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 2012: Kyoto > Kobe

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Which is where the tying up loose ends and preparing for the return trip kicks in, folks, though there was one major long term issue that needed to be addressed before we departed from Kyoto.

It wouldn't have been an issue if we hadn't been able to access Wi Fi, but news that the pre-sale for dates on the March 2013 Neil Young with Crazy Horse tour of Australia and New Zealand started at noon local time in the various states had Hughesy doing a quick bit of calculating. Japan is an hour behind Eastern Standard Time, and two behind Sydney with Daylight Saving Time factored in, so that meant both looked doable provided nothing went wrong with the connection.

More importantly, with Sydney going on sale first the suggestion that I might see two shows on the tour wasn't immediately torpedoed. Neil tends not to vary the set-lists much once he starts a tour, so things mightn't vary much from show to show, but it is Neil, and it is the Horse, and I haven't had the benefit of seeing the man in any format before. Madam had a bit of end of trip running around to do while I chased up that show, so she headed off, leaving me in the lobby checking email and tapping out travelogue details.

Five to ten saw me logging in to the pre sale website and after a bit of toing and froing by ten past I had a seat for the Sydney show, which meant I had time, once the Supervisor returned, to head upstairs, gather up the goods and chattels while she completed the checking out procedure, after which I settled back to catch Brisbane, which was, predictably, being sold through a different agency and that was a fact that Hughesy, equally predictably failed to notice.

A bit more subsequent toing and froing once I twigged to the change produced a seat, and though it mightn't have been the best you might have hoped for I reckoned I'd done pretty well, particularly when you consider that I could well have been away from Wi Fi capabilities when the pre sale started and would probably have either missed out completely or ended up sitting way up in the nose bleeds.

Once that mission had been accomplished it was time to head off to Kobe. There had been a couple of options kicked around earlier in the morning, but the most straightforward involved waging a couple of blocks to the subway station, followed by a two-station transfer to JR Kyoto and a train that would land us at Kobe's Sannomiya without the need to transfer trains in Osaka.

We could have said Thank you to Hankyu, but that would have in involved a transfer somewhere like Umeda, and no guarantee of seats on either leg.

Once we reached the relevant platform in Kyoto, of course, there were already queues formed for the next train, which wasn't that far away, so while we both found seats Madam was over there and Hughesy was perched on half a seat beside the carriage door.

Those matters resolved themselves just outside Osaka when the other seat over there became vacant, and by the time we'd left Umeda the population had thinned considerably, which was a big help when it came to retrieving the Little Red Travelling Bag and Madam's backpack from the overhead luggage racks as the train slowed into Sannomiya.

From there it was a short stroll to the bus terminal to catch the free shuttle that delivers customers to and from the Okura and the Meriken Park Oriental, which was our destination this time around.

It was, of course, far too early to check in, but once the luggage had been consigned to the cloak room we were free to set off on the first leg of the final shopping odyssey, though the question of lunch needed to be resolved first.


On the other side of the inlet from Meriken Park there's a complex proudly labelled Mosaic, which features a number of eating options and we ended upstairs at an Italian place, deceived by the weather conditions into taking a window side position which meant that by the time the meals arrived the cloud cover had seen fit to relocate and we were sitting in fairly strong sunlight. That's a bit of an issue when you've rugged up for early winter, but there was nothing that could be done about it.

A Primitivo Novello mightn't have been the optimum match for a pasta dish with salmon and mushrooms, but each of them worked in their own way without actually managing to converge. The pasta dish had its share of interest in the shape and variety of mushrooms in the sauce, and the wine was easy to drink and flavours one in a style that was obviously meant to be food friendly though not necessarily with this particular dish.

It probably didn't work that well with Madam 's fish based pasta sauce either, but there were other issues at play in that department and a couple of things, starting with a position away from direct sunlight, would have improved matters on the other side of the table considerably.

The sauce, in terms of aroma, reminded me of my favorite anchovy, tomato and garlic sauce, though the chunks of aromatic fish were visible, rather than dissolved into the rest of the sauce.

From there the next step involved picking up Hughesy's tailor made with a focal length of 85 centimetres computer glasses, which worked quite brilliantly, and then setting out on the process of acquiring stuff Madam needs to take back with her, either as presents for friends and acquaintances or for her own consumption back at base.

Heading back to Meriken Park to check in broke up that process, and we had a couple of hours' break between installments, largely spent catching up on email and travelogue tapping once certain connectivity issues had been ironed out.

By six it was time to head out on Stage Two of the Shopping Odyssey, which took us back to Sannomiya and into the nearby shopping arcades and department stores in search of Japanese language magazines, green tea and other comestibles.

In the age of the internet English might, in effect, be the world language, but there's no sign of that phenomenon in your average Japanese book shop. Sure, there's a section of titles in English in places like Kinokuniya, but in the places we visited in search of magazines that aren't exactly easy to find there might have been the odd semi-familiar title but everything under the English masthead was solidly Japanese.

And I couldn't help thinking there wouldn't have been much correlation of content between the seemingly girl-oriented Oz magazine and the underground magazine of the same title that attracted more than its share of attention in the early seventies.

From there it was on to the very impressive food section at Daimaru, where Madam, as we entered, jokingly remarked that they'd be conducting a wine tasting downstairs.

At least I thought she was joking.

We were in the green tea section with what appeared to be the wine section barricaded off behind a temporary facade, so that, I thought, was it for the tasting department, but after a visit to the cookie counter I was steered towards another discrete wine display where, yes, there were tasting options available.


There were red and white versions of Burgundy, the red very obviously Pinot Noir and the white equally obviously Chardonnay, as well as a couple of Italian styles. Much of what had Ben available for sampling was gone since it was late on the second last day of the promotion, but the Frascati and Trebbiano I tried would both have been quite acceptable, with the Frascati being, to borrow a phrase I picked up at Rockford, the sort of wine that invites itself to lunch. I left with a bottle of the Pinot Noir as we left in search of dinner in Chinatown.

We'd walked down the particular street on the evening of our first full day of this trip without surrendering to the shills of the spruikers outside the various establishments then, largely because we were elsewhere bound as far severing meals were concerned, and we passed most of them by again this time around because, basically, neither of us was particularly hungry.

A decision, however, had to be made, and after repeated What do you eel like eatings from Madam we settled on a place where the spruiker (or, in this case, not that I want to appear sexist the spruikess) was marginally less pushy than her neighboring confreres. I settled for a sweet and sour pork and a pitcher of draught beer, which was just the right quantity and combination as far as I was concerned, while Madam opted for a small platter of dumplings that were rather tasty.

The sweet and sour, by the way, bore scant resemblance to the Australian version, largely duets a total absence of pineapple. It made for a rather welcome change.

Outside, making our way back to Sannomiya it was obvious winter had set in, with December weather coming a good three weeks early. The conditions forced us into the underground maze that sits under most Japanese transit centers, taking us through passages lined with eating options and other small businesses and delivering us to the bus station just in time to see the shuttle bus heading off.

It wasn't that much of a disaster, but the time we'd spent going up and down stairs was probably the difference between catching the bus and waiting twenty minutes for the next one.

Back at base, of course, Hughesy was ready for bed, while Madam indulged in what was more than likely the last opportunity to have a lengthy Japanese style bath this time around.

Japan 2012: Osaka > Kyoto

Monday, 12 November 2012

Tired.

That was the key word about two-thirds of the way around the day's exercise routine, and with one final day's exertion to go as I sit typing on a Tuesday morning where the forecast says cloudy in the morning, later turning to rain, that's just as well.

The day's assignment seemed straightforward enough on the surface. A late rise after a big sleep made sense, since we wanted to avoid the morning press of salarymen and other workers making their way into central Osaka. A morning transfer to Kyoto made sense, since it would leave the afternoon free for sightseeing, and an evening without appointments would probably leave us fresh to face a more adventurous schedule on Tuesday, after which it was all a downhill run, so to speak, with Wednesday taking us back to Kobe and Thursday devoted to preparations and packing prior to the return Down Under.

That's pretty much downhill all the way from here, folks.

Of course, there were complications along the way. The first came when The Mother's Phone started making buzzing noises. Given the linguistic issues involved I passed the Incoming message to Madam, who was otherwise (naturally, in an expression of Murphy's Law) engaged in the bathroom. Equally, given the fact that it was probably a text message rather than a voice call, it wasn't that urgent, so someone had time to complete the morning ablutions.

Checking, she established it was a message from a rather concerned Sponge, who we wanted to catch up with, whose communications had been overwhelmed by spam and had, in turn, been waiting to hear from us. We, of course, had been away from email access for the best part of a week, so there wasn't much we could do in terms of contacting him.

In any case, the flurry of text messages following that initial contact established that he was off to Himeji early on Tuesday morning, which effectively ruled out Monday night, and whatever happens on Tuesday is going to depend on how he feels at the end of a longish working day.


Still, that meant we 'd managed to shine a bit of light on the last remaining issue that needed to be resolved, so we duly packed up and set off for Kyoto. That wasn't such a major operation after the transition from lugging the Black Monster to carrying the Little Red Travelling Bag, but we were reminded of the way things could have been as we made our up and down staircases and in and out of subway carriages.

Around ten in the morning things weren't quite as hectic as they would have been an hour and a half earlier, but we made the subway transition to Umeda and the Hankyu connection to Kobe without too much difficulty. I hadn't quite been on the ball the night before when we were headed into the Spanish eatery and the party space across the road was operational, but we passed that particular side street on the way to the subway station so I grabbed a quick photographic record along the way….

Things got a little messy once we'd made our way out of the railway station and set off for the hotel, which turned out to be a bit further from the station than expected, and on the opposite side of the street. Still, things could have been worse.

The initial influence that brought things unstuck was lunch. That might seem like a minor matter, but for some reason The Supervisor set her mind on a particular French/Italian option that came highly rated and wasn't that far from the hotel. Actually, it was a bit further than expected (there's an emerging theme here) and was, when we eventually found it, booked out.

I'd initially suggested I wasn't particularly concerned about the nature of lunch, provided it was conveniently close, and we'd already passed a number of places I thought might have made perfectly acceptable options, but when a decision was called for I pushed us towards a curry place that wasn't that far from the booked out place, so at least we didn't have to go far.The meals, while they weren't anything to rave over, we're perfectly adequate and reasonably cheap.

With lunch out of the way, we set off for the afternoon's sightseeing, which involved a visit to Kiyomizu temple, which is, and I really should have picked up on this earlier, Kyoto's major temple attraction and is almost invariably packed. As it happens it's on the same side of the same river as the places we'd visited on the Sakura Sunday four and a half years before, and I really should have been looking at a map before I ventured an opinion on the relative wisdom of walking as opposed to catching a bus.

Given a slighter better grasp of the geography I would have undoubtedly elected to go as far as possible by bus.

Given a slightly better grasp of our current location vis a vis the river and the city's major transport axes, I would have undoubtedly elected to go as far as possible by bus.

Given an awareness of the number of steps and winding uphill paths involved, I would have undoubtedly elected to go as far as possible by bus.

From which the astute reader will no doubt have inferred, we walked.

Now, it doesn't really matter whether you catch a bus or not. The bus doesn't get you that close to the actual temple, so you're going to be doing a fair bit of walking whichever way you approach it and walking wouldn't have been a problem, except for the fact that it was a bit further than either of us expected.

Actually, we'd made our way across town to the river, crossed the appropriate bridge and started the gradual ascent towards the temple precinct when I looked ahead and realized that we were headed for them there hills and them there hills weren't as close as you'd have liked. Still, the walk wasn't too bad in the early bit. The footpath wasn't that crowded, but as we headed uphill all roads, it seemed, lead to the temple, and each road was delivering its share of pilgrims and sightseers.

Founded in 798, Kiyomizu-dera (Pure Water Temple) isn't the only temple in Japan operating under that title. There's also a Kiyomizu-dera in Yasugi, Shimane, on the 33-temple route of the Chūgoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage through western Japan, but the one under consideration here gets its name from from the Otowa waterfall within the complex, which runs off nearby hills, splitting into three separate streams whose waters are supposed to bring a long life, ensure success at school and guarantee a successful love life. Visitors use cups attached to long poles to drink the water, though drinking from all three is considered greedy. You can't have everything, but I guess if you could manage two you'd be singing along with the Meatloaf song.


Although Kiyomizu-dera dates back to the early Heian period (794 to 1185) when the capital moved to Kyoto the present structures were built in 1633, on the orders of Tokugawa Iemitsu and were constructed without the use of nails. Given the size of the Main Hall (Hondo) and its veranda that opens off it, that's a rather impressive achievement. The veranda, supported by 13 metre high pillars, juts out above a precipice, offering impressive views across the city, and a spectacular view of cherry and maple trees towards the hills in spring and autumn.

Similar structures were apparently erected at a number of  sites visited by large numbers of pilgrims during the Edo period. According to a tradition dating back to that era, jump off the verandah and survive the fall and your wish will be granted. That's the origin of the Japanese equivalent of taking the plunge, to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu. Two hundred and thirty-four people are supposed to have tried it during the Edo period, and, allegedly, 85.4% survived.

I did the maths to figure out an actual number, and came up with a figure of 199.836, which probably shows how rounding off affects your calculations. Multiplying by 85.5 comes to a tad over 200. In any case you're not allowed to do that any more.

The temple precinct contains fifteen buildings classified as Important Cultural Properties, including the inner Temple (Okunoin) a smaller scale version of the Hondo, Amida Buddha Hall (Amidado), and a vermilion three-tiered pagoda and several other shrines including Jishu-jinja, dedicated to Ōkuninushi, god of love and good matches. Visitors who succeed in walking between a pair of love stones with their eyes closed are supposedly guaranteed to find love, or their perfect match. Attempt to do so with assistance and you'll still find it, but will need the assistance of a go-between or matchmaker.

There are also halls dedicated to the historical Buddha and another that contains close to two hundred statues of Jizo, protector of children and travellers. A visit to a structure at the southern end of the temple grounds is said to bring about easy and safe childbirth. Like most of its peers, the complex has an assortment of talismans, incense, and omikuji (paper fortunes) for sale, and when I spotted one that's supposed to protect travellers on the road I thought of the inimitable Staggster, and bought one.

We'd seen our share of temples and religious sites over the preceding two and a bit weeks, and there's a fair possibility that I was more or less templed out, but I must admit Kiyomizu struck me as a bit of a disappointment. There's no denying there's a great view back across the city, and the verandah, with its sheer drop is impressive when you're up there, and very impressive when you're standing on the bottom looking up, but the crowds were getting to me and a fair part of the complex was closed and undergoing repairs.


Anyway, with the walk through the temple out of the way it was a matter of making our way back to the hotel, which, basically, should have been a matter of making our way down to a bus stop and proceeding from there.

Unfortunately, the way down from the temple itself takes you through the steep and busy lanes of the atmospheric Higashiyama District, winding streets lined with shops and stalls, and this is where the failure to take the bus on the way up kicked in big time.

The actual Higashiyama District (Higashiyama-ku, or east mountain) covers the eastern part of Kyoto's city centre along the lower slopes of the Higashiyama mountain range and extends a fair bit further than the section we traversed, as far, in fact, as the Philosopher's Path to Ginkakuji Temple which was one of the sakura season highlights last time around.

Fortunately, as subsequent research revealed, it's the sort of place you're going to be heading back to, hopefully with the tiredness taken out of the equation since it is, by all accounts,  one of the city's best preserved historic districts and a genuine reflection of traditional Kyoto, especially between Kiyomizudera and Yasaka Shrine where the narrow lanes, wooden buildings and traditional merchant shops invoke a feeling of the old capital , which was the way we went. They've even gone to the extremes of removing telephone poles, doing away with the spider web of cables and wires you find above most Japanese streets and and repaving the roadway to maintain the traditional feel of the district.

Streets in Higashiyama are lined by shops, cafes and restaurants that have been catering to tourists and pilgrims since some time around the 14th century, selling local specialties such as Kiyomizu-yaki pottery, as well as gift culture staples like sweets, pickles, crafts and other souvenirs.

The walk through Higashiyama from Kiyomizudera to Yasaka Shrine is around two kilometres and could be done in half an hour or so, but you you could easily spend much longer visiting the temples, shrines, shops, cafes and restaurants along the way.  Maybe next time around we'll be walking beyond Yasaka Shrine past Chionin and Shorenin Temples to Heian Shrine, and possibly even further via Nanzen-ji Temple, with a collection of architecture and artwork from the the late 16th century Momoyama Period. The area also contains the Kyoto National Museum. I expect we'll be back, but next time we'll be getting there by bus, won't we?

The businesses along the way gradually morph from establishments catering to the temple visitor/sightseer trade into a network of interesting streets in a neighborhood that gradually, in turn, morphs into the Gion District, and the further we got away from the temple the more the crowding eased, though you're never in danger of finding tranquility and solitude in any Japanese city, and that's particularly the case when you're in one of the must visit areas of Kyoto.

Kyoto's most famous geisha district, Gion dates back to the Middle Ages, and the shops, restaurants and ochaya (teahouses) located around Shijo Avenue between Yasaka Shrine and the Kamo River originally catered for travellers and visitors to the shrine, but by the mid-18th century the area was Kyoto’s premier pleasure district. From there, the district evolved to become one of the most exclusive and well-known geisha districts in the whole of of Japan.

There are actually five geisha districts in Kyoto where geiko (Kyoto dialect for geisha) and maiko (geiko apprentices) entertain clients, and since geisha are entertainers, not prostitutes, Gion is not, despite popular misconceptions, a red-light district. If that sort of thing floats your boat research suggests you head for Shimabara instead.


Traditional wooden houses called machiya are a major drawcard in Gion, and since property taxes were based on the width of the street frontage, they tend to have narrow facades but stretch up to twenty metres in from the street. Some of them are ochaya (tea houses), traditional establishments where patrons have been entertained for centuries. As expert hostesses, maiko and geiko engage in conversation, serve drinks, conduct drinking games and perform traditional music and dance. Other preserved machiya houses now function as restaurants, serving Kyoto style kaiseki ryori (Japanese haute cuisine).

Having made my way through Gion I was ready to get away from the crowd, and the boots that had seemed so comfortable back when we'd bought them before the Cooktown trip were starting to squeeze the feet, probably as a result of having been worn solidly for a fortnight, with a pinch of prolonged exposure to wet weather thrown in for good measure.

Actually, I suspect that having got wet the outer layers didn't dry out completely and had shrunk marginally. Hopefully further wear will push things back into shape, but it's very much a case of wait and see.

Having made our way through Gion, we were off to the hotel, and here those factors involving unfamiliarity with the public transport system and lack of knowledge of the local geography kicked in again,and they kicked in big time, along with a pigheaded reluctance to say "That's enough, my feet need a rest."

After all, I figured, it wasn't that far, and, off course, following up on that emerging theme, it wasn't a bit more than we expected ("May as well walk," as I recall we're my exact words, "it's only a few blocks."

But it was considerably further than I'd bargained for.

Back at the hotel where any sane man would have had the boots off and laid back for a well-earned rest someone had to check out the Wi Fi situation in the lobby and while it was there, it was painfully slow until Madam joined me with her iPad and ventured into the territory of the bleeding obvious, wandering over to the Front Desk to ask about minor administrative details like passwords. Things sped up considerably thereafter.


A spell upstairs after that gave the feet a welcome respite, and around six-thirty we started making Dinner noises, at which point lunchtime's failure to get in where she'd wanted, along with Hughesy's suggestion we opt for a curry place kicked in big time. Madam had located another French/Italian wine bar sort of place and pointed us in that direction. It wasn't as highly rated as the first one, but that, hopefully, meant it wouldn't be full either. There were two (actually, make that three) major surprises when we arrived on the doorstep. It was another of the basement type eating and drinking establishments, which meant signage above the steps going down.

The first surprise came in the form of the business name. Cheers isn't the first name that springs to mind when you're looking for a French/Italian wine bar sort of place, but maybe the American sitcom never made it to Japan. They probably serve beer, but given the quality of the wine I sampled there I don't think I'd be bothering.

Surprise #1 had a significant addendum, since Cheers seems to be aimed pretty solidly at the female market. That mightn't be quite accurate, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion based on signage and a Girls set section of the menu.

Surprise #2 kicked in when we walked inside to find the place was practically deserted. Maybe Monday nights are quiet, maybe the crowds arrive later, but when we walked in there were two tables occupied. one emptied while we were there, and no one else came in. Strange.

Because the food and wine quotients there were rather good. We did the sharing a variety of small plates thing, and everything was very good, from the oyster and shallot gratin that arrived with the salad to the pizza that finished the main courses side of things. Madam finished with a chocolate mousse that was very tasty and had me wishing I'd done the same. Full marks on that front.

Even better was the wine selection. There were other by the glass options that didn't appear in the actual by the glass section of the menu, but I limited myself to the official version, and the results were very satisfactory.

There was a Prosecco that might have been a tad on the sweet side but worked nicely as an aperitif, a Sauvignon Blanc from Touraine that was obviously SB and obviously in the mould the Kiwi exponents of the variety are looking towards, a Chardonnay from Burgundy that would have received ticks of approval from the New Wave Oz Chardy crew and an Italian Primitivo (a.k.a. Zinfandel) that wrapped things up nicely. Madam limited herself to the SB while I had the other three, but there were glasses passed back and forth, and if she'd weakened I'm sure the result would have been another interesting wine and an excuse for Hughesy to go one more beyond that.

All in all, a very pleasant little evening, and the perfect prelude to a good night's sleep before an early start in the morning.

Japan 2012: Osaka Day Two

Sunday, 11 November 2012

There were no breakfast arrangements in place for Day Two in Osaka, and in a way that was just as well. Given the way things had turned out over the preceding thirty-six hours a sleep in, a late checkout, a move to a third hotel and a rendezvous with The Sister at a French restaurant provided a painless way of filling in the morning, and we'd already planned to catch up with The Former Secretary some time during the day, so when it transpired she didn't have anything else on her plate we suggest she join us for lunch at the Bistrot des Mauvais Garçons.

There was a slight degree of confusion regarding the actual location of the Bad Boys' Bistro, but we arrived more or less on time, just before The Sister lobbed on the scene. There was no sign of Former Secretary, it was drizzling and we were standing in front of the door of another establishment (Bad Boys go upstairs), so de decided to follow the Bad Boys and head up, expecting Former Secretary to find us upstairs.

As it turned out, FS had done been there earlier and gone to check on something or other when we weren't there well before time and made it back late, by which time we were upstairs and she was scratching her head wondering where we'd got to. A quick text message, one of a couple she'd sent without Someone noticing, sorted that out, and we were all set for a lengthy and leisurely lunch, with a bottle of quite acceptable Pinot Noir from your actual Burgundy.

The wine went down very well, the lunch (salad, cream of pumpkin soup, squid in a tomato sauce, beef slowly cooked in red wine, dessert and petit fours) delivered a pleasant combination of tastes though the portions weren't over-generous. The conversation kept things rolling along to the point where, having been the first customers to arrive, we were the last to leave.

The attempt to find the lunchtime venue had delivered us onto the famous Ebisubashi bridge across the Dōtonbori Canal, just underneath the legendary Glico Man billboard. The bridge was originally built to provide access to the nearby Ebisu Shrine, and is associated with a legendary curse on the Hanshin Tigers, Osaka's baseball team. Given the familiarity of the Glico Man and the fact that it lies between the Shinsaibashi-suji and Ebisubashi-suji shopping districts the bridge is a popular meeting place and it's known as nanpa-bashi (by foreigners) and hikkake-bashi (by native Japanese), both of which translate as the pulling bridge due to the alleged ease with which girls can be picked up in the vicinity.

We went back and forth a couple of times over the course of the afternoon and evening, which was largely spent in the Ebisubashi-suji shopping district, which opens off the street that takes its name from the Dōtonbori canal, which means it's time for another excursion into the realms of history.

While it's the main destination for food travel in Osaka, Dōtonbori owes its origins to a decision back in 1612, when a local entrepreneur, Dōton Yasui, decided to connect the two branches of the Yohori River, which run north to south, with a canal. He set out to do this by expanding the Umezu River, which ran east to west, and the intention was to increase commerce in the region. Along the way, Dōton became involved in the Siege of Osaka and died defending Toyotomi Hideyori, but his cousins finished the project in 1615 and the new ruler in Osaka Castle, Tadaki Matsudaira, named the canal and avenue beside it Dōtonbori (Dōton's canal) even though he'd been on the wrong side of the result in the siege.

Six years later the Tokugawa Shogunate designated Dōtonbori as Osaka's entertainment district and by 1662 the street had six Kabuki (classical Japanese dance-drama) and five Bunraku (traditional puppet) theatres, and the Takeda Karakuri mechanical puppet theatre. The theatres were so popular they encouraged numerous restaurants and cafes to open, catering to the flood of tourists and entertainment-seekers who poured into Dōtonbori, and while there has been a decline in support for traditional forms of entertainment and Dōtonbori's five remaining theatres were bombed and destroyed during World War II it remains a prime attraction for culinary tourists.

Today Dōtonbori is famous for its shops and restaurants, and the neon and mechanised signs that line the canal and feature in the shopping areas. For a start there's snack/candy manufacturer Glico's giant runner crossing the finish line, though he's just one part of a formidable barrage of electronic advertising. Inside Ebisubashi-suji there's s six and a half metre mechanised crab that moves its arms and eyestalks in front of  a crab restaurant called Kani Doraku that dates back to 1960 and spawned a number of similar creations, including a squid that puffs steam.

We took a leisurely ramble through Dotonbori, along the arcade that leads to Namba station, where The Sister bade us farewell, and back through a major electronics store and Tower Records, eventually looping into the hotel to check in and looping back out to chase up a Wi Fi hotspot and dinner.


The pursuit of Wi Fi and the need to contact the Kyoto-based Sponge meant we neglected to book seats at the preferred eating destination (Pieno, just off the arcade-type thoroughfare) and while we'd planned to land on their doorstep around five, Wi Fi matters delayed things to the point where we could either spend a lengthy wait in the drizzle waiting for space to become available or look elsewhere.

Predictably, we looked elsewhere, but only as far as the Mar Bar, which was conveniently celebrating a fourth birthday and supplied us with complimentary Cava as we surveyed the menu. That's not quite accurate, of course.

The two girls surveyed the menu, passing comments and requests for guidance across the table. Really, I wasn't particularly concerned about the actual dishes involved, since we were in tapas territory, and if I didn't like one I'd be right with the next provided no one headed off into extreme territory.

Everything, however, proved quite toothsome, and while the glass of white that followed the Cava was a little on the sweeter side of what I'd prefer, an unidentified fuller bodied red was quite tasty, to the point where I ended up with a third glass.

Having seen Former Secretary off at Namba Station we made our way back to the hotel, making a final pass past the psychedelia alongside the canal with a diversion along the way to take a look at Hozenji Temple, all that's left of a major  17th century site after the main hall was demolished during World War II. Decorated with paper lanterns and tucked away in a relatively quiet neighborhood on an alley paved with stones and lined with old-style Japanese restaurants and bars. It's one of those places that's definitely worth a revisit, preferably when tiredness is removed from the equation.

Japan 2012: Osaka Day One

Saturday, 10 November 2012

After two weeks on the road, Madam had designated the two day stay in Osaka as a rest and recreation spell, and after the previous night's indulgences, rest and recreation was definitely what I needed. It started with a long soak in a warm bath, which did some good, but not enough to overcome the effects, and after breakfast at the downstairs coffee shop I would have been happy to roll the rock across the door and hibernate, but we were faced with an eleven o'clock checkout time and a move to fresh quarters.

Friday night's hotel had been selected with an eye to convenience (and very convenient it was) but it had one major drawback. It didn't as far as Madam's initial research could make out, offer a coin laundry, and after the two weeks on the road we'd have a pile of washing that would need to be done.

That was what prompted the relocation, and neither of us was happy when she found that the first stop did, indeed, offer such a service. Had it been evident when the bookings were made we'd have stayed put, I could have taken further recuperative baths and the washing  could have been started much earlier, giving Madam the chance of a longer rest before we set out to dinner with The Principal.

As it was, we left the checkout as late as possible, took ourselves out for a walk with the baggage in the cloak room at the old hotel, located the new one and made a futile attempt to kill time before the check-in time there.

We headed down to the middle of the business section of Osaka, an area that would presumably have been much busier from Monday to Friday, and while things were pleasantly quiet my head throbbed as a result of overnight overindulgence and my right knee was doing something similar as a result of something I'd presumably done just before  we'd shipped the Black Monster back to Kobe.

The knee had been troubling me on and off for the previous couple of days, not to any great extent, but enough to make things uncomfortable. Now, when a lengthy walk might have served to remove some of the toxic elements from the system by way of exercise, the knee was saying, Hang on there buddy boy, this thing needs some rest.

So rest I did. In a park on the banks of a river while the knee delivered constant reminders that it was there and the head pleaded for somewhere to lie down and quietly expire. Eventually, on the off chance that we might be able to check in early, we headed over to the new hotel and made polite inquiries, which saw us upstairs and into the room well before the regular time. I slept, Madam ran the laundry routine, and still managed a bit of a spell before the evening appointment.


That proved, predictably, to be a much more restrained affair than the previous night's exercise, with a rendezvous that took us straight into Japan's longest shopping arcade, Tenjinbashi-suji Shopping Street. I've seen an arcade or two in my time, but not to many that stretch over more than two and a half kilometres. The roofed arcade grew out of a vegetable market associated with the Tenmangu Shrine during the Edo Period and today contains some six hundred stores selling all kinds of day to day items including groceries, clothes, snacks, used books, medicine, and assorted odds and ends. It's not high end shopping and, by all accounts prices tend to be low in and goods are of average quality. Not the place to go looking for Gucci handbags and the like.

But since it's an everyday shopping environment for everyday people it offers a range of eateries and cafes in the arcade itself, and there are more in the streets and alleys that open off the main arcade. You might be inclined to question Hughesy's assessment of a shopping arcade as packed with a bewildering variety of eateries, and in a common or garden arcade you'd possibly have a point in any other society, but a stroll through the eating and drinking quarter of most Japanese cities would sort that issue once and for all.

Many of them are izakaya, basically small bars that offer food to accompany whatever you're drinking, casual places often based around after-work socialising. Izakaya were originally sake shops that allowed customers to drink on the premises, sometimes called akachōchin (red lantern) since paper lanterns are traditionally found in front of such establishments. Nowadays the term usually refers to small, non-chain izakaya.

As the astute reader might suspect, Hughesy is a big fan of this concept, and would be a bigger fan if I was able to read the language and decipher the captions underneath the picture menus you tend to find outside. Somehow we never seemed to find ourselves in nomi-hōdai (all you can drink) or tabe-hōdai (all you can eat) places where, for a set price per person you can order as much food or drink as you can hold, though they tend to be careful to impose a two or three hour time limit.

On arriving you'll invariably find yourself being given an oshibori (wet towel) to clean your hands and possibly an otōshi (in the Kanto region) or tsukidashi (in Kansai) a snack or appetizer charged to the bill in lieu of an entry fee. From there the food quotient will vary according to the particular establishment, and food and drink are ordered throughout the session with food items usually shared by everyone at the table. I took a while to get used to the fact that the closest platter wasn't specifically mine, but the practice allows you to pick and choose. One thing you will notice is that such places tend to be light on for rice, which also threw me at first until I was told that you're getting your rice quota through the sake, which is, of course, rice wine.

Even if you're drinking beer.

Yakitori (grilled chicken skewers, often grilled in front of you go particularly well with Japanese beer, and I'm also quite partial to the cook it yourself Korean barbecue places The Principal guided us into one such establishment where we put several platters of marinated meats through the cooking process as various matters were discussed, and a couple of quiet beers were indulged in, then we wandered off to a Chinese place in a side alley.

The food there was good, a pleasant change from the seasoned Korean meats, and the combination as a whole worked rather well. Given busy schedules for Japanese high school principals and the need for weary travellers to rest we weren't up all that late, and a farewell two stops onto the return train journey saw us heading back through dark, semi-deserted but quite tranquil streets to the hotel, which this time wasn't as conveniently located with regard to the railway station.

Japan 2012: Kagoshima > Osaka

Friday, 9 November 2012

The last last day of the two week rail leg dawned a little later than Hughesy's regular waking hour, and it was around six thirty-two when I surfaced from a rather weird dream involving catering for wedding receptions while obviously working as a primary school teacher and resumed work on the travelogue. Madam surfaced shortly thereafter, announcing an intention to hie herself off to the nearby public onsen, a development that delivered close to an hour's uninterrupted tapping until her return shortly after eight.

With the train scheduled to depart at 11:32 we weren't inclined to do much in the way of pre-departure activity, happy to wander downstairs for a latish breakfast, return to the room to finish packing and check out just before ten. That scenario gave us a leisurely move to the station and a bit of looking around before departure time.

The day before we'd headed down for breakfast just after six-thirty, and found the place close to chockers. Madam's trip out to the onsen had started with an elevator ride that stopped at almost every floor on on the way down as salarymen and other guests sought to indulge in the ¥500 breakfast that seemed to be the Sunn Days Inn gimmick to attract the business clientele.

If it is, then it definitely seems to work, because when she returned and headed to the elevator to take her back upstairs the breakfast room had progressed to the point where there wasn't an actual queue but awaiting list had the next prospective breakfasted being called by name.

On that basis, my decision to tap away rather hurl myself at the shower once she'd been gone more than half an hour could be deemed to be a smart move. We only had the one room card key and I needed it to keep the lights and electricity running, and I wouldn't be able hear someone knocking at the door while I was in the shower, would I?


In any case, a leisurely morning was the order of the day, and I lobbed myself gently towards the shower rather than hurling myself into the rain room. Breakfast on both days was good deal for the ¥500, and you could see why most of the occupants of the hotel's three hundred and fifty plus rooms would be inclined to eat there rather than elsewhere.

Still, it was relatively uncrowded when we made our way downstairs around eight-thirty, hit the breakfast options and wandered back up, passing the impressive display of bottles associated with one of Kagoshima’s other claims to fame, the sweet potato shōchū (imo-jochu). Typically distilled from barley, sweet potatoes, or rice, though it can be made from brown sugar, buckwheat, sesame and chestnut, shōchū is a completely different beast to sake, though if you're in Kagoshima and ask for the latter you'll almost certainly be served shōchū instead. There are, by all accounts, hundreds of different brands, and a fair few of them were represented in the display.

Kagoshima is the only prefecture in Japan that doesn't brew any sake at all, and the spirit dates back to at least the mid-16th century, arriving in the country through Kagoshima from China or Korea. There's a reference in a piece of temple grafitti written by a carpenter in 1559. Apparently the abbot at the particular shrine was less forthcoming with the spirit than his workers would have liked.

Madam had intentions of sampling the local product, but hadn't managed to do so over the preceding day and a half. With plenty of time till the train left she could still have done so, right up to the time we boarded the train, since the Shinkansen platforms at Kagoshima-chuo have bars offering more than a hundred varieties.

Instead, having made our way over to Kagoshima-chuo I set off in search of the statue commemorating the young men from Satsuma who broke the Tokugawa Shogun’s ban on foreign travel, travelling to England and the United States to study Western science and technology, an adventure that did much to kickstart Japan's industrial revolution. I’d spotted the item in question while Madam was scoping out the transport options between station and hotel, had promptly forgotten all about it the following day but now, with the best part of an hour left till the train departed looking for it was a decent way of killing time.

Had I done a head count I’d probably have found only fifteen there, though the party included a recruit from from Tosa and another fom Nagasaki, and apparently there were a couple of supervisors along for the ride as well. They studied at University College London, and many went on to Oxford and Cambridge before returning home. Among their number was  Mori Arinori, the first Japanese ambassador to the USA and, subsequently,  Minister for Education, Godai Tomoatsu (founder of the the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and the Osaka Stock Exchange) and Terashima Munenori, who went on to become Japan’s Foreign Minister.

With that done there was still time to kill, so we loitered around the station’s shopping precinct, noting a rather interesting poster advertising a newspaper and sending Madam off to perambulate through the local delicacies on sale to the travelling public. As stated elsewhere this kind of thing is an important consideration in a gift-giving culture and she didn’t return empty-handed. Once she’d made her way back with a selection of goodies I took a turn around the same area, somehow managing to arrive in the Shōchū Store, though they didn’t seem to be offering samples.

Aboard the train we were seated on either side of the aisle rather than in contiguous window seats, which coincidentally meant we didn’t have access to the handy electrical socket that comes with said seats.

I’d been hopeful of getting access to the power point along the way since I figured there’d be a turnover of seats along the way, but while the seat beside me was vacant when I boarded it was occupied at one of the first stops by a bloke who appeared to be an academic rather than an itinerant salaryman, and when he got off in Okayama the seat was immediately claimed by another dude who remained aboard until Kobe.

Still, although it ran the batteries on the iPad and the iPod down considerably, I was able to tap away at the travelogue while listening to my own personal playlist, and the four hours passed remarkably quickly.

Arriving in Osaka the contrast with where we'd been was noticeable. Actually, it was more than noticeable, it was remarkable. There'd been plenty of room to move in Kagoshima-chuo, and the shinkansen is a fairly tranquil means of transfer, but having grabbed the Little Red Travelling Bag and made our way to the doorway,  two steps later we were in the antbed turmoil of ShinOsaka. Fortunately there was a mere one stop train ride and a single stop subway transfer to get us to the night's hotel, so we had an opportunity to catch the breath before the evening's appointment with the inimitable Diamond Chef.

That started with a visit to an establishment that delivered a range of little platters which went rather well with beer, a visit to a jazz club where Madam found the featured vocalist was an alumni of her old university. From there we were on to a single malt club and things start to become blurry...

Japan 2012: Kobe > Tokyo > Kitakami

Saturday, 27 October 2012

The Tokyo Express wasn't leaving until 9:25 but I was awake around the regulation back home time, which meant the body clock was operating in Australian mode and we had time for leisurely movement through the shower, and a casual check of the packing arrangements.

So casual that when we made our way downstairs for the Viking we neglected to grab two vouchers on the way out. Back upstairs, minor panic when they weren't quite where we thought they were. It was a timely reminder that you don't want to take things too easy.

There was a single pass through the buffet for Hughesy, and Madam's return visit brought back a single serve of a single item. We were upstairs by 7:40, loaded and locked and checking out before eight, catching the 8:05 shuttle, which delivered us to Sannomiya in plenty of time to take the one stop underground leg to ShinKobe, arriving hree-quarters of an hour before the scheduled departure.

The frequency of Shinkansen services along the Tokaido line was underlined by the fact that our 9:25 Hikari was the third train headed for Tokyo after nine o'clock, and followed almost immediately after a faster Nozumi, which left at 9:22.

Once aboard, the Black Monster went into the space behind the seats at the back of the carriage, the backpacks went onto the overhead, and we settled back for the three hour haul to Tokyo. As soon as the train started moving we were straight into a tunnel and when we emerged a minute or two later we were zooming along around rooftop level. We'd landed Car 7 Seats 10 B&C, which meant we didn't have access to the window seat, which seemed to be vacant. I could have been tempted to snaffle the spare seat but with Osaka and Kyoto coming up in quick succession I thought it might not be a good idea.

Just as well. A couple of minutes later we were in Osaka where a flood of passengers filled up most of the vacant seats, leaving 10A teasingly empty as we set back off. That brought us onto flat land between Osaka and Kyoto, passing houses intermingled with agricultural plots, assorted commercial premises, apartment blocks, a stretch of forest, a real patchwork of land use.

We came up into Kyoto in a hurry. One moment I was checking we hadn't passed it without noticing because I thought we'd be there by now and the next, there we (quite literally) were. Another flood of incomers failed to fill 10A, so as we emerged from the regulation tunnel on the way out of Kyoto I took advantage of the vacant window seat. With half an hour until Nagoya I might as well.

Again, the land between Kyoto and Nagoya is mostly flat, with the same patchwork of land use. We weren't quite in Nagoya when the news ticker at the front of the carriage revealed Silvio Berlusconi had been sentenced to four years, and Nagoya delivered  an occupant for 10A.

The presence of a head between Hughesy and the window had me looking around a bit more than would have been the case otherwise, something that underlined the cambering of the tracks on the Shinkansen lines. Queensland has the tilt train that heads along regular railway tracks, but if you want genuine speed and extremely rapid transit you want to be travelling on a train that leans into the cambered curve.

We'd doneNagoya > Tokyo in two legs last time, one as far as Odawara en route to Hakone and the rest of the way a day later, so it wasn't new territory. Just as well since sunshine had 9A and 10A sliding down the shades, and directing the sightseeing side of things to the left hand side, which was the quarter where you'd expect to be sighting Mount Fuji.

Predictably, between the camber and the weather conditions, the Fuji-viewing prospects weren't looking too flash, but heading out of Hamamatsu, when the camber permitted the sight of mountains away on the left (partially obscured by haze, but definitely mountains) made me much more hopeful.By the time we pulled up in Mishima, however, it was obvious that the Curse of the Frockster had kicked in again.

For years, well before our 2008 journey, the Frockster had babbled on about trips to Japan and the possibilities of planting a Bowen Mango on top of Mount Fuji, a prospect so sacrilegious the deities guarding the mountain kept it shrouded in cloud and drizzle while we were there. It was an obvious case of ensuring we couldn't locate the sacred peak on the off chance we might return with plans to fulfill Eylesy's suggestion.

10A was vacated at Mishima, which lies on the edge of the Yokohama-Tokyo conurbation, with a subsequent increase in the frequency of tunnels  and apart from the improvement in the sightseeing aspect there was a handy electrical outlet that allowed a slight recharge of the iPad as we thundered towards Tokyo. It would only be a tad over half an hour, but every little bit helps.

Everything needed to be packed away the stop before Tokyo itself, and once we were off the train it was a case of seeking out The Translator, which turned out to be remarkably easy, given the number of people who were in and around Tokyo Station.

Once the rendezvous had been made, we wandered off to check out restoration work that had just been completed, restoring the ground level entrance to the facade built just under a century before.

A couple of photos of the impressive dome at the actual entrance and we were off across the station square for lunch.

We had around two hours to spend over lunch, and a glance around the immediate vicinity revealed queues just about everywhere. Fortunately we spotted a vacant table in the corner of an Italian place that seemed to belong to the eat at the counter persuasion, and grabbed it tout suite, I can tell you.

It turned out to be a very handy stroke of lunch. The pasta was freshly made on the premises, the accompaniments were quite acceptable, and there were a couple of Italian wines on the wine list, so I managed a rather good Montepulciano over lunch. When we found ourselves with another hour to kill the options were to order something else and stay where we were or head off in search of somewhere we could sit and talk.

If the dessert menu had included cassata I'd have ordered one, but it didn't, so I had settle for a rather moreish Nebbiolo. Fortunately I took my time over it, and was able to resist the siren song. With lunch out of the way it wash case of back to the station, so we took the lift down to the basement and made our way back through the underground redevelopment that proved very interesting indeed.

There wasn't much, surprisingly, until we'd passed through the barrier into the Station proper, where we found a veritable rabbit warren of retail outlets, including a liquor operation that was offering a little wine tasting.

I tried two versions of an indigenous red grape variety, something that mightn't sound too promising, but the early drinking style was good, and the other, given the benefit of a little bottle age was quite acceptable. I've tasted worse wines made by far better known operations from much more established varieties.

We'd dawdled a bit along the way, and when we spotted a clock showing 2:44 when we were due for a 2:56 departure it was a case of a couple of quick photographs and a scramble to find the seats and, more importantly, claim a bit the all important space behind the seats in the rear of the carriage to stow the Black Monster.

That space was almost gone, but I managed to claim the remaining bit, something that came in handy when we made the mad scramble off the train in Sendai. Kitakami isn't one of the stopping points for the faster services and we'd deliberately veered away from the stop everywhere all the way from Tokyo option which would have meant a substantial reduction in time allocated for lunch.

Tapping out the update took us out of greater Tokyo, through the stop at Umiya and towards the tsunami zone. We'd been over this section before, around the same time of day four and a half years previously, and we were on the right hand side of the northbound train again. The countryside is fairly flat, and while there isn't a whole lot of actual visual interest along the way the patchwork is easy on the eye, and the more urban stretches have plenty of green scattered among the buildings.

The run towards Sendai proved simultaneously easy on the eye and mildly disturbing, largely due to the amount of greenery across to the horizon. We'd headed across this time with hopes of sighting hillsides full of autumnal colouring, but apart from the odd russet patch here and there the foliage, on the southern side of Sendai, at least, remained a deep green that was, as suggested, rather pleasing as a vista but wasn't what we were there for. Still, we weren't all that far into the Deep North Perhaps things would be more promising as the latitudes rose and altitude kicked in.

Something)= brought us to an unscheduled stop at Fukushima, where there was no sign of the nuclear power facility that attracted so much attention in the aftermath of last year's tsunami, largely, I guess due to the mountain range that lies between the city and the coast. That isn't the case at Sendai, where we were due to change trains.

The Shinkansen was around five minutes late coming in to Sendai, and our slower up country train was due to leave five minutes after the scheduled arrival time of the Shinkansen, but it was waiting on the other side of the platform when we arrived, and we managed the switch without difficulty.

The up country train doesn't use the same tracks as its more sophisticated sibling, and from the time we pulled out of Sendai, that was rather obvious. Not to suggest we're talking the old clickety clack of the Queensland rattler, but we moved into the gathering dusk at a noticeably slower speed with much more frequent stops.

The first was at Furukawa, but not far past there we were into a fairly solid wall of forest on the left hand side of the train, which is where we found ourselves this time around. I may well be wrong about the forest, but as we rattled along at a fair old sub-Shinkansen clip there weren't too many lights out there until we started to slow down for the stop at Kurikoma-Kogan. While we were pulled up there a passing Shinkansen reminded us of the pecking order.  Madam remarked that we must be starting to climb, and we were probably moving into coloured leaves territory. Given the fact it was now totally dark outside there was no way to verify the notion but I hoped she was right.

The carriage hadn't exactly been crowded when we boarded, but there was a steady flow of departures that continued at Ichinoseki, And again at Kanegasaki so that by the time we reached Kitakami there was practically no one left and most of us chickens alighted there.

A check on the ubiquitous Google won’t give you that much on Kitakami, but in any case we weren’t there for tourist attractions or sightseeing. Madam and Our Host go back far enough to warrant a visit when we’re there, so it’s a matter of catching up and conversing after an evening arrival, with the option of taking a squiz at the sights the next day.

Located around the confluence of the Kitakami and Waga Rivers in Iwate Prefecture, Kitakami (population around 95,000) sits on the Tōhoku Shinkansen and Tōhoku Main Lines, both operated by JR East, connecting Tokyo and Aomori which makes it a convenient and reasonably accessible resting spot for people looking to catch up with old friends. It's about three hours north of Tokyo on Nasuno/Hikari, the slowest of the three versions of the Shinkansen, which delivers a fair indication of the pecking order where the bullet trains are concerned. The trip will set you back around 12,500 yen (a tad over $A145), which underlines the value of the JR Pass (7 days $335.00; 14 days $535.00)

The fastest version, the Nozomi, only stop at major centres like Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, hurtling between destinations at maximum speed, a now you see it, now you don't proposition when you're standing on the platform at one of the lesser stations.  Rail Pass holders don't get to ride on those, but that's understandable given the demand for seats. Below that there's a variety of fast and semi-fast versions, depending on the actual line you're taking, including the Hikari and Sakura (Tokaido, Sanyo, Kyushu), Hayate and Yamabiko (Tōhoku) that stop more often, but bypass smaller centres. Kitakami, with a population that's heading towards a hundred thousand, still isn't big enough to warrant being included on those services.

We were there in the wrong season, since the city's main claim to fame lies in ten thousand cherry trees planted along two kilometres beside the Kitakami River in Tenshochi Park. You get another sense of pecking orders in the sakura department since the fortnight or so in late April when the trees are in full bloom might attract a rating as one of the Tōhoku Region's three best cherry blossom spots (Hirosaki Castle and Kakunodate are the others) it's only regarded as one of the hundred best places nationwide to view cherry blossoms.

Other attractions (mentioned on the off chance you might be passing by) include summer festivals including the Michinoku Traditional Dance Festival, featuring Oni Kenbai, a traditional sword dance where the dancers dress as demons, and Michinoku Folklore Village, an open air museum containing thirty preserved farmhouses and other buildings from around the Tōhoku Region restored and arranged around forested walkways, ponds and fields. I'm guessing they're similar to what we saw in the Hida Folk Village in Takayama last time around, but they'd certainly be candidates on a less crowded itinerary, as would the Kitakami City Folklore Museum (included in the admission fee for the Folklore Village) with exhibits of Buddhist art, natural and  cultural history of the area.

The Kitakami River, coincidentally, being one of the region's most significant geographical features is the fourth largest river in Japan, draining an area of 10,150 square kilometres in the rural areas of Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures and, interestingly, has no dams from its mouth to the Shijūshida Dam north of Morioka, which results in a spectacular salmon run every autumn. We'll be referring to the river again when we talk Hiraizumi in tomorrow's Travelogue.

Having alighted from the train we made our way through the station and into the car park, where a quick conference saw Madam and I back inside buying the tickets for the next day's leg after they'd conferred about what it was going to be. Our Host’s a teacher, and has plenty to do, so we figured we'd get on a train somewhere along the route we followed on our day's ramblings and then leave her to get on with the rest of her weekend.

Extracting the tickets from an official in the ticket office who seemed to resent people carrying Japan Rail Passes in general, or Japanese-speaking people carrying JR Passes in particular. Took a couple of minutes more than you might expect, but we emerged, tickets in hand, to head off for the evening's accommodation, a reacquaintance with a certain Grog Dog, and an introduction to his canine confrere who we've nicknamed Red Cordial Dog since he seems to have fallen into a vat of hyperactivity inducer.

We didn't hang about too long, however, and we're soon off after a quick discussion of the available options. We got a sorry, house full at the first, a similar response at a second, but a phone call and a brisk walk through the eating and drinking area near the station got us a booth at the third, a vaguely Italian-themed place whose trademark dish was Buffalo Chicken.

That turned out to be bony chicken pieces with a barbecue sauce, so I'm not sure where the Buffalo bit originated. Still, it was cheap, there was plenty of it, and the Chilean red wine with a title that seemed to translate as The Devil's Castle was quite quaffable, though I exercised a modicum of restraint, the bill, which I managed to catch a glimpse of on the way out, ran to around ¥7200, which seemed pretty cheap for a variety of plates of nibbles, a fair sized pizza, a drink each for the girls and around half a dozen glasses of red for Yours Truly.

Back at base camp there was coffee, conversation and a couple of performing dogs to fill in the time until one felt inclined to crash.