Very cool - martyn now thinks he is married to a petrol head. I
thought this would be a plus on the 'wife evaluation list' but maybe
with the train spotting in japan and the fact I found him an apple
store later it's all getting a bit much for him. Poor bloke.
In SF now just waiting for flight.rang again but no joy before May ah
well keep trying. We do want to come home. Honest. No we do really.
Off to san Francisco tomorrow we think as we have plan to see
Alcatraz and the bison again and Kay has found a walt Disney museum
which there is a family obligation to go to - All things tacky and
Disney must be participated in or fear the wrath of mother !!!!!!
View from walk 'home' below - Anyone know any ways of delaying
flights. we thought of setting off a volcano but we hear that's been
done !!!!!!!
So as we have no guide book and are skiing "off piste" as some would
say, we found a leaflet for the monterey
bay aquarium - it was ace. Jellyfish the best or maybe the sea
horses not sure it's too big a decision - bit like what to have for
dinner or where to go next ........
No beach really at monterey although the harbour seals made good
entertainment and as we felt it was almost warm enough for our one
remaining item of clean clothing (swimsuits) we headed for the beaches
of Santa Cruz later in the day.
Nowhere booked to stay but were used to that now ! Found somewhere in
the end but complicated a bit by timing our stay with a surfing
competition........ it's not quite Hawaii but it'll do.
*this is a joke for those who think i am
being serious
We stopped at Julia Pfeiffer-Burns state park, and snapped this lovely
view. Taken from the site of the former home of Roosevelt's best man's
ocean view home- he donated it to the state of California when he died
so everyone could enjoy the view.
Kay closed the car glovebox on her hand today, kind of like Dobby the
house elf in harry potter. I have no idea why...
At some point last week volcano erupted - we had no idea until we
arrived at the airport. Flight home was cancelled so we were put up in
hotel for three days. When we went back to airport we were given fly
back date of 5th may everyone in Tokyo v stressed to say the least due
to uncertainty etc. Had option of flight to LA with link to UK from
SAn Francisco on 2nd May so hire car and off we go. So far Airline
have said don't even go to airport for standby list as there are too
many emergency passengers to get back so with a bit of luck we'll be
back sooner than we would have been but definately after martyn's
parents who went on holiday after us but will be back before us as
they're flight has not been cancelled.
Anyway had to buy emergency pants in Tokyo pleased with being
equivalent of large Japanese person. Now is US had to do more
emergency shopping - toothpaste shower gel shampoo and clean clothes
so that we can go out whilst all other clothes in laundry. So title of
today's blog using myself as comparison - large japanese = small
American. I'm still pleased !
And the back again - we'd forgotten American portion sizes - small in
japan and v large in US martyn is happy and stuffed and we shared !
I need a lie down now....... It was probably the apple pie that did it
but soooooo necessary !
See how much sleep we get tonight wide awake at 2am last night love
that jet lag........
We saw this lady at a nearby temple today and realised where she might
have got this from:
There was nothing exiting inside for breakfast tomorrow however 8-(,
perhaps we can set up a similar one with the same name when we get home?
Most street corners and station platforms have drink vending machines,
but today we found one of only a few "cooked meal" machines -
presumably a combination of automatic fridge and microwave?
Kay's lunch was fairly good quality noodles with pork and vegetables,
I however got the short straw, and ended up with battered shapes with
sauce, that turned out to be chicken nuggets!, while it was edible, I
lucked out on the drink vending machine, mistaking what we believed to
be lemon juice turned out to be a bottle of cold tea! Yuk.
We enjoyed the experience tremendously at lunch (though are unlikely
to repeat it), if only to have kay spot on finishing hers, that there
was a big restaurant above the shop where we had bravely selected our
vending machine lunch!
As our friend Drew said "always look up" when in Japan!
This one in our Kyoto 'Superhotel' has been the smallest of all, you
can actually touch both sides of it at the same time
Today started out with a walk to the golden pavillion, which was very
"golden", the sky was grey today but it didn't actually rain, temple
was stunning, and gardens were nice. Yet again however it had been
torched in the 1950's by an obsessed monk/arsonist, but the rebuilt
version looked like it had been polished a lot.
Martyn may have reached temple capacity today as he seemed more
facinated by the concrete pouring truck next door.
After locating our hotel, and storing our heavy bags, we meandered
toward the path of philosophy, through very pretty Gion however, with
increasing darkness of cloud and the news that our best friends have
safely taken delivery of ava louise from the stork, we changed our
plans as we came across The Miyako Odori performance by Geisha and
Meika.
This was fascinating. To top it off we then saw an actual Geisha
walking down the street . This is quite rare as there are only about
100 Geisha in Kyoto apparently. Wow.
We confess to being a little templed out so wandered back through the
shops happening across another two temples on the way.
Found great present for newly arrived ava louise - her parents will
have fits !
Unfortunatley it was after dinner when we spotted this, the most
massive ice-cream sundae we have seen, it was £30 btw, which is about
the same as we have spent on our entire dinner this evening! The photo
is actually a plastic replica of the dessert, as is common on Japan,
almost all restaurants have either a 3d version of every dish they
serve outside for you to see, or lavish photos in a picture menu- very
handy if you cannot read their menus!
Dinner tonight was about as posh as we have had so far, in a very posh
restaurant under a shipping arcade near our SuperHotel (!) which we
think once we found it, that these are a new thing here with pin
numbers instead of door keys and a pick-and-mix pillow bar
Hakone tomorrow on the Shinkansen, and hopefully a view of Mt Fuji
through the rainy-cloudy-foggy-stuff!
Seeing as we had just had 2 days of rain in Hiroshima, we decided to
speed straight to Nara as soon as we hit Kyoto on the Shinkansen.
We kind of forgot lunch, and ended up in a Japanese version of Maccy-
D's with a hamburger in our hands.
Shortly after that we walked to see the magnificient Todai-ji temple,
made entirely of wood, though as we are starting to learn as with most
temples like this they got torched at some point in their mid-history
and ended up being rebuilt. This one was rebuilt 2/3rds of the size of
the original, but it was still a stunning sight.
Later as we wandered the park next-door kay said "..and up here on the
left there should be a five story burger." - clearly she still had her
lunch on her mind.
This is one of Japans most famous sights - the FLOATING Torii Gate.
Only, the tide was out when we arrived - to be fair high tide was 7am
this morning, so we'd have had to set out at 5am to get there, and
there's no ferry then anyway.
Lovely day walking down the Mount misen trails after sneaking up on
the cable car. We did pass several people on their way up at 4.30,
perhaps they were planning an overnight camp! It would have been dark
by the time they got to the top.
We avoided the fresh eel and oysters which are the regions speciality,
and opted for a pizza and salad.
Kyoto tomorrow, who knows if there will be any free wifi like the poor
soul who lives next to this hotel 8-)
So sad here even the weAther cried yesterday.
Paper cranes are symbol of peAce here very sad story goes with them
but it seemed right to buy a kit and have a go thinking we could five
one to you All. Below is our attempt which is close but a bit wrong.
Needless to say you wll now be getting a sheet of paper and the
instructions. just to make you feel better a 10 yr old girl started
the trend.
Oops mart out shower better go off to guess what another temple today
with boat ride and little hill to walk up.
Love you all
M & K
Lunch was another of our quite favorite pizza-buns which are kind of
like a two story fluffy crumpet with cheese and stuff baked into it.
This was washed down by some grape juice which was nice but had a
stange aftertaste somewhat similar to my childhood memory of 'calpol'
- I was always pleased to be ill enough to get some of that, so
enjoyed this also, K not so impressed, so all the more for me.
Koyasan is a tad cold this time of year 0c actually. Our temple inn is
very posh, and made of wood, with no insulation (we suspect these
buildings are build to remain comfortable in the summer heat), after a
traditional dinner that I must confess I gave up trying to identify
we are now tucked under our room's coffee table on the floor which has
a built in heater! Yum.
Lovely mix of temples and shrines here, including a huge one that M
called the B&Q temple due to it's bright Orange paint job. Quite a
lot of the ones we have seen so far are just White though so maybe our
friend ian should come out here with work !
I think the best decorated temples will be in Kyoto as long as they
are not covered up . The orange one is great though as it is so
different to ones we have seen so far - piccy tomorrow with name which
I have currently forgotten.
We have Buddhist breakfast tomorrow after morning serviice at 6.30am
cripes - all the different foods Are great but I confess if it is fish
and tofu for brekky then I hope there is a cake shop somewhere near !
Well I had better go as I think the undertable heater is burning
through my trousers.....Poooof!
No wifi tonight so might be a while before this one goes up (unlike
k's trousers)
And we found them. Takayama has at least 10 temples that we saw, and
some that we missed due to a slighty dodgy tourist map with a variable
scale.
We saw a puppet theatre where a marrionette drew on a sheet of paper
kind of like a 300 year old c3-po and some clever puppets that climbed
bars and fought with samurai swords.
Every year there is a float festival in April - it's in about a weeks
time so we will skillfully miss it. We did however see several floats
in a museum.
For lunch we had the largest apples you have ever seen.
Then we went to hida folk village to see the old houses that had been
transported here when they flooded a valley nearby to build a dam
(which we think we passed on the way here) - bus-bus-in was what the
nice lady said to us when we bought the tickets!
Later we saw a gigantic gong outside one of the temples - kay
proclaimed it 'there is the big bonger'
This evening was also marked by a repeat trip to our 'favorite' eatery
the only one that had nice pictures outside, and an opportunity to
loose £10 in a pachinko parlour! - some lucky (or highly skilled)
locals demonstrated that in exchange for your tenner you can extract
about half a ton of ball bearings from the machines, which one hopes
can be exchanged for hard cash - we however must have picked one that
was out of balls or were clearly less skilled at turning the boring
knob that controlled the machine and plain lost our money in about 3
minutes!
The alternative is that the bloke we saw with all the balls makes them
at home and brings them with him.
Kay managed to stop me putting tomorrows train fare in the machine so
we can head for koyasan tomorrow!
We made it to Nagoya yesterday - although martyn is gutted as he has
just read we missed out on portable karaoke machines in ueno park. I
am feeling grateful for small mercies.
Today was our most complex day so far - we were up early again to get
the train to the Toyota plant which involved two trains and a bus
journey.
The (trainer) lady in the train station who could speak perfect
english but struggled with her train timetable gave kay a set of
cryptic post it's with the station names and the train times - we
managed them all perfectly! I think kay actually was more fascinated
by the prius assembly line and welding shop than I was - she got left
behind the tour group and I had go and get her. I think she could stay
watching the whizzy robots welding two car halves together in less
than two minutes.
The main assembley line actually makes about 4 different cars models
at the same time but was perhaps the size of two or three football
pitches - quite small we thought.
Martyn was outwitted by the bus ticket machine on the way where first
you took a ticket when you boarded the bus, then when you left posted
the ticket into the machine by the driver along with your exact change
into the same hole - I think this went against my vending machine
karma - paper and coins into the same hole seems all wrong!
Later we (just) made the train from Nagoya to takayama where we
sit now in our temple inn, here is a slightly blurrey pic of the view
on the train as we travelled up here.....
Today we travelled across town to shinjuku, where the bullet trains to
Nagoya don't go from, kay was convinced that they did, so planned a
nice trip across town to see the gardens, and with that more cherry
blossom, tea houses and yet more locals, quite a lot more locals- all
having brunch in the same park.
Kay thinks that if there was a world shortage of blue tarpaulins (sp?)
then they should ask questions of the locals here, as you can hardly
see the grass for giant sheets of the stuff
We walked around the gardens and saw some giant carp, and more locals
with giant cameras, seemingly birdwatching as well as tree
photographing.
Later we had a pleasant pic-nic outside the station as we had
skillfully navigated to the JR ticket office to reserve our seats for
the train only to discover that we needed to go back to Tokyo station
which was where it stopped! -oops
3pm arrived and so did the train at about 2.45, it duly emptied of
people and was swiftly and very efficiently cleaned, together with
spinning all the seats round inside so that they faced the right way!
On we got, kay fell asleep rapidly after nominating me to stay awake
to make sure we got off at the right stop!
During the trip I discovered a new addiction to White chocolate banana
flavoured kit-kats! Advantage me, as K hates White chocolate.....
Today we tried to go to the imperial palace, the emperor is obviously
richer than the Queen becase his house isn't open to the public
neither are the Gardens on Fridays - just like the small print in the
guide book says doh.
So, we tried akasuka sensoji temple, which was nicely shrouded by
scaffolding as the work on the outside!
In desperation Kay took me to Akihabara - the gadget Mecca, 8 floors i
think, but lost count. Too many things and too much money to be spent
( we didn't spend anything as actully we thought it was more expensive
than the UK.)
We also had a yummy lunch, in a bistro type place. Later we went to
the sumo museum to prepare for a visit to sumo training tomorrow.
Except sumo training is closed tomorrow. Museum was good though.
Finally we went up Tokyo tower to look at the lights. This was open
and very pretty.
Being as no sumo tomorrow we are off to bed now in the hope we will
wake up in time to get to tsukiji fish market before it closes.....
By the way did we tell you about the toilets here? They have arms with
buttons for bidet functions along with flush volume control and extra
deodoriser.......these all go to make normal experiences a little
ummmm tentative ....... More tomorrow......
Ps claire / ian could you possibly check our fridge - martyn thinks he
left half a cucumber in there.
