Japan &#8211; The Mebas

Tokyo – Awesome/Crazy city

Ab — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 13:16:15 +0000

We are finally catching up to finish writing about our Japan experience… two big ones are missing, Tokyo, in this post, and Kyoto to come shortly… We got a chance to visit Tokyo twice during our stay in Japan. We spent one weekend there with a few of our friends who were visiting Japan, Annmarie, Trev and Torie. We also spent the last couple of days on the way out there. We got into Tokyo Station by Shinkansen (Bullet train) late on a friday afternoon. We really enjoyed the bullet train experience! Very comfortable and civilised, as you would expect Japan to be! When we made it in, we quickly went to drop our stuff at our hotel, the Comsoleil hotel. This is a pretty central location, with clean modern rooms, and not too expensive. After this we decided to go have a look for a famous Izakaya restaurant in the Yurakucho area… we never found it, but had a nice walk around the underworld of Tokyo. Dark streets and small night markets, full of people walking around, and even a few modern day “hostesses” welcoming businessmen to bars and restaurants. This little walk took us around the Ginza area as well. After a coupe hours walk we headed back to sleep as we were meeting the Aussie/American gang early in the morning.

On day 2 we started off by heading to Asakusa. This is a temple in the north east area of Tokyo. it was nice to see, but it was very full of tourists. Its worth it though!

Here it really was quite interesting to see all the people walking around and the random group of drummer playing something similar to a Brazilian batucada, all dressed as bullfighters… only in Japan! Since we were in the area, we headed over towards the Akihabara area (the electronics and comics area). Here we made a quick stop for Trev to buys some fireworks, for which he got an awesome deal! Then, walking into Akihabara we ran into a small noodle shop in the street, and it was amazing! It was great that the 6 people in our group occupied the entire restaurant, so we had a very nice private meal!

After this, we divided our efforts and went to a local “Maid Cafe”. This is a really strange experience… Basically, its a restaurant/dessert shop where all of the waitresses are dressed as prototypical maids complete with miniskirt and squeaky voices. Once there they “take you on a magical journey” where your imagination is the limit. It was all very weird, and even a little bit uncomfortable, specially when looking at the business men in suits looking at the young girls dressed as maids. It was really a strange experience!

After this, we closed the day with an amazing dinner in the Roppongi area (the bar/party area) in a teppanyaki called OMAE XEX, very highly recommended! Definitely need a reservation here though.

On the final day that weekend we decided to go to the west of the city and visit the Meiji Shrine. This is a beautiful temple in the middle of a park that was built by emperor Meiji in the late 19th century. Everything about this place is amazing. Its a truly beautiful shrine that you can not miss. We even got to witness a typical japanese wedding at the shrine!

Once you exit Meiji, you come out at Harajuku train station. This is a place where if you get the right time (weekend in the later morning) you get to see the Harajuku girls, all dressed up. As you keep walking down this main street, you go into Omotesando, a nice shopping areas with lots of little streets and restaurants to visit. If you are in the mood to walk, you can even get on foot to Shibuya, which is the most famous crossing, where there are millions of people on the streets (if you have seen a movie where Tokyo appears, you have seen this).

After this, we went back to Kobe, but came back to Tokyo at the end of our trip, where we went to a few more places. In our return, we found we were running into one of the largest snow storms Tokyo had seen in over 30 years! It was beautiful though.

We got a chance to walk around the imperial palace and some shrines in the snow, and it was really nice as everything was very quiet and peaceful. it was also quite difficult to walk around! In this stop over in Tokyo, Mariana found an amazing Gyoza restaurant in Hrajuku that was delicious. Don’t miss going to Harajuku Gyoza Lou… don’t worry about the queue, it’ll probably go quickly and it’s worth it!

When we were caught in the snow, we were looking for a restaurant and ran into this small place behind our hotel. The food was terrific (different types of skewers chosen by the chef), and while we had no clue what we would get, everything was a pleasant surprise. The waiter even braved the snow storm to get us a coke, as they didn’t have any… he ran to the nearest Family Mart! True Japanese hospitality. The snow storm resulted in us not being able to get to the airport, which meant an extra night in Tokyo…. but it included 5-6 hours in the train trying to get to the airport, then 12 hours of waiting there, an emergency hotel booking while running to the train, and begging and pleading to get a flight back home! It was absolute chaos!

The airport during a snowstorm – crowded!

It was all a magical and wonderful experience. People were so nice, and we really enjoyed our time here!

Other posts about Japan:

Ab — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 00:30:28 +0000

Some people said we were crazy to want to explore some of Japan’s highest mountains during the winter. I must admit it wasn’t by design that we planned the trip this way but other than Kyoto and Tokyo, all the other destinations we went to were indeed on the mountains. Not a difficult task considering that 72% of Japan is mountainous.

Now, I would argue that visiting mountains in the winter is that bit more special because of its beautiful snow tops and magical silence.

In this post I am going to tell you about our visit to Takayama/ Shirakawa-go.

Takayama

This is a traditional Japanese town where you can still find old wooden houses in the middle of a concrete road and taste ramen with no guilt of being in a touristic place.

When we arrived to at the train station, we felt we were in an abandoned ghost town. Not a lot of people around and very few tourists walking on the street. The ‘new’ part of the city is completely standard with quite a sad feel to it to be honest. We continue walking up to reach the ‘old town’ where 3 parallel streets take you back to a different era. All the houses are what you imagine as the old traditional japanese houses made of wood, with little fabric curtains on the doors and paper windows. Many of them today are shops or restaurants but the stars of the show are the sake breweries. Most of them open their doors to the public during the winter months so we were able to get a glimpse of how sake is made. A lovely lady that barely spoke any english went frenetically through a notebook with english explanation to read to us how the production goes – very sweet.

Takayama is known for its Floats Festival that happen twice a year. In Spring and Autumn, these massive beautifully decorated structures are carried through the streets to the sound of music. This is a tradition since the 17th century but these days the floats that are carried are not any longer the original ones made of steel and gold. That’s because they need men with exact same height to carry this massive cars but they can’t find enough men to fit the bill any longer. Don’t be too disappointed because the original floats can still be seen in a museum in the north of the city. You even get a walkman to listen to a cassette in english – this is not a joke.

Other than that, Takayama is the home for hundreds of temples. We didn’t have a lot of expectations but yet decided to go for a stroll through the Higashiyama Walking Course. This is a very well sign posted route to visit a few temples and then continue to the woods. Needless to say that it way too cold to go into the woods but we were pleasantly surprised by the variety and quantity of temples one next to the other.

We stayed at Hotel Spa Alpina which is a more business type of hotel. Simple but clean and with onset (hot spring communal bath) on the top floor.

Shirakawa-go

From Takayama we did an overnight side trip to Unesco’s World Heritage site Shirakawa-go. It only takes 90 minutes on the bus but during the journey we could already see that we were crossing the line between modern times to rural wonderland. We got to Shirakawa-go almost at sunset so we could only catch a glimpse of the famous gassho-zukuri farmhouses that make up the whole village under a thick layer of snow.

Gassho-zukuri means “constructed like hands in prayer”, as the farmhouses’ steep thatched roofs resemble the hands of buddhist monks pressed together in prayer. They are all built facing the same direction so the roof is parallel to the wind stream and not against it to avoid too much draft and cold inside the houses. Traditionally they were used as family homes and as silk farms but today they are mostly converted into ryokan’s.

Besides the incredible landscape, Shirakawa-go has lots of onsens. We stay in a western room in one of the ryokans that had onsens it was called Shirakawa-go-no-Yu. The baths are in the common bathrooms and you can enjoy either the indoors or the

outdoors one looking out to the snowy mountain. The food was included and it was delicious if you like traditional japanese food. Lovely ladies that don’t speak a word of english set the table per room and serve this amazing feast that you practically cook yourself on the table. Yummy!

From there, we took the train back to Nagoya and changed trains to head to Hakone. The first train went literally backwards for a while but not to worry because all seats can be rotated at any time or by a central switch. Only in Japan.

Other posts about Japan:

The One and Only: Fuji- san

Ab — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 00:26:55 +0000

It is very hard to pick the highlight of our trip to Japan but seeing Mt. Fuji has to be on the top 3 for sure. Fuji-san for the locals I find it so sweet that they refer to it as a person and respect it as they would respect the elderly.

Our journey started in Hakone where you get off the JR and step into a different area where 7 means of transportation run in harmony to allow you to see the best sights. Hakone itself is where most tourists stay but we didn’t see much of it because we were going to stay at Gora which is already half way up the mountain by cable car.

Gora is a tiny town with a couple of parks and museums to see. We didn’t visit any to be honest – we were on a mission! We stayed in a very commercial ryokan called Hakone Setsugetsuka. I don’t mean in a bad way but it was certainly an interesting experience to be in a very traditional japanese room that is actually quite new and surrounded by other 200 rooms. The hotel was actually quite impressive with beautifully designed rooms with their own onsen on the balcony with views of the mountains.

The highlight of the hotel are the hot springs with different medicinal and entertainment purposes. This was the only hotel we went to with private onsens. They were set outdoors in little huts that you can just go in and lock the door. Really really nice to have company – that are not random old people – in the hot spring for once.

One thing about this hotel and any other ryokan is that they provide your with a yukata to wear in the premises. So cute, they are to die for. Makes you really feel part of the surroundings. Not so much for Abraham because he could barely fit into the wooden clogs.

Anyway, enough of rambling about secondary things. The day after we woke up and took another piece of the cable car that led us to the ropeway. Inside the little pods, were leisurely looking at the mountains and being impressed by the sulphur blasts and wondering if we would be able to see Mt. Fuji. That was when we heard one of our fellow passengers squeak and there he was. Magnificently huge and beautiful. All the other mountains seem like little hills next to him. I would like to be able to describe the emotion of seeing Mt. Fuji right there in front of us but I fear this is not possible and one needs to witness such a moment. I can only say this was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

Once you reach the top of the ropeway, you can go down and enjoy the different angles of Mt. Fuji. On the way down, the final stop is by Lake Ashinoko where we took a pirate boat (go figure) to continue enjoying the amazing landscape. At the end of the boat ride we took a bus that took us back to Hakone with this last sneak peak at this wonderful volcano.

Mount Fuji can not be mis sed in a trip to Japan. It’s beautiful!

Other posts about Japan:

Koya San – Beautiful mountain town!

Ab — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 07:14:58 +0000

If you haven’t read our introduction to our trip to Japan, we suggest you read that first here.

Koya San

On our first weekend in Japan, we decided to go to a place we read about called Koya-San. This is a small mountain town a coupe of hours south of Osaka, where a branch of Buddhism called Shingon was founded. In this town there are many small temples and shrines, and you can actually stay overnight at a buddhist temple!

So, once we decided Koya San was the place to go, we set of from Kobe, first by train to Osaka, and changed to the Koya Limited express which took us most of the way. The last small bit of the route is through a very scenic and steep cable car, which takes you up to above 800 m above the sea. Koyasan is in a valley surrounded by 8 mountains, which apparently is the number of petals in a lotus.

The cable car up to Koyasan

Once we got into town, we walked around many of the different temples and shrines. The weather here was cooooold! It was absolutely beautiful with snow covering everything you could see, but we really had to cover up. Keep in mind that since we moved to Singapore, all of our exposure to cold has come from either standing in front of an open fridge door or blasting the air conditioning!!!

The courtyard at Kongobuji

It really was quite cold!

Our favourite temple in the area is actually a small complex of temples and shrines calledDanjo Garan (Kon Do, Mie Do, Konpon Daito, etc). There are a few different shrines clustered together, and many very beautiful sculptures and decorations, as well as Torii gates.

The view from the centre of Danjo Garan

Behind one of the temples

It really was huge!

After walking around in the beautiful snow we headed to our hotel, Ekō in (http://www.ekoin.jp/en/). This is a type of hotel called a Shukubo, which is a buddhist temple lodging.

There we were greeted by a monk who showed us our room and told us all of the details of the upcoming day, including evening meditation, a very large vegetarian dinner and a night time tour of the cemetery nearby. An Onsen (hot Japanese bath) was also available in the premises.

The courtyard of our hotel – imagine seeing this as soon as you walk in!

The garden covered in snow

The afternoon started with us heading for meditation, where they briefly explained how they sit and what they do, and then allowed us to relax and think for almost an hour. This was quite a relaxing experience, but clearly it takes years to get a quiet mind! It was so tough trying to think of nothing! Also, it must also take years to be able to sit in a crossed leg position for so long… regardless of this, it was a very enjoyable time.

After meditation, we were served dinner in our room. This included more than 15 vegetarian dishes, which were very nice! We really did not know what to expect with the food here, but were pleasantly surpised with a very nice soup and many other tasty dishes.

Dinner is served

Finally, we wanted to join the cemetery tour which we had heard wonders about. It was only available in japanese that night, but we decided to go for it and it was completely worth it! It goes through a very large buddhist cemetery on the end of town, and you see thousands of graves with very intricate sculptures built above. At the end of the tour you arrive at a very large and sacred temple calledOkunoin (Mausoleum of Kōbō Daishi). This place, in the middle of the night, is just beautiful. Then to top it all off, the monk leading the tour breaks out into a very nice chant… the moment was magical!

The entrance of Okunoin

Then it took a 20 minute walk back, where a great hot bath was waiting for us. This was our first Japanese bath experience, and did not know exactly what to expect… But essentially to go to a common room where you get undressed, then walk into the bath room and wash off, after which you slowly get into a VERY hot bath. Here, a Japanese man started talking to me in Japanese, clearly asking me about where I was from, and about mexican food, but communicating was tough… he did not know many world in english, and my japanese is sketchy at best! All of this happens while you are in a room naked with strangers. It could have potentially been a bit weird, but it actually was not bad at all!

Typical Japanese bath

After this, it was straight to bed, as we had an early morning fire ritual to attend!

When we woke up, it was straight to meditation at the main shrine, which is an ancient and very ornate temple, together with 2 of the monks. It was a very nice experience with them chanting, but it was just preparation for the highlight of the day, which is the Goma fire ritual. This is a ceremony which is performed once per day in every temple, and we had the privilege of witnessing it. In this ritual, the monks start chanting while one of them slowly builds up a fire which can reach a meter in height or more! It probably took the monk about 20-30 minutes to slowly build it up. When its quite high, they through in some small pieces of wood with wishes you wrote the night before. It was just an amazing and peaceful experience. Sitting in a cold room watching the fire build up while the chants were in the background is just incredible!

The goma fire ritual

The fire ritual was truly amazing!

After the ritual it was off to get ready and go for a walk in theOkunoin, the temple we had visited the night before. While we were there, we got a bit of snowfall and everything was covered in a layer of fresh snow. It was beautiful!

Visiting the cemetery

A Japanese group of tourists

A beautiful sculpture/tomb

The sun is shining through

The trip to Koya San was coming to an end as we needed to start heading back to the train station. Walking back we stopped at a very small cafe on the main street, where there was a french woman that seemed to be married to the japanese cook, and a man who looked like her brother…. everyone was talking in Japanese and English and french… and then the guys broke out a cello and a shamisen, like a japanese guitar, and started playing music which they were just making up at the moment. It was a very interesting and different moment!

Then it was off, back to Kobe… by bus and various trains.

We did make a stop in Osaka where we had the chance to make our own Takoyaki at a small restaurant near Osaka station. It was a place called Pizza Ball Housewhich we got from a program of Anthony Bourdain visiting Osaka. It was really nice, but takoyaki is nothing like pizza, really…

About to enjoy some Takoyaki

Then, back to Kobe and a week of work!!

Other posts about Japan:

Our time in Japan

Ab — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 13:36:56 +0000

Our latest adventure has been exploring a little bit of Japan. Everything here has been absolutely beautiful, and the people have been incredibly friendly. We will work on writing the different places we have gone to in several posts, as there’s a lot of great stuff. Firstly, we would like to share some of our impressions and best moments here.

Setting the stage: We got the chance to come to Japan for work, and managed to book some time off to spend an amazing holiday here! All in all, we are spending three and a half weeks here… it has been amazing! Our initial base for the trip has been Kobe, where our office is located, and we have been using Japan’s fantastic rail system to get out. Places where we have been:

– Kobe/Osaka: Osaka is the capital of the Kansai region, west of Tokyo. Kobe is an adjacent city, very famous, of course, for its beef.

– Kōya San: This is a small buddhist town a couple of hours south of Osaka. It is the birthplace of Shingon Buddhism, and a great place to see what buddhist monastic life is like – you can actually stay at a monastery!

– Tokyo: The great capital city. This is crazy, full of people and a lot of fun.

– Kyoto: One of the ancient capitals of Japan. this is an amazing city to see many shrines and temples, and experience an awesome mixture of the modern and the ancient.

– Takayama / Shirakawa Go: These are small mountain towns a couple of hours north from Nagoya.

– Hakone: Another small town in the mountains outside of Tokyo, where you can see Mt. Fuji.

First impressions:

Japan is an extremely easy country to visit. Everything works and works on time and people are very polite. Everyone tries to help best they can even if they don’t speak English – which is quite common here. A little Japanese has helped us a lot along the way but most things are easily done.

The thing that really amazed us was the contrast between traditional and modern Japan and how beautiful each of them is in its own existence. Maybe because we chose quite extreme destinations we were able to really see the 2 worlds that co-exist harmoniously – which is a word that probably best describes Japan in our opinion.

It’s the country of geishas and maidcafes…

oozing Buddhism and accessible porn,

extreme etiquette and crazy drinking,

huge temples and iconic skyscrapers,

peaceful countryside and buzzing cities,

kimonos and Harajuku girls,

fire rituals and street fairs

Michelin star kaiseki restaurants and incredible street food,

Tea spoons with names and crazy gizmos,

Ryokans and 5 star hotels.

Every place, every moment can be special in Japan and offer a unique experience but the ones that were definitely unforgettable were:

Fuji-san: coming to the top of the mountain with a cable car and be surprised with the image of Fuji-san was one of the best moments of the trip. It is huuuuuge and beautiful specially in winter with the white top.
Okunoin cementery in Koya-san: I never thought a cementery could be so peaceful and amazing.
Traditional wedding at Meiji-Jingu: the temple is incredible and seeing brides on their traditional full kimonos is definitely on the top of special moments
Ramen in the little corner shop: that is what Japan tastes like! Yummmmy
Shirakawa-go in the winter: what a magical place
Walking through the corridors in Nijo castle
Onsen or public baths: as weird as having a bath with strangers sounds, the experience is super relaxing.

Curiosities: there were several little things that for us were very unusual and fun that we would like to share with you.

– Hot drinks at vending machines: at every corner you can get a coke or water but also hot coffee and tea in a can

– Japanese are very discrete and toilets could be no different. There is a water fall noise when you come in so no one else hears your toilet noises

– “Make me pretty machine”: these machines are in all games stores. You take a picture and the machine itself makes you look young and cute. Lots of young girls are doing it.

– Even the hydrant openings are cute.

We hope you enjoy the next posts that go into detail of each destination.

Arigato gozaimasu

Mari & Ab

Read the next part of our Japanese adventure here:

Other posts about Japan: