I had the best day yesterday just doing my things. I wrote some morning pages, I crocheted a few centimeters and then ripped it back and tried again. I read some of a book and I listened to some of another book. All the simple things as I waited for a hotel check out or a train or a different hotel check in.
Airport hotel is near an outlet mall and a big wheel
It’s the morning of our flight and we’re in Joyfull the 24 hour cafe around the corner from our hotel. It’s cheap and cheerful and they provide unlimited tea, coffee and soft drinks. We had dinner here last night and didn’t expect to have breakfast but we got a notice that our flight was delayed so we took the opportunity. We have gotten better at waiting and thinking of it as an opportunity.
Dinner last night…
Denis reads and I write. I attended a writing class last year and the teacher suggested writing in the cracks. At first I didn’t see how this was possible but she’s a very wise teacher and eventually it dawned on me. Along with shitty first drafts – where you just get the thoughts out without making it good enough or correcting anything. All the corrections come later in the next writing crack. It’s been the most productive behaviour change around writing I’ve ever made.
You have to press a button when you’re ready to order. Frightened the life out of me at the beginning of this journey but it’s the most efficient way to order and I love it now!
The nicest thing is that when you get back to what you wrote you’ve forgotten writing it and it seems ok, not great but ok. And this new moment is different so it brings different energy and if you’re lucky different ideas. All useful. Never correct yourself in the first draft – unless that works for you, you do you but when I correct in the first draft it makes my creative spark shy away from saying anything else. Could shut her up for days! Don’t want to do that!
Not sure what this is about…
Anyways, there’s something I want to tell you… I’m going to keep going at this writing. In a slightly different way. I’m going to try my hand at writing fictional short stories. Why am I telling you this? I need a place to put these stories and the whole blog discipline seems to work for me. So I’ll be putting them here.
I visited Kyoto Museum a few days ago and this building was closed… can you read the sign?
There’s every likelihood they won’t be good – and that’s not false humility – most things start out not so good but with practice might get better. So here’s my message to you: There is no need for you to read these stories, ignore them. If you’re tempted to judge them or tell me how I can do bettter – don’t, it’ll just upset my creative spark and we don’t want to do that, do we? She’s already quite bothered and thinks fiction is impossible.
Here’s that building again – very French and the statue is French too, a Rodin
And when we next travel and I get back to blogging about it I’ll give the first post a title like TRAVELLING AGAIN so you’ll know you can start reading again. Ok? Right, that’s it from Japan. Thank you for joining us, I have loved your company xxxx
We went on a Hop on Hop off bus tour around Kyoto yesterday. Not the best way of touring a city, I’ll admit, especially as it was Monday and a lot of the sites were closed for a holiday or maybe they just close on Mondays. But it’s great way of getting a feel for a city and staying warm. That last bit, staying warm is particularly important at the moment as it’s been bitterly cold for several days. I have always believed people when they said the humidity in Ireland makes the low temperatures we experience feel worse than the frighteningly low temperatures you hear of in other countries. I no longer believe them. It was a gentle 5 degrees celsius here today and I thought I would literally freeze. I am very sorry I used that phrase at home where I was never in danger of freezing so it’ll be like I cried wolf but it’s woeful cold here, I am not lying.
Entrance to temple through bus window
So we took the tour to keep warm, basically. And we were warm and toasty inside the bus. One of the best things about this mode of tourist experience is that you from time to time get off and wander around an interesting location. A castle, maybe? A temple, perhaps? A shrine, perchance? Or what about the Imperial Palace? I was very tempted, fortunately it was one of the places that were closed, no hopping off for us. We stayed for the whole journey, marvelling at the time keeping of the driver. Now, I can’t say the traffic was heavy but there were red lights and pedestrians crossing when he wanted to turn left at a red light (all legal in Japan) so it was steady traffic and yet as I consulted the brochure showing the forecast timing of each bus stop pick up, he was always on time. Always. It was possibly the most exciting thing about the tour, waiting to see if he’d make it. He came close once but only close. It must be wonderful to live here and know the buses and trains will always be on time.
Normal bus through the tour bus window. The city bus drivers (and the train drivers) wear white gloves
We loved having such a great transport system. We never needed to be on time anywhere… oh wait we did when we were going on the Shinkansen our tickets were reserved and timed. But with our homeland experience of a notional train and bus schedule we arrived more than an hour early. But back to the transport, it is so useful to have a rail transport system that goes from the airport to the city, we really should think about something similar in Dublin or maybe Cork? If it could be in place by the time we get home later this week all the better.
Another temple on the other side of the bus
Anyway back to our bus tour, it became obvious about halfway around that there were far too many temples, shrines, museums, markets and other amazingly beautiful places to visit in Kyoto. We would stop at a shrine and see at least two impressive rooftops (a tell tales sign) in the vicinity. Then we could see a passenger asking the conductor for directions to the proposed site from the brochure and be pointed in a completely different direction to the impressive rooftops we were looking at. I did mean to google a list of the temple, shrines and museums in Kyoto and if I do that I’ll include a screenshot of it here…
Enormous shrine gate
I got as far as googling how many? and there’s 1600 temples and 400 shrines, right. The Hop on Hop off tour is now sounding like the best idea we had. We’re obviously settling into tourist life fine and there’s nothing we need to change. The photos perhaps? Yes they are a little indistinct through the bus window and behind other people’s heads with the high back seats and all but small price to pay for the warmth. It’s freezing out there (not literally).
That’s a castle
But then today we went to two absolutely must get off the bus places. We didn’t go on a bus we took the normal train (have I mentioned how great the transport system is here in Kyoto? It was great in Osaka too. And in Hiroshima where they have Streetcars or trams) There’ll be better photos tomorrow… all going well.
I took no pictures. Denis took that one picture. He didn’t ask he just knew I’d want it. We walked around the museum alone and silent. At least a hundred people were in that dark room and there was only the sound of shuffling and sniffling. Alone together.
I think the reason I came here was to witness the pain. It hurts to witness pain. It’s the small human details that hurt the most. Our pain will pass, we’ll forget what we saw here, what we read, what we heard on the audio guide before we turned it off because we couldn’t hear any more. I can’t tell you the stories only snippets remain in my memory and even they are too much.
You see we could imagine ourselves, the parents running to the school to find our children. And we could imagine ourselves, the children sitting day after day in the place where the bomb went off waiting for our parents, who never come to find us.
At the start of the stories there’s a photograph taken soon after the blast, of a young girl with cuts and bandages and then at the exit just as you’re gathering yourself to leave there’s a second photo a few years later, all healed. She looks happy, she had made it. A happy ending.
But she hadn’t made it, she had died a few years later of what they were calling the a-bomb-disease, one of the cancers. I was cheated out of my happy ending. There is no happy ending. While we continue to believe there are others who are less human than we are, we will continue to inflect damage on them and their children. Until we are all human there is no ending. There is no happy.
We went back to our first breakfast cafe in this area of Osaka and got a great welcome. The lady was out and the owner was doing all the cooking and welcoming by himself. We had more of their amazing toast with maple syrup. As we were eating the lady returned on her bike. As we got up to pay the owner came around the counter and with the help of his phone said, very nice to see you again and then asked if we were going home today? We said we were going to Hiroshima tomorrow and he became animated and pointed to the lady – and his phone said, it is her hometown! Oh Japan, stop with all your kindness I’m not able to cope. We bowed and I’ve a new addition to my bow – my hand jumps up to my heart. It means, Stop, please don’t stop, you’re making me cry.
River running through Minoh park
This would be our last full day in Osaka. Tomorrow at noon we are leaving on the Shinkansen and travelling to Hiroshima where we will spend one night before going to Kyoto where we expect to see lots of pretty temples. Then back to the hotel near Osaka Kix airport (the one on the manmade island) for our last night in Japan.
Secret footpath
As I write we are in the Minoh Park, a big forested park in the north of Osaka. We walked about 2km to the Minoh Waterfall and on the way back spotted a cafe in amongst the trees. The most fancy looking cafe we’ve been in here. There’s classical music playing and all around us are coffee themed antiques. When our coffee arrived earlier we were more than surprised by the grandeur of silver coffee pots, cream jug and sugar bowl.
Afternoon tea anyone?
Needless to say, matching cups and saucers also arrived and everything was laid out so precisely by the young waitress. Our only small concern with all this grandeur is that if they don’t take credit cards our Yen reserves of cash may not cover this feast. We ordered coffee and sandwiches.
I bet it looks spectacular in cherry blossom season
We always forget to top up the cash… And there are no atms here in the forest. We are 1km from the station so even if I stay as collateral it would take Denis more than 20 minutes to get there and back. But there may not even be atms at the station… Would he come back without the cash? Or would he take the train into the city to look for one there? And this cafe closes in an hour. These are the questions they don’t ask you to consider on a pre-marriage course… What will become of me here on my own in the forest?
Look, Denis! Look at the pretty lights! Hmmm.
They accepted our credit card. And it cost less than two coffees plus sandwiches at home.
Can you see the guy with long legs walking on the surface?
There’s also an insect museum in this park. There’s a lot of big insects here that I hope never to meet but big and small they are all providing a service to us and the food we need to nourish us. Without them we wouldn’t survive because our food wouldn’t have an environment it could grown in or the assistance it needs in procreating. We are closely connected to insects whether I like it or not.
Cute stripes, I suppose…
There was one section I loved – The Butterfly Garden. It was a two story humid glass house full of green trees and plants with colourful butterflies flying freely. They flew close enough you could feel the breeze from their wings. You know the Chinese saying that goes something like, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can be felt on the other side of the world? It’s a metaphor for how interconnected we are. How we are dependent on each other, how what happens here has effects there.
Here’s a Rice Paper Butterfly taking a drink
We will be visiting the peace museum in Hiroshima. One of the things I want to see is the Children’s Peace Monument. Shiori told me about the little girl, Sadako, who was only 2 years old and 2 km from where the bomb fell but was uninjured. At least they thought she was uninjured. When she was 8 she was diagnosed with the A-bomb-disease, leukemia. In the hospital her friend brought her origami paper and told her about a legend. It goes that if a sick person folds 1,000 paper crane birds they will get better soon.
Shiori’s Mum gave us these ceramic cranes
Sadako made even more than 1,000 cranes but she knew she wasn’t getting better, she did not get well, she died within the year. But her school friends had joined her making paper cranes and the idea spread across Japan and around the world. And money was collected and they built the Children’s Peace Monument.
Engraved on the base of the statue are the words: This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.
We’ve been visiting museums. Last Friday we went to the Sewage Science Museum of Osaka. Very interesting. It seemed fitting to go there when we realised they had a museum with all the excitement about the toilets. I had hoped we’d be able to get a tour of the sewers but this was not to be.
View of the city from the Sewage Science Museum
Then today we went to see the Earthquake memorial near Kobe. There was a huge earthquake (7.3 magnitude) in this area in 1995 and more than 6,400 people died. Doesn’t seem that long ago to me. I had small children in primary school I was on the parents association and trying to survive life. I think that’s why this museum and the movies and sets affected me. I didn’t take many photos.
The dots show earthquakes of magnitude 2 or more in Japan in the year 2018!
It was on January 17th at 5.46am 1995. (There was a grandfather clock in the exhibition that had fallen over and stopped working at the exact time.) We heard first hand stories from people who were children at the time. About how family members died beside them and how their homes were destroyed and all their possessions lost. About how they were living in a gym with food provided by emergency services. Eventually emergency cabins were set up but not in their own communities and the older people found this the hardest.
The stops signs look like the yield signs?
Volunteers came from all over Japan to help and eventually the area was rebuilt and people went back to their own neighbourhoods.
That was one part of the exhibition and the next part was manned mainly by volunteers, possibly retired people who could speak different languages. We met a lovely man full of energy for his topic who was guiding us through what happens when the earth’s plates collide. I think he said there’s only 11 plates in all the earth and when they don’t slide harmlessly over each other the earth quakes happen. Did you ever play trains crashing with your brother? If he’s stronger then his train can carry on forward while yours tips upward or falls over… something like that is happening with the plates.
We’re seeing emergency signs everywhere
Being near the edge of a plate is unlucky, Japan is near the edge of three plates! (Ireland isn’t near any plate edges, no harm in mentioning here, Ireland is the best place to live as far as natural disasters are concerned.) He showed us a fault line off the coast of Japan that they have predicted (70%-80% chance) that there will be a major earthquake causing numerous huge tsunamis all over Japan within the next 30 years. Gulp.
The dots above show plate edges…
Then he went on to tell us about typhoons with the aid of a video game – which I won by diverting the typhoon with my high pressure… you had to be there. And finally he sent us into an earthquake simulator. Wearing VR (virtual reality) glasses we were in a house when the earthquake started and furniture started moving around. The most surprising thing was how long the shaking lasted. Maybe because all we’ve ever seen are clips on tv or the internet of actual footage that we somehow thought it was just a short experience. It’s longer than a clip and even thought I knew it was a simulation I still wanted it to end.
Still haven’t found a post office
The whole experience was both disturbing and inspiring. Disturbing because no one wants a high percentage chance of disaster and hearing real human stories of what happened was disturbing. But inspiring because our guide was an older man but full of energy and passion for the subject of weather and natural disasters and how we can learn from them and make things a bit better next time. And each volunteer asked where we came from and recognized Ireland and were delighted we had come so far to visit.
The green man for crossing the road, is blue in Japan
And the recent earthquake on New Year’s Day on the Noto Peninsula? At the moment the toll is 168 fatalities and 103 still missing. There are 31,800 people in shelters in the Ishikawa Prefecture. You read about these things on the internet or see them in the news but seeing this exhibition today brings these people and their experiences closer. Can you imagine, your home is gone and you’re living in an evacuation center?
We’ll be going to Hiroshima next week and I thought that would be a major emotional experience and it probably will be but I wasn’t expecting this museum to be so emotional. It’s hard to ignore pain and suffering when you see it clearly and even harder when there’s no one to blame. Bad things happen.
Lines of bicycles on every street with flimsy locks… untouched
I wanted to experience the things that made this culture different. I’ve seen the smiles, the dedication to work, the politeness, the kindness, the not-stolen bicycles and in this museum I see resilience. Last night in a local cafe an old man came up to us and nodded and smiled and looked so happy as he said, “Welcome”. He didn’t have any other English except the word, American. He asked, “American?” and we said no we were from Ireland. He nodded, smiled and went off. Knowing the history between these two countries how can he be so kind and welcoming to us whom he thought were American?
And we’re back in Osaka. We arrived by bullet train but I slept through most of it. I’m coming down with something. (If you’re waiting for pictures of the toilets on the bulletin board train, sorry, we’ll be travelling again at the end of the week and hopefully I’ll be awake enough to go check them out!)
We arrived in Shin-Osaka station again and took the metro 9 stops to our hotel. When we got out at the station we realised we were somewhere very different. Our first hotel near the bridge to the airport was in a very modern area but here we have gone back in time. The streets are full of people, shops, food stalls, lights, casinos, and a train the crosses the footpath and runs between the buildings.
Walking along the footpath and the train comes out between two buildings… this is different but it works
There are also plenty of combinis. The combini is a convenience store. A corner shop would be similar except the combini provides so much. You want to get tickets printed? Go to the combini. You want a cold snack, a microwave snack and you don’t have a microwave, go to the combine. You want to post within Japan, get groceries or hot coffee, cold coffee, toothpaste?Combini is for you. They are literally on every street, maybe twice or three times. There’s two names we keep seeing, 7Eleven and Lawsons but there’s plenty more.
Here’s some – HOT – coffee at the combini. There is heat coming from the shelves keeping the drinks hot. There’s also a coffee machine if you want your coffee old school
We were looking for a throat gargle and realise there something the combini doesn’t do – medicines. We looked up and down the streets for the blue cross international symbol for chemist or medical centre but there was nothing. Passing a small doorway, which looked like the entrance to a storeroom I could see an old counter. Further in some basic shelves with what looked like boxes of medicine. I don’t know what made them look like medicine, are all medicines a particular colour or hue? Maybe. Anyway I was willing to walk into this tardis and find out.
The chemist
We approached the counter. A woman in a white mask appeared and using a combination of phone translate and miming to gargle, she understood and brought us something and even explained how to use it. Easy. Even easier was when we got back to the hotel we saw there were instructions in English on the box too. Easy.
Inside the chemist
We have stayed at three different hotels on this trip so far and we will stay at two more before we leave and each has been different and great in their own way. The first one had a great view, a deep bath and hot water all the time, there was also loads of space for charging our phones, watches and laptop. The second one was smaller but adorable for that with so much squeezed into the space. The powerful shower in your room and an onsen on the 14th floor.
The gargle medicine
An onsen is a public bath where everyone is comfortable being naked. Yes, what a great opportunity to try something different and so handy in our hotel (which by the way was a fraction of the cost of a hotel in Dublin). But alas no, we did not take the opportunity. It sounded lovely and warm and relaxing (maybe not relaxing now that I think of it) you shower first before you go in and the main rule is you can’t wear anything in there, not even a towel. I’m not sure but I think there’s separate male and female areas? Probably.
We’re near the Tsutenkaku Tower
Now this hotel, closer to the centre of Osaka, is more like an apartment with part time reception. We have a large fridge, bins, hob, microwave, bath, shower and balcony – with our very own emergency ladder… We have to work out how to heat the water though. There are instructions but I tried last night and each time a Japanese voice told me something but I don’t know what. I’ll try again. I’d love a bath, the Japanese baths are so deep. But just on my own…
Sunset by the tracks… of the train, that crosses the footpath
We had a plan this morning to go for breakfast at a traditional cafe just around the corner. It was hard to find because it didn’t stand out but inside it was like we’d gone back in time. There was a sign saying no photos, so I’m sorry to say there are no photos instead I’ll try to paint a picture.
Here’s the outside of our breakfast cafe. A secret doorway to deliciousness
Everything is in dark wood, there’s a counter to the right with seats and behind the counter an older lady is making coffee with very strange implements. On the right are a number of tables, maybe five filled with customers. The coffee making implement is like a large glass with a test tube coming out of the base. Where the glass and tube meet there’s a paper filter squished and layered in place. The older lady is putting ground coffee into the glass and adding water. She swirls the water. And the coffee drips out from the tube. She is doing this continuously making coffee for all the people here. Her assistant is younger, maybe a daughter? They have a very familiar relationship and it seems like the older lady is the boss.
Lunch was takeaway, less subtle but equally delicious
The very friendly assistant brings us a menu (with English names) and we order coffee and toast, normal for Denis and cinnamon for me. The toast is what we used to call a doorstep – really thick cut, maybe two inches thick (5cm). It’s very lightly toasted so that the bread in the middle is still soft and it’s also slightly gooey. When you pull it apart it separates in layers. It is divine. Definitely worth the calories. Our coffee comes in white china cups on saucers. As we eat and drink I notice behind the counter there are shelves with more old china cups and saucers and tea pots. And a small drawing of the coffee apparatus with some Japanese writing, I imagine someone who enjoyed this experience drew it and wrote, Thank you for the coffee.
There’s the train on the footpath again!
Leaving, the old lady and her assistant say, goodbye and we say, Arigatō (thank you) and smile, she gets back to her coffee and we get back to wandering. I suppose it goes to show you can’t be judging the inside by the outside, be it chemist or cafe… or your body in the onsen?
We’ve been spending time with the son and daughter-in-law getting a tour of Nagoya and having a meal with Shiori’s family.
Fancy coffee at Central Park
Yesterday morning we walked through a lovely area of Nagoya called Central Park. But first we had breakfast at Komeda’s. This is where you get free toast and boiled egg with your coffee! Very economical. All the expensive shops are in Central Park but there was only one shop I wanted to visit – the stationery shop! The Japanese are legendary for their cute stationery items and Shiori had promised me lots of opportunities for browsing. If paper crafting isn’t your thing (and why isn’t it?) you may not know what you’re missing. I have some photos to show you.
The shopping baskets are tiny with my tiny post -its
If we didn’t travel so light I might have more… might be a little overkill to buy checked in bag space for stationery?
Muji is a Japanese shop where you can buy household stuff and clothes and food and where I got the tiny spatula and Darragh got some t-shirts.
Japanese flags waving in the breeze
And then there’s a whole warren of shopping under the streets of Nagoya. We visited a second hand clothes shop, a chemist (we have a need for paracetamol which is Tylenol here) a sock shop and a restaurant (where we had Udon noodles – yummy) but we could have easily browsed for hours visiting shop after shop. We didn’t have the energy so we went back to the hotel and the young ones shopped some more.
Udon noodles for lunch
When we were back up on streets level I heard what sounded like a politician with a loudspeaker telling us to vote for him but it wasn’t , it was an ambulance… yes. Shiori explained later that the ambulance has to ask people to get out of the way because it’s not a given that they will! So they say, “going through a red light, please stop”, “going through a pedestrian crossing, please wait”. Humans are very confusing… everyone here seems to pay attention to the rules and are very polite and friendly but for some reason they ignore ambulances…
Below ground under the streets is full of shops and restaurants
Last night we went to a Korean restaurant in Shiori’s home town. It’s called a Yakiniku restaurant and you get to grill your own food. We had a room to ourselves and we sat at a big table with two grills set into it. The table was lower than the floor but there was space for our legs underneath, making it easy for us westerners to sit without embarrassment. Although getting back up was a little messy, I don’t think anyone noticed…
The grill
When we arrived at the restaurant we were welcomed by the staff and we each took off our shoes and put them in a cupboard just outside our private room door. There were a couple of pairs of flip flops nearby and I inquired if I needed to wear them but no they were to use if any of us wanted to go to the bathroom. Then the ordering began. Shiori’s sister ordered using her phone and soon there were drinks and platters of vegetables and meats and bowls of rice arriving on the table.
First meat platter
And when we’d finished those platters there were more. The vegetables were familiar but the meats were very different. There was wagu beef also and pork and chicken, so much variety. First of all – delicious. You know when people say it just melts in your mouth ? Most of these meats did just that!
Second meat platter. Thats the intestine on the far right -yum!
And there was the memories of childhood – did you have ox tongue as a child? I had but it was in thicker chunks cut across the tongue and I’ve no idea how it was cooked. This tongue was cut lengthwise and paper thin. Then there was beef guts, possibly intestine? Well, I was seriously full by then but I just had to try it. And it was remarkably tasty. Very fatty which of course gives it taste but the way they flavour the dishes also makes a difference.
I don’t think that normally happens…
We got back late after the dinner each of us (except Darragh) falling asleep on the train. They would be going to a Japanese theme park in the morning while we were going back to Osaka on the Shinkansen.
Just in case you’re in a restaurant and there’s two soap dispensers… the green one on the right is mouthwash. (Shiori told me)
It was so lovely to meet our Japanese in-laws. And you know it’s funny, language isn’t as crucial as you would think. Yes Shiori was busy translating but when there was silence we didn’t fill it, filling it would have been unhelpful anyways. In fact filling silence is always unhelpful so we were lucky not to be able to chuck in some easy small talk if we felt uncomfortable. But for some reason it didn’t feel uncomfortable and that might have been because we were all cooking together. (To be honest Shiori’s Mum did most of the cooking for Denis and I and we were very happy with that!) And in the silence you communicate with your eyes, your hands your smiles and your nodding head. There’s a lot more going on besides language.
See you in Ireland!
Of course they are not our in-laws but I don’t know a word that describes this relationship between two families drawn together accidentally through their offspring and lasting generations. It should have a name so we can talk about it.
Goodbye Nagoya, you are beautiful
Oh and do you remember my palms together bow? Well, right at the end of the meal, each member of Shiori’s family put their palms together and said thank you to the food! That’s what the palm together bow is for here, like grace after meals but not to god, to the food, for sustaining us maybe, for dying so that we might be nourished. Of course I shared my experiences of bowing like that. I don’t mean to brag but I seem to have a back for making the Japanese laugh. Oh and one more thing, do you remember my picture of Mt Fuji from the bullet train? Yes well it seems I may have taken a picture of a completely different mountain. But after a bit of discussion and Shiori’s translation (Me:but I told everyone it was Mt. Fuji) everyone agreed, yes it was Mt. Fuji.
It’s the morning after the moving earth experience of yesterday and I was going to tell you about our trip on the bullet train but I woke up thinking about something different. I’ll tell you about the bullet train later.
Love the rusty patina
Last week I was speaking to a friend. We chat every Christmas because one day years ago I was brave enough to share something I made with her. It was a fabric Christmas decoration. It might sound odd to need to be brave to share something you’ve made. I definitely think it’s odd to find something so human to be excruciatingly difficult. But it is for me. Back then I must have seen something in her that told me she was a safe place, so I shared.
No bicycles on the footpath. The Japanese love to ride their bicycles on the footpaths.
Anyway, we spoke the week before this trip to Japan and she said something that a few other people have said to me, and that was: you’re right to go travelling when your can because it’s something you’ll never regret when you no longer can. I think I “get” her words today. For me the long travelling we have done since 2008 on the motorbike and in the motorhome and now this trip to Japan have seemed luxurious and decedent. A bit too special for me. I love the experience but I’m embarrassed I get to do it. I’m embarrassed to share my luck. I write about it in this blog because writing helps me to understand all my confused thoughts and feelings. Plus, it feels like I’m writing to one person. You. I trust that you are a safe person.
This poster is on most of the trains… Please be careful not to let your belongings bother other passengers. Please set your phone to silent mode and refrain from talking on the phone. Please be considerate of others around you when eating and drinking on the train.
But today I woke up thinking that my being anything other than excited and grateful for what I get to do, is a preposterous (I’ve been reading Sherlock Holmes) way to live… or die. Imagine – and not in a scary way, please – we could each die at any moment but right now in this moment we are alive and (if we are lucky) we can move and talk and laugh and we can make choices. Choices about how to live in this tiny moment. Choices about how to share this little bit of humanity we bring to the world. I want to call it something like essence but Shiori brought me to a stationery shop today (the Japanese know how to do stationery, it’s just unfortunate we may not have enough room to being it all back) and I got adorable little paper clips… Our little bit of humanity is an adorable paperclip holding all our unique experiences, our lovely thoughts – only the lovely ones, all our ideas, all our dreams for the future and… some more nice things.
Could be a water valve?
Our paper clip came with us when we were born. Some of us have been hiding it successfully ever since. But before we started hiding we were sharing our paper clip like crazy with everyone around. Imagine if you could go back to that innocent time… Sharing a smile with the man at the combini (name for small supermarket here) even though you cannot speak his language, you cannot even speak! Sharing a babbling story of your day with your baby friend at the crèche even if he seems bored. Sharing a trip with a group of strangers on the bus even if they seem odd to you. Sharing your banana experience with the other babies even if they are all much better at eating banana than you. Sharing silence with your Mammy as she holds your bottle of water even though you’re well able to hold it yourself. Sharing your joy at making a three brick tower even when it falls down.
The train was completely empty when we took it on New Year’s Eve… and yet they provided trains
When we arrived we were much better at sharing our paper clip of experiences with the others living and dying beside us on this planet. We were smarter then.
When you’re ready to order you press this button and a loud bell goes off in the restaurant to summon the waiter. This made me very uncomfortable… but hunger cured that!
Ok I promised the bullet train experience but first… I do not know how we are going to survive when we get home without heated toilet seats. Oh I can imagine what you are thinking, what a silly fad, I thought so too but have I once turned off the heat? No, I have not and now I might be a little addicted. “Oh look there’s a toilet I haven’t been to!” The automatic flushing. The noise of water flowing – now I’m not sure whether that’s to encourage flow or maintain privacy and sure it doesn’t matter. I feel there’s no need to go into details about the other features, suffice to say I feel as fresh as a daisy when I leave the cubicle. Oh I nearly forgot about the odour – none. You couldn’t make this up, I have no idea where it goes, it’s just gone. And it’s not just in the airport or hotels these toilets are everywhere.
Here are the buttons you will need during your trip to the toilet…
I promised I’d tell you about the bullet train… We got to the Shinkansen terminal in plenty of time on Monday. We had our tickets. We found our platform (there’s lots of bullet trains on lots of platforms) we even found our gate (there’s two gates for each carriage, one for the seats in the front and the other for seats in the rear. The time said 12.05pm and we were queuing at our gate at 11.57am. Perfect timing, go us! The train stopped, the gate opened, the doors opened, we filed on and found our seats – all seats are reserved. But there was a bag in my seat by the window. We checked our tickets again. Yes we had the right seats. Now what? A Japanese woman approached with more bags and squeezed past us to sit on my seat. I caught Denis’ eye, he said “excuse me” (he had lost the toss in the eye game) “I think these are our seats” while shoving our tickets towards her in a not very bowing way. She looked and looked again and then said, “another train” Denis understood first… We are too early! This isn’t my seat! This isn’t even our train! We have to get off! Now!
There’s a guard at every gate and there are two gates per carriage. Can you see his gloves?
A very awkward race towards the door later and we were back on the platform. The train pulled off. If your ticket says 12.05pm that means 11.57 is too early. These huge long trains get into the station, disembark their passengers, load more passengers and get out of the station within 3 minutes! They are never late (can that be really true?) We had less than 30 seconds to spare. But we were wiser. There’s a train number on the tickets and the overhead screens show the number of the train now standing at your gate. We get on the next train. And there was no one sitting in our seats.
Can you see the number 18? That’s the number of the train we should have got on…
It’s 176km from Osaka to Nagoya. It would take 2 hours and 30 minutes to drive but the Shinkansen took 50 minutes – plenty of time to try out the toilets but our earlier confusion made me wary of leaving my seat so I’ll try it out on the way back. It travels at speeds up to 320km per hour. It has to slow down to let people on and off, unfortunately, I think that’s why it took so long…
We made it!
We settled down to admire the countryside and the bento boxes (cute take away lunch boxes you can buy at the station and elsewhere) of the other passengers. At one point I saw someone taking a picture out the window at a snow covered mountain in the distance. Denis said, “that’s Mount Fuji”, the most loved mountain in Japan. I said, “how do you know?” He said “google it.” I googled, “can you see Mount Fuji from the bullet train between Osaka and Nagoya?” You can. Lucky guess. I had thought we wouldn’t get a chance to see it on this trip to Japan but there it was, out the window on the other side of the train looking exactly like it does on the telly.
You can see it, right? Thats Mt Fuji!
We stood up in plenty of time to exit the train at Nagoya (once bitten) and found our way through the station to the metro. It did seem there was less English translations here but we’re seasoned Japan rail travellers now… Fingers crossed.
Our neighbour’s bento box. See all the leg room?
In case you need to hear this today: Share your stories* even if you think they’re boring or just about toilets or mistakes because right now there are people out there missing something… a moment with you. xxx
*Or your art, or your ideas or whatever your adorable paperclip holds
We were finally able to leave the room and our adventures in Osaka could begin. We needed to buy tickets for the bullet train – real name, the Shinkansen – and we’d heard from the son that they were selling fast as this is holiday time for the Japanese. Although we had travelled very successfully the one stop from the airport to our hotel (go us!) buying the bullet train tickets meant we would have to navigate a larger area. Osaka was an hour away from our hotel.
See, very easy…
You thought we were in Osaka? So did I. There are over 2 million people living in Osaka so it’s a little spread out. It would take time to get into the center and the ticket office where you buy the tickets for the Shinkansen. We could of course have bought the tickets online but physically going there meant we would be familiar with the route on the day.
The windows in the train have blinds! And a very handy little table to forget your phone on…
We had breakfast at the hotel – a one off luxury for a day filled with “how do we…?” Turned out it would be the same silver train, we travelled on from the airport, that we would need to go to Osaka. No problem. We had a maps app but also the train announcements (which were very clear) were in English as well as Japanese. Plus the signage at the station was in Roman letters (so we were able to read the station names as we passed).
Osaka Castle
Our small amount of experience so far has led us to believe that everyone in Japan is very polite and this was demonstrated as another couple came to sit in the seats opposite us. They approached, smiled and bowed and when they had our attention they bowed again and took their seats. I was surprised by how quickly I got used to returning a bow. In the morning I was giving a quick nod (like, I see ya – how’s it going?) progressing to a full head nod and by afternoon I was fully engaged with palms together plus bow from the waist. That last one usually eliciting a laugh from every Japanese recipient! (I asked Shiori tonight why that might be and she suggested it might be more of a religious greeting… not entirely appropriate. I’ll probably let that go from now on then.)
The gardener at the castle had swept up the leaves into a Happy New Year 2024 message!
We had to change train lines from our silver train but that was pretty straightforward, as I said the signage is excellent. We were soon at Shin-Osaka where we were to buy our tickets. It’s a huge station but eventually we found the ticket office and queued up. The queueing is very polite also. When we got to a ticket booth and asked the assistant if she spoke English she said, “a little” so we asking for tickets for a train on Monday. She lifted her iPad and spoke into it and then showed us what she had written. Turned out we had queued in the wrong line, this one was the Tickets for Today Only queue. Oh. But.. she spoke into her iPad again and we read, “As you have queued I will serve you.” Needless to say I took this opportunity to practice my bowing.
Close up to the castle
We were so bowled over with our success with the tickets in spite of our wrong queuing that we decided to continue our adventure with coffee and a castle, Osaka Castle. Denis worked out the route – all by train – and we were soon having coffee and tea in Tullys cafe followed by a walk to the castle.
The receipt coffee, tea, sandwich and biscuit
Months ago when I was thinking about our trip to Japan one of the things I wanted to do was walk along the streets looking at ordinary things. As the castle was closed for the holidays we had time to carry on to the food market and instead of taking the train we walked the 40 minutes through the streets. I took lots of pictures of ordinary things, like signs, manhole covers, traffic lights – their traffic lights sit side by side not one above the other! And they drive on the left like us.
Traffic lights are always in a row…
My feet were sore by the time we arrived but I was happy we had done it. The market is called Kuromon and runs along several streets which are covered. It was packed with people and so overwhelming it took us a couple of passes before we found a place to sample food. The food was called Takoyaki and had little bits of octopus in balls of flour batter – it was very tasty. We got a variety of flavours for about €4.
Food market checked out we headed for the station – Namba. It’s a huge place with shops, shopping centers and cafes. We revisited our old familiar coffee shop and had another experience of Japanese culture.
Takoyaki. Yum!
I was in charge of the purchasing while Denis went off to look for a place to buy a battery, my phone was depleting fast with all the photos I was taking and his with all the navigating. But he came back empty handed and instead found a table while I continued to queue. I explained (in English, granted) to the server that I wanted a one shot and a two shot americano and a small cake to share. The very nice polite young man asked if I wanted the cake heated and I said, “I don’t know I’ve never had it before what do you do?” The poor guy had to go ask a colleague what was I talking about… The colleague had better English and when he realised what I was asking smiled and said “I have it heated.” (Excellent choice, by the way!)
One shot americano and two shots and warm cake. Yum!
I paid and waited at the coffee queue. Time passed, so much so the lady queuing beside me turned to ask me what I was waiting for and called the barista over. She told him I was waiting for an americano. The americano came… on its own. So I asked the lady for help again but my receipt only mentioned one coffee and cake… as the receipt was only in Japanese symbols I hadn’t realised the mistake. “Ok, I’ll be back”, I brought the coffee and cake down to Denis. He said “it’s grand, we’ll share the coffee”, so I waved to the barista that it was ok. Next thing he was beside me saying he was so sorry and I was saying it’s ok and he was asking where are were from and we were saying Ireland (and we were exchanging addresses again – no, not really) and everyone was smiling. Off he goes but returns with two shots of espresso… he must have been trying to understand what had got lost in translation. I was really touched and practiced more bowing and more smiling but it wasn’t over yet.
My new favourite drink, called Sweat because it has electrolytes
On the way out the first guy was clearing tables and he stopped to apologise for his English, so I apologised for my Japanese and Denis took the opportunity to ask for directions to an electronics shop to buy the phone battery. And didn’t the lovely guy take the time to look at Denis’ map and point us in the right direction. As we were going I automatically performed my palms together bow saying thank you. (Well, I didn’t know about the inappropriateness of it yet…) He thought this was hilarious and we all left happier than we had been when we arrived.
Namba at night
It was dark when we reached the exit of the station, this was a big surprise as we had been underground and just assumed it was still daylight outside. The streets look very different at night, full of lights and very pretty. We found the electronics shop and headed home. It was now around 6pm, we’d had a very long day – our first full day in Japan and it was feeling like time for bed but we weren’t going to make that mistake again. We went to find dinner. The first restaurant we picked was closed but we found another thanks to a man at the train station who noticed our confusion.
Namba again
The restaurant looked like a traditional Japanese restaurant with low tables and cushions on the floor. Fortunately, they could see we were definitely not supple enough for that carry on and the waitress gave us seats by the bar. She suggested the house special and we picked two other dishes and shared everything. It was really good, we are definitely enjoying Japanese flavours. Then it was 8pm and now we could probably go to bed without fear. And it wasn’t as bad as the previous night so there’s hope as each day passes it will get easier. Whatever happens it will have been worth it!
We’re getting on grand with chopsticks
P.S. By now you may have seen the news of an earthquake on the west coast of Japan – nowhere near us. We were outdoors visiting a shrine – a very popular thing to do here on New Year’s Day, to increase your good luck for the year ahead. All our phones got alerts just moments before we felt slight movement. It reminded me of when you’re in a lift and it starts moving. We’re safe and happy and wish the same for you this new year’s evening in Japan xxx
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