walden Woods Kyoto, a coffee shop, where my wife got her morning coffee. She said it was good, and it was nice to try different coffee shops each morning. From Gojo station we caught the train north to Kitayama station, next to the Kyoto Botanic Gardens, and from there walked to the Kamigamo Shrine for the market.

The market was impressive! There were 265 stalls marked on the handy map at the entrance, which also included a suggested walking route to make sure you didn’t miss any of the stalls. They were laid out in the grounds of the shrine, in between several of the shrine structures, and on both sides of an attractive stream lined with low stone walls. Children and adults waded and played in the stream, which was just over ankle deep. It would have been a good way to beat the heat, since it was a very warm and extremely humid day. There were many large trees providing shade, but not all of the stall areas were shaded.

Wandering around, we stopped to get some lunch at a stall selling bread in rolls and loaves. I got a cheese roll, my got a roll with red bean paste, and we also grabbed a small sourdough loaf with fruit to split a bit later on the shinkansen. My wife bought a few small market items, and I walked over to some of the shrine areas without market stalls to get some photos of scenic parts. Just before midday we found a place to sit by the stream bank, in the shade to escape the heat a bit, and ate our rolls. There was a very young girl standing in the stream and meticulously removing rocks from the stream bed and placing them on the first stone step above the water level, while her father supervised. Eventually he put them all back in, at which point she started pulling them out again.

Walking out of the market we passed a stall we’d seen on the way on called Kiry’s Muffins, which had signs advertising Australian muffins. It was clear Kiry had come from Australia and baked muffins that looked larger and more like the ones we’re used to back home, compared to the smaller Japanese style ones we’ve been seeing everywhere. Apparently they were popular because this was the only stall we saw in the whole market that had queues of people waiting to buy the product. We said hello to Kiry quickly as we passed, and learnt she was originally from Tasmania. She was keen to have a chat and ask us where we were travelling in Japan.

Leaving the market, we walked back to a different station: Kitaoji. We walked along the river much of the way, and we saw several birds: mallards, swallows, carrion crows, and a black kite circling fairly low overhead. I entered a bird count into eBird, but couldn’t identify the kite until we got back to WiFi and I did a search for likely birds of prey in the area. We also saw several dogs, including one shiba inu which led its owner down a steep stone bank towards the river, perhaps in an effort to chase some of those ducks.

The train from Kitaoji took as back to Gojo, from where we walked back to the hotel to pick up our bags and then walk to Kyoto station. I bought shinkansen tickets from a machine to avoid the long queue at the ticket office, and it was very simple. We headed down to the platform and a Nozomi super-express was leaving in about 5 minutes, giving us enough time to walk to the rear three carriages where the non-reserved seats were.

On the train we got seats sitting next to a man in the row of three. After a while, he presumably heard us chatting in English and asked us where we were from. We had a bit of a conversation and it turned out he was a former professional soccer player in the J1 League, the top league in Japan, playing as a goalkeeper. He’d retired and was now working as a coach. He gave me his business card, allowing me to know that his name was Yosuke Abe, and to look up some of that information later.

It was only a bit over half an hour to Nagoya. We had to change to a Chuo Line train to Nakatsugawa. There were two different gates to leave the shinkansen area, one to the exit and one leading to JR train lines, including the one we wanted to get to. So we tried using our shinkansen tickets to go through those gates, and the machine gave us our tickets back, which previously they hadn’t done. And then I realised we were inside the JR platform area without having tapped our Suica cards to initiate the journey. Unsure what to do, my wife suggested we go talk to the staff at the gates. A few other people were getting assistance there, but eventually I spoke to them and told them what happened and that we hadn’t tapped our Suica cards. They took it in their stride and directed us to tap our cards on a pad right there, and then asked for our shinkansen tickets, which we gave to them.

That sorted, we headed to the platform to catch a train to Nakatsugawa. I’d read that they only leave about once an hour, but there was one going in the right direction in about 10 minutes, so we got on that. It was only when it started moving that I realised it wasn’t going all the way, but terminated at Kozoji, about half way there. So we got off and waited for the next train to Nakatsugawa, which was a “rapid” service that arrived just a few minutes later. It had skipped several of the stops that our train had stopped at and so caught up to it. It took us the rest of the way to Nakatsugawa.

Here we walked the short distance to our hotel, The Ryokan O, via a 7-Eleven store to get some snacks to top up the small lunch. We checked in, and found it to be traditional in the style that we had to take our shoes off and use slippers to walk around and up to our room on the second floor. It has futons on tatami matting and very little else in the room – a low table and two flat cushions to sit on, and a very tiny fridge. The toilets and shower rooms are communal, shared with the other guests. We got yukatas from reception to wear when moving between our room and the showers.

After a rest, we left just after 18:00 to find dinner. I’d searched for some possible vegetarian options and decided noodle places might be suitable. There were a few udon places nearby, but the best rated was a soba and udon place right at the train station, so we headed back there. It took some finding to locate it, as it turned out to be a tiny counter inside the station waiting room, manned by a little old lady. There were no seating areas, so she indicated we could sit at the single table in the waiting room. There were only six menu options, either soba or udon noodles, plain, with egg, or with tempura. When my wife showed the old lady her vegetarian card, she indicated the tempura would be no good. So my wife got the plain soba, which just had green onion on it, while I had the tempura soba, which came with a kind of tempura patty which had vegetables and tiny shrimp in it. The meal was good, and cost just ¥970 for the both of us!

On the way back we stopped at 7-Eleven for some snacks and dessert. I got a small tub of red bean paste with mochi balls in it. Back at the ryokan we sat at the bar for a while to enjoy our complimentary drink. The guy at reception had given us vouchers when we arrived. I tried the “Nakasendo Fizz” cocktail, which the menu said was good for relaxing after a lot of walking. It was gin, yuzu liqueur, tonic, and soda. It was named after the Nakasendo trail which we’ll be walking along tomorrow. The bartender asked us our travel plans and we said we’d be doing that from Nagiso, and he said it was a very long walk. I showed him that Google Maps said it was a 4-hour walk, and he didn’t believe it, saying maybe 5 or 6 hours.

After our drinks, we had showers and prepped for sleep.

This morning we were up at 07:00, but took our time having breakfast and prepping for the day. We left about 08:30 to walk towards Kyoto station, which is an impressive maze busy with people scuttling to and fro. We found the Nara Line platforms to catch a local train to Inari, two stops down the line. There was a train waiting on platform 10, which was our local train, due to depart in a little under 15 minutes. It had just arrived and we faced a wave of passengers getting off as we moved towards the platform. We boarded the almost empty train and got a seat to wait for the departure. By the time it departed the seats were all taken and there were plenty of people standing. Most of them were tourists heading to the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine, like us.

We alighted, with most of the train passengers, at Inari station, which is right outside the shrine entrance. Immediately, the sights were amazing, with a huge red torii gate beckoning people in.

The initial area consisted of wide open courtyards with pebbled surfaces and stone paths, surrounded by various shrine buildings, mostly fairly large in size. There were places to buy papers, small wooden boards, ribbons, and other things to write your prayers on and tie them up in the various designated places. Hundreds of tourists milled around, taking photos, and generally shuffling from one sight to another.

After ascending a few flights of steps to courtyards at higher levels, we came to the main attraction here: the path ascending Inari-yama, or Mount Inari. This is a path surmounted by hundreds of red torii archways, closely spaced to give the impression of walking through a long tunnel.

As we climbed, the sides of the torii facing us were blank, but turning around we could see that the other sides were all covered in Japanese characters, presenting a very different view of the tunnel. It was virtually impossible to take any photos of the tunnel without other tourists present, although several people were trying, and consequently holding people up in bunches behind them as the ones in front politely tried to stay out of the photos. It was a bit crowded and difficult thing to keep out of people’s way, as there were also people coming back down in the other direction as well.

Along the way there were a couple of places where there was a break in the torii and some small shrines by the side of the path that you could walk over to see. At one of them we decided to step out of the crowd to go have a look. Although it was just off the main path, it was completely empty of people for a while, until another couple came over as well. Then I spotted a path leading up the hill that looked to run almost parallel to the torii path, and I suggested we try walking up there a bit. I expected that it would track alongside and eventually we would be able to rejoin it. But it meandered uphill in a different direction.

The path led to a bamboo forest, where the path was covered in fallen bamboo leaves. The forest was an impressive sight, and well worth this detour, whatever it was.

We continued uphill, and I checked my phone map and determined that we seemed to be heading in the right direction to reach the top of the mountain, so decided we should just keep going. The path was almost deserted, except that a couple of young guys passed us at one point. Along one side of the path was a wire fence, and occasionally a gate that led to what looked like a less-used path. Signs on the gates said to keep them closed to keep wild boars out. My wife said we better not open the gates or boars might come on to the path we were on. I pointed out that the fence might be to keep the boars on our side. At one point we heard a strange grunting sound coming from the forest, which continued for a minute or so. I’d never heard a noise like that before and My wife asserted it was probably a boar.

The path continued through wonderful scenery before eventually joining a narrow paved road that led further up the mountain. We walked along this behind a spry old Japanese woman, who was scurrying up the hill ahead of us. She looked about 70 years old, and this was probably her morning constitutional or something. The road led past a few small houses and several shrines that seemed to be part of the Fushimi Inari complex, with similar red torii in smaller sizes, and lots of stone statues of foxes, which we’d noticed seemed to be a common theme. Many of these shrines were very old and covered in moss.

The road eventually ended and gave way to a series of steps leading further uphill as the going became steeper. Still the old lady bounded along ahead of us, although we caught up to her taking a rest stop a couple of times. But each time she jumped up and took off again ahead of us. Eventually we reached the path with the hundreds of red torii again, but up here near the top of the mountain there were a lot fewer people walking it. I spoke to a couple who were coming up and said we’d come another way up the mountain, and it looked like a lot of people had dropped off the climb. They said yes, there was a point further back where a lot of the families with children had stopped.

From here it wasn’t far up to the top of the mountain, where there was a large cluster of shrines along the same themes. Many of them had tiny replicas of the red torii, with writing on them in Japanese. Apparently you could buy these small copies and have your names or prayers written on them, and then you placed them on the shrines. I’d hoped there would be a view from the top of the mountain, but the shrines were surrounded by dense trees, and there was no view at all.

We headed back down the main torii path, enjoying this area with the much smaller number of people, and also the surrounding lush green of the forest in which the red gates were set, providing a visual contrast. We reached the crossroads area, where two routes up and two routes down converge. Here there was a small cluster of shops providing food and refreshments, as well as a view of Kyoto below. A hundred or more people were resting here, this being the uppermost point for many before deciding to avoid the steep climb to the top and just return back downwards. We chose the main way down, but again the path forked some way further along. We decided to take a quieter route again, and ended up on a path that I think took us just outside the edge of the shrine and along a narrow road fringed with old houses, as well as some small shrines resembling all the ones we’d seen already.

We reached a place where there was a cafe called Vermillion that looked inviting. Since it was just a few minutes before midday, we decided to stop for lunch. There was a popular outdoor seating area facing a small pond out the back, and they said there were several people waiting for seats on the patio, but we could sit inside without waiting. So we chose to do that and got two cozy armchairs with a small table between them near the front door. My wife ordered the cheese toast which the menu said came spread with Vegemite(!), while I got a baguette sandwich with pastrami, Camembert, and apple. Each was served with some pieces of gherkin. The food was good, though the portion sizes were not large, but it was enough to fill the holes in our stomachs and energise us for more walking.

Continuing on, we re-entered the shrine and emerged near the bottom. Exiting in a different direction to the way we’d entered from Inari Station, we headed to Fushimi Inari Station instead, on the Keihan Main Line. Along the way we passed dozens fo food stalls and souvenir shops, obviously set up to capitalise on the thousands of tourists passing by here every day. Instead of west back to Kyoto, the different train line was to take us north, to Sanjo Station. Here we transferred by foot to the nearby Sanjo Keihan subway line, and took a train west to Keage Station. From here we emerged to walk north, past the large Nanzen-ji Temple and Eikan-do Temple to the southern end of the Philosopher’s Walk, a peaceful walking path beside an old canal, lined with trees.

The Path was beautiful, but we could tell it would be much more beautiful in either autumn with the maple trees turning red, or in spring when the hundreds of cherry blossom trees would all be in bloom. There were many rustic stone bridges crossing the canal, making for picturesque photos.

I’d thought there would be small shops along the way, but there were very few. But we stopped at a cafe named &andbull, which had a sign outside saying “COFFEE, PIZZA, DOG OK”. The logo was a bulldog face, and siting inside with its owner was a very large white fluffy dog. My wife ordered a matcha ice cream and talked with the dog owner, finding out that it was a one-year-old poodle-Saint Bernard cross. She ate the ice cream sitting outside with me. It came with a shot of coffee poured over it!

This was close to the end of the Philosopher’s Walk, and from here the best way back to the hotel was to catch a bus on the main road a few short blocks west. We determined that we wanted the number 5 bus to Kyoto Station, as the other routes all headed in different directions. A bus came and we crowded on with slightly squished standing room. The bus drove a while until it came to a stop where a dozen or more people squashed on, and now it was getting very cramped inside. It continued a few more stops, and then packed even more people on! As we started off and turned a corner I noticed out the window large market with many stalls across the road. I wondered if this might have been the market we’d planned to go to on Sunday but maybe we’d got the day wrong and it was on Saturday. The next stop was just around the corner, barely 100 metres from the previous one, so I told my wife to get off here and we squeezed our way to the front of the bus and got off.

We crossed the road and explored the market, which seemed to be mostly a flea market kind of thing with second hand goods. There were some stalls selling newly made crafts and some selling food such as cakes or biscuits by local bakers, and there were a few hot food stalls. I later determined this was in Okazaki Park, and was a fortnightly flea market. We got a chocolate banana muffin and some lemon biscuits from one stall for snacks, since our lunch hadn’t been large.

Now it was time to brave the bus again to get back to our hotel. Fortunately this time the bus wasn’t as crowded, and a lot of people got off a few stops later so we managed to get seats. We rode all the way to Gojo subway station, where we got off and walked the rest of the way to our hotel. (The bus would have gone right past the hotel, but I had no idea where the next stop would be – judging by the distances between stops it could well have been at Kyoto Station and we would have had to walk the same distance back to the hotel.)

We rested up in our room for a bit before heading out at 18:00 to find dinner. I’d been unsuccessful finding any interesting vegetarian options online, so we decided to just walk to the station and perhaps the Aeon Mall on the other side to check any restaurants along the way or try the food floor in the mall. We ended up in the mall at a sushi conveyer belt place called Kaiten-sushi Uogashi AEON Mall Kyoto. There were a few people waiting, but we wrote our name on the waiting list and didn’t circle any of the three options afterwards because we had no idea what the Japanese characters meant. We think they were for preferred seating at tables or the counter. A waitress came out and offered us the next two seats at the counter, jumping a few other waiting customers who presumably had indicated preference for a table.

My wife ordered kappa maki (cucumber rolls) and pickled radish rolls and also inari pockets from the electronic ordering screen, while I just grabbed a couple of dishes with fish from the conveyer to get started. I ordered a seasonal specialty which looked like fried potato cakes, but turned out to be probably grated yam cakes as the texture was very soft inside. I also ordered a crab and a salmon roe sushi. We filled up on the meal and were very satisfied by the end.

Heading out, we stopped at a Godiva dessert bar, where I had a chocolate and cherry crepe, which was also filled with whipped cream and chocolate ice cream. My wife got a cold 99% cocoa drink, which she said was very good. Then from there we walked back to our hotel, stopping again at a 7-Eleven for breakfast supplies.