Two Week Japanese Holiday Itinerary Using a Japan Rail Pass

Fast trains, precision and politeness were all things I had heard about Japan before I visited in 2019, but nothing could really prepare me for what I would actually experience during my first trip to this Far Eastern country.

Japan had been on my bucket list of holiday destinations for a very long time but I always put it off because of the distance and cost involved.

Planning a Trip to Japan

Then, early in 2019 my friend decided to buy a return ticket to Tokyo on the whim and I thought I should follow suit too. He booked a direct flight with BA, flying out with Japan Airlines and back with BA but I managed to find something slightly cheaper via Helsinki with Finnair.

These three airlines are code-share partners and it is worth checking the price of a ticket on all three websites as I found a cheaper price on the Finnair website.

My friend’s ticket cost nearly £100 more on the BA website flying direct, whereas I bought mine for £685.

The Japan Rail Pass

We also bought two 14-day Japan Rail Passes, each coming in at nearly £340.

Booking Hotels in Japan

Some of the hotels we pre-booked on booking.com before we flew out so we would have a fixed point to start from. In total, we spent about £1,050 on hotels for the two-week holiday, with only one of the hotels including breakfast.

My advice would be to not book hotels with breakfast in Japan as they tend to serve boring Western options and we wanted to taste real Japanese food.

The only exception was in Koya San, where we stayed in a Buddhist Temple and the reservation included dinner and breakfast for nearly £200 in total!

It’s crazy to think that that one hotel amounted for nearly a fifth of our total accommodation spend, but it was totally worth it and the food tasted amazing, so no regrets at all!

Of course, we spent a lot of money on other things like food, city buses and local trains not included in the JR Pass and entrance fees to museums and shows.

Total Cost of The Two-Week Holiday

In total, the cost of this Japanese holiday for two weeks came to around £2,000 per head, which is not cheap but we both had a great time!

You could probably get something cheaper if you stayed in youth hostels, but even if you are extra frugal you may only be able to shave off about £500 and no more.

Travel Insurance in Japan

The main issue for me was to get travel insurance because I have a brain tumour and not a single insurance company wanted to insure me! I literally spent hours on the phone talking to underwriters, insurance agents and so forth, but none wanted to insure me!

There were two companies that offered to cover, one of them for nearly £2,000 (!) the other for a “mere” £750! I thought I would rather chop my hands off than pay that much for a zero risk passenger like myself.

It turns out I’ve had this tumour for years without knowing about it and I travelled absolutely fine to places most people in the world would never even dream of going and I got insurance fine pre-diagnosis.

But the moment I was diagnosed and I declared it to the insurance companies they dropped me like a hot potato!

The worst is, some of them are happy to insure, but only once you are not undergoing any further treatment or on a wait-and-see treatment period.

So basically, post-operation I might have better luck finding insurance, but pre-op either I go nowhere, or pay an inordinate amount of money for insurance.

Just as I was about to give up and go without insurance I came across Aviva in a bit of a twisted way. A friend of mine with a brain tumour also travels quite a lot and he recommended HSBC, which offers travel insurance with one of their credit cards.

I phoned and they said they are underwritten by Aviva so I would need to talk to them directly – which I did.

Insurance Excluding Brain Tumours

We went through the same list of questions and I had a gut feeling they would also reject me which they did but before saying goodbye the lady said I could get insurance excluding the brain tumour and side effects.

I asked how that would work and it’s pretty simple: they cover baggage, cancellations, injuries of all sorts, but if it’s got anything to do with the brain tumour they won’t cover.

This was two days before I was about to depart to Japan so I took their offer for £38 for the two weeks, which was a world apart from the other quotes I got.

Fortunately I know that I have zero symptoms and my brain tumour only ever manifested itself on the scan. In fact, I was none the wiser until the 24 February when I was first given the sad news!

Memory Loss

So far I’ve had three “episodes” of memory loss and waking up totally disoriented, with pains and aches all over my body. The first happened two years ago at home, the second and third while on holiday in Arizona and Utah.

When I have these “episodes” I normally wake up with terrible splitting headaches and sore muscles and joints, but nothing else really.

In Arizona I was very annoyed when it happened but then I had no idea what it was. The doctors back in the UK kept telling me for more than a year that nothing was wrong with me so I ignored the symptoms and jumped into the car, driving off to the Grand Canyon!

So what I am trying to say is that I wasn’t worried about the brain tumour exclusion because I know that if anything happens it won’t involve any hospital treatment. I will most likely need to take a box of pain killers, have a very cold bath or shower and then off I go again!

Japanese Holiday – The Beginning

But back to the Japan holiday! We took off early morning on Friday 24 May in 2019 on a Japan Airlines operated flight with the swanky new windows and large screen TVs.

If you ever go to Japan please fly with Japan Airlines!

They are the absolute best! I’ve flown with many airlines in my life and even the Japan Airlines economy class seats are super comfortable with the 2x3x2 layout and a generous amount of legroom.

The food was also good plus everything was spotlessly clean! We took off on time from London Heathrow, flying over northern Europe and Russia before arriving in Tokyo Haneda at 5AM the following day.

Flying with Japan Airlines

The nearly 12 hour flight went past quicker than I expected although I wouldn’t like to be doing this every week!

The plane had many TV series and movies plus a Japanese news channel. It turned out Japan was experiencing an unusual heat wave and President Trump was also visiting the country the same time we were going to be there.

Maybe because of his visit, maybe it’s just normal, but Tokyo seemed completely deserted that first weekend we spent there.

Getting to Tokyo from Haneda

What we did was take the monorail to Hamamatsucho station near Tokyo Tower where we got off to go for a long walk. The ticket to Hamamatsucho on the monorail cost 495 yen one way from Haneda and took about 25 minutes to arrive.

We planned to walk to Tokyo Tower to take some photos as it looks just like the Eiffel Tower, except it is red and white. On the way to Tokyo Tower we crossed a park at the center of which lay Zojoji Temple.

This was the first Japanese style temple we’d ever seen and it did not disappoint!

There was beautiful greenery everywhere with the temple itself in the middle of it all. Tokyo Tower lay just behind Zojoji Temple so after a short while wondering around the temple garden we headed towards Tokyo Tower.

Since it was only just after 6AM, Tokyo Tower was still closed so we just sat in the base of it, finishing off the leftover breakfast from the plane. I basically took the bread, fruits and juices that I could not finish on the plane – it was mega useful as there was nothing open in the area at that time.

We also repacked our bags and I got my brand new camera out of the bag with which I started shooting my Hungarian language vlog for my youtube channel called “Solaris Traveller”! What a surprise in that name!

Our plan was to walk all the way to the Imperial Palace and once we get there find our accommodation for the first night which was in a 9hour Capsule Hotel in Takabashi.

Getting a Japanese SIM Card

The plan was good, except our SoftBank Prepaid SIM cards could only be activated between 9AM and 9PM Japanese time!

I know, this sounds stupid but as it turns out there are actual humans cross-checking the identities of each user!

So there we were at 6AM with no way to activate our cards for another three hours. Fortunately we had a paper map of Tokyo which we used to navigate ourselves to the Imperial Palace.

The problem was our rucksacks were pretty heavy so we decided to take the metro to the station closest to the capsule hotel.

As we found out later we should have just carried on walking for another 10 or 15 minutes to reach the place! Instead, we spent the next nearly two hours trying to find the 9hour Takebashi!

Download Google Maps

We should have prepared a bit better by downloading Google Maps onto the phone but we fully expected to be able to use our Softbank SIM cards straight away.

Anyhow, it wasn’t the end of the world and finally we managed to drop the bags off in the capsule hotel then head out to the Imperial Palace Gardens.

The Imperial Palace Gardens

The actual palace grounds were closed due to the Trump visit, but the Gardens were OK too although if you are not that into parks then just head somewhere else.

We ended up spending about two hours in the park, after which we walked over to Tokyo train station where there are more than 100 restaurants in the basement.

I had a simple chicken noodle soup but even that was a hundred times tastier than any other Japanese food I’d ever had before! True, the station restaurants were a bit costlier, but they were the closest to us and just wanted to eat something!

The 9hours Takebashi Capsule

Following lunch we checked into our rooms – in these capsule hotels check-in starts at 1PM and you have to be out by 10AM.

The capsule itself cost JPY 4,900 for the night for one person, which I thought was a bit overpriced, given that other capsules cost only about JPY 1,500 at most.

Clearly, this hotel is geared towards the stupid western tourists that don’t mind paying over the odds for the “experience”! In comparison, later that week we stayed in several full service hotels for JPY 3,000 to JPY 4,000 per night per person!

In fact, the following day we stayed in a traditional Japanese Ryokan hotel in Tokyo in the old district for JPY 5,250 per person.

I think that proves just how overpriced this capsule hotel is but this doesn’t seem to stop tourists from flocking there. The place was full of American, Australian, New Zealander and some European tourists plus the odd Japanese.

It was definitely not for the Japanese office worker that just missed the train home because of too much sake and karaoke!

Anyhow, that’s not to say I did not enjoy the stay, in fact it was quite fun. We decided to put our heads down a bit and have a snooze for an hour, which worked out pretty well and we were both exhausted plus the place was empty at 1PM.

Earthquake in the Shower!

Once we woke up we both went to the shower room to freshen up a bit but something weird happened halfway through the shower! We both felt an earthquake shake the entire building for several seconds!

It was surreal and at first I thought maybe I was about to have my first seizure or something but then I noticed that the shower door was also shaking so I realized it must have been an earthquake!

I went downstairs to reception to ask what was going on but the guys at the desk said it’s nothing unusual and there is nothing to worry about!

I thought it must be like an everyday occurrence in Japan, having earthquakes like we have rain in London!

Anyhow, after all the exciting we caught a train to Shinjuku, which is a major tourist attraction on the west side of downtown Tokyo.

What is Shinjuku Like?

It is difficult to describe Shinjuku – neon lights everywhere, high rise buildings and thousands of people rushing up and down the narrow streets. When we got off the train somehow we ended up in a small square with a Temple at the center of it, surrounded by several market stalls selling food and drinks.

We were both a bit dazed by our jetlags as well as the cavalcade around us, so we sat on the steps in front of the Temple and listened to the live singing of one of the priests. The Hanazono Shrine is another typical Japanese red building made of wood where Buddhists come to pray and offer sacrifices.

It was fascinating to see this temple in the middle of this tranquil park almost swallowed up by the neighbouring skyscrapers!

From here we crossed the street over to Golden Gai, a bar district left-over from the 1940s and 1950s with its narrow alleyways and tiny drinking holes. Neither of us being big drinkers we did not stick around, instead we headed over to the red-light district to check out what it was all about.

I’d read a lot about the love hotels, the various virtual reality porn shops plus the many massage parlours, so I wanted to see for myself what it actually looked like.

Discovering Kabukicho in Tokyo

This part of Shinjuku is called “Kabukicho” where the streets are pedestrianized and narrow, lined with high-rise buildings on both sides. Signs everywhere were trying to lure people in to spend their money on all the seedy business going on inside, which was quite fascinating to see with a European eye.

Some sex shops and love hotels offered rates by 10 minutes, which is hardly enough to get undressed let alone to have a “heated” discussion!

In the end, I later tried one of the virtual reality stores, but more about it further down!

During our first visit to Tokyo we were sucked in by the many games stations, such as the Taito Games Station Tower with its several levels offering gaming experiences for all ages.

As you enter, you are greeted with loud noises and flashing lights, all emanating from the dozens of arcade machines on which the youth of Tokyo have descended.

I found it a bit difficult to believe but many adults were going crazy about some of the games which looked immensely basic and made no sense to me. Why on earth would a grown adult spend the night banging on an arcade machine displaying some flashing lights and fat ducks or floating chicken?

In the end I decided to have a go at a couple of the games but I failed miserably! I did not even get past level 1 on the basic games!

When we had enough of the games arcades we headed over to Piss Alley, which is just next to the big green railway overpass, not far from the Taito Games Arcade.

Dinner in Shinjuku’s Piss Alley

Piss Alley is another left-over from the middle of the last century where you can wonder down to alleyways sampling some local drinks and barbecued meat.

It was so smokey and crowded that in the end we decided to go somewhere else and settled on a restaurant round the corner were we had to order the food from a machine.

The whole experience was quite strange, ordering food from a machine but it worked out just fine in the end. The food also came in relatively cheap around 600 yen per main course and about 100 yen per sides.

Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing

After dinner it was time to head over to Shibuya to check out the famous crossing. The problem is I felt slightly disappointed by the whole experience as I thought the crossings in Shinjuku were far more interesting!

Also, the vantage points over the Shinjuku Crossing were all crowded and it was difficult to take a good photo from anywhere. As it turned out we only spent about 10 minutes here then headed back to the 9hours Capsule Hotel in Takebashi.

By this time I was so exhausted I could hardly drag myself up the stairs so I passed out sleeping as soon as I landed in my capsule.

Unfortunately I woke a few hours later around 4AM and I wasn’t able to fall back to sleep so I went for a long walk around neighbouring Akihabara.

Walking Around Akihabara

Akihabara is about 20 minutes walking from the 9hours Capsule Hotel in Takebashi – at 4AM the entire neighbourhood looked spectacular and slightly spooky with nobody on the streets.

It made the whole area look like it was out of a zombie movie, abandoned and post-apocalyptic!

By then it was already post-sunrise but because of all the high-rise buildings the rays of sunshine did not penetrate this level of the city until slightly later.

It was well past 5AM when the sun rose above the skyscrapers and I was able to take some photos, but as soon as the sun was visible the temperature began to become unbearable.

It was very strange to feel all that humidity and heat that early in the morning, but I guess for the locals its business as usual.

I tried to sleep a little bit once I was back in the capsule hotel but I did not manage and my friend was also up, ready to go discover the city so I joined him. First we wanted to find the cafe where our breakfast was supposed to be served, but it was still closed and not opening until 9AM.

So off we were tracking back to the capsule hotel! My friend stopped off at the 7/11 on the corner to get some breakfast but I went upstairs to the capsule to lie down a little longer.

Sunshine City Shopping Center

As soon as my friend finished his breakfast we headed out to Ikebukuro, a major station on the Yamanote Line where we wanted to visit the Sunshine City Shopping Center. My friend is a big Pikachu fan and there is a Pokemon megastore in the Sunshine Shopping Center.

The Pokemon Megastore did not really interest me that much so I sat outside the store, watching the passers-by. It was interesting to see how every shopping center we visited was extremely busy any time of the day – not a single dead mall in sight!

I remembered how similar it was in Birmingham and Edinburgh all those years ago but now most UK shopping malls are struggling to stay alive!

Yet, here in Japan everything was chock full with shopper, in some places having to queue to buy food or get into a store!

Instead of queuing for lunch, we stopped in a restaurant on the way to the train station but it was a bad decision as the chicken was terrible, giving me stomach ache!

Picking Up the Japan Rail Passes!

After lunch it was time to pick up our Japan Rail Passes from Ikebukuro Train Station which took about 15 minutes in total.

We handed over our exchange orders which we received by post in the UK then the girl at the desk asked us to fill out some forms, photocopied our passports then gave us our JR Passes valid for the following 14 days!

The JR Pass system is so different from the Interrail system as you need not make reservations or book any tickets in advance, instead you just turn up at the train station and get on!

The only exceptions are some high speed shinkanzen services plus a few airport trains. In all of our train travel around Japan we made two reservations but even that seemed a bit unnecessary as nobody checked the tickets on the trains!

Although the JR Pass seems a bit pricey, it was well worth the money because we criss-crossed Japan from Aomori in the north all the way to Himeji in the South!

The only time we couldn’t use our pass was when we travelled to Koya San from Namba Station – on that occasion we had to pay the full price for the express service operated by a private firm coming in at about JPY 4,000 return.

What is a Suica Pass?

We also had a Suica pass, which is basically a plastic card which you load with money then use on buses, trains and trams. You can also pay with the Suica card in many shops and lock your bag in lockers plus a plethora of other things. All you do is top it up at the train or metro station or ask in store to put money on it. Then you tap the card reader and off you go!

The biggest pain in the arse in Japan was the fact that most cities operate metro lines, train lines and bus services by several private and state-run companies, and there is no single day ticket system like on the London Tube or in many European cities.

So, for example, if you want to travel on the Tokyo Metro system, you need to figure out which one you want to ride on and whether they have a singular or combined day pass. We had a combined day pass for the Toei and Tokyo Metro system, but as we later found out it wasn’t valid for the Rinkai Line and some other services so we had to then use our Suica pass at an extra cost!

Also, you can use your JR Pass in Tokyo on the JR Network, but it’s not valid on the metro either! It was so confusing and I think we wasted a lot of money on metro and bus tickets as we could not figure out the most economical way to travel around the major cities.

Walking Around Harajuku District

Anyway, back to Ikebukuro: once we got our JR Pass, we went down to Harajuku to visit the Meiji Shrine inside a huge, beautiful park made up of more than 100,000 trees at the center of Tokyo!

It was a direct train from Ikebukuro to Harajuku on the Yamanote Line then a five minute walk to the park entrance.

Visiting the Cat Cafe MOCHA

Before we went inside the park I spotted a cat cafe near the Metro station and told my friend that we should pop in to see what it was all about!

I thought a cat cafe is where you sit down to have a coffee, all the while the cats surround you or even come and sit on your laps. But not so!

In Cat Cafe MOCHA we had to pay JPY 1,200 to go inside and feed the cats plus watch them from a distance.

I was like: just how desperate do you have to be to pay for this?!

We only paid because I wanted to see it for myself what other local people and tourists do and I must say it was an eye-opener! There are actual people paying for this kind of non-sense, queuing all the way down the stairs to get in!

We only paid for 10 minutes then left as soon as we were at 9 minutes because they charge you by the minute if you go over! The good thing was that we got a carry-out coffee but in the end I did not pick mine up!

The Meiji Shrine in Harajuku

The park was absolutely amazing with the dense forest-like trees and crows crowing away, making the park seem all the more spooky!

The park and shrine were dedicated to a former Emperor and his wife about five generations ago, and when they died, their followers decided to dedicate a green space to their memory. It took a couple of years to plant all the trees and build the shrine but it was well worth it as it all looks amazing.

Ritual Hand Washing in Japan

It was also here that I learned how to ritually wash my hands at the Temple entrance using spring water and the wooden ladles. Basically, you rinse your right hand first, then your left, then rinse your mouth using your left hand and finally rinse the left hand again to purify it from the mouth rinsing. All sounds a bit weird but it was nice.

We must have spent a good couple of hours in the park then my friend decided to walk around Harajuku but I headed over to our hotel for the night: Ryokan Sawanoya.

One night at the Ryokan Sawanoya cost JPY 10,870, excluding breakfast with a shared bathroom.

This Ryokan is a very traditional place, offering rooms for decades now to tourists from all around the world. Ryokan Sawanoya has even been featured in several international publications like the Telegraph as it is such a beautiful place.

Staying at a Traditional Ryokan

I arrived at Ryokan Sawanoya around 4PM, dropped my bags off in the room then went downstairs to the communal Onsen.

Our room had no bathroom so we had to share it with others on the first floor.

It was the same for the hot bath downstairs: the bath was open from 4PM to 10PM and everyone that wanted to use it had to queue up. Since I was there at 4PM, I was the first to use it that day.

Using an Onsen in Japan is an entire ritual in itself, but in a nutshell: you need to shower properly, cleaning all parts of your body. The next step is to rinse off all the soap and dirt, after which you can head into the hot bath. Beware: the water is mega hot, so don’t just jump in like crazy as you might have a heart attack!

At first I sat on the edge of the bathtub, only putting my feet in the water, then I lowered my entire body into the tub. The Japanese garden was right outside the bathtub, so I pulled open the large window, simply enjoying the view over the luscious green space.

I spent about half an hour in the water at which point my friend got back to the Ryokan too and he had his turn as well. We were both so exhausted that we passed out sleeping a bit upstairs then we went for a walk to nearby Nezu Shrine, just over the road from the Ryokan.

This shrine is also surrounded by a nice little park just off the main road. Since we slept in it was already dark when we arrived and both of us being pretty hungry we just headed over to a nearby restaurant called Matsuyoshi Yakitori that sells barbecued meat. The restaurant has been in business for more than 40 years, serving the local area with great barbecued meat!

In Japan they call these restaurants Yakitori, which literally means barbecued meat. The meat is roasted in front of you on coal and the restaurant can get very smoky, so if this bothers you then probably best avoid Yakitori restaurants.

After dinner we walked back to Ryokan Sawanoya, but on the way there we stopped at Le Coussinet, one of the local bakeries, to buy a puff pastry filled with custard.

It was like nothing I’ve ever tasted before, really nice fluffy on the outside, but creamy on the inside!

We eventually got back to the Ryokan room around 10PM and put ourselves away for the night as we were planning to take the train to Himeji early in the morning.

Early Morning Wake Up Call!

As we were both still suffering from the jetlag and the eight hour time difference between the UK and Japan, we woke around 5AM. We packed up the stuff, chatted a bit then decided to head over to Tokyo station for the 703AM Hikari Express instead of the 803 as we had quite a lot of time to spare.

In the big rush we checked out without paying as we thought the room was pre-paid!

In the end I was chasing the owner of the ryokan to charge my Mastercard which he finally did after two weeks!

Taking a Japanese Shinkanzen

The train departed from the Tokyo Shinkanzen station’s southern platforms but we had no food with us so began looking for some bento boxes furiously when we arrived.

Fortunately there were a couple of shops open at that time of the day, so both of us bought a couple of boxes of bento and a drink for the long journey ahead.

The entire trip took 3 hours 42 minutes direct, stopping at Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and some other smaller places along the route.

Without the JR Pass the single ticket would have cost JPY 15,120, so this one journey alone was worth a third of the JPY 46,390 we invested in the rail pass.

I must say the journey to Himeji from Tokyo flew by pretty fast! If you are lucky, you should get a seat on the right hand side of the train in the direction of travel and then you will see Mount Fuji about 20 minutes after departure.

Our seats were on the left, so we got up and went to the door to check out Mount Fuji for the 10-15 minutes it was visible in the distance.

Mount Fuji from the Express Train

If you are keen on seeing Mount Fuji closer, you can get a train there from Shinjuku, but we decided to skip it as we had an already busy schedule ahead.

I spent quite some time walking up and down the train checking out the various parts, like the smoking cabins, the toilets (there were many) plus I even got off at one station to take a picture of the front of the train.

The train was mega fast and I would say it is well worth taking it at least once, even without the train pass as it is a once in a lifetime experience.

As the countryside and cities whoosh by on either side, you are sitting there in your airplane seat, mesmerised by the beauty of Japan rolling by!

Arriving in Himeji – On Time!

We arrived in Himeji at 1045 on the dot, immediately walking over to our hotel after which we headed over to Himeji Castle.

We booked a room for one night at the Daiwa Roynet Hotel in downtown Himeji for JPY 6,840 excluding breakfast. The hotel is part of the Daiwa House Group, which is a property development company that owns several units in the US, Thailand and other parts of the world.

Our hotel in Himeji was so new that when we booked it, the pictures were still showing only the renderings of the building!

When we arrived in the hotel lobby it smelled brand new and everything was spotlessly clean as expected from any Japanese hotel!

This being 11AM, our room was still not ready but we left our bags in the luggage room then went out to discover what Himeji had to offer.

Walking to Himeji Castle

The walk from the Daiwa Roynet Hotel to Himeji Castle took about 20 minutes along various covered shopping streets that reminded both of us of the Italian covered passageways in Torino and Milan.

The castle in Himeji eventually became visible after about 15 minutes of walking, with its awe-inspiring turrets towering over the city!

Most of Japan’s castles were destroyed during World War 2 due to the American bombardment but Himeji miraculously survived as the city leaders camouflaged it with black tarpaulin.

It was absolutely fascinating walking around the castle grounds followed by a tour inside the main castle building. The entire structure was thoroughly renovated a few years ago so the building looked brand new and squeaky clean.

What surprised me most was the size of some of the beams as well as the floor boards, making me wonder where on earth they found those huge trees?

Later on I read that some of the beams and girders were made from 500 to 600 year old trees that have since become so rare that they are under government protection!

I find it crazy that much of Japan’s forested area was decimated only to build castles, towers and shrines which generally burned down only after a few decades in service.

We must have spent a good four hours wondering around the castle grounds and building at which point we decided to leave to eat something in a nearby restaurant.

We settled on the Ninja Restaurant just outside the castle where the owner trains the local kids on how to hold a sword and act like a real ninja.

His skills at holding a sword were much better than his cooking unfortunately but he was a very friendly guy so if you want to support the local kids and ninja culture, make sure you eat there!

It was about 5PM by the time we got back to the hotel so we had a shower then lay down a little. It was a bad decision because by the time we woke up it was nearly 8PM and everything had shut!

Although we walked around for nearly an hour we found only the red light district open with its pubs and massage parlours plus a few pork ramen places where I did not want to eat.

The Weirdest Restaurant in Himeji

Finally we settled on a restaurant purporting to sell a local delicacy made from sake, soy sauce, tofu and a secret ingredient. The waitress did not speak a single word of English so it was a bit of a struggle to communicate, but we managed to find out this special meal was vegetarian.

Unfortunately when it arrived it nearly turned our stomachs as it smelled like Red Bull and beer vomit, fermented for a week!

I don’t know how anyone is able to bring themselves to eat that concoction, but it took me several attempts before I managed to force at least some of it down! I finished the eggs, the tofu and a couple of other bits but couldn’t eat the jellied something and seaweeds.

We wanted to head out of Himeji in good time the next morning, so we went back to the room to rest a bit then both of us fell asleep pretty quick.

Breakfast at Bon Marché

The following morning we did our shopping in the local Bon Marche supermarket where we bought several boxes of bento, breakfast rolls and yogurt drinks as well as a miso soup each.

As a comparison, the Bon Marche shopping came in at around JPY 1,100 versus more than JPY 2,000 in Tokyo Station the previous day! So if you want to scrimp and save money, you are better off shopping in these larger stores instead of buying stuff at the stations.

After breakfast we took the Hikari Superexpress to Kyoto which would have cost JPY 4,750 without the pass. We had to change in Osaka but even like that it only took one hour to arrive in Kyoto! So far this meant that I would have spent nearly 20,000 yen already out of the 46,000 that the JR Pass cost us, which wasn’t bad!

Taking the Hikari Express to Kyoto

The express train arrived in Kyoto around 10AM, we caught a bus to the hotel, left our stuff there and went to discover Gion, which is the old town in Kyoto.

Gion is across the river from modern Kyoto, which is a pleasant walk of about 10 minutes from the Carta Hotel Kyoto Gion where we were staying for the following two nights.

We picked this hotel on Booking.com and paid JPY 17,167 for a room with twin beds and private bathroom for two nights. The view was nice over the main road and nearby high-rise buildings which we both enjoyed. The receptionist was also extra helpful but what we loved most was the free coffee in the morning.

Kyoto is so big and so full of historic sites that it would be impossible to discover it in two or three days, so you must prioritise. We picked Gion due to its closeness to the hotel but we also took a train out to Arashiyama as well as Kinkaku-Ji and Ryoan-Ji followed by Fushimi-Inari on our last day.

Even as we spent three days in Kyoto there are still many places that we missed, but I think we managed to see the most famous and amazing places as it is.

Tourist Hoards in Kyoto

Unfortunately there are literally thousands of tourists swarming around in Kyoto, so you really have to be either very early to arrive at most spots or visit those places that don’t interest tourists. I would say you will be out of luck aiming for the second option, so just try and get up mega early to beat the crowds.

On our first day in Kyoto we were not able to do that so we had to put up with massive crowds and hundreds of umbrellas as it was raining all day.

On the plus side, we had our rain coats so the rain did not really bother us that much. What was really annoying though was the fact that every Chinese tourist was carrying an umbrella, ready to poke my eye out every time they turned!

Also, I could hardly take any good photos in Gion because there were dozens of tourists at every turn!

Fortunately the further away we went from Kiyomizu-Dera the fewer tourists we bumped into. Clearly, most of these tourists were travelling on tour buses which were on a schedule, so the tourists wouldn’t dare to stray from the pre-planned action.

As a result, they would jump off the bus, rush around the nearby vicinity then dash back to the bus before it headed off to its next destination!

We basically walked up the main tourist path to Kiyomizu-dera to take a few photos after which we carried on towards Nineizaka, a huge pagoda built centuries ago! By this time we were getting hungry to we settled down in a restaurant facing Nineizaka and ordered some hot food to warm us up.

Sitting there, eating the chicken noodle soup and rice, facing the pagoda was absolutely unforgettable, something like stuff you only see on TV!

The rain was pretty relentless so we admired the view a little longer than usual then left for a bit more walking towards the shrine of Kodaiji and the large Higashiotani Cemetery next to it.

Although it was raining it didn’t really bother us that much – in fact, the rain made the leaves more green and the environment seem more lucious.

We spent about 30-40 minutes in the shrine and cemetery followed by a lazy walk to the bus stop. Kyoto has a really good bus network and most of the buses went past our hotel, so we were quite lucky in that sense. By the time we got back to the hotel it was time to take our room which was on the fourth floor, room 402.

The views were nice but I did not really like the grey colour of the walls, although I did not complain or ask for a room change.

Jetlag Kicks In Again!

It was around 5PM so we both had a shower and began planning our next day and evening. Unfortunately, I got so tired from all the walking and jetlag that I ended up passing out around 7PM!

In fact, I slept all the way until 1030PM when my friend arrived back from his excursion around the fish market which, by the way, closes early at 6PM.

When he got in I woke up for a few minutes but I turned over and slept all th way until like 4AM. I decided to go through my photos and read a bit but then my friend also woke up so we got up and left around 6AM for the train to Arashiyama.

The train to this suburb of Kyoto was so clean we initially thought we must have got in the first class carriage but it turned out later that all cars were the same. The seats were covered in plush green textile, the walls with wooden coloured plastic as well as huge windows to aid in admiring the stunning scenery.

The train was not direct, we had to change once which gave us about 20 minutes to do a quick shop in the local 7/11.

By this time we were almost locals at the 7/11 where we bought our coffees for 100 yen a piece, some rice balls in addition to the regular bento boxes and Japanese sweets.

I know I shouldn’t be eating sweets with refined sugars but since it was most likely a once in a lifetime holiday I thought “sod it”!

Everything in Japan tasted so refined yet hardly spicy, I would say the perfect food composition.

Our train arrived in Arashiyama about 40 minutes after departure. Here, we were thinking about renting a bicycle but instead went to climb a hill we spotted as we walked towards the river.

Being Spontaneous During the Trip

We were quite spontaneous in most things we did – although we had a few hotel reservations for the first week, we hardly made any plans as to what to do with our time.

This hill was quite fascinating: the base was covered in a dense bamboo forest for about hundred or two hundred meters which turned into a pine forest later on.

Walking in the forest was amazing: the various local bird species were singing away at full volume at this early hour plus later on we even saw a monkey, crabs and various frogs! On the way down to our shock and horror a long snake also jumped on our trail in front of us!

We originally planned to walk to the top of about 400 meters height, but I suggested we go down a different way at which point we got completely lost with the trail ending in a waterfall!

So, unfortunately we had to turn around and track all the way up the hill, back to the trail! This added about two to three hours to the journey but eventually we got back to the trail and about an hour later we arrived at the river with the famous Katsura Bridge crossing it.

When we got to the bridge I thought it was a bit mediocre, being a simple concrete bridge so I did not understand why everyone is crazy about it?!

Crossing the Katsura River

Once we crossed the bridge we turned left, walked along the river bank for about half an hour to finally arrive at the “famous” bamboo forest. I must say this was also a disappointment because of the throngs of tourists plus the small size of th place!

It took us less than five minutes to cross it on the designated path that was full of tourists from around the world! In the end I wasn’t even able to take a nice photo!

We also checked out the local temples but in the end we decided to leave as it was so crowded and less exciting than we originally thought. Our next stop was Ryoan-Ji, a well-known rock garden that surrounded by a walled Japanese Garden and lake. This lake is supposed to have influenced the work of Van Gogh when he painted his bridges and lillies although I am not 100% sure about this!

The train to Ryoan Ji was far more interesting than the rock garden itself, which was about 25 meters long and 6 meters wide. The train, on the other hand, was ancient, ricketing along the bendy tracks to our destination about 35 minutes away.

We got off the train at Ryoanji stop, then walked to Ryoan Ji through a small town where we planned to eat lunch in an Udon Shop. The problem was all the places were already closed at 3PM which was crazy!

Anyhow, we decided to walk to the Rock Garden, check it out followed by a bus ride to Kinkaku-Ji, or the Golden Temple

Kinkaku-Ji or the Golden Temple

The Golden Temple (Kinkaku-Ji in Japanese) is a jaw-dropping structure covered in gold leaf, surrounded by a pristine lake and many pine trees. The main issue here was again the hundreds, if not thousands, of tourists swarming the place like an angry beehive!

The Chinese tourists were actually pushing people, including us, out of the way so they could take photos without other tourists in the picture! It was absolutely crazy!

We only spent about 10 minutes here as we couldn’t handle the tourists any longer then headed to the back of the temple to check out the other shrines with the rest of the gardens.

By this time we were so hungry we could have eaten a deer in whole, sideways, uncooked! As soon as we finished the gardens, we got on the bus into town and had dinner at a Japanese fast food noodle place. It was OK, nothing spectacular, but it was tasty and clean, the same chain where we ate in Shinjuku at Piss Alley.

Funaoka Onsen in Higashinocho

After dinner we walked around in the Imperial Palace gardens then crossed it to the other side where we caught the 205 bus to Higashinocho, which is home to Funaoka Onsen.

Funaoka Onsen is nothing spectacular, just your average onsen, but what makes it special is that it was built before the war and has some relics still in place!

The water was mega hot and after the usual stares at each other’s cocks we eased into the rhythm of the place!

There was a medium size pool outside in the garden with a small water fountain from where a sliding door led into the main bathing area. Here you can shower and clean yourself with soap, rinse yourself then go into the super hot pool that’s full of locals and some tourists.

I must say it was a bit odd walking around with my pride and joy just hanging there, but I got used to it pretty quick.

It’s normal to check each other’s cocks out even though it is a straight onsen!

The Yakumo Syokudou

We spent about an hour in the onsen then headed out to dry ourselves. As we walked acrosss the street towards the bus stop we spotted a bar on the corner, called Yakumo Syokudou.

We decided to stop in there to eat something as we were both pretty hungry. As I was standing outside with my camera recording a selfie shot, the waiters saw me and one of them came out to ask if I was a Youtuber!

I was pretty impressed by this and so we sat in to have some food. The only downside to this place is that smoking is allowed inside, otherwise it is pretty cool and looks very funky.

After dinner we caught the bus but not before figuring out what the funny bus symbols meant in the stop! We noticed that there were the bus numbers and next to each a bus symbols moving along the line slowly. It was there that we realised it was the bus arrival forecaster!

Our bus was still a few minutes away which I used to contemplate about life in Japan: it all seemed so precise and ordered, like a well-oiled machine!

I wonder why the system is slowly failing though? Child birth-rates are at an all time low, there are not enough people to do the jobs and soon enough the financial and welfare system will begin to falter.

Then no matter how precise and well-organized these people are, the system will come crushing down!

It was nearly 1030 when we arrived back in the room and both of us being exhausted we just put the TV on for some noise then speedily passed out sleeping!

Visiting Fushimi-Inari Temple

The following morning we went to Fushimi Inari, a large religious mountain compound for the observation of Buddhism!

There were dozens of temples, shrines and statues everywhere, the most important being the red wooden structures lining each pathway up the mountain.

I do not remember the name of these things, but they are pretty awe-inspiring as they snake up along the trail up towards the top of the mountain!

At first I did not realise just how big the compound was, but we must have spent a good two or three hours wondering around the place. Later I found out the trail was about four kilometers long, most of it lined with the red wooden beams!

It was around 930AM when we left – took a train to the hotel, got changed and then went to Nansenji Kusakawacho, the historic district to check out some more of the ancient temples, buildings and gates.

Visiting Nanzen Ji in Kyoto

The first stop was near Nanzenji Temple, where we took a bus as we walked so much already that day.

This was the museum district of Kyoto – most houses here are very expensive and I imagine this is where the city’s elite lives.

We came to see the Tenjuan Temple Garden, which is very famous around the world for being a Zen garden, built using the principles of the Buddhist religion.

But before we arrived at the garden we visited the San-Mon Gate of Nanzen Ji, a huge wooden structure at the center of the square.

The entrance fee was 500 yen like in most places, which is about $5-6 or 4-5 pounds.

I was getting a bit fed up with paying an entrance fee everywhere I wanted to visit, but I guess that was part of the game of being a tourist.

The Gate was very high with a balcony at the top and a special shrine for one of the shoguns and his many concubines.

My favourite part of entering these old Japanese constructions was taking my sandals off and strolling around the rooms bare-foot on the soft pine tree floor!

It felt amazing as my soles were massaged by the veins of the planks – as if I slowly came in contact with the past centuries, during which the tree that produced the planks stood still on a hillside, probably not too far away!

After the gate we walked around a little longer, visiting the Suirokaku Aquaduct, which looks like a Roman aquaduct, except it is in the middle of Japan!

The entire area was very tranquil and not as busy with tourists, this being a bit out of the way for the average Chinese and Russian tour bus passenger!

I was always fascinated to see the huge crowds gathering at a few dedicated spots, thrundling down to see the sight, never looking at anything else on the way there or back then taking a few selfies and rushing back to the bus!

As if they needed the safety of the bus to feel good!

I actually overheard some of these tourists complaining that their holiday was boring and that Japan is not as exciting as they expected…well, if Japan is not exciting enough, then I do not know what!

Inside the Tenju-An Temple Gardens

Finally, we entered the Tenju-An Zen garden, where we had to pay another 500 yen for the privilege! These museums are huge money making enterprises, for sure!

The building in the garden was off limits, but the garden itself was very beautiful. The first part was a rock garden, laid out in the typical Japanese style with a tree at the center of each section, forming the centers of several squares shaped into the pebbles.

The next section was the biggest attraction, with the pond at the center, surrounded by huge pine trees, many flowers and dozens of shrubs.

There were also a couple of small bridges and benches to sit down and take a break after all the strolling around Kyoto’s many tourist sights!

By then it was time to head back to the hotel to pick up our bags and take a train to Osaka, our next step on the trail.

Travelling to Osaka from Kyoto

The train to Osaka took only about 40 minutes which was pretty fast given the distance involved.

We reached Namba Station around 3PM then walked across to Nipponbashi along the huge shopping arcade which connects the two areas underground.

I noticed that in Japan there is a shop literally everywhere you go, underground stops and train stations included!

In fact, I would say train stations are the primary target of shopping malls to expand and draw more customers in.

I was totally fascinated by the sheer number of shops and shopping malls in Osaka and pretty much everywhere in Japan. I would never have imagined that so many shops would line every street, passage, corridor and underground station – I wonder who can sustain all these stores? Most of them looked pretty similar too, selling more or less the same stuff in chain stores!

Clearly, Japanese people have a lot of money, but what will happen when a thrid of the population simply disappears?

Who will sustain all these shops then?

The walk to the hotel took about 15 minutes – just in time for check in. Most hotels in Japan are very strict: if you want to check in early, you have to pay a surcharge!

We stayed at the KKR Namba Kuromon Hotel, just across the road from famous fish market.

The Kuromon Fish Market

Kuromon Fish Market is basically a couple of long streets covered with a glass roof where the shopkeepers sell the daily catch, fresh out of the sea!

As soon as we dropped our bags off we went down to the market to begin looking for our dinner.

By this point I was so hungry I could have eaten anything but my choice fell on a white fish that’s been grilled then reheated in the microwave. I also ordered some rice with it but I was still a bit hungry so I went back for seconds.

After dinner we walked down to the famous Dotonbori district, where all th streets are lined with neon lights, ramen stores and udon restaurants.

The highlight of the place is the canal, which is lined with two walkways on either side, at the end of which is the famous Running Man sign.

The running man sign is basically an advertisment for a sweet factory but every time a Japanese athlete wins a championship, they change the clothing of the running man to reflect this.

We also went out to Tsutenkaku, where there is a now defunct TV tower that functions as a viewpoint.

In retrospect, although it was a nice place and it was interesting to check out the neon lights, we could have just stayed around in Dotonbori and save ourselves the trouble to come this far.

Unfortunatey we were kind of forced to do this, as we had paid 800 yen for a day ticket on the metro which is only valid until the end of the day on the day of purchase and not 24 hours as I originally thought.

Since we only used the day ticket once we almost felt obliged to use it again to make it worthwile.

Lesson learned: only buy a day ticket early in the day if you know you will actually make good use of it!

By the time we got back to the room it was past 11PM – we were both exhausted but kind of felt obliged to do as much as we could because the next day we were going to leave for Koya San in the morning.

I loved the view from the hotel room which I admired for a while then duly fell asleep not too much later.

In the morning we went for a walk to Osaka Castle, which is a replica of the original building that was burned down in the 19th century then bombed out during World War Two.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw: your typical Japanese style castle with a water feature surrounding a tall wall, behind which lay the defensive structures.

Although they have rejuvenated the buildings, the castle is now actually home to a hotel, a ninja school and various other civic buildings.

The walk around the castle and the gardens must have taken a good couple of hours – we started to head back to the hotel around 930, just in time for the market opening!

I had the same fish for breakfast that I had for dinner, then we went back to the hotel, got ourselves ready and walked to the train station to catch the train to Koya San.

Unfortunately we did not do the planning too well, as the only direct train was with a private operator which meant that our JR Pass was not valid on it!

It was very annoying as we already shelled out like 46,000 yen for the pass and now we had to spend nearly another 5,000 yen for a return ticket to Koya San!

Anyway, there was nothing we could do…

We caught the 11 o’clock train to Koya San which made a few brief stops here and there before arriving at its destination in XXX just before 1PM.

From here we took the funicular train up to the top of the mountain where the Koya San religious village is situated.

Although it was nearly 30 degrees down in Osaka, up here it was much cooler which meant that I had to put my jacket on!

We first thought we would walk from the funicular station to the hotel but then we realised it would be nearly 5 kilometers taking an entire hour!!

Luckily we were able to catch the bus heading to Koya San, getting off at stop 16, just outside Jokiin, our accommodation for the night!

Koya San’s Buddhist Temples

Koya San is the home of more than 100 Buddhist temples and one of Japan’s largest cemeteries with 200,000 grave stones!

Jokiin is an 800 year old temple that now accepts paying guests, including an onsen, a number of pretty Japanese gardens and our own golden wall-papered room which I will never forget in my entire life!

The floor was covered in the traditional tatami mat, the corridors laid with pine wood flooring and the unmistakebly Japanese sliding doors with ricepaper cover!

Clearly, many idiotic western tourists don’t know how to carefully open doors, so they have run their fingers through the paper doors on many occassions! Proof of this was the freshly papered squares by the side where you need to grab the frame to pull it open!

Also, an important rule is that you are not meant to pull your bags on the pine floor, but the American tourists regularly ignored this, making a lot of noise in the process!

As soon as we arrived at the ryokan we left our bags by the reception after which we went to discover the temples at the center of Koya San. We were too early to check in, so we spent the next two hours wondering around the two main temple compounds. The first one was right next to Jokiin while the other just across the road.

Most of the buildings here burned down during a great fire in the 19th century, but some of the structures are still centuries old.

Before the great fire there were more than 1,000 temples in Koya San, but today this number reduced to about 120 as the monks did not have the money to rebuild the burned down temples.

Even so, what is left behind is awe-inspiring and breathtakingly beautiful in this green mountain setting! Of all the places in Japan this was definitely one of my favourites, probably within the top three of destinations you must visit if you are in Japan for at least a week!

The entire place smelled so fresh, the birds singing loudly and the monks walking around running errands and doing their business.

Koya San was originally founded in the 8th century by a priest called Kobo Daishi, who was good friends with the Emperor at the Time. Kobo Daishi also spoke Chinese, so he visited China many times with the Emperor, bringing over with himself the foundations of a religion.

It turns out that the branch of Buddhism practiced here in Koya San is almost the same as the Buddhism practiced by the Dalai Lama. That is a major deal as there was almost no connection between the two sects during the centuries, yet they managed to lay almost exactly the same precepts!

In fact, when I mentioned to one of the monks that I shook hands with the Dalai Lama himself he nearly fell on the floor and immediately wanted to shake my hand!

Around 3PM we went back to Ryokan Jokiin to take up our room. The receptionist, a monk herself, showed us to our room which had a table set up in the middle with cups of tea, ready for dinner in a couple of hours!

Staying at Ryokan Jokiin in Koya San

We paid for full board, including dinner and breakfast, coming in at 192 pounds for the two of us. This was by far the most expensive place I’ve ever stayed at, but it was definitely worth it!

The on-site onsen at Jokiin opened at 4PM so we got ready on the dot to make sure we would be alone without any noisy American tourists. The onsen here is very traditional, with a hot pool, the showers and the buckets to cool yourself down.

We ended up spending about 45 minutes here followed by dinner in our room at 5PM on the dot.

It was here that I realised Koya San and the entire religion based on the principles of Kobo Daishi are vegan, so everything they served was made from vegetables.

Basically, these guys don’t want to kill any sentient beings, which results in them eating a lot of tofu, leaves and soup.

Surprisingly, it was better than I expected, although some of it was a little tasteless, missing the salt or other flavours.

Koya San Cemetery Walking Tour

Calum also booked a walking tour for that evening at 7PM which was to take us around the old cemetery. The cemetery tour started at another ryokan and lasted about two hours.

It was fascinating to see the structures in the cemetery, all lined up in neat rows, some larger, some smaller but all resembling the same ideology and belief system.

It was here that we learned to bath Buddha and to wash ourselves before we crossed into the realm of Kobo Daishi across the bridge.

It was quite fascinating to see some of these guys doing it all tranced, believing every last letter of what they were told.

What is Shingon Buddhism?

The story is that Kobo Daishi, when he found complete peace, he went to meditate one last time, entering into eternal meditation. About hundred years later, one of his disciples went to the room where he entered enternal mediation, washed him, bathed him, cut his beard and left him there to continue his meditation. Ever since then, for about 1,300 years, they’ve been bringing him food every day so that he never goes hungry and can continue to meditate forever more.

Yes, it is a strange story, but not much stranger than a virgin prositutue getting pregnant with Jesus Christ, who then resurrects after spending three days in a cave dead…then of course flying up to heaven.

You tell me which is more unbelievable…?

By the time we arrived back to Ryokan Jokiin we were both so tired we could hardly move and fell asleep pretty much straight away!

The duvet and bedding were super soft and warm, we did not even need th heating on – plus we definitely did not want to watch the TV!

Instead, we just enjoyed the silence then slipped into a long, deep sleep, only waking the next morning around 630, in time for our breakfast at 7AM.

The breakfast was very delicious and just enough to start the day, made up of tofu, some vegetables as well as some soup.

The monks here eat twice a day only, spending the rest of the day meditating, learning and praying. It must be an interesting and relaxing life, with little to worry about – although I am not sure I would be able to cope without eating for so long.

Meditating with the Monks

In the morning we decided to go back to the cemetery to see it during the day when it is perhaps even more beautiful than at night. But first we spent almost an hour with the Jokiin Monks meditating in the Ryokan’s own temple. In fact, the Ryokan IS the temple, so we spent a night in a real Buddhist temple in Japan!

This time in the cemetery we could see the moss covering most trees and stones, with many of the graves having survived hundreds, if not thousands of years since the foundation of Koya San.

We must have spent a good three hours wondering around the cemetery, after which we walked back to the hotel to check out. We did not want to leave our stuff there again so instead we went to the train station to head back down to Osaka for our second night.

The 1216 Express Train to Osaka

We were very fortunate to catch the 1216 express train, which only stopped in a few places, getting us to Osaka in under two hours.

Osaka is such a fascinating place, I would have liked to spend more time there but unfortunately we could only allow for two nights. We managed to book a night in the same place, receiving almost the same room, just one down the corridor.

Osaka’s Station City Mega Mall

The afternoon we spent walking around the market, looking for some more tasty foods then going over to Station City, a huge megamall complex, containing about five huge, interconnecting shopping malls.

It was quite amazing to see the hoards of people shopping, which was a huge surprise after coming from Europe, the UK and in particular the US where shopping malls are really struggling.

Here it was all abuzz, thousands of people rushing around, looking to buy their next favourite thing!

We only bought some food and sweets, then went up to the free viewpoint at the southern side of the complex. It was a bit of a challenge to find the place, but if you look for the observatory, you will easily find it.

We also discovered a huge water feature at the back and a life that took us past the 20th floor, providing for breathtaking views over the urban landscape that is Osaka.

Our big regret is that we were unable to visit the instant noodle museum, but we were too late as all museums in Osaka (and in Japan in general) seem to close at 430PM.

Visiting the Castle Gardens

Instead, we went back to the Castle Gardens where we were hoping to walk around in the illuminated park but they wanted to charge us 3,400 yen for the privilege! That is almost 30 pounds, so instead we headed back to Dotonbori for a last stroll down the canal.

We ate at a small restaurant that sold beef udon soup which actually tasted quite nice, tried a local pastry and finally doing some 7-11 shopping for the train journey the following day.

Our plan was to go to Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture, in the central north of the island to check out the castle, the park as well as the samurai district.

Travelling from Osaka to Kanazawa

The train departed at 7 in the morning and arrived in Kanazawa direct in about three hours. The landscape we rode through was amazing, your typical Japanese countryside with the rice paddies, small villages and many straight roads!

I was surprised to see so much new road construction with overpasses, bridges and tunnels – as if the country was on an upward economic spiral!

I thought it very wasteful how they are asphalting over the last remaining land in their country – what is the point anyway when in a single generation the population of Japan will drop by a third?

Anyhow, our train arrived in Kanazawa just before 11 from where we took a bus to the hotel.

This hotel was the KKR Hotel Kanazawa, right next to the park at the centre of which lies the castle.

The hotel staff were not very kind – maybe because we arrived super early or because they are just generally rude.

Anyhow, we left our bags in the luggage room and rented a bicycle each then proceeded to discover what Kanazawa had to offer.

Renting a Bicycle in Kanazawa

The bicycles were not the best but they did the job – the problem was we could not cycle in the park so we spent like 20 minutes looking for a bicycle lock!

In Japan you are not allowed to just leave the bicycle anywhere, you have to lock it in a designated bike locker spot!

Otherwise the bicycle pound will come and snatch your bike, which we did not want to happen.

The castle in Kanazawa was interesting with a huge family event. This castle was also a renovated building, as the original was destroyed in a fire more than 100 years ago.

Touring Kanazawa Castle

At the ticket office they offered to give us a free guided tour in English which we accepted although the guide’s English wasn’t that amazing.

We spent about half an hour walking around the castle gardens then crossed over to the main city park.

This park is world famous for its lake and vegetation which meant that it was absolutely chock full of tourists!

They were literally bringing the tourists here by the busload, they went to the same Instagram spot, took their selfie then rushed back to the safety of the bus! It was just terrible!

In the end we walked around the lake, some of the cherry tree orchards followed by a brisk walk back to the bicycles to avoid all the tourists.

Our main interest was the Kanazawa samurai district where the former homes of rich samurais have been preserved in their original form. This part of Kanazawa was gorgeous with the river flowing through it and several bridges crossing it.

The Kanazawa Samurai District

The main samurai home we visited belonged to a Samurai that earned about 1,200 koku of rice per year, which in today’s value would be about 100 million pounds or so. Not surprisingly, his house was huge with all the mods and cons of the day like a fish pond, a tea room, sliding doors and rice paper walls.

I really enjoyed this exhibition, so if you are in the area you should definitely visit.

From here we made our way to the other side of the Sai River in Kanazawa, where another smaller Samurai district is located. Along the ride there we stopped at the pharmacy museum, which was restored to its original glory to showcase what a shop in the 17th century was like.

The second samurai district was not as impressive as the second but it was still nice.

We also cycled to an ancient temple not far from here, but we did not want to pay to go inside so instead we began our long cycle to the sea!

The entire riverside is paved on both sides so we joined the cyclepath down to the sea, which took us a little over an hour to reach.

Fortunately it was more or less downhill, although in some parts we had to cycle uphill which exhausted us in about half an hour! Never mind though, we carried on and reached the sea just in time for sunset.

We were hoping to get some dinner here but this being a small fishing village everything was already closed, not even a small shop open!

We were both very tired by this time and the hunger did not help, but we had to cycle all the way back to the hotel!

The path back to town took a lot less time for some reason – we popped into a 7-11 on the way after which we finally checked in!

We had a shower in the hotel, stretched our legs a bit in the bed then went out to look for a restaurant to have some dinner.

Dinner at Marichou K

We were lucky because we found a really good restaurant called Marichou K just down the road from the hotel where we settled in for the night. This restaurant was run by a local lady who took our orders, cooked the food and served us the food!

I guessed her name may be Maryjoe in American, and she Japanised it!

I could be completely wrong though!

I had the most delicious chicken katsu curry with miso soup – I still remember that silky soft taste!

We finished our dinners around 930 and went back to the room to sleep which wasn’t that difficult as we were both exhausted!

The view to the castle and the full moon was amazing, unfortunately it did not come out very well on any of my pictures.

The next morning we got up really early as we wanted to catch the 7 o’clock train to Takayama where we wanted to see the ancient town center and the the Hida Folk Village.

The train to Takayama crossed through the Japanese Alps, over pretty little rivers and narrow valleys.

If you are in Japan for the first time, you should definitely check this route out because it it was absolutely breathtaking!

It is not even difficult to get here any more, as you can take the bullet train to Kanazawa, spend the day there then head down south early in the morning on your way back to Tokyo.

If you are very efficient, you can even do the entire trip in one day thanks to the fast Japanese trains!

Heading to Nagoya from Kanazawa

Our first stop on the way to Nagoya was Takayama where we checked out the old merchant district. This part of Japan was famous for its silk and wood, thanks to its location in the middle of the Japanese Alps. Pretty much everyone here back in the day was involved in silk worm growing which generated a healthy income for most people.

I learned a lot about the silk making process as well as the life of a wood-cutter plus many other professions that have now more or less died out.

We spent about two hours walking around the place then took a local bus out to Hida, the historic village.

This village is special because there used to be nothing here but in the 1980s the government decided to set up a memorial district to collect houses from the region that would have otherwise been lost to demolition.

There is a pretty little lake at the center of the park with most houses surrounding it. The tall trees and the lake made it very pretty so I must have spent a good three hours wondering around the area.

Unfortunately we soon had to head back to Takayama to catch the train to Nagoya. Our lives were a little simpler because we left our luggage in the locker room at the station so we did not have to haul around anything big!

Lunch at 7/11 – AGAIN!

We ended up eating at the local 7-11 again which by this time had definitely become our “regular”.

The 7-11 stores are all reliable, well stocked and clean, so you always know what to expect.

Most of the food was also very cheap and good quality, so when we couldn’t be bothered to look for food we just went to eat at 7-11!

We caught the train to Nagoya but our only regret was that we pre-booked a room there instead of waiting for a little longer.

It turned out that we could have made it back to Tokyo that same day and leave for the north a little earlier.

Spending a Night in Nagoya

Anyway, Nagoya turned out to be an interesting place with lots of lit up streets, nice boulevards and tall buildings.

We stayed at another Daiwa Roynet hotel, but this was a City Royal, which meant that there was a spa and onsen on site!

We arrived in the hotel around 6PM, put our clothes in the washing machine, went to the spa then on the way up to the room we put the clothes in the tumble dryer. As it turned out, the tumble dryer was terrible and the clothes were wet even after four thirty minute cycles!

If you are in Nagoya, I would recommend arriving early in the day as most museums close at 430 and the shops and restaurants shut around 8-9PM.

There are some restaurants that serve until later, but I did not like any of them so instead ate at one of the Japanese chains where I ordered the food on the machine to take away. The dinner actually turned out fine, although Calum decided to eat somewhere else then go back to the room while I stayed out a little longer.

I think I arrived back in the room around 1030PM, hoping the clothes would be dry but they were still wet! We left them out to dry then did a mega fast packing in the morning as we planned to catch the first shinkansen to Tokyo followed by a connecting bullet train to Aomori in the north.

Our train from Nagoya left at 623AM so we bought some breakfast at the local 7-11 at the train terminal. We got to Tokyo with about 25 minutes to spare but we did not realise we needed to reserve our seats on this train!

We began to frantically hunt for the ticket office, envisaging a huge bill at the end of if all! Well, it turns out even though you need to reserve the seat it doesn’t cost anything! It’t a bit of a pain in the arse, but the train splits in two at some point and I imagine they want to make sure you are sitting in the correct part of the train.

In the end we caught the 840 train instead of the 820 one, which meant that in Aomori we missed our connecting service to the city center. This was a bit of a pain because we had to take a bus and walk a bit, but there was nothing we could do!

Travelling from Tokyo to Aomori

The train ride up to Aomori was interesting enough but half the time the train was in tunnels so we saw very little of the countryside. When the train was not in a tunnel, it was between the soundproofing walls or between towerblocks, so I would say it is not exaclty a scenic ride up north!

Not that it mattered! I still enjoyed sitting on a bullet train, speeding up to Aomori at 300 kilometers an hour! The bullet train left at 840AM and we arrived just after lunchtime. The connecting bus departed at 1223, leaving us just under two hours to check out the city center of Aomori.

The bus dropped us off at the base of the main overpass and we walked down the high street towards the bay. It is almost impossible to miss the bay as there is a huge triangle shaped building at the end of the road, so you just walk in that direction.

Aomori served as the ferry terminus for boats going between Hokkaido and Aomori, but the arrivals of a bridge an tunnel ended the ferry service back in the early 2000s.

The last ferry has been preserved as a museum, which I decided to check out once we arrived at the port.

Calum wasn’t that interested in the ferry, so instead he went to the art museum which I could not care less about!

The big triangle building turned out to be a shopping center from the 1980s which had seen better days. In fact, the entire city looked a bit tired, I guess the departure of the last ferry has caused the demise of the entire city!

The clouds rolled in and it was pretty windy too, so it made the whole place seem like we flew back in time to the cold war, fighting on the northern edge of western civilisation!

I can imagine the buzzing city center here in the 1970s and 1980s, when hundreds of people arrived here on their way to Hokkaido. Back then the passanger trains would roll onto the ferries and the passengers would go upstairs to the deck to watch the city of Aomori slowly disappear in the distance!

I honestly felt like I was up at the northernmost edge of the world, there being nothing else past the choppy seas! This is of course not true, but ever since then I picture Aomori as a strangely romantic town from the Cold War, when it was one of the most important places in the north of Japan.

The Aomori Ferry Museum

The ferry museum was absolutely fascinating and the best was that hardly anybody else was on board! I was literally walking around on my own until I arrived at the captain’s deck where another half dozen people were taking selfies with a statue of the last captain of the ferry!

I was quite chuffed to see the ferry and how it worked: I was able to walk from the belly of the boat all the way to the top of the chimney that today functions as a viewpoint over the city of Aomori!

The engine room at the base of the ferry was quite interesting, above which they displayed some old train carriages and engines. The next level was the market level where they showcased what Aomori and the region looked like in past centuries.

There was also the captain’s quarters, the shower rooms and toilets plus the top deck with the chimney which I duly climbed.

I think I spent about 45 minutes on board the ferry, but then I had to rush off to catch the scenic Resort Shirakami train to Akita!

Fortunately, the train station is right next door to the ferry terminal so I walked down to the street level, bought some food at the station shop then boarded the scenic coastal train!

The Resort Shirakami scenic coastal train is an absolute MUST if you are on holiday in Japan!

It is really easy to get to as part of a couple of days away from Tokyo and if you are very efficient you can even turn it into a day trip!

You could for example catch the very first train to Aomori, wonder around the streets then check out a couple of museums and take the scenic train to Akita.

In Akita you could spend the afternoon checking out the park, town center and sampling some tasty udon! It is entirely possible to catch the last bullet train back to Tokyo the same evening if you want, but instead we took it easy and stayed in Akita for the night.

The scenic train took just under five hours to arrive in Akita going through some of the most beautiful parts of Japan you can imagine!

The train was panoramic with huge windows, a bar and very comfortable seats, so I was loving pretty much every minute! I was so surprised to see that the train was almost literally empty! There were maybe 30-40 of us on board a five carriage train that could easily transport at least 300 people!

There were a few Japanese people but they were clearly not interested in the scenery as they closed the shutters! I thought to myself: why the hell do you come on a scenic train ride if you pull down the shutters in the most scenic parts? I was simply flabbergasted by this! I thought maybe they were locals but it turned out that they were tourists like us!

In terms of western tourists, we were the only ones on board! The bar was very good and sold local cider and various apple products, this being the largest apple producing region in Japan. As we were rolling along in the fields, huge apple orchards lined both sides of the rails.

Just as the apple orchards slowly began to disappear we started to see the huge mountains as well as the sea. The best part of the journey is that on your left are the massive mountains covered in ancient Japanese cypress forests while on your right you can admire the endless sea views!

The area around here is called Shirakami Sanchi, which is one of the largest preserved forests in Japan with amazing wildlife and many hot water Onsen.

According to UNESCO, “Shirakami-Sanchi World Heritage Property is a wilderness area covering one third of Shirakami mountain range with the largest remaining virgin beech forest in East Asia.”

If we had a bit more time we would have got off, but we just carried on towards our destination for the day: Akita!

We had no idea the train would make a brief stop by Senjojiki, so we stayed on board when we noticed everybody suddenly began to get off! I asked the driver what was going on and he indicated that we can go to the beach to take pictures.

It turned out it was a scheduled stop to check out the shrine at the sea and take pictures plus buy some stuff at the local stores. I think we might have been there for about 15 minutes when the driver blew the whistle, telling us to get back on board!

It was fascinating to stop like that all unexpectedly, admiring the views and taking in some late afternoon sunshine.

There was another hour and a half to go to Akita from the beach stop which was mainly straight and flat, but still enjoyable. For me the most interesting bit was the section along the coast and the tree orchards, taking me back to an age gone by when slower train travel was the only way to get around.

Thinking back I am very annoyed that even the tourism board said our itinerary would be impossible to do because we wanted to cover such large distances! I remember visiting the London tourist office and the lady there saying we would never be able to visit the north with such little time on our hands (16 days!).

Well, if I had listened to her I would not have these amazing memories of Aomori, Akita, Niigata and Kakunodate.

True, many times we only stopped for a few hours, but that was sometimes just the right amount of time to scrape the surface and take away a bit of Japan we would otherwise have never seen!

With the high speed train going up north it is perfectly possible to visit Aomori, Akita and Niigata in a single day from Tokyo! And if you have the time, you can spend a day in each, joining them up on these amazing scenic train trips as we did.

Arriving in Akita

We rolled into Akita late in the evening but it was still light for a couple of hours so we started looking for dinner before we checked in.

We read somewhere that the udon noodle soup was invented in Akita, so our choice was naturally a noodle shop!

Unfortunately the shop everyone recommended was closed so we went to Sato Yosuke Akita Ten, near the train station in the basement of the local shopping mall.

This restaurant is clearly what caters for the locals as there wasn’t a single other Western tourist in there!

In fact, it was really difficult to explain what we wanted as nobody spoke English! In the end, we had to use Google Translate to explain I did not want pork or shellfish, and that I would prefer chicken or beef!

Finally, we both picked a simple vegetable noodle soup which came in a large bowl with some smoked ginger on the side. Afterwards we realised we should have put the ginger in the soup to give it a nice smokey flavour, but we didn’t!

We walked to the hotel on a full stomach which wasn’t our plan as we wanted to take a taxi but both drivers refused as the hotel was too close! In any other  country they would have taken you on a long ride and ripped you off, but here in Japan the driver got out of his seat and showed us the way to walk!

Although it really wasn’t that far, we would have preferred to take a taxi to “splash out” and to save ourselves the hassle but then we had no choice!

The walk took about 15 minutes with a few sightseeing stops – we decided to walk past the park and the main tourist spots as we had to take an early morning train, meaning we would have no time to go for a long walk in the morning.

Checking into the Daiwa Roynet

The Daiwa Roynet hotel in Akita was great, in fact it was located right in front of the Daiwa House Group, which owns the entire hotel chain as well as several residential properties worldwide, including Texas.

I am a great hotel buff from my reception days, so it filled me with pride to stay right next to the headquarters – LOL!

Not being funny, this chain was great, clean and always convenient at an affordable price – I often wondered how they can make money at such low price?

There was always air conditioning, towels, a nightgown, toothpaste, various toiletries, a TV and so forth, making it more like a Holiday Inn experience than a cheap Japanese hotel chain.

By this time we were so tired that all we wanted to do was to sleep! No wonder: the night before we stayed at the Daiwa Royal Hotel in Nagoya, hundreds of miles away and yet we were now up north in Akita! And this was all possible without flying a single minute – only taking the high speed trains.

In retrospect, it was the best decision of our holiday to buy the two week railway pass as the trains were always on time with a wide variety of services to a huge number of destinations.

I don’t think there is any point getting the first class ticket, but if you want you can do so – the seats will be slightly wider and the carriages a bit more quiet.

Otherwise there is absolutely no difference in service and the first class carriage arrives at the destination at the same time as the second class!

But going back to the hotel room: as I was standing in the window, admiring the views, I remembered a few Asian movies that I have seen where the lonely businessman is looking over the city. Here, in Akita, for a moment I could feel like one of them, being one with a lonely Japanese businessman!

OK, the movie that comes to mind is not played in Japan – In the Mood for Love – but Japan is mentioned a couple of times!

It was incredible to see that even a small Japanese town like Akita ran on steroids, with cars, taxis and services operating on an almost 24/7 basis.

And this was all happening so far away from Tokyo, yet it still felt like we were connected into the deep tissue of Japanese society and psyche.

Even here we felt appreciated as tourists and we saw how everything was still as organised, if not better organised, than in other parts of the nation. Here, pretty much everyone was the same punctual as in the south or in the central parts of Japan, which made it feel a little surreal for me for the first time during our trip.

It was also here where I was watching a TV advert about a toilet cleaner and felt shocked that people need toilet cleaners when everything is so clean anyway! The advert was of a really filthy and disgusting toilet which then became sparkling clean after the application of the magic cleaner!

As I was watching it, I suddenly overcame by a feeling of disbelief, as if it was impossible to have such dirty toilets in a perfect country like Japan! “Here, in Japan everything is clean and perfect, how can you propose that anyone’s toilet gets that filthy” – I was thinking there!

But then I realised how silly I was – of course toilets get dirty in Japan too! But I was slowly being succumbed by this notion of “everything has to be perfect in Japan” and I felt upset seeing a dirty toilet on screen!

Watching Japanese TV – For Fun!

Every night as we checked in we also turned on Channel 1, which was the main Japanese channel so far as we understood – and the format of the programs was so weird.

Basically, people were sitting around in a chat show format, discussing various things and tasting stuff or just talking about nonsensical garbage. That’s at least what we thought as we did not understand a single thing from what they were talking about! In fact, in the whole two weeks we couldn’t find a single hotel with an English speaking channel!

Anyhow, the big deal on Japanese TV is that even when they switch screen, in one of the corners of the screen you can watch the TV host or one of the guests – you can see their facial expressions, how they react to what they see and sometimes they even talk over what is on screen!

It was like reality TV non-stop in the perfect Japanese world! But then one morning we saw the news that a crazy maniac went to a school bus stop and started knifing the children down with a bare hand, then killing himself by stabbing his own neck!

I don’t want to read too much into it, but I suppose the high expectations of Japanese society and culture make people do crazy things!

I think I might have fallen asleep around 10PM – I guess you might have realised we did not come to Japan to piss away time and go partying! Those days in my life have long gone!

I am pretty sure Japan has many crazy nightclubs, but I have been to any of them.

Instead, I went to sleep early after a long day of discovering place then woke up early again to do the same one more time!

So up we were around 500 the next morning to discover Akita and its famous park. The sun was already up but we couldn’t find any shops nearby so we just went for a brisk walk around the city and the park.

This park was actually owned by the feudal lord until about the 1980s when he handed it to the local government to look after! I couldn’t believe what I was reading – so basically the shogun that took this land in the 17^th century still owns the place, happily ever after!

This is even worse that Britain or most of the Western European aristocratic societies. The workers bust their ass, feel like there is something to aim for, yet the aristocrats enjoy the good life from generation to generation without having to do literally nothing for it!

I know, they say it is a huge responsibility, but when you have millions and you are not pissing it up the wall, then I am pretty sure it’s not a massive task to maintain your lifestyle. Plus, if you have at least two brain cells, it won’t be mega difficult to make a bit more money with your already large pile of dough.

Anyway, that was my takeaway from Akita: the lonely Japanese businessman busting his ass, away from the family in Daiwa Roynet style hotels, while the 14^th generation of the shogun family hands over a family heirloom to the local government because they can’t be arsed to maintain it!

And all the while the Japanese mass media is spewing out proletar-blinding non-sense 24 hours of the day! Great stuff!

Visiting Kakunodate near Akita

We caught the early morning train to Kakunodate, but not before we bought some breakfast at 7-11 which by this time became an institution for us!

I normally got a couple of rice triangles, the beef sandwich and some pastries plus the America coffee.

The 7-11 chain in Asia has an interesting story: basically, the US 7-11 business was about to go belly up when a Japanese investment arm bought it up and expanded it into Asia. Now they have more stores in Asia then in the US put together!

I am such a 7-11 aficionado now that I’ve been to several branches in the US, Japan, Thailand and even in Europe! Believe it or not they even have branches in Europe among the tens of thousands that spread across the four quarters of the globe!

We took the high speed train to Kakunodate, which lies about 40 minutes east of Akita. Kakunodate is famous for its cherry lined riverside walk and the ancient samurai district with its black fences and two-story buildings.

As we got off the train we locked our bags away in the lockers then walked into town to check out the samurai places. We arrived a little too early but it was OK as we got a sneak preview into how they are cleaning these big old houses.

The most interesting was to see that some of the samurai houses are still lived-in and people were about to go to work as we arrived! Basically, Kakunodate is a living and breathing space, with many preserved homes on display for the discerning visitor!

Some of the homes are as they were in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, with one of the largest functioning as a museum and visitor center. I had some basic ideas about Japanese history before I came here, but this exhibition really put things into order and helped me understand why the Meiji Restoration is so important in today’s society.

In a nutshell: the samurai were the mercenaries of the shoguns, ready to do every order for honour and glory! If you were a samurai and lived in the land of the shogun, you were his property, but if you were good he gave you a stipend to build a nice home. These homes are that: the bigger the house, the higher that status of the owner and the braver the samurai was.

The Meiji Restoration did away with all that brought in reforms to speed up economic development and a more just and equal society. I would say they succeeded as people seemed happy during my journey.

On display in the museum were letters, swords, uniforms and everything you can imagine – in the end we probably spent a good couple of hours here!

I think I am not going to tell a lie if I say we were both exhausted by this point so we were taking it slow. The weather up here was a little cooler and everything seemed slower, so we took up the rhythm of the local vibe!

Around lunchtime we took a train to Akita where we changed onto a scenic train to Niigata. Niigata is about four hours south of Akita and the scenic train chugs along the coast in a little longer than that. The scenic train had large windows again and it wasn’t that busy so we could stretch out on both sides of the train.

As we were rolling down south, the coast was on our right side above which towered the huge mountains on the left with snow at their peak even early in June!

It was fascinating to see the mountains and the coast side by side, with the snow-capped mountains on a hot summer’s day. It was slightly incredible, like being in a movie where we did not understand the language at all!

We were hoping to take the scenic train across the mountains to the east coast of Japan from Niigata, but by the time we got there we were so tired that we decided against it. We wanted to head back to Tokyo to look around Shinjuku and the other parts that we left out – Niigata wasn’t that exciting so it made our decision much easier!

Since there is a high speed train from Niigata direct to Tokyo Omiya, we hopped on the next fast train and arrived in Shinjuku around 9PM. We booked a room in the APA Hotel & Resort Nishishinjuku Gochome-Eki Tower, which is another chain hotel favoured by lonely businessmen.

We picked this hotel because the price was right and it seemed close to Shinjuku on the map but in the end we had to walk just over half an hour to get there from Shinjuku station!

On the plus side, there was a bus stop just outside so the next time we simply hopped on the bus to Shinjuku or took the metro from outside the entrance.

Also, there was a spa on sight and a swimming pool, although the pool wasn’t going to open until 1 July! I thought that was really stupid as I booked the place for the swimming pool, but I couldn’t do anything about it!

Back in Shinjuku, Tokyo

Once we checked in and had a shower we went down to Shinjuku to get some food. Shinjuku looked amazing at night again, but some African migrants were harassing us to buy drugs or to have sex with the prostitutes they were pimping out.

Anyhow, we ended up eating in an udon noodle shop across the railway station which wasn’t as good as the night before but it was OK. I ended up going back there the following day as well for dinner as it was very conveniently located. We got back to the hotel room totally exhausted at the end of the day, so we both passed out sleeping pretty much straight away!

The Tokyo Metropolitan Gov. Bld.

The following day we got up early again to walk to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building that functions as a 360 degree viewpoint over the city. The best is that it is completely free!

What you need to remember is that you won’t be the only one wanting to see it and there are only two lifts going up so the queues will be humongous if you leave it too late! We were there from 9AM and even then we had to queue for nearly quarter of an hour!

Upstairs on the 45^th floor it was amazing to see the city in front of us, like a sea of concrete and skyscrapers!

I found it incredible to see all that construction, hustle and bustle and people going on about their business as if that was the most important thing in their lives!

People were running around down in the streets like ants in a massive colony, all knowing what they wanted and where they were heading!

Calum wanted to see the famous Shinjuku Gyoen National Park but I wasn’t too keen on spending another 500 yen on a park, so we decided against it. I told him to go inside but clearly he didn’t really want to spend the money either.

Instead, we got some lunch at a corner udon soup noodle shop which looked like an individual store. Later it turned out that it was also a chain – like so many other of our favourites which we thought were independent places!

The soup was tasty either way except for the raw egg they put on top of the beef noodle soup! I don’t know why Japanese people love raw eggs so much but it was easy to remove it and place it on the tray instead of eating it.

Visiting Tokyo’s Nature Study Park

After lunch we headed over to the Nature Study Park in the south of Tokyo which today functions as a garden for the education of the masses.

The entrance fee was 500 yen as usual – you can’t get anything cheaper unfortunately – we spent about an hour and a half walking around the ground which was quite nice. There were lots of trees, birds and flowers in bloom so I would say it was worth it.

From here we began walking back towards the same station we came from but on the way there we spotted a restaurant that smelled extremely good with curry sauce. To cut it short, we ordered the curry with chicken and rice but it was so spicy it actually hurt my mouth! After about five or six spoonfuls my lips and tongue started going numb so sadly I wasn’t able to finish the mid-afternoon pre-dinner!

I should mention that we bought a day ticket on the Tokyo Metro and Train lines but as it turned out they were not valid on all the lines! As crazy as it may sound, Tokyo has several privately run railway lines and they don’t accept the combined tickets! So even though we spent like a 1000 yen on a ticket already, we also had to top up our Suica card with cash so we could get from B to C!

So from Meguro Station we had to take a train on a private line to Odaiba, which is the port of Tokyo. There is so much to do here it is impossible to list everything – we wanted to check out an exhibition at the large museum here but it was so expensive we decided against it.

It was the second light exhibition in Japan that we had to refuse for it was too expensive! I don’t know why they are so high-priced but there was no shortage of visitors so I am pretty sure they did not give a monkey’s ass when we did not buy our tickets.

The Toyota Interactive Showroom

As the Toyota interactive showroom was just across the street we went in there to test some of the 3D items as well as the 4D theatre where they played a few minutes of the Dakar Rally. It was quite fascinating to see all this new technology, just a shame I am not able to drive any more due to this stupid brain tumour!

The beach was not far from here so we walked down there to watch the sun set above Tokyo then caught a train to the other side of the bay. Our plan was to catch a ferry up-river to Asakusa to the Asahi Tower from Hinode. We had to cross the Rainbow Bridge to get to Hinode, which we did on another private railway line that cost us a couple of hundred yen from Odaiba Kaihinkoen station.

The ride across Rainbow Bridge was absolutely fascinating seeing the city on both sides of the bridge then descending to nearly street level using a serpentine. It is incredible how efficient everything is in Japan – even this bridge was economical with space by winding under itself instead of going down to street level in a straight line.

We were very fortunate as we caught the last ferry with minutes to spare – there were a bunch of students, some commuters and us! Clearly, not many tourists know about this service but it was amazing all the same!

Taking a Ferry to Asakusa Station

The ferry had two floors and a glass ceiling and large windows, plus at the front I could stick the camera out to record many of the buildings and take pictures of Tokyo life along the river.

The lights were slowly turning on as it was already after sunset, our penultimate night in Japan! If you do one thing while in Tokyo, it should be this ferry! It’s a lot like taking the ferry along the Thames from the City to the Parliament – you will see lots of skyscrapers, the stars and many busy streets and dozens of bridges.

The ride took about forty minutes up river and we arrived in Asakusa a little after half past 8. We both were desperate for the toilet but fortunately there is always a toilet at every station in Tokyo! This was also pretty clean, although smelled of cigarettes but this did not bother us that much!

What we wanted to do was go up to the top of Asahi Tower, the building with a giant golden shit-shaped something on top of it! It turned out this building doesn’t have a viewpoint and there is only a Bavarian restaurant on its ground floor! Clearly, Japanese people really need their Bavarian sausages, otherwise they just wouldn’t survive!

But what we found out here was that there was a cafe at the top floor of the nearby Asahi Office Tower, the HQ of the Asahi beer company! The cafe is little known and wasn’t overpriced, so we took the lift up to the 20^th floor to have a slice of cake and a bottle of water.

The views from the cafe were even more breathtaking than in the Tokyo Government Building: as the sun has already set, there was a sea of lights in front of us and we could even locate our hotel tower in the distance!

Visiting Senso Ji near Asakusa

We must have spent almost an hour here admiring the views, then descended to the ground floor to visit Senso Ji – an ancient Buddhist Temple.

The story behind Senso Ji is a bit of a twisted one because it involves some fishermen worshipping a stone statue that they’ve found in the river! Basically, Wikipedia says that according to legend, a statue of the Kannon was found in the Sumida River in 628 by two fishermen, the brothers Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takenari.

The chief of their village, Hajino Nakamoto, recognized the sanctity of the statue and enshrined it by remodeling his own house into a small temple in Asakusa so that the villagers could worship Kannon.

The rest is history and every since then millions of people have been flocking here to admire the temples and street markets and walk down the river to carry on with their journeys or to check out where the statue was found.

We ended up walking around here for a while after which we began looking for a place to eat. Our choice fell on the Yamano Ya restaurant not far from Umayabashi underground station. I decided to get the Udon Beef Noodle Soup again as it looked nice on the menu plus a fish which was also very tasty.

The Toei Line from Umayabashi to Shinjuku took about half an hour which was very handy as we were both exhausted by then and just wanted to get back to the soothing onsen!

It was great to have the onsen in the hotel because it was clean and large enough to enjoy without having to elbow others out of the way. The room upstairs, overlooking the city from the 25^th floor was breathtaking too, which will stay with me for the rest of my life as I will probably never get to stay in such a high room again.

During our 14^th day in Japan, which was our penultimate as well, we booked a ticket to the World Famous Robot Restaurant! I am not going to say it was more hype than it deserved, but in retrospect they could have probably squeezed the two hour show into a little less than an hour! But more about that later!

Visiting Kawagoe North of Tokyo

First we took a train out to Kawagoe because the night before at Asakusa station we saw an advertisement about an ancient village only half an hour from Tokyo! We were super interested to see more as the video about the village was very interesting and it all seemed like a worthwhile trip.

Well, we couldn’t have been further from the truth! True, if you take the fast line to Kawagoe you can get there in half an hour, but the Japan Rail pass is not valid on it as it is operated by a private firm. So we ended up taking the slow train that took an hour there and back from Shinjuku Station with no change.

Kawagoe itself was also very disappointing as the old bits were very far from the station and cut in half by a major road with busy traffic! So we both felt cheated a bit, not to mention the time we wasted getting there. In the end we walked around the old town after spending more than half an hour looking for it, then got us some breakfast and caught the first train back to Tokyo where we arrived around lunchtime!

If you are short on time, you are better off looking for something else in Tokyo rather than wasting your time coming all the way out to Kawagoe to be honest!

The Robot Restaurant show was at 2PM so we looked for some lunch when we arrived in Shinjuku. To make life easy we went back to the same udon restaurant where we had dinner two nights before – it was clean, fast and cheap so there was no point looking for anything else.

Unfortunately the rain was pouring down by the time so there wasn’t really much to do in terms of walking or looking at shops, so we ended up getting stuck in a clothes store to wait out the rain.

The Robot Restaurant Show

Finally we managed to get our hands on the tickets and enter the Robot Restaurant for our 2PM show! One word of advice: there are huge queues every time of the day and it is almost always pretty much sold out even at this high price! The original price was going to be around $80, but we found a discount code website that gave us a third off. I was happy with paying $51 but the $80 would have been too much.

You can watch many videos about the Robot Restaurant on Youtube, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but it was pretty amazing overall! The colours, lights and music was breathtaking and I will always remember this for the rest of my life!

Fortunately the rain stopped by the end of the show so we could go for a walk around the area again. As we were walking around I spotted a Virtual Reality Porn Shop which I found very intriguing so I went in to enquire about how it worked.

Visiting a VR Porn Shop

Turns out they provide a VR set through which you can watch porn or anything else you might wish – it’s all connected up to the cloud so you can play computer games or watch any other movie, doesn’t need to be porn.

I paid the 1,050 yen for the hour including the equipment and spent a good time in the cubicle – if you are in Japan you should definitely try this experience out as you will be hard pressed to find it anywhere else in the world!

We finished at the VR store around 6PM but we still hadn’t packed yet so after another walk around the area and dinner we headed back to the hotel for one more onsen.

I was very sad we had to leave so soon as the two weeks flew by so quick, but if you are planning to go to Japan too, you should definitely stray off the beaten track as the tradition Tokyo Nagasaki trail is pretty boring!

While we researched for our two week holiday in Japan we came across many blogs suggesting the boring old deer, the monkeys, Nagasaki and Hiroshima plus the obligatory Kyoto stop.

Well, our holiday was so much more exciting than that! We saw tonnes of samurai homes, ancients towns and villages, the many Shinto shrines and we also criss-crossed the country using the high speed trains!

Flying Back to London

Unfortunately our flights were mega early in the morning on Saturday, so we put ourselves away for the night then headed to separate airports in the morning as I was flying through Helsinki from Narita while my friend from Haneda to London direct.

I wish I had booked a direct return flight, but mine was about £85 cheaper so that persuaded me! Next time I will definitely not get a connecting flight as it was a massive pain in the backside changing over in Helsinki! Helsinki is a small, boring airport with nothing to do plus a handful of super mega overpriced restaurants, so I ended up twiddling my thumbs for nearly four hours whilst there.

As a side note – if you are heading to Narita Airport from Tokyo City Center, then you can use your Japan Rail pass. I caught the train to Narita from Shinjuku and the journey took a little under an hour and a half. Normally the ticket would cost you $40 one way, but with the JR Pass it came in at nothing! I loved it because the JR Pass is pretty expensive but this did knock quite a large chunk off the price for me!

In contrast, if you fly from Haneda, you need to pay for the underground and the train to the airport from Hamamatsucho Railway station that will cost you nearly 500 yen.

So, in final words, if you are flying to Japan, try and get a direct flight to Narita Airport and make sure your JR Pass is still valid on your last day going back to Narita Airport to take advantage of the price saving!

Anyhow, I hope you will enjoy your trip to Japan and even if you are not going, I hope you’ve taken some inspiration from here to imagine what a trip to Japan might be like!

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