May 3 though May 6 is known as Golden Week in Japan. It's a four day holiday right after a three day holiday. Most Japanese spend Golden Week in rural areas, trying to get away from the cities and enjoy the beautiful spring weather in the countryside.
Ryan and I decided to go to the Kansai region of Japan for our holidays. We managed to take May 2 off work, giving us five days. The Kansai region consists of Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe (the large red dots on the map) as well as numerous small cities, including Nara (somewhere within the Osaka dot).
We had a great time on this trip, and if anyone reading this is planning a trip to Japan, I recommend the Kansai region as a "must-see", but I also recommend spending more than four days. There was a lot we missed, especially in Kyoto and Nara, but we just didn't have the time to see it all.
At 5:45am, I awoke to the sound of Ryan knocking on my door. I was supposed to be up half an hour ago but, like an idiot, I can't figure out how to set my alarm. Did I mention I was majoring in Computer Science? Rest assured, had I slept in to 5:00pm, my alarm would have surely woken me up.
I got dressed in record time, and the two of us ran to the train station to catch the 6:10am train to Matsumoto. We got there 40 minutes before our bus was scheduled to leave, so we grabbed breakfast at the bus station, all the time thinking how great a start to the trip this was.
The bus ride took 5 hours from Matsumoto to Osaka. Like my last trip, I half-slept for most of the ride. I woke up at one point drooling on Ryan's shoulder. On the TV was a Japanese movie with a plot I couldn't figure out. Something about a man in a business suit who occasionally breaks into song and "Walk Like an Egyptian" style dancing.
We got to Osaka around 12:30pm in the pouring rain. Luckily for us, Osaka has a huge underground mall, so we decided to head down there. Since I was the "expert" on Osaka, I led the way. We were both hungry, so we went to the "Gourmet Museum", a food mall. Ryan said he felt like sushi, so after 15 minutes of hunting around, we found a restaurant that served sushi. Coincidentally, it was the same restaurant John and I ate at on our New Year's Trip. Ryan had the sushi platter, and I had the "pressed" sushi lunch set. It consisted of small square pieces of sushi, two-layer high, that had been compressed to the size of one.
After our meal, we wandered around the underground mall until we found an exit. it had stopped raining, so we decided to talk to Dotomburi, the food district. It was a one hour walk and it rained on an off, so by the time we got there we were wet, tired and hungry. We found an izakaya restaurant and went in. Izakayas serve many small dishes instead of one set plate for a meal, and usually have a more relaxed atmosphere. We ordered a small pizza, a big salad, kim chi (Korean spicy vegetables), deep fried fugu (poison blowfish) and sea snail. I thought ordering snail would be interesting, since I happened to like escargot. Well, had I known this restaurant's complimentary appetizer was sea snail, I wouldn't have ordered more.
We took the subway back to the Gourmet Museum and grabbed ice cream sundaes for dessert. We then got lost trying to find the train to take us to Kyoto, a nearby city where our guest house was located. We finally got there close to 9:30pm.
The place was a real hole-in-the-wall, but it was cheap, and we could come and go as we pleased. Although not the best accommodations we could have found, we just just happy to get a place to sleep.
We were woken up this morning by a phone call from one of our co-worker's aunts. She had apparently met a woman who once met Ryan's grandmother (so the story goes), and wanted him to visit her in Kobe. Ryan was non-commital on the phone and did his best to sound awake. I got up to take a shower but finding it occupied, went into the common room to make small talk with the other tenants. By 10:30 we were out the door and on our way to explore Kyoto.
Kyoto was the capital of Japan before Tokyo and it is littered with ancient shrines and temples. We took the subway downtown and looked for a place to grab lunch. Kyoto is the exact opposite of Osaka in terms of restaurants. We finally stopped at an expensive (tourist prices) Italian restaurant and ate seafood spaghetti.
After lunch we wandered into Maruyama-koen Park, a huge park with a dense forest and temples, shrines and pagodas galore. If it had been a nicer day, it would have been a little more picturesque, but it was beautiful all the same. Although it didn't rain, it was overcast and cool all day.
We left the park and saw a huge torii (arch) in the distance. It must have been 100m tall and bright orange. On the other side was the orange and green Heian-jingu Shrine. We spent some time there taking pictures.
After Heian-jingu we went to the Kyoto Imperial Palace grounds. We wandered around the huge courtyard for 20 minutes then, unable to find the palace itself, we got tired and gave up. We were also starving so we called Guillaume, who was also staying in Kansai, and met him and his brother at the train station.
We decided to go to Osaka because Guillaume's youth hostel was in Osaka and because of Kyoto's lack of good (and reasonably-priced) restaurants. We parted company with Guillaume and Mathieu at Osaka station. While they went to check-in to their youth hostel, Ryan and I went in search of Maguro-tei, the all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant.
We asked for directions to the restaurant at the tourist info booth in Osaka station (finding the tourist information booth was an adventure in itself). The woman there gave us a map and told us it would be a 10 minute walk from the station. After 20 minutes of searching, we still couldn't find the place. We finally stopped and asked a man on the street for directions. He told us to go right, then he waved his hands around, indicating that a zigzag pattern was required, then told us to ask someone else. We asked two cab drivers and a security guard and none of them had ever heard of this place. If I hadn't been there once myself I would have doubted its existence.
Finally a kindly konbini (convenience store) clerk told us where to go, so we arrived, after an hour of searching, and lined up outside to get in. I still can't believe two cab drivers had never heard of this place, yet there was a 15 minute wait to get in. Guillaume called and we tried to give him directions from the station, but he had trouble finding the right exit, so we gave up and wished him well on the rest of his vacation. Starving, we finally got into the restaurant. I beat my previous record of 16 plates of sushi by two. Each plate has two pieces of sushi on it. You do the math.
Thoroughly stuffed, we waddled back to the station and got back to our place for some much-needed rest.
We got up late this morning (10:30am). Hey, this is a vacation, right? We headed off to Nara, Japan's first capital. It took us an hour by train, so we arrived around 1:00pm and we were starving. We asked for a map of the area at the Tourist Information Centre, where we were given a lecture on Nara's "World Heritage Sites" by the Old Man of the Info Desk. He described Nara's forests as "primeval". I don't think he really knew what "primeval" meant, but he used it a lot.
After the lecture, we grabbed lunch at a Japanese restaurant in the Nara Arcade. I had some of the best tempura udon (noodles and deep fried battered shrimp and vegetables in soup) I've ever had.
After lunch we saw some pagodas and small temples, then made our way towards the Todai-ji temple, the largest wooden structure in the world. It houses Japan's the largest bronze Buddha statue, the Great Buddha. It was huge, both the temple and the statue. We spent half an hour taking pictures of everything.
After Todai-ji, we walked through Nara-koen park, an enormous park that is the home of over 1000 deer. In this region, deer are considered sacred, and it is forbidden to harm them. The deer know this and have become quite bold. Rumor has it they'll take food right out of a child's hand, regardless of whether or not the child is offering.
After our walk in the park, we checked out Nara's National Museum, featuring Important Ancient Buddhist Artifacts. They had 1000 year-old illustrated scrolls depicting the life and times of Important Ancient Buddhists as well as model temples, statues and ceremonial objects.
All that immersion in Important Ancient Buddhist culture made us hungry, so we grabbed a Mos Burger and headed back to Kyoto. By the time we got back, we were hungry again, so we stopped at a Mexican restaurant for some tacos. The head waiter was dressed like one of the Three Amigos and spoke Japanese, peppered with the occasional random "gracias" and "buenos dias". On our walk back to the guest house we saw, of all people, Moui and her boyfriend who had just arrived in Kyoto. Promising to meet up with them later tonight, we returned to the house to relax for the night.
Before bed we chatted with some of the other tenants They all seemed to be Australian English teachers. One of them rented a bad Chinese Kung-fu movie, so we watched it until we got so sick of it we went to bed.
The train ride from Kyoto to Kobe was long and crowded. We spent about half an hour standing and being pressed up against each other on a hot crowded train. We finally got to Kobe around 12:30, a little sore and very hungry.
We wandered around the arcades until we were handed a flyer by a short Indian man. he was giving out ads to an Indian restaurant that offered an all-you-can-eat lunch. Interested, we asked him where this restaurant was, since the map on the flyer assumed a basic knowledge of the geography of Kobe. He agreed to show us there and led us up a block, then around a corner to an elevator, then to the 3rd floor. There was no way we could have find this place on our own.
The restaurant was great. We ate naan, Indian butter bread and curried chicken and veggies until we were too stuffed to move. We waddled out of the restaurant and checked out a nearby shrine.
After the shrine we walked down to the harbor and saw a huge flea-market featuring mostly people clearing out their basements. Seeing nothing worth buying, we headed to the Kobe Earthquake Memorial Park, a small section of the pier that was left in its semi-destroyed state from the 1995 earthquake. There were also information posters and a video detailing the destruction.
We then went to the Kobe National Museum. There was a special exhibit that day that attracted dozens of people: Ancient Chinese Flatware. Bored to tears, we went to the History of Japan exhibit instead.
Feeling restless after the museum, we hiked up to Kittano, the northern part of town atop a hill where the famous Kobe Steak restaurants were. We walked up the steep slope for almost an hour, pausing at several restaurants to gawk at the prices. Some restaurants had Kobe Beef meals ranging from 3800 yen (about $47) to 12000 yen (about $150!). We finally found a decently priced restaurant that looked good. I ordered the 120g (4 oz) steak set for 2600 yen (about $30). The meal included slices of cold ham and onion salad, soup, green salad, rice, and steak.
The beef was served sliced and half-cooked on a sizzling skillet. The idea is to let the patron finish cooking the steak slices to perfection. The meat is dipped into a small dish containing Kobe Steak Sauce then eaten with rice. The steak was delicious (my mouth is watering as I write this). It was the most tender piece of meat I've ever eaten. The sauce was tangy and also delicious. Everything they say about Kobe beef is true (well, except maybe the rumor about farmers massaging the cows to make the meat more tender).
After dinner we headed back to Osaka to catch the train to Kyoto. I realize as I write this, that we must have spent a fortune on transportation. Along the way we called Guillaume to see if he was still in town. He was, but his brother had already left for Narita airport that morning. We agreed to meet him at the station for dessert. We hung around Osaka for a few hours, then headed back to the guest house.
Got up early today. We were to meet Guillaume at Osaka station at 11:00am, so we had to be out of the guest house by 9:30. We went back to Maguro-tei for lunch, since Guillaume missed it the night before. I ate only 16 plates this time. I had nothing to prove.
After lunch we walked around Osaka, stopping at Dotonburi's west side that we missed the other day. It was a hot sunny day, so it wasn't long before we got tired of walking.
We took the subway back to the train station and spent the rest of the afternoon in the underground malls and surrounding department stores until our bus arrived. 10:00pm, we arrived in Matsumoto for a late McDonald's dinner. It's good to be back.