Japan

Plans and Worries

Hello again. I'm now in Fukuoka and am trying to work out what I'm going to be doing next.

Yesterday I took a Shinkansen from Hiroshima to here via Shimonoseki, where my guide book suggested you could get a very good view of the straight between Honshu and Kyushu. It was a nice view from the top, and I quite enjoyed the climb up and down the mountain to see it, but by the time it had started to rain I'm not entirely sure the stop was worthwhile.

I stayed overnight in a hotel here in Fukuoka and am now trying to work out what I'm going to do next. I may see if I can find another night or two here or possibly go straight on to Nagasaki and stay there for a few nights.

I am getting increasingly worried about the upcoming golden week. This is a period where a lot of national holidays fall close together and so apparently everything gets extremely busy and hotels often get booked up weeks in advance. Since I have only a few days left until the start of golden week, and I don't yet know where I'm staying you can understand why I'm somewhat worried. I can either try to go ahead as I would otherwise, ignoring golden week and simply hoping I can find something whereever I happen to be, or I can try now to book something for the week so I know I have somewhere to go.

Booking ahead may well be the more sensible option, but I haven't tried booking at hotel myself yet and more importantly it requires that I work out in advance where exactly I am going to be significantly ahead, which as yet I have not been able to do.

I do have a general plan now for the route I would like to take round Kyushu, Shikoku and then back onto Honshu but I have not as yet come up with a list of places where I want to stop along that route and it will probably still take me some time to come up with such a list.

Rain,deer and Mountains

Since I last spoke to you... Hmmm... I can't remember exactly when I last spoke to you, I'll check in a moment. But I've been having a nice time on Miya-jima and have now returned to Hiroshima.

Ah, right. I think that was posted sometime around midday, so that after posting that I wondered off to another of Hiroshima's parks to visit the Contemporary Art Museum which was doing a pleasant exhibition of sculpture.

After my second night in Hiroshima I took a tram and a Ferry to Miya-Jima where I have been staying for the last three nights. It was a beautiful sunny day when I arrived, so after booking into a very nice Ryokan in the main village I spent the afternoon walking along the coast of the island and visited some of the beaches. The are some incredibly tame deer that hang around the village, especially outside the ferry terminal, looking for food from the large quantity of tourists coming through. I have even seen them walk into the ferry terminal and start eating the tourist information leaflets (why amongst everything in the terminal they would go for these I'm not sure).

Unfortunatly the weather did not hold, and by the next morning it was pouring with rain. Nevertheless I got dressed up in my waterproofs (which have now become very dear to me) and climbed up Mt Misen. Having climbed to observation tower on the top via the temple Daisho-in and discovered that the only thing to observe were the inside of clouds, I took the cablecar back down, taking a look at the monkeys hanging around the top station on the way.

Yesterday the weather was again poor, though a slight improvement on the day before. In the morning I waited for high-tide before visiting the shrine Itsukushima-jinja and got to see it at it's most impressive, rising straight from the sea. After an early lunch I then headed up the mountain again, this time taking the cablecar to the top (seeing more monkeys) and walking back down by a different route. Thanks to the slightly better weather yesterday I did manage to get a few looks at the rather spectacular views when the clouds parted.

Today, after my final night on the island, and waking up to a pleasant, sunny day (though not as hot as previously) and finally being able to actually see the top of the mountain from the ground. I caught the ferry back to Mija-jima Guchi and took the tram back again to Hiroshima, where I have now booked two nights accomodation.

Today and tommorow I should have enough time to visit all of the important things in Hiroshima that I wasn't feeling up to before and plan where I will head next. I will try and get another update in before I leave Hiroshima to let you know what I've seen and where I'm off to next.

Atomic Birthday

I am now in Hiroshima, and it is now my Birthday. Somehow this seems slightly incongruous, but basically it means I really don't feel like doing the peace museum today. Meanwhile It's been some time since my last entry as I've been continually on the move since I left Osaka and haven't had the time to get online. So lets see what I've been doing since I last updated this, even I have difficulty remembering all of it.

In Osaka I activated one of my rail-passes (the Sanyo-area one) so I could move around more easily. I then got on a train west to Himeji where I visited the castle, said to be the best in Japan and certainly worth the visit. After wondering around Koko-en, next to the castle which were pleasant enough, I got back on a train to go further west to Okayama.

After spending the night in Okayama I visited Koraku-en in the morning, though not as early as I had intended. Having gotten there later than I had intended there were a lot of other people there and I think I was getting tired of gardens by this point so I fairly soon headed off to Takahashi. In this small town to the norwest of Okayama I visited Raikyu-ji (a temple) which has a very nice zen garden, before climbing the hill to Japan's highest castle, though I didn't go into the castle itself. It was a hot, sunny day but the view from the top was impressive, and the walk down by a different route, through the forrested mountain side was great. Taking another train to Kurashiki I spent the afternoon wondering around some of the preserved historic streets there and the evening in the amusing Tivoli parked, copied in it's entirety from Copenhagen.

In the morning I took a local train a few stops to Soja where I rented a bike to ride the Kibi Plain cycle route back towards Okayama. Once I arrived back in Okayama (after the ride and another short train journey) I took a train south to Kajima where I took a boat tour the very impressive Seto-Ohashi bridge that island-hops across the inland sea at that point. Unfortunatly being a monday the museum associated with the bridge was closed so I went back to Okayama and from there on to Fukayama, where I visited the rather eclectic collection housed in the Auto and Clock Museum.

After a night in Fukayama I went first to Onomichi from where, after taking a cablecar up the hill and visiting a few of the temples, I took a ferry to Ikuchi-jima, one of the islands in the inland sea. Here I visited the temple complex of Kosan-ji which is alsmost entirely made up of copies of the most impressive bits of other temples.

The next day on the island I visited the Hirayama Ikuo Art Museam before going to Tomonoura via Fukayama by a combination of ferry, train and bus. I spent a couple of hours wondering around this harbour village before returning to Fukayama and then on here to Hiroshima where I arrived yesterday evening.

After all of that, and managing to leave my rail-pass on the Shinkansen I took here I'm feeling like settling down somewhere for a few days. I havn't done much more than wonder around the peace park here in Hirsohima, but I have another night here and during the day I will try and decide what I am going to try next. I would like to visit the island Mija-jima to the south of here which sounds interesting but the only accomadation on the island itself sounds to be rather expensive.

I've just updated the entry with placenames and a correction or two. Probably no more updates for a little while though as I'm thinking of spending a few days on Miya-jima. Will see what happens and let you know when I'm back in Hiroshima.

Photo Time

I thought this should be a seperate entry to not make the previous one to long. You see I'm in Kinko's here, a copy shop really, but they have CF-card readers on the computers. Which means I can upload photographs. So that's what this entry is about.

St Petersburg (Well, the river and the Hermitage, plus some columns)

Moscow (Or at least a very big gun in the Kremlin in Moscow)

Me, on ice, at Lake Baikal

Matt and Andy, on ice, at Lake Baikal

Monument to Transiberian and a couple of trains in Vladivostok (sideways, need to rotate sometime)

Kenrokuen, complete with heron

Some cherry blossom at Kenrokuen, for Liz

Right, there are just a few. Requests welcome, but I'll probably stick up more over time anyway.

Big City Blues

Not sure why that's the title, not doing that badly here really, just thought it sounded good. I am though in a big city now Osaka to be precise.

I'm afraid I'm kinda lacking inspiration for this entry, not sure why, just not really sure where it's going, so please excuse me if it bounces around all over the place.

This is the end of my second full day in Osaka, having come here from Kanazawa on the thunderbird, on Monday? I've got confused as to what day it is, I had thought I came here on Monday and yesterday was Tuesday, today Wednesday. Which would be fine, except my watch (which is usually right) insists that it's Thursday. To make everything that little bit more confusing my watch is currently working out the date in London time so it doesn't even necessarily say the same day all day here.

Right, now as to what I've actually been doing here. Yesterday (whichever day of the week it was) I went to the castle and the surrounding park which is currently flooded with cherry blossom. Unfortunatly it also poured with rain which I wasn't really prepared for, but I managed to keep out of the worst of it. I also visited the peace museum, but that was more or less it for the day. The only other vaguelly interesting thing I did that day was get completly lost somewhere (I have since worked out where) in the outskirts of Osaka. I seem to have difficulty working out which way I'm facing when I come out of the subway system here, and I ended up wondering off in exactly the opposite direction to which I had intended.

Today I went down to the harbour village area and visited the aquarium and Suntory museum, as well as going on a boat trip around the harbour and watching the Lion King (In Japanese) in the IMAX cinema down there (not sure why, I just felt like it). The aquarium is very impressive with what it says is the worlds largest tank and some very nice non-fish animals as well, inlcluding seals, penguins, and assorted otters (The sea otters which were asleep on their backs when I first got there were particularly sweet).

Noto Hanto

Back in touch and back in Kanazawa. I did manage to go up the peninsular, spending two nights in Wajima and one in Hakui. I have to admit the I didn't do a whole lot while I was up there but I went for a nice walk along the coast and got to see lots of nice scenery.

I travelled up on Thursday taking the Thunderbird to Wakura Onsen and then a bus from there to Wajima. I had some trouble finding places to stay in Wajima as it turns out I had stumbled into a festival on that weekend and most places were full. In the end I stayed in two different minshuku for two nights, then left around midday Saturday taking a bus through some interesting countryside to a place I forget the name of on the East coast (Always to be known to me as "Hatted-'t' strange tree thingumyjig") from where I could take the Noto railroad down that coast.

I had some time to spare there before the next train so I wondered around and found an enexpected but very nice park on one of the headlands. After wondering around that for some time I headed back to get the train (Which was made that little bit stranger by the fact the level-crossing gates played greensleves).

The railway gave some impressive views of the countrside and coastline of the east coast, but took longer than expected. I changed back to the JR line at Nanao, but since it was getting late and I had yet to find a place to stay I didn't go all the way back to Kanazawa that night but stopped off in Hakui instead. In the morning I visited the rather strange "Cosmo Isle" that they have there which is a very odd dome shaped building housing a strage space/ufo museum, before heading back to Kanazawa.

I got myself two nights in a hotel here in Kanazawa so I'll try to work out later today where I'm going to head off to tommorow. I'm considering going to Fukui and from there to a temple where you can spend the night, but it's a little out of the way and I'm not sure if it's worth it. If I don't do that I may well head straight on down to Osaka and start exploring the southern end of the country. I'll tell you more about what I'm going to do once I've had another look over the maps and guides later today.

Quick One

This is going to have to be a quick one as I've only got about ten more minutes here, different place but still free.

Anyway just letting you know that I'm going to try to head up the Noto Peninsular (that bit above where I am now to anyone with a map). This will probably keep me out of touch for a few days at least but I'll be coming back through Kanazawa so I'll try to update you then. Nothing much else to say really.

Wasn't in touch yesterday as it was Wednesday and an awful lot of things seem to close on Wednesdays, including [ti's] labo where I had been using the internet previously (No, I don't know why it's called that either, there are a whole set of [ti's] things around the centre of Kanazawa). It was also raining a lot yesterday which meant I didn't do a great deal, just visited a couple of the museums around town.

That's about it. Gott go now.

Kenroku-en and More

Well, Simon asked the question and this post will answer it. If I'm converting the times correctly I had indeed been to the gardens at the time he asked. And some of the cherry blossoms are out, though not all, in answer to Liz's question.

I got up early this morning and was at Kenroku-en more or less at the opening time of 7:00. I think it was worth getting there early as I got to experience the gardens with very few others around, I only saw maybe two people for the first hour. The gardens are incredibly beutiful though and I took an awful lot of photographs (several of a heron which appeared used to it).

I've also been to Seison-kaku, a mansion attached to Kenroku-en (I keep wanting to write "The Kenroku-en Gardens" but since the name means "Six Sublimites Garden" it's unnecessary), built in 1863 by the 13th lord of the Kaga clan as a home for his mother (He says while reading the leaflet). This is a very nice traditional japanese building, of which I have no photographs since it wasn't allowed.

I also visited one of the gold leaf stores here in Kanazawa and the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum for Traditional Products and Crafts (I'm only tying that once). Both of these had some incredible works in them, in one case involving massive quantities of gold leaf (The golden toilets are particularly strange). At the store I also got to see the process used for making the gold leaf and had a cup of tea with gold leaf in it (Does one get the impression they may have too much of this stuff?).

Anyway, those were the main things I did today, there was a lot of wondering around involved between these of course but not anything of special interest. I doubt I'll do anything much more this evening so that will most likely be it for the day.