Japan 2013: The whys and wherefores

Thursday, 5 December 2013

If I hadn't been to that Elvis Costello in Sydney at the end of January, I wouldn't be writing this in early December.

Costello, many years ago, came up with the concept of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook, toured briefly with it in the late eighties and then revised the methodology, which almost guarantees the audience a substantially different show each night, in the Noughties.

I'd enjoyed Sydney so much that I announced, on my return, that next time he brought The Wheel back to Australia I was going to all the shows.

Fast forward six months or so and I was sitting in an apartment at Aquarius in Cairns checking my email when a posting announced Costello would be playing four Songbook shows in Japan in December.

Significantly, it was right at the time when we were in overseas traveller mode, and the presence of Madam's sister and niece had brought us to Cairns.

So I'd blame them if blame wasn't too strong a word. It was more a case of the penny dropping, and having allies on hand to push the idea forward.

I told The Sister about the four shows, three of them on successive nights in Tokyo, and suggested they might be doable, flying from Cairns. She agreed, Madam was persuaded, and here I am tapping this out in a hotel room in Cairns at five-thirty in the morning.

It's actually Day Two of the trip, having driven up from Bowen on Wednesday, and the plane leaves in just under seven hours. I could well have started this a couple of days ago, but I was in the throes of finishing the Travelogue for our second Tasmanian odyssey, and, anyway, I knew that early risers need something to do when further sleep is ruled out of the question.

So, having explained the basic why, we turn our attention to the where, which breeds an interesting set of destinations under the particular circumstances, which in turn requires further explanation.

So we start with the four concerts, three on successive nights in the Roppongi district of Tokyo (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday) followed by a fourth in Osaka on the Sunday.

That brings the rail pass issue to the fore, with the key question being whether to buy the seven day or fourteen day version. The flight from Cairns deposits us at Kansai International, and the rail journey has to start in Kobe or Osaka.

Given the seasonal factors, with the last show being on December 15, we need to make the Tokyo > Osaka leg on the 14th the final leg of the rail trip. We've only been back from Tasmania for a month, so a fortnight on the road, or rather the rail, in Japan is too long, so the rail pass goes for seven days.

And if we'd opted for the fortnight on the railways we'd have to leave a week earlier, which would have ruled out the Leonard Cohen concert in Townsville last Thursday.

That seven day spell runs from Sunday to Saturday, with the flight in arriving on Thursday evening, and Thursday night spent in Kobe. Booking the train tickets for the week takes a chunk out of a morning or afternoon, so that takes care of Friday, with certain other logistical factors needing to be attended to, and on Saturday we move to wherever the train leg of the journey kicks off.

So where do we go?

To look at that side of things you focus your attention on the other end of the rail leg and work backwards.

We want to be in Tokyo early on Wednesday afternoon so we can book in and scope out the route between the hotel and the theatre, so whatever we do on Wednesday morning needs to be done somewhere around the capital.

Kamakura isn't that far south of Yokohama, which in turn abuts the south of the Tokyo conurbation, and our friend The Interpreter lives in Yokohama. That means dinner with The Interpreter on Tuesday night, which in turn translates to an overnight stay in Yokohama.

So we've got Sunday and Monday nights to look at, and a rail route that ends in Yokohama to nut out.
The concert side of things is Hughesy's part of the trip, so those days and nights leading up to Yokohama are Madam's reward for doing the organising. She loves the onsen experience, it's coming into winter, and there are any number of options, but the best seem to involve hot springs, mountains and snow, so that's where we're headed.

One night in Matsumoto, the other up in Niigata, both in onsen resorts, which in turn means Japanese banquets, probably served in the privacy of the room.

If that looks reasonably straightforward, it is still the result of extensive research, with most possibilities investigated and worked over with a fine tooth comb.

So it's Thursday as fly over day, Friday for sorting out tickets and such. Saturday should be an easy day, with a transfer to the northern side of Osaka in the afternoon.

Sunday morning has the transfer to ShinOsaka, and a transfer from there to Nagoya along familiar territory. We've been up and down that section of track every other time we've been in the country, and there isn't much choice about it. You're talking the main Tokaido line that links Osaka and Tokyo.

From Nagoya,  we're also on a track we've covered before, but this time we're travelling in the opposite direction. Last time around we did Nagano > Nagoya, a spectacular run through the autumn mountains. This time, with winter on the way in, we won't get the coloured leaves, but the scenery should still be spectacular.

And Hughesy can keep track of things through the new, camera equipped iPad, which has taken over the Travelogue role. I'm anticipating a much richer visual record this time around.

But we're not actually going all the way to Nagano. Matsumoto is half an hour or so down the line from the city that hosted the Winter Olympics, and when we alight we'll be heading to Matsumoto Castle, one of Japan's Top Three Castles.

Japan's big on Top Threes and such, and this visit will mean we've been to all the castles.

After the castle,  it's off to the onsen, and the Japanese banquet.

Monday's much the same, though the rail leg involves a couple of changes that might seem to require split second timing, but given the punctuality of the rail services we should be right.

Monday ends in Niigata, another go at the hot springs and the banquet, and Tuesday brings us down through Tokyo to Yokohama.

Wednesday morning has been set aside for temple and shrine viewing at Kamakura before we head back to Tokyo for the first of the Costello triple-header.

Thursday has visits to art galleries and viewing platforms in Roppongi pencilled in before Hughesy takes himself to the Costello show, and on Friday we'll take a look at the Imperial Palace before I toddle off for a third go.

Given the nature of the concerts there's a slight possibility that Hughesy might be grabbed and hauled on stage to spin the wheel, but I'm not holding my breath. Night One and Osaka are probably the most likely ones since we'll be there as a couple, but I guess hairy foreigners might attract attention on the other two.

I suspect, however, that I'm in the wrong demographic and probably the wrong gender, but you never know. Maybe I'll get to request Beyond Belief, what with living next door to the Great Barrier Reef and all.

Saturday will be the zoom down the Tokaido line on the Shinkansen day, followed by the final concert on Sunday. In between we're having lunch with The Sister and The Rowdy Niece, before transferring to Kyoto for more temple and shrine viewing on Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday afternoon will see us back in Kobe, ready to prepare for the return flight, which arrives in Cairns around sparrow fart on Friday morning.

The experience last time around suggests driving back to Bowen that day is not a good idea, so we'll overnight in Mission Beach and take our time getting there, stopping off for a pie at the Mourilyan Bakery along the way.

On Saturday, it’s either breakfast at the accommodation or brunch at the Vivia cafe in Cardwell, followed by the run through Townsville back to the Little House of Concrete in time to prepare for the silly end of the silly season.

That, in a nutshell, is the plan. How it pans out forms the content of the next eighteen entries.

Japan 2010: Kobe > Kansai International

Thursday, 15 November 2012

And so we come to the end of the overseas leg this particular time around.

With the sightseeing over, and the shopping exclusively in Madam's court, there wasn't great deal for Hughesy to do apart from transform himself into a beast of burden once the morning's Viking breakfast had been devoured.

There wasn't a great deal of hurry in that department since the smorgasbord stays open until, eleven, so it was after a quarter to nine when we made our way downstairs.

We'd stayed at the Oriental on the first night of the first trip, and I remember the Viking that time around with considerable affection. This time around the spread seemed smaller, though still quite adequate and I am, after all, trying to cut down on the dietary intake. The verdict of the bathroom scales once we get home isn't something I'm looking forward to.

The Viking, however, offers traps for young, and even not so young, players.

I started lining up for a freshly made omelette and found that what I had supposed to be fairly finely chopped mushrooms was, in fact, finely chopped octopus. Not bad, but not quite the taste I had in mind.

From there it was back upstairs to pack, and the only remaining items on the agenda came in the form of a spell in the shops at Sannomiya, a train transfer to the dormitory suburb where The Mother lives, another run through the shops after arriving there and the ritual restoring of the various goods and chattels after we'd been reunited with the Black Monster and Madam's Blue Portmanteau.

The only excitement along the way, at least from where I was sitting, came when I was redirected from my position inside the shopping centre, poised and waiting for one of the people occupying the public seating to move and create space for a large hairy foreigner minding two backpacks, the Little Red Travelling Bag and Madam's camera bag.

There was, I was informed, much more seating available outside.

And there was, though there was also the threat of drizzle, a rather nippy wind. Still, I managed to get a bit more travelogue tapping out of the way, a process that continued once the luggage had been sorted.

The result, at 3:29, with nothing to do but lock the Black Monster while we wait for the Socialist Taxi to whiz us over to Kansai International, is that the Japanese territorial trip is almost, as I tap this out, to all intents and purposes, over.

Unsurprisingly, apart from a rather spectacular sunset, the trip to the airport proved unexciting, apart from the interest provoked when a driver attempts to direct a minibus into back streets where it's obviously going to be a tight squeeze. The check in process ran as smoothly as you'd want it to, passing through Immigration on the way out was a no paperwork breeze and half an hour before boarding the head count in the relevant Departure Lounge ran to less than two dozen.

Or more if you count the cabin crew.

Predictably, the place filled up substantially in the final bit, but still, once we were aboard there was an abundance of vacant space.

After the excitement associated with Business Class on the way over, the return leg was, to put it bluntly, a bit of a disappointment, not that there was ever any likelihood of substantial wow factors on an overnight leg.

Before we were seated and fastening the seat belts there was a little change of routine that would have implications about eight hours later when it came time to disembark.

I’m the first to admit I’m a creature of habit, and I like to get myself organized so I know where everything is. I was planning to do a bit of reading and tapping on the iPad while we waited for dinner, and once the seat-belts sign was off I’d be looking to enjoy a soundtrack on the iPad until it was night night time.

With that in mind I was going to stow the backpack under the seat in front, but someone made the helpful suggestion that I stow the thing in the overhead locker after removing the things I wanted. She’d stow anything that needed to be stowed in her bag, which was going under the seat.

The result of the suggestion was that I removed Pad, Pod and earbuds from the backpack and assumed they’d all gone into the Little Red Travelling Bag. As it turned out I didn’t get around to needing the iPod or the ear buds, and that was the cause of a little confusion after we landed.

In the meantime, having seated ourselves, I took a squiz at the menu and accompanying wine list, not planning on a hefty session, but interested to see what was on offer this time around.

The wine options on the way over had me slavering in the manner of Pavlov’s dogs, but the return leg was, to put it bluntly, disappointing. There was a Tempus Two Chardonnay, which looked like a reasonable match for the sweet and sour on the menu, but that, as far as Hughesy was concerned, was it.

Actually, what with the relative lateness and all, a single glass of wine was quite enough, thank you, but it would have been nice to be left on the horns of a vinous dilemma once I’d checked the Halliday Companion app on the iPad. The Chardonnay was the only item out of four that rated a 90 or better, so the Chardonnay would have to d, wouldn’t it?

And the sweet and sour, thanks to the presence of pineapple was much more familiar than the previous night’s version, which was, by the way, a far better option...

In any case it wasn’t that long after dinner that I found myself in a darkened cabin pondering how much sleep would be possible under the prevailing circumstances.

Japan 2012: Cairns > Kansai International > Kobe

Thursday, 25 October 2012

Getting a good night's sleep before a major excursion isn't as easy as you might think, and I was awake, if the old memory serves me well at one-thirty and three before I emerged from a dream involving High School acquaintances, degenerate cricketers and an Elvis Costello concert around five-thirty.

At least I slept better than Madam, who ascribed an inability to get a good night's sleep to a combination of factors you can probably figure out without actually being told. Given the number of things that could go wrong over the next three weeks you'll be running over the possibilities, and that sort of thing isn't exactly conducive to deep and undisturbed slumber.

In any case, once I was awake I was back on the Travelogue and had the prelude largely knocked over before the pre-breakfast shower. There had been some consideration of a walk to find a breakfast option away from the hotel but intermittent drizzle put paid to that theory and we headed downstairs for a Spanish omelette (Hughesy) and a bowl of fruit (Madam) before we completed the packing and the regulation reshuffle of bits and pieces.

The Ukulele Lady had kindly offered to drop us at the Airport (she was working somewhere over in that direction so it was more or less on her way) and we were downstairs around half an hour before the time she'd indicated on the off chance she might be running early. We didn't want to be keeping anyone waiting, did we?

The check in and departing the country procedures ran smoothly, producing a state of illusory well-being that was severely disrupted by an announcement around half an hour before we were scheduled to begin boarding.

Technical issues, they said, were going to delay boarding (and, subsequently, departure) by an hour and while I wasn't happy about the delay I'd rather they found things that were likely to go wrong before takeoff. In any case, with things up to date almost right on the originally scheduled boarding time it was a case of a bit of thumb-twiddling with the iPad battery around 83% and the iPod taking over the workload.

There was, however, one major departure from revealed form this time around.

Faced with the prospect of an early morning arrival back in Cairns Madam thought it might be worth investigating the cost involved and the extra benefits obtained in Business Class. The original motivation was more legroom and the chance of a better night's sleep, but an extra ten kilogram luggage allowance is a significant factor for someone who'll be looking to bring a quantity of delicacies and other odds and ends she can't buy in Australia back with her.

We were, by the way, entitled to sixty kilograms of luggage on the way over, so the fact that the scales registered thirty-five in Cairns probably means someone's credit card will be reeling by the time we make our way back.

I'd heard rumors of better quality food and drink in Business Class as well. Not that I was expecting anything spectacular in the Jetstar version thereof, but you never know, do you?

As it turned out, when the boarding call came around an hour late we were the first through the Business queue and had plenty of time to acquaint ourselves with the extras, which started with the zipper bag of goodies and the blanket to keep you warm en route. The offer of a glass of bubbles to start off before we started moving was a nice start, particularly when the glass of bubbles I started lunch with seemed awfully familiar.

Fine, but there was better to come when the menu arrived, along with the accompanying wine list.

The bean curd appetizer, with marinated Japanese leek and dressing didn't quite sound like my scene, but the chance of a glass of Jansz Premium Non-Vintage Rose bubbles with it sounded like a good way to take the edge off the tofu as far as Hughesy was concerned.

Given the rest of the lineup the Tinpot Hut 2011 Sauvignon Blanc is probably a classy drop, but take a look at what followed it on the list. Stella Bella 2009 Chardonnay, Innocent Bystander 2010 Syrah and Cape Mentelle Cabernet Merlot? Count me in.

So the entree, a choice of Chicken rikyu-yaki or Beef ginger teriyaki for the main and a chance of a bit of cheese for afters, along with very decent wine? No problems.

As it turned out, of course, airline catering is airline catering, and the food was about what you'd expect under the circumstances, but the glass of Jansz Sparkling Rose seemed suspiciously similar to something I'd tried not that long before.

Madam had gone for the Stella Bella Chardonnay, and ended up with a glass of seriously good new style Oz chardy, which was impressive, and when the flight attendant delivered a glass of Innocent Bystander Syrah I wasn't quite in seventh heaven, but I was a very happy camper.

If we'd been sitting further back we'd have been looking at a choice of an SSB or a Shiraz from some offshoot of the McGuigan dynasty, but here we were with a choice of wines you'd expect to be looking to pay around the $10/glass in a restaurant. On that basis, Business Class has got me.

The point behind all this is that on your average budget airline Economy starts with a price and you start adding on the extras, starting with minor details like luggage, meals, drinks and blankets. I'd noted the Economy wine options had kicked in at $7/airline serve bottle. The Business glasses were slightly smaller than that, but you'd have been looking at $14 for the alcoholic equivalent of what arrived gratis on Business.

On the other hand you can start by looking at the business price and start counting back the things that'd cost you. Somewhere around $20 worth of wine by the glass is a bonus on top of the extra leg room, the increased baggage allowance and the fact that down the back you're paying for the meal.

There's still a differential, but if you look at it that way it diminishes rather substantially. Of course, it helps to have picked up the seats on sale, but every little bit helps...

With lunch out of the way a predictable torpor descended over the area as we settled in for the long haul without much to look forward to in the way on scenery et cetera. I'd noted green jungle below us during lunch, and guessed we were over the Owen Stanley Range. There was a highly distinctive river system that brought the name Markham to mind, something that needed to be confirmed, and a recent check on Google Earth and the National Geographic Atlas app failed to deliver a definitive answer, but for the next couple of hours it was a case of a semi-dose with something quietish on the iPod.

Madam took advantage of the proffered iPad to watch Madagascar 3, which filled in the time rather nicely, and in terms of battery usage I'd have been better off doing something similar. As the snob in me sniffly dismissed the audio, visual and reading options available on their iPad I tapped away on mine, running down a battery that was seriously depleted by continuing to read the Neil Young autobiography.

They roused us with just under two hours to go, and I used the opportunity to sample a bit of the Cape Mentelle Cabernet Merlot, declining suggestions of more solid sustenance, which were of the noodle in a cup or standard packaged snack persuasion, looking forward to the chance to watch the passing light show once we made landfall.

Last time that had been somewhere around Kyushu or the southern end of Shikoku and there had been a run along the coast with  the Seto Inland Sea visible, but we were following a different flight path this time around, and the lack of precise geographic awareness in the darkness threw me big time.

Looking at it now in the cool clear light of morning reality I can see (with the admitted aid of the National Geographic Atlas app) that we must have made landfall around the eastern end of Shikoku, probably around Tokushima, which I managed to confuse with the Kobe-Osaka conurbation around the time the final landing instructions came over the P.A. System.

They're leaving that remarkably late, I thought, under the mistaken impression we were on our final approach. In reality we were still somewhere around two to three thousand metres up and the lights on my left that would have represented a fairly large urban and industrial centre that looked reasonably close must have been an extensive conurbation that was probably twenty kilometres away.

Still, even if I didn't know where we were the lights gave something to occupy the attention once we'd been told to turn off all electronic devices.

Once we'd landed there was a lengthy around the terminal building before we reached the designated air bridge, where another of the benefits of business came into play.

I'd carefully stashed everything I didn't need except for the iPad and whatever I could fit in my pockets in the back pack, which had been stowed in the overhead locker, so once the seat belt sign went off and Madam moved into the aisle retrieving it was easy, and when the doors opened we were in among the first to disembark, which brought us to the first door on the shuttle that carries you towards the Arrivals processing area.

Moving swiftly, Madam and I had hit the lead of the pack through the temperature check and I arrived at the Foreigners section of Immigration (there was a bevy of her compatriots following Madam to the Japanese passport section) to find there wasn't a queue at all.

Straight in, hand over passport and immigration form, place the index fingers on the fingerprint machine, get the facial recognition bit done and I was through something that mightn't have actually taken an hour last time around but certainly felt like it.

In fact, that process needed less time than I took to type that last paragraph.

Things didn't go quite so smoothly in the Baggage Claim area, since the baggage handling process doesn't seem to be class conscious, but once we'd done the retrieval and whisked our way through Customs we were on the lookout for the shuttle bus and looking pretty good.

I'm not sure exactly what happened next, but having been directed to the relevant stop (#6 if I recall correctly) I joined the queue with the bags and Madam headed off to get the tickets from the relevant machine. We'd checked our bags, the bus had arrived, and the driver had refused to accept what we wanted to hand over. Instead of two tickets and two receipts from the machine we had one ticket, the requisite number of receipts, and a driver who wanted actuals rather than apparent evidence.

There was some flustered to-ing and fro-ing that ended up costing an extra ¥2000, but we ended up on the bus at 8:35, a far better result than we'd expected when we heard about flight delays back in Cairns.

Last time around I'd made a mental note to sit on the right hand side of the bus because it seemed the view of the city lights was better on that side, but this time, Madam's attempts to figure out what had gone wrong proved a significant distraction and I didn't see a lit-up Osaka Castle this time either.

The run along the freeway from the airport to downtown Kobe takes about an hour, and we were in plenty of time to catch the 9:50 shuttle to the Okura and Meriken Park Oriental Hotels. last time around we'd started at the Oriental, but this time it was the Okura for the first two nights.

Negotiations at reception proceeded with the regulation courtesies and rituals, and we were conducted to our room on the twenty-fifth floor by a bellhop who wasn't anywhere near as over the top as the Harry Houdini clone we'd encountered at the Oriental last time around.