Japan 2012: Kobe

Friday, 26 October 2012

Late nights often result in late mornings, but there was plenty on the agenda on what was, effectively, Admin and Organizing Day, so despite the presence of rather effective blackout curtains we were up reasonably early after what had been an uncharacteristic late night at the end of a longish and eventful day.

Still, we didn't get off to a rapid fire start, and it was after eight when we stepped into the elevator to head off to reacquaint Hughesy with the strange but very civilized custom of the breakfast Viking.

We were off, in other words, for a fairly substantial smorgasbord breakfast.

The day's agenda included converting the Rail Pass voucher purchased in Australia into an actual usable document, buying the tickets for the first couple of days' rail travel and anything else Madam thought might be booked out, chasing up some computer specific reading glasses with a focal length of 85 centimetres for Hughesy, transferring the clothing and other items Madam was going to need for the rail pass leg from her (blue) suitcase to mine (The Black Monster), and stashing everything else into the other one, which was going to be spending the next couple of weeks with The Mother.

That took things like neck cushions, airline blankets, changes of clothes for the return leg from Cairns to Bowen and other odds and ends out of the we're going to have to lug all this around the countryside for about three weeks equation.

Downstairs at the Viking I was tucking into a freshly made (as opposed to here's one we made a little earlier) omelette when I had a momentary vision of the inimitable Frockster and his likely reaction to the scene before me. There were, for a start, the regulation number of efficient and courteous hospitality workers, showing guests to seats, clearing tables, delivering tea and coffee and a couple of people who were obviously there to supervise, ensuring that everything was being done just right.

The guests were quietly going about their breakfasts, and the whole scene had a barely audible hum of activity. I figured you'd be able to hear The Frockster before he'd actually come through the door. He'd probably be demanding a table next to Hughesy and the Kobe Carnation and riffing off a variation of the theme that prevented us seeing Mount Fuji last time around.

Then, I figured, he'd sight the breakfast options on offer. Now, I'm not suggesting the man has steak and eggs for breakfast, or beef sausages, or some specific form of cereal, but the first thing he'd have noticed was an absolute lack of anything resembling Corn Flakes or Coco Pops.

The eye would have run along what would serve as a perfectly adequate continental breakfast buffet and noted the presence of the standard varieties of fruit juice and the varied selection of pastries, but would have pulled up short where you might expect to find the cereal. Instead he'd have sighted a variety of very Japanese breakfast options, none of which Hughesy is familiar with because of what lies on the other side of the open space.

There are two alcoves over that way, the first containing a variation on the old salad bar, with a nice array of mesclun leaves, a tray of cherry tomatoes, the assorted fruits and melons you'd expect to find at the breakfast table, a rather tasty variation on a peperonata (which probably explains the grated Parmesan cheese)  and a couple of salad dressings (which would tend to explain the croutons).

I mean, if you're going to have something approximating a Caesar salad for breakfast you're going to need croutons, n'est ce pas?

The other alcove delivered the variations on bacon and eggs, with a chef on hand to do you an omelette on the spot in a non-stick pan and another doing what looked like perfectly done fried eggs without any hint of frizzle around the edges.

I wasn't 100% sold on the look of the sausages but a fresh omelette, some bacon and a few other bits and pieces from the other alcove and a croissant or two made up a pretty solid first go at breakfast, and I ventured back for seconds from the salad bar and a bit more from the pastry department.

I was expecting a fair bit of hoofing and reckoned I'd need the carbohydrates.

Back upstairs we finished sorting things out and caught the 9:55 shuttle into Sannomiya (the same free service looks after the to and from business for the Okura and the Meriken Park Oriental) and arrived at the city's transport hub around five minutes later. After a brief diversion to investigate replacement options for watch batteries we headed off to a Japan Rail booking office for what was probably the most important part of the whole trip.

I've been referring to a voucher but the JR information booklet calls it an Exchange Order, and you need to have bought the little devil before you land in the country. You lob at the JR Office with your Exchange Order and your passport, fill out the form you get at the office and after a bit of peel, paste and laminate action you end up with the document that looks after the majority of your ticket purchases.

It won't get you on to the top level Shinkansen services, and there are a couple of other exemptions, and the Pass doesn't work on railway lines that aren't part of the JR Group, but it does cover some bus and ferry services.

Once you've accomplished the exchange the fun really begins, and given the nature of the beast and the likelihood you'll be sitting in a booking office with a queue of people looking for tickets, this is something best done over a couple of sessions rather than all in one fell swoop.

So you get the tickets you absolutely must have first. If there's no one waiting you go for the next most pressing ones. If it looks like you're holding up the queue you head off to do something else, and come back for another go, or find yourself another quiet office and proceed from there.

We were looking at a leg from Kobe to Kitakami with lunch in Tokyo the next day, so we obviously needed those tickets for a start. Having got that batch we set off for the optometrist for a pair of computer-specific reading glasses and stopped in at another JR booking office when we got to the right general area and filled in the ticketing for another couple of stages. Once the glasses bit had been dealt with we noted there was no one in that JR office, so we headed back in for another go. That might seem like an excessively cautious approach until you consider the process involved.

Bear in mind that this is when you know where you want to go and when you want to do so. Lob up and say you want to go from here to there on Thursday and it's probably a more lengthy process because there'll be a number of options. Madam's pre-trip research was very detailed, and we knew when we wanted to leave most places we were going, and we had the connections along the way nutted out already.

So you start by telling the person you're dealing with what you want and when you want to go. They fill out a requisition form, and when you've finished requesting they start processing the requests, which involved some fairly solid touch screen action and the odd point of clarification.

That process eventually delivers printed tickets, which are then checked against the requisition form and then checked with the purchaser to make sure you're getting exactly what you asked for. As stated, it's a slow process, and requests for the tickets you'll need to cover a fourteen day pass could occupy one particular operative for most of a morning.

That's a significant consideration when you've already been in there for ten minutes tying up one of three operators while a queue has formed, which is why you start with the most important ones, and gradually work your way through the rest.

In any case, with the most pressing ticket issues dealt with we needed to head back to the Okura, though there was the odd minor issue to be dealt with en route, and wandered back upstairs to collect the Blue suitcase just in time for Madam to miss the 1:55 shuttle, something that was largely made possible by somebody's refusal to accept Hughesy's logic that the hotel's over there, there's a roadway that runs right in front of the hotel and this ramp looks like it'll run down to the roadway.

As it turns out I was right on all accounts, but we wandered around the environs of the Kobe Maritime Museum, completing a circuit of the building and ended up gaining access to the hotel by the route I'd suggested was there all along.

In any case there was another bus twenty minutes later. Since I'd probably get in the way en route I remained in the Okura, with the result that three days' worth of Travelogue are more or les complete, up to date and ready for publication about two hours before we head off to rendezvous with one of Madam's old school friends and dinner.

With the writing up to date I decided to follow earlier suggestions and repair to the comfortable chairs in the lobby overlooking the Japanese garden behind the building and settle back into reading Neil Young. I'd been quite happy upstairs, tapping away listening to Toumani Diabate and Bert Jansch, which wasn't an option downstairs, but I thought I'd be spotted when Madam returned, it was her suggestion and I didn't want to be a philistine, did I?

As it turned out, of course, someone sailed through the lobby while I wasn't looking, failed to notice I was there, had a minor panic attack when the realization struck and then didn't exactly rush down to ensure everything was OK and I hadn't been abducted by strange females (or something).

We were due to rendezvous at seven and since Motomachi Station is equidistant by hoof from the Okura and Sannomiya we eschewed the shuttle bus and hoofed it around the edge of the Old Foreign Settlement and the Kobe take on Chinatown (Nanking-Nachi) before making the rendezvous slightly ahead of time and heading across the road from Motomachi Station to a rather good Korean eatery located in a basement at the bottom of a rather steep set of stairs.

There was nothing I could see to advertise the place, no prominent display board with the various menu options, no one spruiking the quality of what's on offer downstairs, but when you're that small (it's not the largest eating space you've ever seen and wouldn't hold much more than thirty diners) and that good you probably don't need the shill. Mind you, there probably was some form of signage outside that I failed to notice...

Dinner came in a variety of small serves, covering a variety of styles, some steamed chicken with kimchi that I wasn't expected to like, but did, barbecued beef, a seafood omelette and there were enough of them to cover the middle of a smallish table. With help yourself bowls and such in front of each diner as the two old school friends chatted away and the dishes kept coming I did my best to clear space in the middle of the table where everyone could reach things more easily.

One of the things I wasn't particularly eager to reach was the one that arrived with an I'll tell you what it is later which is the proverbial dead set give away in the probably oh yuck department. Whatever it was turned out to be chewy, not particularly interesting, and not much to my taste. Subsequent inquiries as to the identity received a single word response.

Guts.

There was a bed of noodles as well, which was more to my liking, and I pecked at it intermittently. Interestingly, no one else seemed particularly concerned to finish it off. Any suggestion to this effect will undoubtedly be met with an immediate denial, but I suspect there's a bit of the old let's see what the foreigner reckons about this one operating here, much like the two exposures to the surprisingly crunchy jellyfish last time around...

There wasn't any hint of a wine list, but Korean goes better with beer anyway, so I managed to knock over (figuratively, of course) several pitchers while we made our way through the platters.

It wasn't all that late when we called stumps and wandered back through Motomachi, guided by the old school friend, who'd parked very close to the Okura. We'd headed in via the Cape, with Madam suggesting the deals they're offering at the Okura and the Meriken Park Oriental were related to a slightly inconvenient location compared to the competition, but if you know where you're going and you're willing to walk, Motomachi is only a hop, skip and a jump from the Okura.

Across the road at the zebra crossing, through the car park and over the pedestrian bridge and you're a bit over a stone's throw from Motomachi, and with shuttle buses to Sannomiya for most of the day and well into the evening isolation is a relative thing.

Still, if they're going to offer deals like the one we were enjoying we'd be mugs to knock them back.

We'd picked up the rather impressive deal (two nights with full Viking breakfast for the special rate of ¥23000, remarkably good value when you work on Madam's easy conversion rate of ¥100 to the Aussie Dollar, and still pretty good value when you do the sums at the actual conversion rate opting on the day concerned. By comparison, I'm looking at a base rate of $229 per night as the base rate for my preferred accommodation option when I head off to catch Elvis Costello in concert in Sydney early next year.

Back at the Okura we finished most of the preparations for Travel Day One and clambered into the cot just after eleven, looking forward to whatever the morrow might bring.